Embrace Healthy Competition In Service Of Mastery
Competition can be useful if channeled expertly. Competing with ourselves – as distinguished from “against” ourselves – in creating personal bests is a worthwhile goal. If you’re an athlete, do you track your time? If a business professional, your finances? If a student, your grades? What do you find it useful to track, and what […]
The Ability To Learn Faster Than Your Competitors May Be The Only Sustainable Advantage
With competition comes the notion of competitors – a word that can sound anywhere between exciting to deadening. How do you conceive your competitors? Often, I’ve found in working with business owners that they either diminish the competition or make too much of it. It’s arrogant and risky to say, “We have the best – […]
Staying Away From Toxic People Is An Important Element Of Self-Care
Staying away from toxic people and situations is an extremely important element of self-care. Coming into contact with people who treat others negatively and even cruelly, often the best response is simply to get out of harm’s way. Among the key delivery systems for toxicity are projections which are usually given in the form of […]
Self-Care Is Ultimately About Loving Yourself
Self-care is ultimately about loving yourself. It’s thinking enough of your own body – your being – to be attentive to ways that you can nurture and healthily soothe yourself. Our culture gives us very mixed messages about our lovability. Much of marketing is designed to convince us that we’ll only be lovable – only […]
“Piles Of Unconsciousness” May Indicate Poor Self-Care
How is your self-care reflected in your environment? Is it cluttered and filled with stacks of things that you can’t discard? Or is your space clear and free of distraction? Many believe that our outer worlds reflect our inner worlds. One of my best friends refers to unmanaged stacks of papers and things as “piles […]
Feeding Your Soul Is The Most Profound Form Of Self-Care
Feeding your soul is perhaps the most profound form of self-care. The ways are almost infinite: the challenge is in making the time to do it. Ask yourself daily – and perhaps several times daily – “Where is the joy now? How do I access it? What brings me joy?” Often, being playful and open […]
Self-Care: Attending To Your Personal Health And Well-Being
Self-care: your practices and habits relating to how well or how poorly you attend to your own health and well-being. How would you rate yourself on self-care on a scale of 100? Where have you had the most difficulty in the past in self-care? Consider, for example, the topic of sleep: how attentive are you […]
Risk Is Often Presented As A Justification For Command And Control
Among the primary reasons advanced for command and control cultures is risk management – that is, how does a group best prevent bad things from happening while doing it best to accomplish its mission? Perhaps the most notorious command and control entity was the Soviet Politboro which famously created the Soviet Five-Year Plan for Agriculture […]
Do You Ever Treat Yourself Harshly In Service Of A Large Goal?
Among the most resonant pieces of advice that I ever received from one of my mentors was never to treat my body as if it were a horse that I was whipping to go longer and faster (not that I would ever literally do that). Her point was that we have often pushed our bodies […]
Command And Control Often Shows Up In Personal Relationships As Well As Business
Edward Deming, the famed management consultant credited with engineering post-war Japan’s economic recovery, believed that organizations are holographic of their leaders. He said that companies – and all kinds of human groups – emulate and embody the values of their leadership. People within command and control cultures also often model the same kinds of dominating […]