"Success" is something for which we are all expected to strive, especially in our careers. But what exactly is "success"? For most of us it means achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted, such as fame, prosperity, superiority, or victory.

Whether you are striving for it in your practice or for your clients, striving and achieving success is not easy. Often there are obstacles in your path. All too frequently these barriers are not just factors outside your practice. They also can be self-sabotaging success attitudes, such as: (more…)

As far back as Shakespeare, and, perhaps, even father, lawyers have been ridiculed and disdained, treated like vermin—except when needed. If there is one adjective that been applied universally to them over the centuries, and especially in recent decades, it’s "untrustworthy."

In fact, this is what Gallup Polls find, year after year. In "trustworthiness" of occupations, lawyers come in very close to car sales people. Warning: This is someone of whom you should be wary. What does this really mean? (more…)

Has this ever happened to you? You’re giving a presentation and someone asks a question that hits you in the gut like a concrete soccer ball. Your brain turns to guacamole . All you can utter is, "Uhhhhhh."

Harry was giving a presentation about soft-sell marketing to service professionals at the Chamber of Commerce. When he paused to ask for any questions, Stu, a software consultant, asked from the audience, "So how does that compare with Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerrilla Marketing?" (more…)

If there’s one truth in life, it’s that there’ll always be criticism of what you do. You can’t avoid it but you can respond to it so you feel better about yourself as well as dampen the conflict 

It was late on a crisp Fall Saturday. Harry and Louise were finishing painting the trim on their Queen Anne-style Victorian house. They had carefully researched Victorian color schemes and felt comfortable with their decision. The color they had chosen was a Nantucket blue which they thought would better complement the gray of the house than the non-traditinal dull white used by the previous owners.

As Harry lowered the 24-foot ladder and Louise hammered on the lids of the paint cans, they both smiled with satisfaction at the aesthetic result of their hours of labor.  Little did they know everything was about to change.

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Do you find that sometimes you have difficulty getting your point across? You just can’t figure out what the problem is. After all, you know what you want to say. You think you’re being clear. You’re avoiding jargon. You’re keeping words simple and sentences short. Thought B follows thought A. Yet, something isn’t clicking for the other person. You’re not connecting.

It should be a slam-dunk, but somehow it isn’t. It may be the result of the fluid, changing, rapidly-moving environment where TV, politicians, and ads speak in 20-second sound bites … and you don’t. We’ve learned that today people expect to receive their information in small chunks. More than that, forget it. This means that to grab someone’s attention and be listened to (not just "heard") you are better off stating your point in a short, pithy, memorable way. And what is that?

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If you’re like most people, you’ve been taught to ignore your intuition. If it’s not systematic and rational - with a cost-benefit and risk analysis, forget it. But should you really ignore that gnawing sensation in your gut, telling you that something is wrong … or right, and more than just what your logic tells you?

Ignoring your intuition can be detrimental. Your intuition is a subsconscious process showing up as a feeling. It’s not tangible, evident, or deducible. But it’s your brain telling that while you’ve been assessing the observables, it has been weighing and calculating the unobservables, like your attitudes, preferences, unconscious perceptions, knowledge of human behavior, and just barely remembered relevant experiences.

Unlike logic, it materializes as feelings, alerting you to pay attention, that there are other factors in the mix. Think of it as emotional radar … or apprehension. (more…)

O what a mess we can create when we simply expect things … .

Expectations are anticipations of some probable occurrence or appearance to which you look forward. In other words, when you expect something, you are making a mental wager with yourself about the outcome of some future event.

This event can be any thing, however, it is frequently your own behavior or (more…)

Ever notice how easy it is to remember the negative? I don’t mean only disaster-in-the-making negative events, but also the everyday I-can’t-find-any-stamps-with-flags negative events.

At the same time, positive events of the day tend to float by, somewhere below your level of recognition unless they are momentous, such as surviving a serious illness, getting a new project or promotion, or seeing your child’s first steps.

This is because your mind drives your memory toward the negative. The result of this action is the Zeigarnik Effect.

In 1927 Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik discovered that our minds are constructed in such as way that we tend to remember (more…)

As hard as it may be to believe, every difficulty presents you with an opportunity. I grant you that they’re not always easy to spot and it takes practice to learn how to spot them.

But when you do spot them, what do you notice first? Do you see a door closing and what you can’t do in these situations? Or do you see a door opening and what you can do in these situations?

If all you can see is what is wrong in a situation, you’re a pessimist. You are more likely (more…)

Red-faced and still fuming, Louise returned from her business lead exchange luncheon ready to blast anyone who crossed her path. It had been a good meeting, wherein the ten members exchanged referrals, leads, and tips, until Louise had misunderstood something another member had said. It was twenty-something Tony, who had the unfortunate habit of directing his comments to males only who were seated at the other end of the table.

Louise had asked him politely to repeat his information. Grinning as if about to reveal a truth no one else would dare utter, Tony responded with a chuckle, “Sure, Louise. I know it can be really tough to follow business when a woman gets to be your age.” He hunkered over to make the point.

His comment hung in the air like (more…)