I squirm in my seat. My boss sits across from me stern-faced. I try to cut the tension by asking about his weekend, but he ignores my question and immediately gets down to business. We're meeting to review my performance for the past year. He has a legal pad in front of him and he... Continue Reading →

An elderly couple walks past me. Time has turned her hair gray and taken much of his. He walks with a limp and she's got her arm tightly wrapped around his, the other holding a bright daisy. I'm not sure if they're lost, looking for directions, or just on their daily walk. They're slow walkers... Continue Reading →

(A version of this story ran April 22, 2016) When a customer service representative asked for the best way to contact me recently, I immediately started giving her my childhood phone number. I haven’t thought about the phone number in more than 25 years. I’m not even sure it works anymore. And it came blurting out... Continue Reading →

I was so close to the door. I was just twelve feet away. A couple more steps and I would be free. I would be out the door with the prize in my pocket. I could taste the chocolate on my lips. When no one was looking, I had placed two Hershey's bars in my... Continue Reading →

We think we're good listeners. But, are we really? Numerous surveys over the years have shown that respondents think they're good listeners. One survey published in Psychology Today reported that 96 percent of respondents said they were always or sometimes good listeners. However, a study two years ago by two Carnegie Mellon professors showed that we... Continue Reading →

Oh, the crazy places the mind can go. In my post today, Remembering my why on The Heart of the Matter, I write about how I ran into several challenges recently, and had to think on my feet. As I was writing the post, I thought instantly about the old Trix cereal commercials of my... Continue Reading →