“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” These of course are…
Samuel was finally there! After so many years of planning and saving money he was ready to pull the trigger on starting his own business, opening up a gas station. Because he had a tight budget, he had to cut some corners. He even debated adding a restroom due to cost of plumbing, calculating if it was cheaper to just have a porta potty outside, but decided to go ahead with a small restroom with minimal cost invested in it. …
If someone told you that you had to paint the Mona Lisa the same way Leonardo da Vinci did above, what would be your initial response? Chances are it probably isn’t going to be “I’ll have it ready by next week”. Maybe you would feel overwhelmed by the task, not knowing where to even begin, and quickly dismiss it as “I can’t do that”. But what if you were told to paint just the top left square in the picture…
Once upon a time a psychology professor walked around on a stage while teaching stress management principles to an auditorium filled with students. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the typical “glass half empty or glass half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, the professor asked, “How heavy is this glass of water I’m holding?” Students shouted out answers ranging from eight ounces to a couple pounds. She replied, “From my perspective, the…
You meet up with someone you want to establish a good relationship with for business reasons. As you all are talking, politics somehow comes up in the conversation. He says something you clearly don’t agree with and so you contradict him, making your point clear. He in turns doesn’t agree with your comment, and continues by telling you how your view is wrong. After you disagree again, he gets aggravated and after giving you a quick handshake with a forced…
As she listened in to the current speaker while she was back stage, she heard that he was almost done with his presentation and in a matter of minutes she would be up. Several months ago Ana had volunteered to speak at her company’s annual Management Convention as she knew it was a great opportunity to do so, even though every part of her body told her not to. She had never felt comfortable speaking in public, to the point…
Motivation is define as “the general desire or willingness of someone to do something.” It’s in our nature to like to get things done, to accomplish things, to grow and develop; the issue we run into is lack of actually wanting to do it because either we get put off by all the work that’s involved or we give into the fear of “what if something goes wrong”. And so here’s where motivation comes in, it gives us that boost…
Several years ago I attended a conference where the Head of Innovation for a company gave a presentation that blew me away. What stuck with me the most from that presentation was the formula he presented for innovation: Innovation = Idea + Execution, which he credited someone for and for the life of me I have not been able to find who came up with this so please feel free to comment if you know. Anyway, the great thing about…
Tim arrives at his first meeting of his new job. He gets there 10 minutes early, wanting to make sure to make a good first impression, and finds he’s the first to arrive. He takes a seat, opens up his notebook, and proceeds to write the date and meeting subject down. Soon after, people that he’s recently been introduced to start arriving. Each person that comes in waves at everyone and says good morning as they sit down and pull…
It’s no news that what keeps most of us from doing that one thing we’ve been thinking about doing is fear that we will fail. We’ll give ourselves all these different excuses for not doing it and basically give in to the fear. But why do we fear failure? Author Seth Godin in his book Tribes states that fear of failure is overrated. He states that what actually stops us from taking that next step is fear of criticism. This…