Do you believe you’d have more meaning, purpose, and drive if you could just find your passion? Do you look at people more successful than you and presume they succeeded more because they were lucky enough to find their passion; and that if only you were so lucky to stumble on something to drive you, you’d also succeed? I propose…
Joshua Spodek
Why Entrepreneurs Are Today’s Artists (and Why It Matters)
Artists change how we see and think about the world. Visiting Paris’s Musee D’Orsay for the first time in twenty years made me wonder if artists today are changing how we see the world like a century ago. Manet, Monet, Degas, Cezanne, their peers, mentors, and legacies–to pick one of countless lineages–provoked discussion and debate in their time and affected…
Learning to Communicate Beyond Words and Talking
I once read that the difference between activities that cool kids do and uncool kids do is that uncool kids’ activities tend to be based in rules and cool kids’ less so. I don’t know how you’d verify the idea, but I found exploring it told me about myself. Uncool kids play chess, which has clear rules. You can count the…
Failure is How You Feel About Your Results
I simplify complex or mysterious terms to make them easy to understand and act on. The professional and personal development fields seem to prefer click-bait titles—what sells over what works. Talk about failure and success is filled with clichés (“It’s the journey, not the destination,” “everything happens for a reason”) and grandstanding (“fail early and often,” “I failed many times before…
The Problem Determines the Solution
“Which is more important as a leader, to work alone or to work in groups?” I heard that question asked of a panel of business leaders last week. The panelists all answered something like “in this day and age you have to be able to work in groups. That’s where you get everything done” with some acknowledgment that you had to…
Successful Behavior Comes from Little Tricks More Than Lofty Ideals
There is a one-hundred percent chance I will work out this morning. It’s raining. I’m cold. I’m hungry. I have a lot of work to do. I have emails to catch up on. So many distractions. How do I know I’m going to exercise? Because I put on the lycra shorts I wear when I row on the rowing machine and every time…