Fear Mediocrity? Five Reasons Why

Is mediocrity the last taboo? The question came to mind a while back when I spied a column by Thomas Friedman, who suggested that in our global economy where work gets done cheaper overseas and where, here at home, technology is eating jobs in a rapidly accelerating pace, only the strong  will survive.  His overall […]

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Whose Family? Whose Values?

With the recent rise of Republican Rick Santorum in the Iowa caucuses, we’re sure to hear a couple of words again and again as the right-wing’s quest to rebuild America continues: Family. Values. I can’t help but cringe every time I hear that catchphrase.  Not because I dislike families – I have a terrific one […]

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No, Really! Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Crisis is just opportunity in disguise. The universe/god/buddha doesn’t give us more than we can handle. It’s always darkest just before the dawn. Scar tissue is stronger. The cracks are where the light gets in. Blah blah blah. Here’s an interesting question: Which is worse, coming up […]

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Women, Willpower, and Thanksgiving

Hey you! Yes, you–the one with all those balls in the air! Before you take another bite of pumpkin pie, read this. A couple of new books–Willpower, by social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, PhD and New York Times reporter John Tierney, and The Willpower Instinct by Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal, PhD–dig into the science […]

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Oh Wow: The Meaning of Life

Of all the words that have been spoken or written (ours included) about Steve Jobs in the past few weeks, the wisest and most meaningful may have come from the eulogy delivered by his sister, novelist Mona Simpson, who recently shared it with the New York Times. By now, you have probably read Simpson’s opening: […]

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Self, How Did I Get Here?

 Last week during all the memorializing of Apple founder/college dropout/cultural visionary Steve Jobs, I found myself watching the commencement speech he gave at Stanford University in 2005 — and, in all that wisdom, one line in particular gave me the chills: Don’t Live Someone Else’s Life, he said. Actually, what he said was: Your time […]

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Fail Thee Well

What if the surest indicator of your future success–of living a happy, meaningful, and productive life–is how good you are at failing? Brace yourselves, perfectionists, because the evidence is mounting: in order to fly, you’ve first got to fail. And (worse!) how well you fail may be one of the biggest predictors of success. Bigger […]

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Can’t Decide on a New Year’s Resolution?

Here you go:  in no particular order, a dozen New Year’s resolutions designed especially for the undecided.  Let us know what speaks to you – and add a couple of your own. Ready?  Set.  Go! • Inhabit the moment.  You can’t rewrite the past.  You can’t be sure of the future.  All you really have […]

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Backlash bedamned: Fear not the alpha gals

Successful women, watch out.  The menfolk, they don’t like us. At least that’s the message from a New York Times piece by Katrin Bennhold, titled “Keeping Romance Alive in the Age of Female Empowerment”.  And since we’re all, you know, successful women, we thought we ought to parse it out if only to share the […]

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Accounting for Taste. And Hipsters.

Here’s a scary thought: What if there were a formula that could take your age, education level, income level, proximity to a city center, and field of employment and spit out a prediction for how skinny the jeans you’re wearing right now are? Or how likely you are to eat organic? To drive an SUV? […]

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