Most of us want to be liked and admired by other people. So in social settings we find ourselves constantly returning to our favorite topic: us. We try to impress anyone who will listen with our job, accomplishments, how much we know, or the neighborhood we live in. And while that may work some of [read more]

Making smart decisions about what to spend and how to save doesn’t sound like much fun to most people. They’re often lumped together with balancing the checkbook and choosing between complicated investment options on the list of things we don’t really understand and would rather not spend our time doing. So they’re often neglected. But [read more]

WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE — Kid’s say the darnedest things, and three things you can learn from it. When running for president in the year 2000, George W. Bush was asked by the press to explain his immature behavior in his twenties and thirties. He responded simply, “When I was young and irresponsible, I was young [read more]

My guest this week is Google President of Brand Solutions, Kirk Perry. He shares a very personal story about a loss on a high school wrestling mat that has both haunted and blessed him ever since. Kirk is much more interesting (and charming) to listen to than my prose is to read. So I encourage [read more]

In 1976, Alex Haley published his Pulitzer Prize–winning book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The story chronicles the history of Haley’s ancestors, starting in 1767 when an African man, Kunta Kinte, was kidnapped in Gambia, brought to the United States, and sold into slavery. A year after the book was published, it was [read more]

I learned one of my most memorable lessons on chivalry as a college student in the early 1990s. One Saturday, my girlfriend and I were walking on a sidewalk downtown. As we walked past a middle-aged African American man sitting on a bench, he said to me, loudly, “Young man, show some respect. Walk curbside [read more]

The kind of goals people deem worthy can vary over time and across cultures. In the U.S., for example, we often tell our kids to set lofty goals. If we fail, so what. At least we tried. In Asia, on the other hand, setting an aspirational goal and falling short might not be what most [read more]

Larry Bird was already a basketball hero in his home state of Indiana by the time he was a senior in high school, graduating as the all-time leading scorer at Springs Valley High. By the time he was a senior at Indiana State University, he was being touted as the best college player in the [read more]

Natalia learned the painful consequences of not telling the truth at the tender age of three. But it wasn’t the sting of her father’s hand when she was caught that hurt. In fact, she never got caught at all. It turns out that cost her far more dearly than if she had. Natalia was born [read more]

Most of the daily decisions we make only affect us for a short while: what to have for dinner or what clothes to wear today. Some can affect us for a lifetime, like whom to marry. But sometimes the effect of our decisions lingers on to impact our children and their children, for generations to [read more]