“You can’t know what’s really happening in this loud, crazy world, or in a single human heart, unless we are fully present in the moment, and listen. We are the characters in the daily dramas that make up the moments of our life, and our days, and then all of history. Stories exist wherever we […]
Tag Archives: personal development
Stories–Part I: My Stories
I love reading, listening to and telling stories; I always have. I think we all do. From the time I was a small child I loved hearing bedtime stories. Even before I understood the symbols on the pages as letters of the alphabet, I tried to link together the drawings and pictures in my Little Golden […]
Cluelessness–What We Don’t Know (Part III–Are We Hopelessly Clueless?)
At a press conference on June 6, 2002 at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, in response to a question about the quality of intelligence about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld delivered his now-famous quote about “unknown unknowns:” “There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. […]
Cluelessness: What We Don’t Know (Part II–Everyday Anosognosia?)
A news story, reported by Michael A. Fuoco in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1995, began: “ARREST IN BANK ROBBERY, SUSPECT’S TV PICTURE SPURS TIPS At 5 feet 6 inches and about 270 pounds, bank robbery suspect McArthur Wheeler isn’t the type of person who fades into the woodwork. So it was no surprise that he […]
Cluelessness: What We Don’t Know (Part I)
Philosophers spend a lot of time wondering and worrying about questions like: what CAN we know?, what DO we know?, and how do we KNOW what we know?; so much so that an entire branch of philosophy, known as epistemology, deals with these and related questions about knowledge, and what exactly knowledge might be. Epistemological philosophers have also […]
What is it About A$$holes?
You are driving down the highway, travelling with the flow of traffic as you near a construction zone where the traffic narrows from three lanes, then to two, and finally to one lane. You’ve merged into the single lane, when you see, in your side-view mirror, a black Dodge Ram pickup truck blithely cruising along the shoulder […]
Seeing With Fresh Eyes
French novelist Marcel Proust wrote that, “The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes.” To me, this sounds like the exact opposite of déjà vu. We all know that déjà vu feeling. It’s the distinct feeling that, even though we are in a completely unfamiliar place, somehow, we’ve […]
Stomping Grapes or Making Wine?
Four Rules for Building Powerful Teams
Last week, my business partner Moss Jackson and I finished up a leadership development program that we had created for a long-time client. The program brought together senior leaders from different business units and corporate functions within the company, who worked in small teams on a variety of challenges. All but one of the challenges […]