1: Why pay attention to the stories you are telling yourself?

And why devote the time, effort, and energy to change these stories?

It’s not going to be easy, Crucial Conversations authors Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Emily Gregory warn us.

There are two reasons you may want to change the stories you are telling yourself:

Reason #1: Bad results.

Maybe you … continue reading

“Nothing in this world is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” —William Shakespeare
1: “Even if you don’t realize it, you are telling yourself stories,” Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Emily Gregory write in their classic book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High.
Even right now. Even as you are reading this.
Yesterday, we looked … continue reading

1: Interested in learning the secrets of life?

Searching for pure truth?

Would you like to fill your soul “with an understanding of love that knows no boundaries?” Diane Button asks in her book  What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living.

Answers to these questions can come from spending time with those near death.

As an end-of-life doula, Diane spends many hours with people in their … continue reading

1: “What’s that?” Gabby asked.

She pointed to a small metal box that dangled from a hospital bed’s grab bar.

Jacob, who was in his early forties, had been confined to a hospital bed because of an aggressive brain tumor called a glioblastoma.

“He had been a very active man, a cyclist who loved the outdoors and lived an adventurous life, but this ‘glio’ robbed his body of the freedom … continue reading

1: When Diane Button was new to end-of-life care, so many questions flooded her mind.

“I wondered if I would ever get to a place where I would feel comfortable stepping into the home of a dying person with ease and grace,” she writes in her wonderful book What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living.

Fortunately, she had a mentor. “Hospice chaplain Clarence Liu was was … continue reading

“One of my clients had candles spread all over her house, in every room,” Diane Button, an end-of-life doula, writes in her book What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living.

“They were on nightstands and dressers, surrounding her bathtub, and even along the walkway of the woodsy entrance into her house,” Diane notes.

“There were dozens of them, and they were beautiful, but not one … continue reading

1: Looking for lighthearted conversation?

You’re unlikely to find it if you visit the Button family on New Year’s Eve.

“Our oldest daughter, Carly, is getting her doctorate in counseling psychology and is a fan of stoicism and existential psychology,” Diane Button writes in her book What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living.

“Her passion inevitably leads us to deep conversations about the meaning and purpose … continue reading

1: It was November of 1988, and Terry Looper was on his way to Las Vegas.

Terry owned 10 percent of the company that was about to be sold.

“Once the papers were signed, I should’ve been on top of the world,” he writes in his book Sacred Pace: Four Steps to Hearing God and Aligning Yourself With His Will.

“I was not just a millionaire as I’d always … continue reading

1: “There’s wind and then there’s a typhoon, there are waves and then there’s a tsunami,” Andy Grove writes in Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company.

The same is true in business.

“There are competitive forces and then there are supercompetitive forces,” he notes.

Andy calls it a “10X” change.

2: Harvard Professor Michael Porter identified the various forces that determine … continue reading

1: Then Intel CEO Andy Grove was sitting in a conference room with other members of the Intel team.

The topic? “Evaluations of a certain highly touted new software from a company whose other products we already use,” Andy writes in his legendary business book, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company.

Intel’s head of Information Technology shared the challenges her team … continue reading