I had the privilege a few weeks ago of watching the most dominant team in recent sports memory- possibly the most dominant team in college sports history- play for the National Championship.

College women’s basketball may not be the gigantic national TV event that the men’s tournament is, but it’s the arena of the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team. If you haven’t paid attention to this team, you may want to.

In the last two years, this team is 78-0. That’s right, they’ve won seventy eight games in a row, including 2 National Championships…and their SMALLEST margin of victory over that stretch was a win by “only” 12 points.

To put this in perspective, it’s the second longest Read More...

Not sure if you saw much of the olympics, let alone the commercials, but this one from Nike offers a great message. When you are striving for a goal and you get knocked down, how fast are you going to get up?

Be Free!

From Lance Armstrong on his bike, to a six-year-old in China learning martial arts, movement is the universal language that connects us all. It’s a language of beauty, drama, tragedy and triumph. And the road to athletic greatness is not marked by perfection, but the Read More...

The thesaurus might equate “disabled” with synonyms like “useless” and “mutilated,” but ground-breaking runner Aimee Mullins is out to redefine the word. Defying these associations, she shows how adversity — in her case, being born without shinbones — actually opens the door for human potential.

Aimee Mullins was born without fibular bones, and had both of her legs amputated below the knee when she was an infant. She learned to walk on prosthetics, then to run — Read More...

There are many lessons you can learn from the natural world, but do you know how to apply these lessons? Let us revisit the concept of flexibility by looking at what the Tao te Ching says about it:

Men are born soft and supple;
Dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
Dead, they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
Is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
Is a disciple of life.

The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.

So, how can this message from Read More...

Who said this? “Never give up! Never give up! Never, ever give up!”

If you answered “Winston Churchill”, you would be correct! Thank goodness, there were men like him in the day when the world needed them most.

His message, of course, was related to World War II, but its implications for our lives are profound.

If a person gives up on his or her dream, all that will surely follow is sadness and depression. You need to team up with someone who will encourage you to “never, ever give up”. If you do not have a friend, parent, sibling, or spouse who fills this role for you as your biggest supporter, it can be very, very hard to persist.

In fact, those who should and could be Read More...

When a tree faces a windstorm or a snowstorm, it has two options: fall over or withstand the force.

A friend of mine is a landscape architect. He talks about Bradford Pear trees with great disdain because they are such a popular choice in landscaping, and yet they are weak trees. Although they look pretty, due to their poor roots and thin branches, they deteriorate in about 20 years if they do not toppled in a windstorm sooner. Storms do not strengthen the Bradford Pear tree, they destroys it.

However, many other varieties of trees actually strengthen in storms. With hearty trunks and branches that flex in storms, they withstand the strength of the snow or wind and continue to grow stronger. Read More...

As I was planning this article, I read the following quote from an ancient Chinese warrior in one of my client’s offices,

“Those who are victorious plan effectively and change decisively. They are like a great river that maintains its course but adjusts its flow…they have form but are formless. They are skilled in both planning and adapting.” So although I am not the first to notice the fantastic analogy provided by a running river, I feel the lesson we can all learn is as pertinent today as it was in 100 BC.

We CAN learn from what occurs around us in nature to navigate changes in life, but still get to our desired result.

1. Know Your Desired Result
   A river Read More...

Have you ever tried to do something over and over and no matter how hard you try, it just frustrates you? Or are there some tasks that come to you so easily that you can complete them almost effortlessly?

So many times, we put a lot of effort toward improving the things that are frustrating, and we take for granted the tasks that come easy. Is that the smartest way to use our natural abilities for success? Many experts and studies say no.

Each study uses different terminology to explain the balance of strengths and weaknesses, but the conclusions are similar: improve your natural strengths for the greatest development.

For example, Marcus Buckingham in his book, Read More...

I first learned of Tom Peters in 1995 when I listened to his program In Search of Excellence. His ideas and advice has been invaluable to me for more than a decade now.

Over the years I can think of no other business authority that has a clearer understanding of what works and what doesn’t. In my opinion, if you are looking for a model of management excellence look to Tom Peters.

Mr. Peters was recently asked how people can deal with the current challenges that this economy is posing. Below Read More...

Download the 4 Barriers to Growth mp3
(1. Right click the link 2. Choose “Save Target As”)

If you are reading or listening to this, I would guess that it is because you have a strong desire to improve the quality of your life and to grow.  It is amazing to me how in our quests to grow how often we seem to get stopped.  It makes us wonder what is wrong with us.  

Well you know what I find out that when we get stopped or block in our quests for growth it is usually not the result of a character flaw nearly as much as it is the result of one of what I call the Four Emotional Barriers to Read More...