Life Tip #97

No one ever welfared their way to success! When I was young, I worked one summer for a landscaping company. In his pickup truck on the way to one of our jobs, the owner told us about a phone call he got from a guy responding to his Help Wanted ad. The guy asked the …

Life Tip #90

Don’t be a greyhound. Here is a "question everything" allegory for you: There once was a million-dollar winning greyhound racing dog. All of a sudden, one day, he decided to quit racing. When asked why the sudden decision to quit, the dog said, “After all that running and running and running, I finally realized that …

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

 “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." ~ Sir Isaac Newton ~~~~~ All of my giants have fallen. In the first half of this year, I’ve lost the most towering figures in my life. First, we lost Grandpa Charlie Stangl, and while only my grandpa-in-law, he …

Anything We Put Our Mind To

My source of unconditional love, my go-to person for getting grounded, my Dad, passed away last night surrounded by family. He got in one final, solid nap before the big party in heaven began. Dad taught me many things during our time together, more by his example than by words. Yet there is one thing …

65% of Americans need Life Tip #24…Really!

Knowledge is money. Gain the first, keep the second. According to a poll released earlier this year by Creditcards.com, "over 65 percent of U.S. adults with debt don’t know when or if they’ll ever get out of it." Click the link below to read the story. I think much of our money woes stem from …

Life Tip #48

Always put your family before money. Scenario: Your great-paying job forces you to be on the road 100 percent of the time, but at the same time your middle- to high-school kid is having difficult, even dangerous, times back at home. Then you get an offer for a new job where you can be back …

Earth: “See, this is why we can’t have nice things…”

This article speaks for itself: Dutch fence off tulip fields to stop selfie-takers crushing flowers. Come on people! We can do better than this! It reminds me of a great quote from the Simon Pegg movie Hector and the Search for Happiness: “There’s a big difference between being here, and being here to be photographed …

Life Tip #26

Avoid the career of least resistance. Go for greatness! Your career will likely consume upwards of ten hours a day, five days a week, for more than 30-40 years of your life, so strive for something you truly love. If you settle for the job or career of least resistance, you’ll never be fully satisfied …

Life Tip #11

While you’re trying to look like them, they’re trying to look like you. A New York Times story from 2006 described how Asian women were endangering their health with illegal creams. A survey in the story showed that four of every ten women in major Asian countries (Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, and …

Life Tip #4

Your life isn’t limited to six steps. Our lives don’t have to go like this: Step 1: Survive youth and high school. Step 2: Get a college degree, and/or… Step 3: Get a job that turns into a passionless career. Step 4: Get married, have kids, then get a house and lots of other stuff. …

Life Tip #151

Don’t be a boiling frog slipping down a slope. I am sure you have heard the “boiling frog” fable. If not, it is a brief fable that can be applied to many areas of our life. The fable tells us that if you try to throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it …

Life Tip #173

Don’t cry about the hand you were dealt. Play it to the best of your ability. We may have been dealt a bad hand, but we still have a choice as to how we play the hand we were dealt. I was dealt a pretty good hand, in that I could have gone straight from …

Life Tip #166

Perspective! “You kids don’t know how good you have it!” This is one of the lamest things we say, but it is still funny, and true. There really is a lot of truth to the “how bad it was when I was your age” advice, relatively speaking. This Life Tip could be its own book. …

Life Tip #73

Everything is relative. When I was younger, my friends and I went through a phase when we would say about anything and everything, “It’s all relative.” We thought we were being so clever and funny. Yet in reality, there is complete truth in that statement. Everything is relative. Things we think are awesome and wonderful …

Life Tip #111

Get out and experience how the other halves live. Most of us grew up—or currently live—in a community where everybody not only looks pretty much the same, but also falls into the same economic and cultural categories. This is the natural way that neighborhoods and communities are built up, like it or not. I would …

Life Tip #28

Your employer doesn’t want you to pursue your dreams. Thaaaat’s right, your employer doesn’t want you to strike out on your own to chase your dreams, because that means they will lose your skills and experience, and then have to hire and train a whole new employee. Nor do they don’t want word to get …

Question Everything

How many of us have ever had a "Truman Show" moment? If you've seen the movie The Truman Show, which stars Jim Carrey,  you'll recall the end of the movie, when Truman discovers that all his life has been a façade. It was a very powerful scene, where most of the TV show viewers were …

Life Tip #271

The American Idiot: This next Life Tip is for anyone who might find themselves in the position of the “American Idiot.” I own the rare distinction of experiencing my two most embarrassing moments within the same 24-hour period. They both happened in Europe. I guess our most embarrassing moments are more likely to occur when …

Life Tip #127

“Go West, young man” still applies. In many of his books, but most notably in The Americans series, historian Daniel Boorstin chronicles some of the famous and not-so-famous risk-takers who helped to build up our country. In the book The Americans: The National Experience, Boorstin compares the social classes of early America with the social …

Life Tip #142

Instead of focusing on living longer, make the years you live more meaningful. When I was a young adult I used to look forward to insightful and inspirational columns by a Catholic priest, Father Lou Guntzelman, in the county’s weekly newspaper. In one column, Father Lou was reflecting on how we are desperately focused on …