Blogs

The 2012 Presidential election is over . . . finally. Are you as exhausted as me from the wall-to-wall coverage and the ceaseless campaigning and spin that we’ve been inundated with since, it seems, the last election? Does it feel like we’ve been treading water for the past year or two, simply waiting for this election to…

Watching “Superstorm Sandy” roll up the eastern seaboard last week—albeit from the comfort and safety of my west coast apartment!—got me to thinking about crisis management. Namely, what would I do if disaster struck, natural or manmade? How would I respond personally, professionally? Of course, living in California means I should already be quite aware…

Let’s face it. Regardless of our political or philosophic leanings, we all want pretty much the same things out of life. We want good health. We want to love and be loved. We want good jobs at good wages. We want to be safe and secure here at home and abroad. We want our kids…

With kids back in public school, college campuses refilled, national and local elections looming, and the economy still stuck in the doldrums, wouldn’t it be great to fast forward a few weeks, months, or years and see how it all turns out? Maybe, but what would be the fun in that? We gain strength as…

Summer’s end and the sight of busses bringing young one’s back to school often makes me reflective. Summer comes upon us each year with much promise, and seldom do we squeeze in all we hope to get done. But does that mean we had a bad summer? Hardly. I’m a believer in aiming high, thinking…

Some days, the work never seems to end. You’re going 100 miles per hour and getting nowhere, trapped in a whirlwind of activity. Other days, idle time leads to pacing, anxiety, and lack of focus—there must be something I could be doing! You find it hard to relax, to take advantage of downtime. How can…

Sometimes our hearts and minds are stirred by the unlikeliest of sources. Take last week’s episode of NCIS (that’s right, NCIS—one of my guilty pleasures and one of TV’s top-rated dramas for nine years and counting). The main character on the show, Jethro Gibbs (played by Mark Harmon), faces a life or death situation which…

Why do we serve others? Is it because we expect something (usually monetary) in return? Is it because of some religious or philosophical conviction? Or is it simply because serving others makes us feel good? For most of us, the reasons we serve others are probably some combination of the above, weighted differently depending on…

Do you get so caught up in the day-to-day of life that you begin to lose sight of what’s most important, often taking things for granted, overlooking what’s right in front of you, or simply going through the motions as if on autopilot? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I just seem to put on the proverbial…

These days we all seem to be in “crisis mode” 24×7, as though if we were to relax/lighten up for one second our lives would crumble around us. That’s just plain sad. I’m not suggesting that the country and the world don’t have some pretty serious problems (we do), but if we spend all of…

Halloween is not even here yet (less than a week and counting) and already Christmas and other Holiday decorations are making their way onto some of the larger retailer’s floors. ‘Tis the season, so to speak, which means it’s also time for all those inevitable news stories to begin popping up about how this group…

It would be easy these days to become so preoccupied with what’s going on in Washington DC (or “not” going on, for that matter), your state capital, or your local business environment, that you start to lose sight of the task at hand: to live well, love well, work hard, and make a difference in…