About 20 years ago I went through a phase of reading those North American motivational books — Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Emerson, Tolle, that whole shelf. One of them was Nathaniel Branden’s The Art of Living Consciously: The Power of

Coachy-mode unnamed dad to his daughter as she puts her boots on for soccer: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Daughter with a grin that shows she’s too clever for her dad: “You can’t fail if you

New Rule! [specific words or gestures] are now a criminal offence. New Rule! I’m removing that guardrail and bending that rule — it’s slowing us down. New Rule! The Board won’t agree to this — too conservative — so I’ll just not mention it. Forgiveness, not permission. New Rule! That process

Those idiots! They are just out for themselves. They don’t care how they impact others…. Last week we focused on the corroding effect on our happiness from Comparison with others. We see their visible successes and not their doubts, fears,

There’s a famous study from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics that gets wheeled out regularly to make a point about happiness. Bronze medallists, on camera and in interviews, look happier than silver medallists — despite silver being the objectively better result.   The explanation

Those two orange circles up there are the same size. I know it, you know it, and your eyes still don’t believe it. Surround something with bigger things and it shrinks. Surround it with smaller things and it grows. Your brain isn’t broken — it just refuses to

“Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.” — John Steinbeck, East of Eden   Sit with that for a moment – what a beautiful piece of writing.   It’s from a passage where Steinbeck is

The smartest person in most rooms he walked into. Technically brilliant. His organisation knew his value — and so did he.  But it wasn’t enough.  He’d been passed over for promotion. His numbers weren’t where they needed to be.  When I first met ___, he

“My boys have a better chance of being well-rounded, rational young men asa result of me committing myself to this journey of figuring out my thoughts.” This quote from a client this week is an example of a father – recognising

A feature of the wonderful Aussie blue’s artist, Lloyd Spiegal’s music is the lyrics.  Many of his tunes really that hit me in the feels.  One example is “The man I was.”  Hard to listen to without feeling a little choked up.  The key lyric here “The man that I was killed the man that

The “People and Culture” piece at work influences traction in a quite specific way. It is the difference between walking along a clear, well-maintained path or on soft sand, or wading through water. You can still get there, is it

The Australian HR Institute published findings from the Global Leadership Wellbeing Survey last week. It tracks the happiness of leaders — and it isn’t telling a good story.  There is an unbroken, ten-year decline. A decade of consistent, measurable deterioration in the felt wellbeing of

We tell our friends “Mental health matters” and “don’t be afraid to ask for help.”   We mean it. We watch elite athletes work with coaches, sports psychologists, nutritionists — whole teams dedicated to marginal gains — and we think: of course,

Case Study #01 — J___ Director, Professional Services Firm  The first thing J___ told me was that life felt like there were “too many balls in the air — spread too thin, not operating at my best.”  Fair call, as a director of

Interesting chat this week. To an open question about leadership problems that drain energy and drag on team performance, the reply came back: “Generally, I find it’s staff who do that — I fire them and get better people.” I