Soft Skills – Note to Self: Shut Up and Take Action

It is New Year’s Eve day.  I am supposed to be happy and excited.  Instead I wake up very agitated.  My mind is teeming with negative thoughts.  I have been sick for two weeks.  I feel behind.  I feel unaccomplished. I feel tired even though I just got a full night’s sleep.

Then I catch myself.  I realize that, because I have not done much for my soft skills blog lately, the voice in my head is scolding me.  Negative thoughts fill my mind.  I feel deflated.  These feelings had been building up for a few days already. I knew I had to do something to break this pattern.  Instead of letting my negative thoughts control me, I decided to go for a run and de-stress a little. ...  read more

How to Stop Lack of Confidence

A reader recently asked, via email, “How can one make up for a lack of self-confidence?  How do I beat this nasty character flaw?” Having self-confidence is integral to building Inner Excellence, so I thought this would be a good time to address this question.

First, let me start by telling you a story: ...  read more

Don’t Care Too Much at Work

It may sound counter-intuitive for me to recommend that you shouldn’t care too much at work.  However, after reading this story, hopefully you can understand and appreciate why you should not care too much, if you want to accelerate your career success.

On Monday, I had a morning phone meeting with one of the data team leaders who was doing some reporting for our enterprise level initiative.  I was not looking forward to it, as the lead person is one of those less-than-competent folks I mentioned in my recent article, How to Deal with Others’ Incompetence.
 ...  read more

Forgive and Forget – Key to Career Success

I had a real scare yesterday. My 3 year old daughter, Isabel, lost her balance and fell from an 8-feet-high rope ladder, head first. I screamed, and although I was a few steps away, I couldn’t reach her in time. She hit the dirt on the side of her head and right cheek. Luckily, her head does not seem to be injured. Besides a shiner on her cheek, she was just super scared. ...  read more