A Birthday Manifesto learning just to be… (Not) on the shelf Written on the occasion of my 57th birthday, september 28, 2018 My Manifesto in Brief I turned 57 today, which seems apropos when I look back on my journey, I’m like Heinz 57 – a mixture made from a multitude of experiences. I have been…
Tag: advice
A twist to the tale – or – the Journey, continued
I have come to embrace, appreciate, and even love the thing I once hated most about my personal journey. Uncertainty. It is an uncomfortable word and a difficult way to live. It is easy to look at the well-ordered, seeming predictable path others travel with envy. Those people who seem to know exactly who they…
Trigger warnings, safe spaces, and middle-age orneriness
Dear College/University Student, Please forgive me if I don’t understand your need for Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces. Forgive me not understanding how vital it is to your mental health and wellbeing to be sheltered from all adversity and opposing ideas. Let me explain where I am coming from and maybe, if in your safe…
Leadership 101: Make no place for foolish pride
As you read the following, keep in mind: Effective leadership requires a certain vulnerability. They say confession is good for the soul. So, here goes: It is a sad fact of my flawed nature that, too often, the less certain I am on a matter, the more vociferous and vehement my argument. In other words,…
Leadership 101: Influence requires investment
Influence requires investment. If you had to define leadership in one word, what better could you find than influence? Leaders effect change because leaders influence. Leaders achieve goals because leaders influence. Leaders are only leaders to the extent they influence. I remember bits of a sermon an evangelist passing through our little west Texas town preached…
Lost in Translation | I Have a Dream (that needs an interpreter)
I need a Joseph or a Daniel to help me out here. I need a dream interpreted and I am willing to pay for it. Well, sort of. Last night I dreamed and this is how it went… Someone had died. I don’t now know whom it was, but in my dream, I must have…
Unexceptional beginnings? Don’t stay where you started!
Ancestry.com is an exceptional tool for learning how unexceptional you really are. Like most people around my age, I spend more time thinking about roots and origins and the “old times” than I did, say, 20 years ago. Can it, then, be a surprise that, when the opportunity to pop my family name into an Ancestry.com search…