[Audio clip: view full post to listen] “Gramps,” I said, “What’s the fourth dimension like?” It was a hot August afternoon, the kind where you only want to lie around and pant or drowse on the shady front porch. I looked down the street. The heat ripples dancing silently above the pavement were the only [...]

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Following my speech at the Expats Club here in Chiang Mai yesterday, the audience asked a lot of good questions. But one – the very last – struck me as especially important. “You told us,” one audience member said, “that you’re selling an audio product, and that you sell it for $44. That seems high [...]

Those so-called “bad” habits you’ve been trying to break (or get rid of, or overcome) they may be better assets than you realize. In fact, if you really understood what you’ve got there, you might not dislike them quite so much. True, in their present form, some of your habits may be royally screwing up [...]

Believe it or not, strong and healthy self-discipline is within the reach of virtually anyone. Of course it doesn’t come free. There’s a price to pay. But before you start reminding yourself of all the times you’ve fallen short in the discipline department, and how you may never have what it takes… just stop. I [...]

The trouble is, most of us don’t really know or understand the tools we have available to us. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that most people can’t tell you the difference between will power and self-discipline. They are different, though – quite different – and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Each [...]

Are you a waiter? You know, the kind of person who delays getting into action, putting things off, thinking about it, gathering more information, letting it all percolate down through your subconscious till you fully understand every nuance of the situation… and by then it’s probably much too late. Is that you? Well, this article [...]

When we’re trying to build our motivation and strengthen our persistence, there’s one easy, dead-simple test that’ll always tell us how we’re doing. It’s the gaps… And yet, even though this is a crystal clear indicator of our current effectiveness, we often avoid looking at it, and even go to great lengths to avoid seeing [...]

Probably the biggest persistence killer (and the subject I get the most questions about)is procrastination. Simply put, if you’re not moving forward on a project with maximum energy, you’re probably procrastinating, putting things off until later (or never). At the risk of sounding callus, I think this subject of procrastination is highly over-rated in terms [...]

Usually when we discuss persistence here, we’re talking about how it impacts our own lives and successes. But for a moment, let’s back away from our personal concerns and examine how this trait of persistence might impact our children’s lives. After all, anything we can contribute to the next generation is arguably more important – [...]

Probably everyone has read the famous quote by President Calvin Coolidge in which he states that “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.”  A common truism is that “persistence is the twin sister of excellence.” And a Japanese proverb states that “money grows on the tree of persistence.” Everybody praises persistence. And [...]