| When you are born on the bottom rung and now stand near the top, you ask,“How did I end up here?” When you grow up in trailer parks and now live in a beautiful home, you wonder, “How did I end up here?” When no one in your family went to college and you now teach at one, “How did I end up here?” The typical answer to these questions is “Hard work.” |
This July 4th most Americans will have a vacation day – one “free” from work. But how free or independent does your work normally make you feel?
Technology was intended to be the great liberator – transforming our lives and ushering in the 15-hour workweek. I’m not there yet are you?
The number of people working in blue-collar jobs has decreased since 1970 from 31% to less that 14% today. …
Consider the following:
When we talk about our relationship with work, we often focus on our own satisfaction, work/life balance or lack of meaning in our jobs. In other words we talk about our unhealthy relationship with our own work.…
| This is the question posed by legendary music producer Jimmy Iovine during the spectacular HBO docu-series, The Defiant Ones, chronicling the parallel journeys of his life and Dr. Dre’s and how together they made music history. His answer to this question is “focus”. Without blinders horses would look to their left and right distracting them from their pursuit of victory. This six hours series is a testament to how focus and hard work can help overcome extraordinary life challenges. |
One wears a hoodie and the other a robe. One rules from the bench, the other from the sideline. But their success, in part, comes from a similar gift.
Recounting the challenges of attending law school as a wife and new mom, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made a bold declaration that it was only possible because of her ability to compartmentalize. In the morning before school she was strictly a wife and mom. …
Last week, Seth Godin wrote, “The difference between who you are now and who you were five years ago is largely due to how you’ve spent your time along the way.”
Serendipitously that same day, I watched, The Man Who Knew Infinity – a true story based on mathematicians trying to understand the world by discovering life’s underlying equations.
With Seth’s words in mind, this amateur mathematician tried to develop a simple equation to capture how we become who we are.…
| Music is seminal to our lives. From our first lullaby to our wedding dance to whatever dirge they may play at our funeral, songs mark both our most important moments and hum in the background of our daily lives. (As I write this now, music ripples through my ear buds playing Springsteen’s Streets of Philadelphia – which perhaps subconsciously led to the inclusion of the funeral reference above). |
This phrase has probably been uttered to hundreds of millions of American children over our country’s 240 year history.
Yet during that time only 44 people have actually held that job.
It is no wonder that when we tell the stories of our Presidents we marvel at the individual efforts and the hard work that must have been required to ascend to our highest office. Yet consider how many other factors, like these, had to fall in place when you hear their extraordinary individual tales:
Money helps.…
| According to research from Shai Davidai and Thomas Gilovich, probablynot nearly as much as you can feel it in your face. In one classroom exercise, Davidai asks students to google images for headwinds and tailwinds. For headwinds, there is a whole host of images of people being blown backwards and destroyed umbrellas. For tailwinds, not so much (other than the occasional aeronautics diagram of planes.) Images of headwinds are more available to us not just online but in our own minds. |
