Personal growth comes from self-awareness, and the practice of journaling is a phenomenal way to start that process with regular reflection—as long as your reflection is accurate. If you’ve ever been to a playground or circus with fun mirrors, you know the slightest bend to a mirror creates a distorted image that reflects your image […]

One key for designing the future we desire is self awareness. A study study by Cornell University and Green Peak Partners found it was the single greatest predictor of success among executives. That goes for most of us. Our lives have many domains. Consider your spirituality, psychological and physical health, family, friends, and work. It […]

I have always been an avid reader, but over the last few years, I’ve become much more intentional and ambitious in my reading. In 2015, I set my first challenging reading goal: to read fifty-two books in one year. By the time the year was done, the total was seventy-six. I still read at least […]

Leaders and entrepreneurs fail for a million reasons. The usual suspects include lack of cash flow, dearth of technological savvy, or insufficient planning. But according to researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the cause behind a failure to thrive in both personal and professional settings may be much simpler to explain. At least for married folks. […]

When you see a group of friends roar with laughter after taking a selfie, you can bet they used a warp app to capture the moment. Like the funhouse mirrors of yesteryear, the app stretches our bodies and squeezes our faces to hilarious extremes. We have to laugh because the reflection has nothing to do […]

Most Americans think of George Washington as a great leader and the father of our country, but I bet few of us think of overdue library books. When Washington was president, he borrowed two books from a New York library and forgot to return them. According to a humorous but true story the fines for […]

No sleep.” “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” “Sleep is for the weak.” I often see motivational statements like these hashtagged on social media. The idea is to spur high-achievers on to work harder for better results. But what if that’s exactly backwards? What if our willingness to shortchange our sleep is actually sabotaging our success?

Whenever I speak with leaders about their greatest struggles, the answer I hear more than any other is a lack of confidence. It’s a universal affliction. Early in my career, I suffered from almost crippling social anxiety. At formal office functions, I’d sweat like crazy and my hands would go ice-cold. Later, as the CEO […]

Do you have a bad habit you’d like to overcome? If so, you might take a lesson from the pin oak tree, focusing on what you want rather than what you don’t want.

I once heard a person say in a disdainful tone, “I don’t read ‘self-help’ books.” With this seemingly innocuous verdict, he slammed the door on a multitude of voices eager to push him to God’s best for his life. He severely limited his exposure to wise counselors and leaders available to him. And he drew a curtain across a world of extraordinary and supernatural influence.