Silence. It’s one of the best things for us. Even so, for many, it’s scary. So we surround ourselves with noise, TV going in the background or music streaming, podcasts playing, zoom meetings zooming. These days we have more noises than ever before. There are videos, shows, audiobooks, and on and on chattering in our…More
Tag Archives: self-improvement
Time is more than money
Time isn’t money. It’s more than that. Yes, I know that some people like lawyers and consultants bill hourly. But just because an industry works like that doesn’t mean we should live life the same way. We shouldn’t. “Time is money” is a phrase that is pervasive in our American culture. Not everyone says it,…More
When I made one of the biggest bets in my life
Sometimes you need to abandon plan b and go all in. I recently read this 2013 article on Steve Job’s presentation of a lifetime. It was for the first iPhone. It was monumental, legendary, historic. Yet the article outlines all of the things that could have gone wrong (how the multitouch, making a call and…More
Resolutions are good, legacies better
Don’t just make resolutions; leave a legacy. Over the break, I, like many of you, reflected on the past year and casted hopes for the next. It was a mixture of memories and dreams, sadness and joy, grief and gratitude. There wasn’t much clarity that came from that exercise for me. But there was one…More
A stronger you is often born from weakeness
Weakness often begets our greatest strength. Most of us hate the idea of being weak. It conjures up images of being needy, helpless, desperate. But that is one of the best ways of unleashing our greatest strengths. It’s often when we’ve hit a place where we feel the most vulnerable, exposed that something is catalyzed…More
To be rich, this is the kind of hustle we all need
Often it’s not how much money you make but what you do with it that counts. I heard this story about this Chinese woman selling these little buns, for like fifty cents or something like that, in New York City’s Chinatown many years ago. And after maybe decades of working, she bought a building in…More
This is your bet of a lifetime
We’re all betting, but there’s more to winning. You see, how we spend our time, energy, and money requires us to decide how we want to allocate them. How much time and money do you spend on this or that, invest in the stock market, get together or not, buy expensive clothes, or not are…More
Gratitude is good, but contentment is better
Gratitude. It’s something we hear a lot about, especially this week. But, there is something that has a greater impact on our lives, like gratitude, but more richly. What is it? It’s contentment. You see, gratitude is something you do, an action. But contentment is a state of being. It’s not just an act; it’s…More
Patience: the secret to growth
Growth is a winding, circuitous, and weird path. It’s rarely a straight line. It doesn’t go the way we expect nor want it to go. Sometimes it even means going backward before we begin moving forward. And that’s not necessarily the problem. It’s this. The problem is we often expect our growth to progress linearly, and when…More
How you can survive the pandemic
In this pandemic, our best medicine is to face reality. Reality is being true to the situation at hand, you know, that we are in the middle of a pandemic and being with people is highly risky, especially indoors, mask-less. “Facing reality” means more than intellectual ascent, but actually practicing what you know to be…More
John Pa 