I have a hard time accepting how quickly Christmas spirit is taking over in early November. I mean, we are still a couple of weeks away from Thanksgiving, but I see the lights, trees, and one radio station already plays nothing but carols. I can’t help but wonder, where is this holiday creep coming from? […]

I don’t remember much in terms of what I learned in my high school classes. Good education, no doubt, but most of it was a foundation that I expanded in college. The ideas that I remember to this day came from my English classes, which oddly enough was a subject I liked least at the […]

I’m not a sports fan in general, but even I can’t help but get sucked into how my local team, Astros, is doing in the world series. I watched a bit of the first two games, and I concluded that Nationals, the opposing team, was superior.  But guess what, Astros turned around and won the […]

We give up when we run out of ideas. Fairly logical, because our mind tells us that we put up a good fight, so it’s time to go back to something safe. Therefore, when we are failing to get ideas, it’s time to fail to get ideas! The simplest way to explain it is through […]

Leadership is a word used so often that sometimes I begin to wonder what does it even mean. Not to add to the confusion, but perhaps to provide a fresh light, I’d like to propose that leadership is isolation. Leadership is like forging a new path, and any time we create something new, we have […]

I recently came across a quote by Dwight Eisenhower that says, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” It’s funny how I spent ten years in the army, even more than that outside of the service, and I finally hear it now. Sound advice from an impressive general and a president, but I’d like to […]

I am finishing a book, my last Army boss gave me over a decade ago called “Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant.” Mostly it’s a collection of excerpts from Grant’s journals picked out as a series of leadership vignettes. In one of them, Grant describes Lincoln’s ability to tell stories as far more effective […]

I came across a story about a person noticing how guests would tell his Alexa to keep changing music. In the days of manual players if somebody would want to change music, as a host, he would always be asked first, but now with voice commands curtsies seem to have gone out the window. To […]

I remember a commentator being upset about the media using cliches such as “kicking the can down the road” when reporting on the national debt. In his mind, labels like this prevented us from discussing the problem and as such lessened the likelihood of taking action.  Ironically, enough, this is the first time I recall […]

As I watch the news, I can’t help but notice how the opposite political party is always the enemy.  Isn’t it similar in our relationships? When something doesn’t go our way, don’t we tend to point the finger at another person? Why is that?  Finger-pointing shifts responsibility. When we pass the blame, we get off […]