Blog Posts — Page 4

“Whatever you think rigor looks like, you should go up a few notches.”  Eva Moskowitz, CEO of Success Academy “Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.”  Dean Koontz, NYT best-selling author One of my favorite lines is “don’t believe what you think.”  We can have a lot of vigor for a particular idea or belief independent of the amount of rigor we invest to substantiate Read More

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” —Victor Frankl “People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.” —Plato Growth can be for better or worse. Growing physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually is almost always a good thing Read More

“Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity.” —Thich Nhat Hanh “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” —Marcus Aurelius Life is so easy.  There are only two required tasks – we have to breathe and we have to die.  In their hit  song, Dust in the Wind, the group Kansas sings “All your money won’t another minute buy.”  Read More

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” —Martin Luther King A friend recently asked me why everyone called George Clooney by his real name and very few people knew that Fonzie’s real name was Henry Winkler.  My wife said, “that’s easy – George Clooney has been in Read More

“Part of spiritual and emotional maturity is recognizing that it’s not like you’re going to fix yourself and become a different person.  You remain the same person, but you become awakened.” —Jack Kornfield “To be, or not to be?  That is the question – whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, AND, by opposing them, end them?”  —Shakespeare, Read More

“We all have different narratives; all of our narratives are at different stages of development.”  —Viola Davis “If they were right, I’d agree, but it’s them they know not me.  Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away.”  —Cat Stevens I’ve been thinking lately about how the narratives we create for our lives, or those that are imposed upon us, can limit or expand our possibilities.  The question is, “how Read More

“Ideologies separate us.  Dreams and anguish bring us together.”  — Eugene Ionesco “The ultimate end of any ideology is totalitarianism.”  — Tom Robbins “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”—   Eleanor Roosevelt “For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.”  — Margaret Hefferman Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd.  Without innovation, it is a corpse.”  — Winston Churchill My Read More

“I am my own sanctuary and I can be reborn as many times as I choose throughout my life.” —Lady Gaga After reading the New York Times every morning, I need to find a sanctuary where I can recover from the daunting and depressing news around the world.  For me, that means retreating to my bedroom to meditate for 30 minutes and playing my guitar for 30 minutes more.  My little sanctuary helps me to Read More

“To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.”  —Raymond Williams “Radical simply means grasping things at the root.”  —Angela Davis “A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they are dead.”  —Leo Rosten “America has never been moved to perfect our desire for greater democracy without radical thinking and radical voices being at the helm of any such quest.”  —Harry Belafonte “A radical inner transformation and rise to a Read More

In French, the word for wine is vin.  If you want to order a glass of red wine, you say:  “Je voudrais un verre de vin rouge, s’il vous plait.”  In this post, I’m going to use VIN as an acronym to discuss the importance of finding connections with people according to Values, Interests, and Needs.  I like VIN as an acronym and vin as a drink because they represent the flavors of connections as Read More

 “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”  John Maynard Keynes “Old friends pass away, new friends appear.  It is just like the days.  An old day passes, a new day arrives.  The important thing is to make it meaningful:  a meaningful friend or a meaningful day.”  Dalai Lama “We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.”  George Bernard Shaw Read More

I joined the Army in 1967 identifying as an IBMer and was honorably discharged in 1970 feeling more like an SDSer. (Student for a Democratic Society).  I interviewed for a job at IBM before I started basic training at Fort Knox in the hopes they would keep me in mind when I got out.  The Army told me they would send me to Monterrey, California for 6 months of German language training and then on Read More

“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.  And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”  Dalai Lama “Service is the rent we pay for being.  It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”  Marian Wright Edelman In my work with organizations, I am often asked to facilitate strategic planning sessions.  I always start the process with three questions: Why do you Read More

Come gather ’round peopleWherever you roamAnd admit that the watersAround you have grownAnd accept it that soonYou’ll be drenched to the boneIf your time to you is worth savin’And you better start swimmin’Or you’ll sink like a stoneFor the times they are a-changin’ Bobby Dylan In 1988, I spent a couple of weeks investigating the health and safety infrastructure in China because my employer at the time, Northern Telecom, was working with the Government of Read More

“Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer.  I feel stronger for confession.”  Mahatma Gandhi In a recent Krista Tippett interview with Elaine Pagels, Krista asked Elaine what great books she had recently read.  One of them was A Confession by Tolstoy.  I immediately purchased it on Kindle for $.99.   It was the best buck I’ve spent in a long time.  As a relevant Read More

Several years ago, I joined a rafting expedition down the Zambezi River in Zambia, Africa.  The Zambezi is known to have the best category 5 rapids (most dangerous) of any river in the world. Our expedition had two rafts with six people on each raft.  Each raft had an expert guide and was accompanied by a safety kayak in case a raft capsized.  We were all warned about the alligators, hippos, potential for accidents, and Read More

I don’t know where this post is going.  I’m just going to get started and see what happens.  Let’s explore some paths to peace that may lead to a better place. As is likely true for most of you, I’ve been feeling assaulted lately by the continuous bombardment of bad news.  I read the New York Times and find very little uplifting news.  Quite the opposite.  I hear about: Corporate exploitation Pharmaceutical misrepresentation FBI/CIA machination Read More

“When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.”  Victor Hugo   “A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.”  Fidel Castro   “Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.”  Alice Walker   Given all the disinformation proliferating in the world, it seems to me that we should be more concerned with convolution than revolution.  Are we living in the midst of the next Read More

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” Jimi Hendrix “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” Albert Einstein “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” Mahatma Gandhi “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” John F. Kennedy “You cannot find peace by avoiding life.” Virginia Woolf “We can never obtain peace Read More

“There are four questions of value in life:  What is sacred?  Of what is the spirit made?  What is worth living for and what is worth dying for?  The answer to each is the same.  Only love.”  Lord Byron “Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.”  Franklin D. Roosevelt “Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.”  Joseph Campbell “Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles Read More

“A life that doesn’t know possibility takes in only half the truth.”  Pico Iyer “I’m being rowed through paradise on a river of hell.”  Haga Shahid Ali “Once in a lifetime, hope and history rhyme.”  Sophocles A mentor of mine, Dr. Bill Anthony, told the story of his experience teaching psychology at Boston University.  Bill was the Director of Psychiatric Rehabilitation there and taught graduate and undergraduate classes to students who aspired to be in Read More

We are all familiar with the bias that strategic plans are a waste of time.  Many people hold the belief that too much time and effort are invested in developing strategic plans because, after they are done, they are put on a shelf and collect dust.  The reason that this belief is so widely held is because it’s often true.  The plan becomes a static document that quickly loses its relevance as conditions change.  It Read More

When does an iteration become an aberration?  That’s the question I’ve been struggling with for the past few months. Aberration is defined as a departure from what is normal, usual, or expected – typically one that is unwelcome.  An aberration is something strange that rarely occurs, for example when the thermometer tops 90 degrees in January in Minnesota.  Although, given the acceleration of climate change, that may turn out to be more of an iteration Read More

“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today.  No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.  This means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fiction way of thinking.”  Isaac Asimov “Man is something that shall be overcome.  Man is a rope, tied between beast Read More