Nuggets of Sagacity

If your company has a trenchant issue year upon year, or after repeated declarations and "resolutions" you have the same recurring challenge, just accept you need help, and get it. That's a sign of wisdom and courage. Its opposite is self-deception and cowardice.

Don't hire an overpriced "expert" to tell you what you already know trussed up in airbrushed jargon. Engage help to get applicable wisdom, tips, tools, and real-time support. You should be either edified or at least energized as a result, ideally both.

You don't need a psychology degree to locate low self-esteem. Just look out for rudeness. It's a beacon of low self-regard, projected outwards.

We can all sense an environment in which people have given up or are just going through the motions. It's palpable. So, in contrast, is buzz, creativity, possibility. And it applies to us as individuals too. As Emerson declared, "Who you are shouts so loudly I can't hear what you say."

Don't attend a meeting and whisper to your cronies. One conversation at a time should be a meeting norm, unless you've been requested to discuss in smaller clusters. If you don't need to hear what is being said, get out of the meeting. If the room at large doesn't need to hear what you have to say, neither does your neighbor.

Having youngsters staring at their phone as if the meaning of life resides there or manically deploying their thumbs gripped by the fear they'll be left out of some "breaking" social news, shows the paucity and tragedy of the culture our own laziness has inculcated in our younger generation.

If you keep procrastinating something, you're afraid of some aspect of it. Locate what that is, and start there.

The greater the "collateral" you have to provide to "demonstrate" value, the less valuable you likely are, unless you're an original researcher, author, thinker. If it's a cloaking device to add gravitas where there is none, watch out. If it's all derivative, so are you.

Pointing out a noted person dropped out of school, or butchers the language, or never learned social skills is not something to emulate. That may seem "intriguing" or even "endearing" in light of their achievements, but those aren't the achievements. Your chances of impressing most of the human race by acting like an outlier, without creating value as one, are slim. It's the artistry we're after, not the "act."