Blog Posts

MANY YEARS AGO I was in a suq in the Middle East when I came across this very interesting bottle. It was very dusty and I couldn’t really tell what colour it was so I started to rub it to get the dust off. There was a flash of light, a puff of smoke, and there standing on the bottle was a small, attractive lady Genie. I was astonished and quite speechless. Hands on...

Communicating in an Imperfect World   Have you ever been speaking with someone and thought to yourself: Wow, they just don’t get what I am saying. They must be from another planet! Or Man, I can’t make myself any clearer. How can they not understand me. They must be an idiot. In a perfect world our communications would go something like this: I have a chunk of...

Time is Money – Or is It?   Time is perhaps our most precious resource. Once we “spend” time we can never get it back! Much consideration is given to not wasting time. In business this is most often reflected in the adage: Time is money  The assumptions embedded in the idea that time = money are so profound that they impact how we think about...

Sales – It’s all about Rapport No matter what you are doing in your life – whether it is on a professional level or as a volunteer and whether you are a parent, a teacher, a doctor, a business owner, a politician or any combination of these titles – you are selling something The art of sales is all about getting someone to buy your product or...

  Are You the Carrot, the Egg, or the Coffee   A young man went to his grandfather for advice. The grandfather puffed on his pipe and listened as the young man described how hard and difficult his life was.  Nothing seemed to be going well for him. As hard as he tried, as soon as he solved one of his life’s problem another one would immediately rise...

The Mind Body Connection Communicating with Your Unconscious Mind   The French philosopher, René Descartes (1596-1650) developed a concept of mind and body that came to be known as Dualism. The mind was thought to be non-material, not subject to the laws of nature, while the body was thought to be like a machine. Dualism holds that there is a rigid distinction...

Part 5 Three Big Blunders most people make with their New Year’s Resolutions (Or setting any Goal)   Blunder # 3 – Lots of ideas – No plan.     Part 4 – The Cloudy Crystal Ball looked at how to set up a S.M.A.R.T. goal as a way of achieving your New Year’s Resolution. Recall that the acronym S.M.A.R.T. stands for: Specific...

Part 4 – Three Big Blunders most people make with their New Year’s Resolutions (Or setting any Goal)   Part 4 – Blunder # 2 – The Cloudy Crystal Ball Part 3 three discussed how the RAS works and how it can either help or hinder us in achieving our resolutions. This showed that it was  far better to have one resolution to focus on rather than having...

Part 3 – Three Big Blunders most people make with their New Year’s Resolutions (Or setting any Goal)   Blunder # 1 – The Laundry List   In Part 2 we saw that the RAS is a part of the brain that acts as a pattern recognition system and filter, only allowing through to the conscious mind those things that it deems important.  We also saw that,...

Part 2 – Three Big Blunders most people make with their New Year’s Resolutions Or setting any Goal   The Reptilian Brain and New Year’s Resolutions   In Part 1 it was noted that research shows that the vast majority of people are unsuccessful in achieving their New Year’s resolutions. This part will explore how a specific part of the brain helps or...

Part 1 – Three Big Blunders Most people make with their New Year’s Resolutions (Or setting any Goal)   The Big New Year’s Resolution Fail   The New Year’s Resolution List The concept of making resolutions at the beginning of a new year dates back several thousand years. The ancient Babylonians made promises to their gods at the start of each year to...

  Imagination VS Willpower – Which one wins?     How many times have you heard someone say, “Just put your mind to it,” or “if you have enough will power you can do anything.” Many people believe they could improve their lives if only they had more of that mysterious thing called willpower. With more willpower they could eat right, exercise...

Quick Tip for Instantly Improved Conversations Good communication is the key to success. Without good communications, confusion and chaos reigns. Clarity and purpose flow from good communications. While any communication can get results, clear and purposeful communication is powerful and much more likely to get the desired results. A good understanding of how to...

  Going Beyond Psychometric Testing in Pre-Hiring Screening     Good people don’t underperform due to the wrong personality, the wrong behaviors or some Quixotic definition of culture fit or lack of intelligence or weak team or technical skills. Lou Adler in his post “Why Good People Underperform”, 20 Oct 2015 points out several reasons why he...

There are only two true choices in how we see our lives   As Master Yoda explained: “There is no such thing as TRY. There is only DO or NOT DO.”  To “try” and do something is to admit that you have already failed. You can’t try to pick up a coffee cup. You either pick it up or you don’t. And so it is with life. You either do things or you don’t. And it is...

    My Rules or Your Rules – Either or?   I was reading Jian Shuo Wang’s (CEO at Baixing) post “Should I Follow Your Rules or Should You Follow Mine? on LinkedIn the other day. (The post can be found here.) The gist of the post was that he hired a contractor to do some masonry work and the contractor and he didn’t get along very well. He...