The real lessons in life are seldom the ones we want WHEN WE learn the lessons in life that we think we need to learn, we generally learn nothing at all. The real lessons we need to learn are the lessons that life has in store for us. You know when you’re due for your next lesson: it’s when you’re resisting some or other change. You find yourself stuck, defending your position, trying with all your might to hold on and control what should happen next. When you’re driving [...]

Being uncertain is the launching pad for personal power If there’s anything you’re certain about, anything you’re 100% sure that that’s the way life is, that’s the way God made us, then you can be certain about one thing more: that you’re fooling yourself. What you take as the absolute truth is simply the current  limit of your world, of what you believe is possible. It’s your ‘flat earth’ statement, and you just haven’t sailed beyond the limits yet to test it. Ne plus ultra is a Latin term that [...]

Uncover your act, before life does it for you! Riding a motorcycle at high speeds, climbing mountains, getting into a shootout – these are things that many men will do bravely. But ask us to expose ourselves – to drop our act – in an authentic workshop setting and it’s, ‘No way!’ A man would sooner drop his pants in public than drop his act. In fact, if he dropped his pants, he would turn that into an act! Your act is the persona that you present yourself to be. [...]

Be honest with yourself first, then with others It’s one thing to pretend to others. Then what we usually do is we pretend that we’re not pretending. We actually argue to prove a point that it’s not so. Of course I love you. Of course I’m not interested in other women. Never look at them, never would. Then comes the test – in the form of a raised eyebrow, perhaps – and we go, ‘No, I’m not just saying it, I really mean it.’ More astonishing than this, is how [...]

Your country needs you to lead! Your country needs leaders, and talking about it doesn’t create them. ‘Be the change you want to see in the world,’ said Ghandi. Be the leader you want to see. It starts with you. The biggest wave cannot rise without all the tiny water molecules below it. The Taj Mahal relies on every brick for its beauty. It could not be without one of them. What if you were the building block for leadership in your country? Who would you have to be? What [...]

Powerful communication requires yielding, not force When men pretend to be confident it’s easy to spot. One way they do it is they tend to push their communication harder than they need to. If you’re trained to observe this you’ll see it in harder inflections as they speak. It’s almost like they ‘bark’ at least once per vocal utterance. It needn’t be an aggressive bark; it might be a jocular one, but it’ll sound like a bark as it rises in pitch and volume above the other words. You’ll find [...]

Do you notice that if you’re not there arguing and pleading for certain things to be done (at home, at work) or for things to be done a certain way that they simply don’t get done, or don’t get done right? Your presence is like a coil in a watch that keeps it wound up for a short time – but when you’re not there, that particular discipline, or practice, falls away. This phenomenon is the destiny of most men, even highly successful ones. Take a World Cup-winning sports coach. [...]

You appreciate in others what you feel you deserve in yourself People who don’t have money often don’t trust those who do. The poor, to put it bluntly, often think that the rich must have done something crooked to get their money – and that they’re up to something right now, so the poor person is suspicious of the rich person’s motive, even when the rich person tries to help. On a global scale, this phenomenon shows up as conspiracy theories. The fact is that the poor person doesn’t believe, [...]

Do what you want others to do There’s a story about Mahatma Ghandi, that he was approached by a woman who asked him to treat her sick child; he recognised that the child had diabetes and that it should stop eating sugar, but instead of telling her there and then, he sent her away and told her to return in two weeks. During that time he stopped eating sugar himself, and when the woman and child returned, he told the child to stop eating sugar. Do it yourself first, and [...]

Liberate yourself by saying a simple, clear no When somebody makes a request or a suggestion and your answer is ‘no’, do you, like most people, beat about the bush and try to let them down gently? Like saying, ‘Maybe, we’ll look at it,’ and hoping it goes away. Some feel they have to explain themselves for hours and some, amazingly, find themselves caving in and saying, ‘Yes!’ If you can’t say no, here are some questions to challenge you: 1. Who are you to think that you’re so great [...]