AN IDEA WHO’S TIME HAS COME
By Bill Cottringer
Thanks to the relatively recent science of neuromarketing, brain research has begun to identify the central role of the reptilian part of the human brain (old brain)—below the thinking and emotional semi-conscious mental activities we ... Views: 711
AN IMPORTANT “YES, BUT...” CAVEAT OF BALANCE BEING AN ASPIRATION POINT
By
Bill Cottringer
For much of my life I have faithfully bought into the total virtue of the ‘golden mean’ of balance between extremes being the only way to go. This safe road has generally worked out to my benefit, ... Views: 859
AN IRRECONCILABLE CONFLICT?
By
Bill Cottringer
“There is no squabbling so violent as that between people who accepted an idea yesterday and those who will accept the same idea tomorrow.” ~Christopher Morley.
In his recent movie, Gone Baby Gone, Director Ben Affleck leaves his brother ... Views: 1838
THERE ARE ALWAYS TWO SIDES OF THE STORY
& THEN THERE IS THE TRUTH
By
William Cottringer, Ph.D.
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” ~ John Lennon
Actually there are probably as many ‘stories’ as there are people on this planet. But, there is but one overall, unifying truth that ... Views: 762
ANGRY HEARTS
by
Bill Cottringer
There is an undesirable phenomenon going on today that we can all feel—angry hearts. Like any other problem we want to solve, we have to understand it and then figure out what we can do about it as individuals.
Divisions between people seem to be ... Views: 760
ANGRY HEARTS
by
Bill Cottringer
There is an unexpected side-effect of being mentally and spiritually healthy: You become more aware of and obligated to help resolve the phenomenon of angry hearts. And this can be more time consuming, draining and beyond what you may think you are ... Views: 1536
Anticipating and Avoiding Getting Fired
By
Bill Cottringer
“If you intend to go to work there is no better place than right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work you cannot get along anywhere. Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no good.” ~Abraham ... Views: 1942
ANY RELATIONSHIP CAN GO SOUTH QUICKLY
By
Bill Cottringer
“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” ~Henry Winkler.
Great, good or ghastly relationships can go South in a New York second if they are not prepared ahead of time for the Big “S”—the inevitable stress that challenges ... Views: 719
Are There Still Differences Between Male and Female Psyches?
By
Bill Cottringer
After John Gray’s Book “Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus” came out decades ago, significant mental and emotional differences between the sexes explained many of the difficulties that caused ... Views: 1598
Are You Asking The Right Questions?
By
Bill Cottringer
“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” ~Tony Robbins.
Success in life, in the three primary areas of work, play and relationships, requires getting successful outcomes to solving ... Views: 1355
ARE YOU LUCKY OR UNLUCKY?
by
Bill Cottringer
“Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation, while bad luck is when lack of preparation meets reality.” ~Eliyahu Goldratt.
Are you lucky or unlucky? I suppose how you answer this question depends upon how you define “luck.” The ... Views: 384
Are You Smart Enough?
By
Bill Cottringer
“Half of being smart is in knowing what you are dumb about.” ~Solomon Short.
I have been an avid researcher of the connection between intelligence and success for several decades now, and am finally ready to release my short list for ... Views: 1467
Asking Good Questions To Increase Satisfaction In Work, Relationships And Play
By
Bill Cottringer
Sometimes real success involves flip-flopping the traditional sequence in which we approach things. Then we end up wondering why something doesn’t feel quite right, like the tail seems to be ... Views: 1027
BANDWIDTH AND “P” POINTS FOR SUPER SUCCESS
By
Bill Cottringer
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” ~Winston Churchill.
We are all on a super success quest race with an unfortunate delusion that there are quick cures and instant ... Views: 1305
Basic Beliefs that Block Success
By
Bill Cottringer
“It is my belief, you cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you understand the most amusing.” ~Winston Churchill.
Sara is a very positive thinker, John is as smart as a whip and they are both very happy and ... Views: 956
Be a Winner of the Conflict Trifecta
By
Bill Cottringer
Conflict is the beginning of consciousness. ~M. Esther Harding.
There are three main types of conflicts—against life, between others, and within ourselves—which we all face in trying to get through life and live our own ... Views: 159
BE YOUR BEST SELF BY NOT TRYING TO BE A BETTER YOU
By
Bill Cottringer
“We discover who we have always been when we stop attempting to become better than who we really are” ~Stephen Levine.
When the positive psychology movement was gaining momentum, Stephen Covey characterized ... Views: 1280
Beating the COVD Holiday Blues
By
Bill Cottringer
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Wishing you happiness during this holiday season.” ~Helen Keller
This year the normal holiday spirit may be dampened by ... Views: 606
BECOMING SINGLE-MINDED
By
William Cottringer, Ph.D.
“Self-consciousness creates the illusion that there is a separate self from the rest of reality. That would be the funniest mistake in the world if so many people weren’t so convinced that the illusion is really true.” ~ The author. ... Views: 4973
BECOMING YOUR BEST SELF
by
Bill Cottringer
“Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true strength.” ~Lao Tzu.
An earlier Psychologist, Abraham Maslow, proposed a hierarchy of needs that all people had a ... Views: 651
BECOMING YOUR SIGNATURE SELF
By
Bill Cottringer
What do Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Jack Canfield, Tiger Woods, Nichole Kidman, Katie Keric, and Alex Rodriguez all have in common besides being extraordinarily good looking, rich and famous, and masters of their trades? Better yet, what ... Views: 1252
BEING A GOOD EMPLOYEE
By
Bill Cottringer
A big part of being happy and successful, involves your approach to work. These simple requirements are a prescription for the right approach to work in being a good employee If you practice these simple suggestions you are likely to get recognized ... Views: 9663
BEING CERTAIN
By
William Cottringer, Ph.D.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” ~Philip K. Dick.
The other day my daughter Abby was given a question to answer by the instructor of her epistemology class as a high school senior. The question was ... Views: 905
BEING HAPPY WITHOUT MONEY
By
Bill Cottringer
“If you can’t be happy poor you can’t be happy rich.” ~ The Author.
Are we all really capable of achieving great financial wealth like The Secret proponents and all the wealth books and wealth gurus profess? Are we all meant to have wealth? ... Views: 11245
Benefits & Callenges of Diversity
By
Bill Cottringer
“Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi.
The rest of the workforce diversity story is unfolding as every great social change brings sometimes unexpected ... Views: 357
BEST 10 CUSTOMER SERVICE TIPS IN THE BUSINESS
By
Bill Cottringer
“Good customer service is 90% listening and follow-up and 10% talking.” ~The author.
1. Leave your bad moods, frustrations and other agendas at home or at least put them aside and out of mind and heart when you are engaged with ... Views: 2261
Best Perspective For Success In Closing The Gap That Matters Most
By
Bill Cottringer
Success is not—
What you do,
What you get,
Or what you have;
But what you attract,
From being who you are.
“Success is a certain sense of progress accumulated from making all the right little ... Views: 1650
Better Time Management for 2020 and Beyond
by
Bill Cottringer
“Time is the one resource that is equally distributed, but unequally used.” ~The Author.
This combining millennium will likely just continue to overload us with more and more information, where we end up never having ... Views: 1074
Birth of The Terrible Twins Within (Our Dualistic Minds)
By
Bill Cottringer
“If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it is very unlikely that we will ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day. Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the ... Views: 1302
Brain and Heart Management for Better Success
By
Bill Cottringer
The lion’s share of success and failure is mostly due to how well we manage our brains and hearts—specifically how we learn, grow and improve the thinking and feeling which drives our behavior. Psychologists have never ... Views: 1536
BREAKING THE NEAR-IMPOSSIBLE CYCLE OF ADDICTION
by
Bill Cottringer
“In the course of history many more people have died for their drink and their dope than have died for their religion or their country.” ~Aldous Huxley.
A drop dead handsome, smart young man gets a good education and ... Views: 2822
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” ~Maria Robinson.
As managers today, we are being challenged to use and teach one skill more than all the others in our toolbox—adapting to and teaching change successfully. Just pause a moment ... Views: 757
Challenges in Virtual Communication
by
Bill Cottringer
“Texting is a brilliant way to miscommunicate how you feel and misinterpret what other people mean.” ~Anonymous.
Face to face (f2f) communication itself has many challenges but communicating in the new virtual world surrounding ... Views: 260
CHARACTER-BUILDING
By Bill Cottringer
If you do a Google search on “character-building programs in schools” you will uncover nearly a quarter of a million hits. Why is character-building such an important topic getting so much attention in our schools? First of all it is not ... Views: 1640
CHOICES, CHOICES, CHOICES
By Bill Cottringer
Probably the one thing we think about and do more than anything else in life is making choices. Many times we even have to choose to make a choice or not. We generally make choices from either our heads or our hearts, but usually somewhere in ... Views: 705
Choosing the Right Side
By
Bill Cottringer
An elderly Episcopal priest once gave a simple sermon with a single message that makes too much sense to disregard, even for non-religious people. The message was this: There is one main choice in life and that is which side are you on—the ... Views: 1015
COLLABORATIVE LEADERSHIP
By
Bill Cottringer
“A leader is a dealer in hope.” ~Napoleon Bonaparte.
And so the opening question is when have we needed hope more than today, if it is just help to be more optimistic in seeing past the ornery information overload that is burying us all? ... Views: 1085
Common Sense Life Mission-Based Alignment
By
Bill Cottringer
“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same things moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.” ~ William James.
A few years ago, a colleague of mine wrote an important business book ... Views: 2141
Common Sense Or Good Sense?
By
Bill Cottringer
“Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.”― Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
It seems to be a sad common consensus today that common sense is not so common anymore. But, the validity of that conclusion really depends ... Views: 1311
Common Sense Time Management Learned The Hard Way
By
Bill Cottringer
“Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn. ~Delmore Schwartz.
Today, given the tons and miles of information overload that the Internet and other technology has produced and the ... Views: 1813
Commonsense Solutions to Our Three Main Conflicts
By
Bill Cottringer
“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” ~Eugene Ionesco.
To help identify the source that drives our three main conflicts, I am taking the liberty of expanding the meaning of the ... Views: 386
Communicating with Today’s Workforce
By
Bill Cottringer
“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.” ~Peter F. Drucker.
In managing a wide variety of workforces for nearly six decades now—private and public settings and large and small organizations ... Views: 829
Conflicts and Heartaches
by
Bill Cottringer
“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.” ~William Ellery Channing.
Conflicts are as much a part of life as change, taxes and death. Heartaches go together with conflicts like grass ... Views: 200
CONTROLLING VS. MANAGING BEHAVIOR
By
Bill Cottringer
“One of the biggest sources of frustration comes from trying to control the uncontrollables; on the other hand, great satisfaction comes from gradually learning to manage the controllables better.” ~The author.
Control: To exercise ... Views: 1711
CROSS-TRAINING IN THE SELF-GROWTH JOURNEY
By
Bill Cottringer
“There are two ways to get to the finish line quicker—run faster and bring the finish line closer.” ~The author.
Today we are all getting headaches from the ever-growing ornery overload, distress from the difficulty of keeping ... Views: 823
Dangers of a Divided Mind
By
Bill Cottringer
“Warning: A divided mind misses half of everything but deludes you into believing you have the whole truth. So, if you want to get twice as much done in half the time in finding the whole truth, rejoin your divided mind.” ~The Author.
I ... Views: 163
DEALING WITH A CONTROLLING, TOXIC BULLY
By
Bill Cottringer
It is easy to get trapped into feeling negative about being mistreated by a controlling, toxic bully and worse over not feeling you can do anything about it. It is frustrating, humiliating and maddening. And you can get even ... Views: 6471
Dealing With Early Negative Downloads That Now Control Most of Your Life
By
Bill Cottringer
What can you do about all the negative, unconscious downloads that occurred before age six, that now flood your mind with overwhelming self-sabotaging beliefs that you are not even aware of? This ... Views: 905
Dealing With The Pressure For Instant In And Out Results At Work Or Anywhere
By
Bill Cottringer
Many years ago I wrote about the need to slow down, because the hectic pace of living that most of us were getting caught up in was causing physical distress. This is certainly not new news, but ... Views: 830
DECODING CONFLICT
By
Bill Cottringer
Organizations today are faced with inevitable conflicts in team-building that will require creative resolutions that may be just slightly outside the leader’s toolbox. Even the most experienced leaders have to approach each new conflict with ... Views: 969