Meaning

The Challenge of Conflicting Goals When it came to setting goals, I would apply all the best practices of splitting my life into categories – personal, professional, family, relationships, health, etc – creating 3-5 SMART goals for each…which worked for me until it didn’t. I consistently found this traditional approach often led to goals in direct conflict with each other in allocating my time and energy: hitting my workout and morning routine goals required me …

What I Do Now Instead of New Year’s Resolutions Keep Reading »

As John Maxwell once said, ‘Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.’ You might find as I did, the value and power of unlearning in order to relearn differently. I went into my sabbatical with the mindset and approach of “do the opposite of everything I would normally do.” Normal for me… Strategy: what’s the big goal that I’m trying to achieve? What are the objectives and priorities to focus on? What are the activities to …

Walking into Clarity: How Getting Lost Helped Me Find Myself Keep Reading »

Perhaps, like me, you’ve had dreams that seemed almost too big to achieve. Dreams that, despite the odds, you’ve held onto. As I looked at my daughter with her head resting on my shoulder, the evening streets of Barcelona passing in the window behind her, two powerful realizations washed over me: “We are here. We actually made it happen.” “These are the moments. Today is tomorrow’s good ol’ days.” Earlier this summer, I fulfilled a …

How My 3-Month Sabbatical Changed Everything – and What’s Next Keep Reading »

Upon returning from my 20 year sabbatical, many people made a point to let me know this was the best email auto-responder they ever read, so sharing here for you to use in whatever way you would like, while also explaining the purpose of my sabbatical. <> I will be out of the office for 3 months until August 28th achieving a decade long, life-changing goal. If you want to know what/why, you can scroll …

Why I took a 3 Month Sabbatical Keep Reading »

Not gonna lie, I was really nervous agreeing to the challenge issued to the group of entrepreneurs: post some piece of content every business day for two straight months; $50 per missed day collected in a pot to be donated to charity. The hesitations stemming from a few very legitimate restraints and a few very illegitimate self-doubts. That little voice in my head had a field day: there’s no way you will have that many …

Unexpected Learnings from Posting 60 Straight Days Keep Reading »

I recently wrote about how realizing the big picture irrelevance of any one speech or pitch, frees me from getting anxious about it. An interesting thing happened when I took the same frame to the macro level of my life. I initially found it extremely demotivating…what’s the point of working so hard if it doesn’t really matter anyway? I found this driven home pretty hard when I was on vacation with my wife in Paris, …

Freedom of Irrelevance Keep Reading »

A few years ago, as I was preparing my “induction speech” as the incoming President of EO St Louis, waves of nervousness kept preventing me from getting my remarks where I wanted. I am typically not one to get stage fright, but in this case, the stakes felt a little higher to me. My term also coincided with our chapter’s 25th anniversary. We were inviting a couple hundred of our “alumni” in addition to the …

What\’s the Worst That Could Happen Keep Reading »

The finish line was in sight…so I went into a full blown, all out sprint. I wanted to finish my first half-marathon, my first race, leaving nothing out on the course. If I can only get to that finish line, all this pain will be worth the pride. As I approached all the signage and structures from where I excitedly began a little over an hour and a half earlier, I was really surprised at …

Beware of Fake Finish Lines Keep Reading »