I just finished watching “What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been,” the newish documentary about The Grateful Dead, and I was stunned by what I learned about the life and untimely death of Jerry Garcia. There are lessons here about leadership, success, and facing one’s shadow that can rock your world (pun intended) if you…
Last week Dropbox raised their prices. Here’s the announcement. As you read it, ask yourself how honest it is: Hi Josef, Dropbox Plus just got an upgrade. And a new price—starting on May 10, 2020 (that’s your next billing cycle), Dropbox Plus will be $119.88 a year (plus any applicable taxes). The all-new Plus plan…
This is different than you’ve seen from me before. I wanted to share a transcript from one of my more unusual clients. If you enjoy it, please let me know, and I can share more like this. 😉 Peter: Everyone I get close to gets hurt. Josef: Say more. Peter: I constantly have to…
The core of what I teach my clients is that if you want to grow, you have to get used to living with the discomfort of examining how you cause your own problems. It’s easy to find any number of excuses for things that are going wrong in our lives. But once you embrace the reality…
I thought I was done with the series I did on The Matrix, but I’m not. That’s what epilogues are for! It’s like a P.S. for writers, and who doesn’t like a good postscript? If you read the series, which started with Part One, you probably appreciate now more than ever that it’s a film…
I was a springboard diver as a kid. I was good, but I was never great. I understand why now. There are two principles that make the difference between good and great in any endeavor. When you learn to dive, you start with the easy stuff, of course: front dive, back dive, maybe a single…
This is the final installment of my series on The Matrix. Have you seen Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 yet? Neo’s meeting with the Oracle is quite built up, so we share Neo’s disorientation when he walks into a shabby kitchen and meets who looks like a mitten-knitting grandmother when we’re…
Last week in part 3, of the series on The Matrix, we discussed how Neo learns he must let go of his sense of control in order to find the truth. We’ve touched on the idea of the mind prison, wherein we trap ourselves by believing our thoughts are us. Inside this prison, we’re compelled…
This is part three of my series on the Matrix, which was released 20 years ago. If you haven’t already read Parts One and Two, you might want to review those first. Perhaps the most famous scene from The Matrix is when Morpheus asks Neo to choose between the red pill and the blue pill.…
Today we’re going to talk about Whataboutism, one of the most popular ways people deceive you. Early last year, the Oxford English Dictionary added the word whataboutism to its catalog: “The technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.” Whataboutism is the perhaps…