The late philosopher Marshall McLuhan was famous for saying “The medium is the message,” meaning that the technology used to convey ideas is more important, from a cultural standpoint, than the ideas themselves. McLuhan used a lightbulb as an example of how the medium of technology could message a whole culture or even a whole […]
How many stories have we all told that include the line, “Then, this completely amazing thing happened.” There are variations, of course: “Then, you won’t believe what happened;” or “Then, everything changed, out of the blue.” Life surprises us—often with a great turn of events. We couldn’t see it coming, yet it must have been […]
Fiction is the domain of novels and screenplays, but it has a way of slipping into other creative pursuits, like planning entrepreneurial endeavors and evaluating our businesses, as well as planning and evaluating our lives. The reason for this potential slippage — which can cause us to put less than solidly-factual and rational foundations under […]
There is one truth about leadership that will never fail those who understand it and adhere to it. Leaders who see light, even amidst what might seem like complete darkness, will always be those who inspire others and who reach higher goals. Any amount of competition, any market forces, any geopolitical realities, any set of […]
I think in narrative form. I have a sixth sense for how stories develop—what propels them forward, which paragraphs or pages contribute to the authentic spine of the story and which paragraphs or pages miss the mark and do no service to the whole. That’s the reason for any value I bring to helping people […]
First of all, it’s best to admit that not all of you wants to stop smoking. Otherwise, you already would have. Part of you certainly does—the wise part that knows that taking the risk of dying from lung cancer is no way to behave. But another part of you isn’t going along with that reasoning. […]
In my view, being human means having the capacity to experience and to give love (often, through a miracle called human empathy) and to reason and make choices. It also means having the opportunity to embrace the truth about oneself, including one’s life story, back to its early chapters, in order to make sense of […]
I have been writing for many years about the threat that burgeoning technology poses to the best of humanity—our empathy, connection with self and connection with reality, in and of itself. The evidence is everywhere: People opting for second lives in the metaverse (which actually threaten their first lives, more than accomplishing anything else). People […]
This quote, whose author is unknown, is worth a few minutes of your dedicated focus. The genius of the question is that it simplifies “vision” by wringing out self-doubt and anxiety. Looking through that lens, if only for a brief window of time, can tell you who you really want to be. And that’s a […]
What is worth dying for? Most of us will never be forced to answer that question, because most of us will not be in situations that demand life or death decisions. But the question is still worth pondering. Because knowing what you are willing to die for can infuse your life with the intensity of […]