Ever know anyone who takes themselves too seriously? It’s a drag after a while. You have to mind your p’s and q’s at all times, keep your elbows off the table and use proper grammar. On the other hand, maybe you’ve known people who are a little too comfortable in their own skin. They scratch […]

The definition of “extravagance” changes during a recession. Suddenly, Starbucks seems extravagant. Buying an extra gallon of milk. Topping the tank off. Things we once did routinely are now thought through carefully, as if every dollar depended on it – because it does. But being miserly is miserable, and Ms. Jones is getting tired of […]

Only 7% of your communication is verbal. Your spouse can easily attest that the other 93% leaks out in sneers, smiles, nods, nudges, signals and sighs. Oh, that damning body language! Yet we spend gazillions of dollars verbally telling Ms. Jones what we think she wants to hear. While no one is suggesting that television […]

Do you shave after you get dressed? Put on your makeup before bed? Put your shoes on before your pants? Well, that depends on the outcome you want: you’ll either turn out wrinkled and soapy or be all dressed up with nowhere to go because you did things out of order. In the same way, […]

Kids just don’t think. They lick shopping cart handles and touch hot stoves, dart into the street without looking and eat Halloween candy without X-raying it first. Kids just have no concept of consequences. Some adults live willy nilly lives, too, not knowing or caring about the penalty of their actions. Others live intentionally. Their […]

Tiger Woods functions on the golf course. You work. The difference between “function” and “work” is gifting, not effort. You could sweat and strain as much as Tiger, but you’ll never beat his score without his God-given finesse on the front nine. It’s a rare gift when your occupation is in your gifting. It’s fulfilling […]

Order in the court. Law and order. Pecking order. Out of order. Marching orders. As much as we feel confined and constricted by order, it does make life somewhat easier to know that the stars are hung in the sky and the earth revolves around the sun in exactly the right arrangement to sustain the […]

You love it or hate it, rail against it or suck up to it. Every single one of us has authority, and we must all also submit to it – or else everything falls apart. What or whom do you have authority over? Certainly, you have authority over your own self. You control your words, […]

Ike hurtled past Havanna and headed into the Gulf of Mexico, where he could become a tempest in a teacup or a Category Five humdinger of a hurricane – it was anybody’s guess. On the heels of Katrina and still leery after Gustav, we decided to play it safe and cancel an upcoming meeting in […]

“Clinton supports McCain,” the headline in my podunk little newspaper proclaimed. Huh? What? How many editor’s and publisher’s did that little “OOPS” slip past? Too add insult to injury, the correction the paper ran the next day began with a typo. If our local paper published corrections for anything other than factual errors; the corrections […]