The last month of the year is almost upon us. Even without a calendar, I can tell we’re pushing into December from all the motivational end-of-year rally cries from companies and influencers. Can’t you? “Make the final push!”, “Keep going!”, “Don’t give up!”. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but…

“Grateful” and “Gratitude” seem to be a buzzwords this time of year, at least in the U.S. with Thanksgiving approaching. As popular as it is to say, “I’m grateful for…” it doesn’t always…

Challenges aren’t merely challenges, however much they might seem that way. And problems aren’t merely problems, even if they present themselves as such. There are stages that challenges or problems go through, evolving each step of the way. And as they evolve, there’s a way to discern the best type of action to deal with them to get the best result….

You might be shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to the innovation, positive change and even the growth you’re looking for. By that I mean, you may be making those results you’re looking for even more difficult to achieve. Results of…

Did you ever wonder why the stories of George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick are so captivating? Or why Bob Dylan’s music is so engaging?

Emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress is better known as burnout. 75% of workers have experienced it and 67% of people think it has worsened over the last 20 months. If you’re not…

“It’s not the mountain we conquer but ourselves,” Sir Edmond Hillary famously said after the first successful ascent of Mt. Everest in 1953. I got thinking about…

The highest skydive “drop zone” in the world is on Mt. Everest; my friend and colleague Mike Sarraille is about to make an attempt at it to honor Extortion 17. I want us all to go along for the ride (virtually anyway)…

I wear a lot of black. Maybe you’ve noticed all our gear is in black and it’s a major branding theme; it’s not a mistake. Don’t worry, this isn’t the next fashion blog…

We’re literally in the middle of the Amazon Jungle. No cell phones, no restaurants, no emergency services. Just a small camp surrounded by forest as dense as you can possibly imagine and all the countless creatures that live in it. I’m with the Shipibo people, an ancient indigenous group in the Amazon Rainforest, primarily in Peru…

You could win the lottery. NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And there’s always crypto. It seems like it’s easy to achieve success, at least the financial kind. And happiness is an inside job, right? Why then, would you need to hunt discomfort? Those ways seem much more palatable. You’re right. There might be…

Breakthroughs are often seen as the result of small iterations, consistent effort, and little steps forward. After-all, it’s usually hard, time consuming and maybe even expensive, to fight the status quo of your company culture to change and/or deal with existing market conditions and/or challenges that come up every day.

Some things can’t be changed. They’ve either already happened or they’re immovable, immutable things. Maybe there’s something about yourself, your situation or your history that you’re convinced makes your true aspiration a seeming impossibility. And when challenges look unsolvable, that probably stops you from taking steps towards them, right?

A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in the nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled.

Breakthroughs aren’t automatic. If they were, they wouldn’t be the sudden, dramatic and usually important quantum leaps that they can be. Our brains aren’t tuned for breakthroughs, they’re tuned for survival — surprise! You probably already knew that. But there is a way to tune them…

There’s misinformation out there. Scare tactics. Emerging technology worries that might disrupt your whole business or life. What does it all mean and how do we know what’s right? Or, at least what’s right for us?

Going down with a broken leg in the first round, Conor McGregor lost his second UFC mixed martial arts fight to Dustin Poirier as millions watched around the world…I have a decidedly different perspective of what went wrong for McGregor — and it’s a mistake every single one of us can fall victim to in business and in life.

Self doubt is an indulgence in questioning oneself. It’s the no-man’s-land of indecision between belief and disbelief. You know the feeling. Tightness in your chest, your face flushes as you wrestle with questions and insecurities in your mind, maybe a visceral sense of …

There’s a cost to making things that matter that’s easy to overlook. In a world of shortcuts, fast-lanes and hacks it is perhaps the least obvious answer. But if you want to create something meaningful in your company or in your life, it’s absolutely necessary…

There are 39 things that I’ve learned in my 39 years that have made a huge difference in my business and life. I just celebrated my birthday, now stepping into the last year of my 30s! (yes, I think worthy of an exclamation mark). Every year at about this time, I reflect on…