I guess I need to get used to having wisdom bombs dropped on me by my son because they keep happening. Especially through the game of baseball. The first came a few years ago when I was putting the kids to bed. I always ask for their favorite part of the day. Ben's was watching the Cubs game with me. It blew me away because I would have listed it as my lowlight. They lost a game in excruciating fashion, effectively ruining my day. Interestingly, I no longer remember if they blew the lead or came up short in a comeback — or even who they played — but I remember the lesson he taught me. …
You & Improved
Is Your Job Getting More Emotionally Expensive?
"Inflation is real. And I'm broke." This was shared with me by a woman in an organization for which I was preparing to speak. Although many people have struggled to keep up with the rising cost of goods, she wasn't referring to money. Over the past few years, some of the most important jobs in our society have grown more emotionally expensive, thanks to the pandemic and other factors. They are harder to do and there are fewer people willing to do them, yet we need them more than ever. Let's consider nurses as one example. They are carrying unsustainable patient loads and burning out …
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Recharging Your Dead Battery
Have you ever experienced a time when the battery on your phone was dead? I mean stone-cold dead. Not only would it not turn on, but it was so depleted that even after you plugged it in, you still couldn't use it for several minutes, despite the fact it was directly connected to a power source. Life is like that sometimes. Kim and I recently took an anniversary trip to Mackinac Island in Michigan. I bought a new journal, expecting to have a bunch of time to fill it with brilliant brainstorms and insights. Alas, when we made the return trip on the ferry, only four pages were …
What Are The Chances?
The baseball deflected off the bat, soaring high and out of play. It reached the roof over the grandstand above us, but I suspected it might roll back. It did. I watched as gravity reversed the ball's course and it fell back into the crowd. Hitting the aisle about twenty feet away, it ricocheted wildly off the concrete, and raced through a forest of arms, right toward me. I kept my eye on the ball and relied on the instincts and reflexes honed in my days as a second baseman. I alertly shifted my hands to my left and the ball stuck. I had just caught a foul ball at Wrigley Field on …
You Are Better than Einstein
Believe it or not, you’re actually better than Einstein. I read once that Albert Einstein didn’t know how to swim. And he was a terrible sailor, capsizing his boat so often that locals regularly had to tow him back to shore. It made me feel good to read that. I have never sailed, but I do know how to swim. It’s nice to know that I can do something Einstein couldn’t, and that he stunk at things. Because I spend too much time worrying that I’m not enough. I’m not outgoing enough, smart enough, creative enough, disciplined enough, thin enough, or faithful enough to …
A Moonrise to Remember
I pulled out a notebook and pushed aside the bowl of creamers and the container of jellies. My family was at one of our favorite breakfast spots, our go-to place for celebrating big milestones. This day was decidedly less joyful, however; more of an escape from a nightmare we recently experienced. A few miles away, our house was an island in an apocalyptic landscape. A week before, a hurricane force straight-line wind mutilated an idyllic stand of 150 pine trees into an ugly riot of splintered, uprooted sticks, violently strewn about. Amidst the aftermath, it was hard to imagine …
The Two Zoo Truths
I have an odd experiment I'd love to try someday. I thought of it during a family visit to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, after going through a number of exhibits in a row in which the animals were either hidden or off exhibit. (It's hard to tell if the jaguar is sleeping in a corner out of view or at the vet for a check-up.) After a few minutes of fruitless searching, we just shrug our shoulders and head to the next one. So I thought it would be interesting to remove all the animals from every exhibit at a particular zoo. How long would it take for the average visitor to realize that …
Stacking Your Way to Success
Sometimes people look at successes I've had and say, "Must be nice," as if they happened by magic. What they don't often see is the framework that helped enable that success. Fortunately, it's a framework anyone can develop. We often assume that in order to be successful, we need to be great at one thing. That can work—see LeBron James, for example—but that path is extremely difficult and unlikely. The truth is you only need to be pretty good at a handful of ordinary skills. You just need to build a talent stack. Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, popularized …
The Artful Balance of Dreaming and Doing
When I was a teenager, my mom called me a dreamer. She didn’t mean it as a compliment, but she wasn’t wrong. I've always been idealistic, my head regularly inhabiting the clouds. I’d sing along with John Lennon’s Imagine and revel in the fact that we were soul mates. You’re NOT the only one, John. We’re in this together! I took pride in that side of myself. But when my mom labeled me a dreamer, and I knew it wasn’t a compliment, it got my attention. Of course, my idiot teenage response was, "What does she know?" Eventually, I would relate to Mark Twain, who said, …
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Because You Said So
We recently renovated the rec room in our basement. The transformation mostly consisted of several gallons of paint and some key new decor purchases. In the past, I would have been tasked with the paint job, but this time, we decided to make it a family affair. It was a great idea, mostly because I'd still be working on it — the bead board required four coats alone — but also because it gave us a shared sense of accomplishment and excitement for the finished product. The kids weren't token helpers, either. I managed the trim, but they were involved in everything else. Lucy is fourteen …