Thinking is what happens when we listen – to others, to ourselves, to the world around us - and when we become aware that not all thoughts are created equal.
Read moreAlive, Accessible, and Alloyed: How the World is Changing Spiritually
I first heard of Diwali when I was much older than my nine-year-old. I’m not Hindu, and I’m not from India, where the festival originated centuries ago as a harvest celebration. Growing up in a very Christianized portion of north Texas, Hanukkah served as the limit of my experience with the world’s religions. So why does my kid know about Diwali when I didn’t? After all, is this simply the sort of thing that happens when you have a father with expertise in religious history?
Read moreThe One Thing About Everything
When I was a classroom teacher, there was always a point in discussion where you could sense the students starting to dig in, to commit to a particular hill they were willing to die on. Out came the sophomore socialists to do battle with the freshman free-market capitalists, neither giving an inch of ideological ground or conceding the other side had anything approaching a valid point. It was class struggle versus laissez-faire competition in an ideological death match. There could be only one–one winner, one idea to rule them all.
Read moreThe First Steps in Connecting Our Inner and Outer Lives
I’ve been fielding variations on the question of how to connect my “inner self” with the reality of the “outer self” for going on thirty years now. Like with Ra, it started with friends pondering career choices or moral dilemmas. They came to me because they knew I could help them cut through their own internal noise to find their true voice. My listening to them helped them listen to themselves amidst the cacophony and complexity of modern life.
Read moreCan Business Save Us?: The Dual Traps of Business Mythology
So how would you answer this question: is business the problem behind, or the solution to, our collective ills?
As trust in social institutions continues to plummet, many people today are looking to business to provide meaning and purpose. Where else to turn, after all, when political institutions are gridlocked, education seems ineffective, and religion is, well, complicated? Business, at its best...
Read moreDoes Culture Really Eat Strategy for Lunch? (A Reflection on Drucker’s Dictum)
At some point in their careers, most executives come across management guru Peter Drucker’s dictum that culture “eats strategy over breakfast” (or lunch, depending on the version they read). Drucker’s point was that culture takes priority over, and can in fact derail, any strategy one might pursue in the course of fulfilling an organization’s mission. That is, any strategy that fails to be generated by, or account for, culture has the potential to itself be thwarted.
Read moreAwareness: The First Practice of the Art of Life
When I first talk to people about what we do here at HumanWealth Partners, they often ask me the tactical questions first, like “where or how do I start to practice what you’re calling the Art of Life?” Whether they just want to experience more ease and less anxiety in their day-to-day activities, or whether they want their organization to operate more effectively, or whether they want to maximize the social impact of their work, they just want to know what to do, where to begin.
Read more