Another (new) year! The beginning of new, sometimes recycled, New Year's Resolutions. Why do we do that? To what avail? The answer you, like me, might find in the movie Groundhog Day. In the movie a man relives the same day over and over again. To his dismay it's not the best day [...]
My gym has an advanced scale and I was walking back to it to try again. The stupid machine had to be wrong, possibly defect. But once more the display showed 105 kgs (232 lbs). I gulped and sighed deeply. This was two years ago. I dusted off my 18 year old racing [...]
Awe and amazement fill me when I watch the Olympics. Years of preparation, pain and sacrifice and then that one run, game or other form of moment of truth. I stand in awe of the beauty and control in the movements. I bow to the power, agility and persistence. How contagous the joy, [...]
What drives you? What makes you get up in the morning? Even when you don't feel too well, or worse, when you feel bad? It could be because of my profession, but questions like these intregue me. A book like Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us I simply can't resist. Even though [...]
...something we made up. It's the start of this video on greatness, a video you've got to love. A video by... Nike. Once upon a time I used to buy Nike gear because I loved the swoosh and the "Just do it" pay off. I worked out 3 hours a day on 6 different kinds [...]
Kids say the darnest things. So they say (adults, that is). I disagree. Kids speak the truth as they know and see it. They humble us with questions that show us how little we actually know. And often times they show us the better way out a situation. For example the kid of a law [...]
True self confidence may be the scarcest of goods. Apart from the ones who clearly lack it, we also know people who are overcompensating their lack of self confidence with arrogance or other misplaced and inauthentic show of personal power. And what about ourselves? I know I get very uncomfortable when people compliment me... Even [...]
Statistics abound on change. They don't paint a pretty picture. 70% of change programs fail (think mergers, implementation of IT systems and so on). Nevertheless I keep preaching change is simple (like I did in my blog on How to really change the world). So where does it go wrong then? My experience is [...]
I was in a line up and I felt irritated. 31 executive MBA students had lined up to visualize our respective progress on self set personal development goals from a year ago. The level of harshness on our own performance was typical. Without exception others rated progress higher than the ones that self [...]
"Don't you... bring reality into my classroom!" Decreted my professor of marketing at Kellogg school of management. He was quite aware that reality does not exist in any other than subjective form. (Click for a do it yourself experiment.) He told the story how one day he was grocery shopping and noticed how people buy eggs. [...]
