Mental Toughness

It seems like in today’s culture there’s a hack for just about everything. As David Goggins describes in Can’t Hurt Me, there’s no shortcut to creating a tough mind. You have to do the things you don’t want to do. Period. Essentially, you have to do the hard work. Just like you have to do lots of hard work to …

Can’t Hurt Me

Most of us have a pretty damn good life, but not all of us. Some of us have “average” lives, with a spouse, 2.2 kids, a house, a dog. Some of us have all we could ever want; a giant house, all the money we need, “everything”. Some of us have shitty lives; not much food, a bad family environment, …

Love You Forever

Last night I read “Love You Forever” to my 19-month old daughter for the first time. I only made it about half way before I was sobbing. My kid just squirmed around and played with her stuffed animals, as per usual, but I lost it. My mom read that book to me when I was a little kid, and boy …

Never Miss Twice

It happened (or didn’t happen, I should say) yesterday: I missed writing a post for the first time in 82 days. I realized it this morning when I awoke and was still laying in bed. “Maybe I can just get up real quickly and write a quick post and call it good.” Sure, I could have done that, but I’d …

Audible.com

A few months ago I started a free trial on Audible.com. Somehow I accidentally forgot to cancel before the trial period was over and all of a sudden received an email that said “your new Audible credit is here!” or something like that (on Audible, buying a book costs one credit). Listening to books has proven to be a great …

Be a Mirror

I’m nearing the end of reading Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss, and reflecting (No pun intended) on some of the key elements of the book. One of the principle tactics Voss describes from early on is mirroring. In a negotiation, mirroring is the simple act of repeating the last one to three words of what your counterpart has …

Negotiate: Hypothesis vs. Assumption

As Chris Voss describes in Never Split The Difference, when going into a negotiation, have a few hypotheses in your mind about what the person your negotiating is thinking/wants. Don’t assume you know what they want. I’ll spare you the old saying about assumptions. Armed with several hypotheses in mind, rather than assumptions, as you enter a negotiation, begin gathering …

The E-Myth

In today’s world you might think that any book title (or any title for that matter) that has “e” in it refers to “electronic”. I wouldn’t hold it against you if you did here, either, but in the case of The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, the big E stands for entrepreneur. In this book Gerber talks in depth about …

Never Split The Difference

This week’s new read (listen) is Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss. So far there are some interesting techniques that Voss describes in the book, some of which I’m looking forward to applying. A full review may or may not come later, but for now I’ll give the book a thumbs up. There are definitely a lot of war …