"I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time." Anna Freud

So I picked up a copy of Strengthsfinder 2.0 and took the code from the book and did the online assessment.  It seemed like a lot of questions but it did not take long to answer them.  It came back with my assessment of my 5 key strengths:

• Context
• Individualization
• Connectedness
• Learner
• Intellection

The book and online aids give out some great information on the strengths it finds you reveal in your answers - and the list of possible strengths is a long one.  The answers you pick in combination are used in some complex matrix to come up with the key 5.  The way to use them in your teams, work environments, and probably relationships looks to be pretty interesting.

Here's what the expanded explanations were for mine:

Read more »

Please feel free to catch up on any old posts.  I will begin writing again and posting to the site more regularly now that it is up and running again.

As always, your feedback is both appreciated and desired!

“The Dilbert Principle: People are idiots.” - Scott Adams

My mentors have been drumming one particular item into my head for the past 14 years - Rule Number 1: "There is no dealing with idiocy".  I now know why this rule has been their number one mantra.

When you cannot have a decent conversation without someone interjecting and ascribing words or meanings to you that you neither said nor intended - that is idiocy and when faced with it, you must remember the axiom.  Ignore the person and the commentary and go about your business as usual.

If you do anything else you end up a victim to that force which keep the universe expanding at an accelerated rate.  You end up being sucked into the black hole through which energy exits the universe.
Read more »

"Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do." - Bertrand Russell

After listening to one of the most infurating statements I have heard in more than a decade I decided do some research via informal discussions and some reading.  To be fair I was as irritated over the statement as I was for why it was made in the first place, but that's irrelevant for this entry, I suppose.  Just know that it upset me enough that I ended up spending countless hours over the last week double-checking data before sitting down to write this article.

It isn't because I questioned the incredulous nature of the statement - that was never in question - I did it because of the alarming message hidden within the statement itself.  As it turns out the seriousness of the problem I recognized is much deeper than just one person's seriously deficient understanding about the real world.  No, instead, it seems there is a specific ignorance relating to a very real life or death situation that is systemic to Generation Y.

I am dumbfounded about how we have made a long-lived national issue out of reproductive rights; yet we have really forgotten in the few short years between the emergence of Generation X and Generation Y that there are worse things that can happen to a person as a result of sexual activity than an unwanted pregnancy [1].  What the hell has happened in this country?  Have we seriously propagated an ignorance that will cause our youth to kill themselves and others before they can comprehend the magnitude of the consequences of a compounding negligence?

I need to make something excruciatingly clear to every reader of this blog: wanting something to be true, even believing something to be true, does not make it true.  If you are going to assume anything - you need to assume not that there is monogamy within your relationship but that there is not.

This isn't about trust or the lack thereof.  This is about health - yours and your partner's.  Care enough to know the facts because not knowing can end up causing you to unwittingly commit murder or suicide.
Read more »

"The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart." - Luke 6:45, NASB

What fills your heart?  Fear? Loathing? Love?  Loneliness? I could go on naming a million adjectives, and the ultimate reality is that what fills our hearts is all of this.  Our hearts are filled to the brim with all of these feelings and states of being - at all times and in all places.

The question before us is... which elements do we choose to be what drives us forward in our life experiences?  Do we draw from the desire to "belong"?  To be wealthy?  To be compassionate?  To be selfless?  When we look into our soul's well, what do we see and what do we ignore? 

Whatever the failure or accomplishments - what did you end up with seared in your memory?  Was it the hope of growing into honorable strength or the shame of a coward running from it instead?  Do you know how to tell the difference?  There's an easy way to tell...
Read more »

Lundy: My date was horrible. I picked her up, and I don't know Miami, of course, and I got completely lost, and she was chattering away the whole time about this Yogi master I just have to meet so by the time we even got to the restaurant I was tearing my hair out.
Debra: Oh, God. I'm sorry.
Lundy: No, it was good. It was a reminder that, uh, I shouldn't be dating.
Debra: Course you should be.
Lundy: No. It all comes down to simple mathematics. A really beautiful relationship is a once in a lifetime thing. And I've already had mine. - Dexter, Episode "Sea-Through"

Wow, that last line hit me like a ton of bricks when I heard it.  The character speaking it on the show was someone in his 60s and he was speaking it to a 30ish young woman who was in the midst of falling head over heels in love with him - but neither of them knew it yet.

Imagine what it must be like to know you have had the one true love of your life - and we're not talking about the first love or the sweetest love or any of that... we're talking about that love so unique and beautiful for your life that you realize over the years of your life that it's a love too beautiful and unique to ever find again; then imagine understanding that the relationship is over for whatever reason; and that your life continues without that person and somewhere in the deepest part of you - you have already accepted that any future relationship can never be more than a shadow of that something that was so amazing and beautiful that you'll never see it in your life again. 

To be that person standing there and actually saying it out loud to someone else - it's an astounding thing, because when you're able to say it out loud... that's when you know it's real (at least that's how it always is for me).  As awful as that image is, though, imagine what it must be like to be that person and to live with the reality of knowing that the every time you start a new relationship that you already know what it's not going to be, and what that new person is not going to mean to you, and what that relationship is not going to become for you - and then... then imagine what it's like to be one of those poor sods who might be amazing for someone else but who will never be that for the person they're with now.  Take that image - as uncomfortable as it is - and hold onto it for a minute before you continue reading this entry.
Read more »

"I sit here in my tastefully decorated office and watch you go about tilting at windmills, many times beating the windmill.

Well, my turn. It's my turn to stand up and make a complete idiot of myself and do something that leaves this nation a reslightly better place." - Shirley Schmidt, Boston Legal

I heartily admit to being an avid fan of the show Boston Legal, and I don't much even really like network television all that much - but this show just captured me in a way few things ever have in my life as much for the content and character of the concept as the passion with which the writers approach the dialogues.  The above quote, in particular, I love because of the character who is speaking and the character at whom it is aimed.

It turns out I also love it because I realize that the truly decent people of this nation, and perhaps the world, feel very much like Shirley and Alan in that moment.  One is the accomplished, reserved, and consummate ideal of a respectable and upright citizen - and the other is a passionate ideologue who oft finds himself advocating for no other reason than simply because someone needs advocation. To have the one, then, speak to the other in this way is a far deeper and meaningful thing than perhaps the show's audience may have considered.  In a way, don't we all come to that realization that deep inside us is the person we always wished we had been and we face that moment of truth and have to decide... are we or are we not what we say we are?
Read more »