Articles
CONVERSATION #22:
SIFTING THROUGH THE STUFF
In 2022, we sold the home and farm where we had lived for 20 years. Before this move, I spent many months sorting through a lifetime of belongings. Now, almost two years after moving into our new home, I have spent countless additional hours going through boxes of business files, personal treasures, clippings, birthday cards, photographic prints, letters written to me, and copies of those I wrote to others, my children’s drawings and so much more. And I am still not done!
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CONVERSATION #21:
SAVOR SAVOR SAVOR
These are challenging times. We are bombarded with negative stuff constantly from the media. Our news feeds are filled with articles about how to deal with despair, cynicism, and hopelessness. This leaves our friends and us feeling down.
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CONVERSATION #20:
YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF
This past January, I tripped on a rug, fell, broke my femur bone and needed hip surgery. This was my first surgery ever and launched a great adventure that was exposing me to new life lessons constantly. Partly as a rationalization, I took these teachings as gifts to use in daily life once I got back to “normal” and old routines.
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CONVERSATION #19:
DO YOUR COMPARISONS TO OTHERS BRING YOU UP?
OR BEAT YOU UP?
When I was a child under ten, growing up in Miami Beach in the 1940s after World War II, my parents often urged me “to finish all the food on my plate, because the children in Europe were starving.” This was one of my earliest memories of how society trained me to constantly compare how I stack up to others. Whether we measure our lifestyle, income, net worth, health, house, street address, or how far our restaurant table is from the kitchen, we all do this CONSTANTLY…and it affects our self-image, our satisfaction, our goals.
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CONVERSATION #18:
COULD THE SPORTS BRA HAVE BEEN INVENTED BY A MAN?
People often ask me where I find ideas for these conversations? As I wrote in Conversation #1, we are all bombarded by data, media, sales pitches, and frustrations. You simply have to pay attention to what’s happening around you. After a friend told me about one of the two women’s stories below, I had the core of my subject for this issue. Easy!
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CONVERSATION #17:
LESSONS LEARNED GROWING UP IN MIAMI BEACH
My tight-knit, high school class has had reunions every 5-10 years ever since we graduated in 1958. We are still very much in touch and have recently been sharing life stories via email. This month I shared stories about growing up in Miami Beach in the 1950s. Here is an adaptation of what I wrote for classmates that I believe you will find valuable and entertaining.
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CONVERSATION #16:
WHY DANCING FLAMINGOS ARE PART OF A REVOLUTION THAT COULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE
As I wrote in my book, The Undercover Road, spotting trends, pivoting and reinventing yourself are key components of a successful life and career. However I notice that most people have great difficulty adapting to change, even if they become aware of it, and often stagnate or wither by continuing old habits and patterns.
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CONVERSATION #16... A FOLLOW-UP: THESE DIGITAL WAVES ARE GOING TO ROCK YOUR BOAT
Conversation 16 urged people to keep their minds open to new trends, even if they don’t like them. I used examples of how modern art, avant-garde art and now crypto art and NFTs were all misunderstood initially. That same day, I read how Kevin Roose, a technology editor for the New York Times decided to break ground and experiment: what would happen if he auctioned off the first NFT of a Times article in the paper’s 170-year history?
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CONVERSATION #15:
PROFITING AND SUCCEEDING BY SEEING THE REALLY
ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY TRUE REALITY
Recent events have helped me realize an essential step for achieving goals regarding money, career, relationships, health and happiness: You have to first size up the correct view of what’s actually happening in your sphere and realm.
Every day we hear how one tribe has one set of facts, and another has “alternate facts.” Each group claims the other is mistaken and doesn’t see the TRUTH. However reality often intrudes and gives people a real kick in the face. Like the patient in the hospital I wrote about last time who was dying and insisting that it wasn’t possible to be killed by the virus because covid didn’t exist; it was a hoax. Surprise!
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CONVERSATION #14:
HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW YOUR BRAIN?
How well do you know your brain? Its likes and dislikes? Its skills and limitations? Brains are like good friends—the more time you spend together, the better you will get along. Paying attention to your particular gray matter can really help you succeed in reaching your goals and objectives.
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CONVERSATION #13:
EDITING AND SIMPLIFYING YOUR LIFE
People sometimes tell me that I have many interests and accomplishments. “How do you do it all?” they ask. Sometimes I say that “I delegate,” which is true. But the deeper answer is that I edit and simplify my life. And in ways that most people would never imagine.
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CONVERSATION #12:
INFLUENCING AND CONTROLLING YOUR LIFE
My friend and business partner of 15 years, Ben Davis, always appears calm, relaxed and unruffled. Whether it’s maddening client delays, financial setbacks, or political outrages, he stays mellow and deals with the issues as best he can. “I try to stay focused on what I can influence and control and not become upset over things that are beyond me."
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CONVERSATION #11:
ACHIEVE SUCCESS BY CHANGING YOUR PERCEPTION OF TIME
We battle every day with how we use and manage our time. Winning this fight determines our health, finances, career growth, and success in most areas.
Decades ago I read an article in Psychology Today magazine about two different perceptions of time. First there is the homeless man living in a blighted neighborhood trying simply to survive. He has to avoid muggings, score his next meal and find shelter for the night. His focus is about the current moment. The present. His future time horizon is only hours or minutes.
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CONVERSATION #10:
RISKING AND ADMITTING MISTAKES AND BAD CHOICES
People are messy! And complicated. And egotistical. And imperfect. But most of us pretend that relationships should proceed smoothly; that we are not allowed to make mistakes; that we can’t fail at something without losing others’ respect; that we never make bad choices; and that it’s horrible to mess up or not succeed at almost anything.
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CONVERSATION #9:
PREPARING FOR LIFE'S DIFFICULTIES
The other day after a walk around the hayfield, I washed my legs in case there was poison ivy and changed my pants and socks. Next morning in the shower, I saw a tick on my calf that I plucked off and flushed down the drain. Pesky little buggers. I disinfected the bite with hydrogen peroxide that I have on hand “just in case.” I was prepared.
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CONVERSATION #8:
HOW TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX BY NOTICING UDDERS FOR TODDLERS
You may have heard about GIGO, a computer industry term that stands for garbage in, garbage out. The quality of the output is no better than the quality of the input.
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CONVERSATION #7:
OVERCOMING RIGID MINDSETS
As sure as there are sharks in the ocean, I am certain you know how hard it is to succeed…at almost anything. Acquiring more money, winning in competitive sports, making the sale, attracting a spouse, maintaining good health: these all take enormous effort. Victory’s never as easy as portrayed in movies, novels and TV shows.
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CONVERSATION #6:
ATTITUDE CHECK: IT’S ALL RELATIVE
As a young boy, I had always admired gymnasts and thought that the high horizontal bar was the most beautiful and elegant event. But I had never tried doing it. At 28 years old, I was married, had a full time job and one day decided to take lessons for the high bar at the local YMCA.
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CONVERSATION #5:
THE SIMPLEST WAY ENTREPRENEURS MAKE MONEY
A Miami Beach High School classmate of mine, Arthur, told me a fabulous story at one reunion that is definitely worth passing along. It describes a common technique for making money, how to think out of the box, the joy of being passionate about your work, and the flukes of life’s chance encounters.
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CONVERSATION #4:
FILL THE EMPTY CATEGORIES IN YOUR LIFE
Let’s talk about the Periodic Table of Elements. In case you don’t recall this graphic from high school chemistry, the table is a way of displaying all the elements known in rows and columns related to their atomic numbers, electrons and chemical properties.
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CONVERSATION #3:
MAKING DECISIONS AND IDENTIFYING YOUR PASSIONS
Do you have difficulty making decisions? Choosing the best paths for achieving your goals? Do you have any passions or major interests, but are afraid to embrace them and risk ridicule, failure or life-altering changes? I urge you to reflect, take some chances, act on these stirrings that are deep inside you. Empower yourself with tiny steps that can morph into giant leaps. You never know where they will lead.
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CONVERSATION #2:
FIND FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE AND
MEANING IN YOUR LIFE
I recorded a documentary about Jane Fonda’s life that I bumped into randomly on TV. Eventually I had time to watch it from the beginning. I knew she was a famous actress and read that she was first married to a renowned movie director, Roger Vadim, who cast her as a sci-fi, sexy comic book character named Barbarella.
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CONVERSATION #1:
ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS
Picture yourself in moving water. You are not on your back or in a rubber tire tube, floating relaxedly downstream, nor swimming energetically upstream. You are submerged, but breathing is not an issue. Mostly you are in the same general area of the water being buffeted by…life and bits of data. These particles of information are very solid. They have different colors, and they bump into you. It doesn’t hurt, and you feel many of them. They are spewed into the current by TV/radio stations, newspapers, magazines, books, podcasts, internet sites you read, people you meet in real life, locations you visit, letters you receive with invoices and pitches for money. Ideas, confronts, requests, discomforts, distractions…it never stops.
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