We've had several speaking gigs since the Olympics has started and I'm finding it's a great conversation piece for people. There seems to be a common denominator of interest: the individual stories and montages. The most inspiring ones are the ones where the Olympian overcame a major adversity to get to where they are today - whether injury, personal defeat, loss of a loved one, or just years of discipline and sacrifice. If you're not happy for Shen Xue and Zhao, the Chinese pair skaters (and married couple), who finally won gold, then you may not be human. That's simply an awesome story! …
Dream Big
The Future of College and The Advantage of the Childlike
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what college will look like when Lucy is ready to graduate high school. It fascinates me, because considering that she's only fourteen months old as I write this, I only know it will look nothing like it does right now. Degrees earned online used to be the domain of people looking for a promotion or a new career and already juggling a job and family. But now I’m seeing commercials of college-aged students talking about taking classes online. iTunes U is filled with audio downloads of educational courses from some of the most highly regarded institutions …
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A Quick Note About All The Things You Can’t Do
I'm not sure if you've heard, but the economy is bad. Like, really bad. It's not a good time to go out and do anything outlandish, like start a business or invest in learning a new skill. You definitely want to keep risk taking to a minimum, that's for sure. Oh, and the housing market is still pretty bad -- and we're now getting into the worst part of the year -- so don't even think about trying to sell your home, because no one will buy it. It's always better to not try at all than to try and fail and be disappointed, right? *Ahem.* …
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Escape the Cube: Free Ebook & Interview with Pamela Slim
Are you in your dream job? Do you sometimes wish you could be like Jerry Maguire and rebelliously leave your current workplace behind and break out on your own? Or are you thinking, "Yeah, right, in this economy? I'm glad I HAVE a job!" We had a chance to interview Pamela Slim, author of the blog and book called Escape from Cubicle Nation. She is a seasoned coach and writer who helps frustrated employees in corporate jobs break out and start their own business. We turned the interview into an ebook, which you can download for free. In it you will: Gain insight on whether you should …
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The Opposite of Success is Not What You Think
Pop quiz: What is the opposite of success? I'm no psychic, but I'm gonna go ahead and guess that you'd probably say that the opposite of success is failure. That would be wrong. The opposite of success, as Joe Malarkey (the Worst Motivational Speaker in America) recently reminded me, is doing nothing. Failure is actually an integral part of success. Joe points out that all successful people have failed. They just didn't stay there very long. We hate failing. We really hate losing. Most of us go to great lengths to avoid experiencing either. Everyone who's ever learned to ride a …
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Your Recession-Proof Inner Child
Old people are often accused of being stuck in their ways. "Old" is a relative term, though. It does seem to be that as our age climbs, we tend to get more comfortable and less open to change. But that can begin to happen just as easily when you're in your twenties as when you're taking advantage of the senior citizen discount at Applebees. This little trait doesn't usually serve us all that well. Even less so during economic recessions. …
The World’s Tallest Snowman (I Mean Snowwoman)
Is it possible for a whole town to be Adultitis-free? I don't know about that, but Bethel, Maine sure comes close. In 1999, the ski town of about 2,400 residents set the record for world's tallest snowman. In 2008, the record was finally broken. By them. This time, they built a "snowwoman" and she was no dainty lass. …
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What Did YOU Want To Be?
One of the questions that Kim and I almost always ask when we interview someone is, "When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?" Sometimes the answer to that question is the best sound byte of the whole interview. It's certainly always interesting, and it never ceases to amaze me how often it ties in to the life's work of the interviewee. Particularly the ones who are doing what they love. Our friend Brett Farmiloe is making a career out of getting people to think differently about their career paths. We interviewed him a while back (listen to it here) and when we …
Ginormously Fun Goals
Even in this "supersize it" culture, there's something magically childlike about seeing the world's largest pumpkin. Steve Connolly turned his hobby into a passion, setting a personal goal of growing the biggest pumpkin in the world! How childlike is this?! Apparently the conditions were "just right" this year in Sharon, Massachusetts, which helped to bring his record setting pumpkin to a whopping 1,878 lbs... and its still growing about 11 lbs. per day! Yikes! The coolest thing to think about, though, is that this very same pumpkin started from a seed just five months ago. Whew... I'm …
Jump off the Conveyer Belt
We recently started back on the road for a fall filled with speaking gigs. One thing Jason talks about is to "Stop living by rules that don't exist." This is a major way to fight your Adultitis. Living by this philosophy is exactly what gives the typical two-year-old the bad rap as "terrible." In defense of parents of toddlers everywhere, let me point out that two-year-olds are in the business of testing everything, discovering the world around them and how they fit into it... which doesn't always look pretty. Jason and I joke that inevitably there's always a two or three-year-old throwing a …