Browse published articles attributed to William Cottringer, with full-archive search.
The Baker’s Dirty Dozen Gaps Between What’sr Byr Bill Cottringer “The main challenge in life is to close the gap between where you are now and where you really want to be.” ~The Author. We all have much work to do to close the above gap. Here are a Baker’s Dirty Dozen Gaps we need to figure out how to close before they widen past the point of no return:
After decades of both humorous and sad failure attempts to fix broken realities I didn’t like in my own and others’ lives, I think I have finally discovered a simple prescription that I wish I had known about years ago. Many needless broken bones, bleeding and bruises could have been ...
SOUND LIKE THE TRUTH? By Bill Cottringe n Why is it important to “sound” like you are speaking, reading or writing the truth? If it is so important, how can you make sure you are doing it? First question first. 1. First of all, our perceptions and versions of the truth are what we act on, ...
Love-Hate Relationships Are Fertile Ground For Learning & Growing BynBill Cottringe n“You know you are in deep trouble when you learn to either love to hate a person or hate to love them.” ~The author. In looking back over the many relationships I have had at work and domestic ...
GET READY TO RUMBLEnby William Cottringe nn There are plenty of dismal headlines in the business and public service news today. “Financial Meltdown,” “Profitability Plague” “Cooked Books,” and “Ethics Erosion” are common phrases today. Are these things just part of a bigger problem? nn ...
SHORTCUT TO HAPPINESS BynBill Cottringe nn“Happiness is merely what you get from doing what you do to get it.” ~The author, not being facetious. Or put another way… Shortcut to Happiness Want more happiness? Slow down & do less, Unload the overload; Listen to what you want, Hear what you ...
REMOVING THE SAFETY SPACE BETWEEN YOU AND LIFEnBy Bill Cottringe n In a recent movie, "Lions for Lambs," the truth of life was pursued to the end from three different directions by three great movie stars, who probably weren’t acting: Tom Cruise, the ambitious politician, Meryl Streep, the ...
Little Things Count Most in Getting a JobnBy Bill Cottringer. A long time ago I discovered an extremely useful concept called perturbation point, or just "P" point for short. These are the little critical things you can do to get the biggest results. The following checklist has the little ...
DECREASING UNHAPPINESS TO INCREASE HAPPINESSnBy Bill Cottringe nn“There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.” ~Anthony de Mello.nnn More and more people are ...
Developing Emotional Intelligence byr Bill Cottringer “Having both intellectual intelligence (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ) is necessary to be successful. What you lack in IQ points, you can make up for by having emotional intelligence.” ~The author.
Ten Important ‘Yes, Buts…’ of Happiness to Keep in MindnBy Bill Cottringe n“The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.” ~Billy Joel. The path to the most rewarding things in life always seem to be singular, but they do have some “yes, but…” side paths ...
Leadership Skills Byr Bill Cottringer If your want to be a leader, feel free to test your potential against this self-assessment instrument. And if you are already a leader, you can assess the level of leadership skills you have achieved and the ones still needing some work. The scoring key follows the self-ratings. 101 Leadership Skills Self-Assessment Instrument © 2020 Dr. Bill Cottringer, Cascade Security Corp.
A Belief Worth Questioning Byr Bill Cottringer “Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.” ~John F. Kennedy. All the world’s dreadful problems and the unwanted miseries they bring, are caused by one questionable belief that has gone unquestioned for too long. This belief is that some people have the absolute right to control and “own” others, with the imposed certainty that the controllers have more experience, better truths and superior success prescriptions than those they control.
A Few More Thoughts About Happiness byr Bill Cottringer “Breathe in common sense and breathe out nonsense.” ~The Author. Happiness has as many different definitions and ways to get it as there are people on the planet. Here are a few more thoughts about happiness I have had recently, since my book, “Thoughts on Happiness.”
AN IMPORTANT “YES, BUT...” CAVEAT OF BALANCE BEING AN ASPIRATION POINT BynBill Cottringe nn 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, ...
Four Places To Be On The Growth Continuum And Three Of Them Are Bad BynBill Cottringe n“If we are growing, we will always be out of our comfort zone.” ~John Maxwell. Sorry about the gloom and dome title, but it’s true, just like throwing a pass in football—three things can happen and two ...
Why Somebody Else Can’t Tell You How To Be Successful And Happy. BynBill Cottringe n“Success and happiness are what you get from doing what you have to do to get them.” ~The author. What do you suppose all these folks have in common? • All the present living presidents. • All the academy ...
FROM KNOWING BETTER TO DOING BETTER BynBill Cottringe nn This title is a logical progression from the last article—“Decreasing Uhappiness To Increase Happiness.” Before we can do this, we need to learn how to move from knowing what to do and how to do it, to actually doing it. And, the ...
JUDGMENTS, DEFENSIVENESS, UNDERCURRENTS, FESTERING & FAI ESSnBy William Cottringer, Ph.D. Sooner or later conflict occurs in any relationship. A particularly difficult conflict is when one person thinks or acts one way about something that is diametrically opposed to the other person’s ...
SEVEN VERBS TO DEFEAT ANGER Byr Bill Cottringer “Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” ~Ambrose Bierce.
The Four Crucibles of SuccessnBy Bill Cottringe n Every success has four crucibles that make nothing go to something, and close the gap between dreaming and reality: The Head, Heart, Soul and Hands. We know now, the energy that is transformed between these four crucibles is what shows up ...
Reality Repair Rx: A Critical Time for ThoughtfulnessnBy Bill Cottringe n“You can’t behave your way out of a problem that you thought your way into.”n ~The author. This quote is a re-arrangement of an earlier one by Stephen Covey, “You can’t talk your way out of a situation you ...
REALITY REPAIR QUESTIONS BynBill Cottringer "I wouldn't give a fig for the simplicity that comes on the near side of complexity, but I would give my left arm for the simplicity that comes on the far side of complexity." ~Oliver Wendell Holmes. I just finished writing another book, Reality ...
Four Important “Yes, Buts…” About Success to Keep in MindnBy Bill Cottringe n“Success is often what is left when you empty your toolbox of the failed solutions that are past their opportunity, but hard to give up.” ~The author. Two very good cases have been made about our main purpose for ...
How to Have a Near-Perfect Marriage Or Not. BynBill Cottringe nn“The happiest marriages are 75% right selection and 25% effort; choosing the right person and devoting the rest of the time being the right person.” ~The author, with the right person, being the right person. Let me begin by ...
THE TREADMILL TRAP: Keeping Up With The Speed Of ChangenBy William Cottringer, Ph.D.nnn What is faster than a nanosecond? Whatever it is, it is upon us! Right at this moment I am both crying and laughing about the impact of Karl Fish’s “Shift Happens” I-Net and U-tube “Fishbowl: Did You ...
CROSS-TRAINING IN THE SELF-GROWTH JOU EY By Bill Cottringe n“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 ...
SEVEN HELPING PILLARSnBy William Cottringer, Ph.D.nnn“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.” ~Dr. Seuss.nnn We are all born with an innate desire to be successful and help others. There is wisdom in the saying, “you can best help ...
THE “WORST BAD HABIT” YOU CAN GET CAUGHT UP INnBy Bill Cottringe n“The obscure takes a while to see and the obvious—even longer.” ~Anonymous. What is the worst bad habit you can get caught up in? One that is hard to see because it is so much of who we are on this human journey. As it ...
Various Versions of Happiness Byr Bill Cottringer “Happiness is what you do to stumble upon it.” ~The Author. The pursuit of happiness is something we all engage in, to some degree or another. And the last I heard, it is still an inalienable constitutional right of Americans and should be for all people on the planet. But this pursuit of happiness is where the commonality starts disappearing—in the many paths people choose to follow to find it. Below are several different paths to happiness people travel.
25 Self-Development Truths You Can Take To The Bank Or I Don’t Know Anything BynBill Cottringer "The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." ~John Ruskin. Here are 25 self-development truths I am certain of through firsthand experience ...
THE TWO HALVES OF LIFEnBy William Cottringer, Ph.D. “Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson. From where I am standing do my looking today, there seems to be two distinct halves to my life. Of course I am interested in finding ...
A VERY ANNOYING HABIT byr Bill Cottringer “I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.”rn~Jane Wagner.
PRETZEL MANAGEMENTnBy Bill Cottringe nn“Pretzel Management is when you stop trying to figure out when one thing ends and another starts. You just spread some mustard, take a healthy bite and enjoy it.” ~ The author. I don’t think it’s just me but I sense management is getting ...
Five Ways to Keep Your Perspectives Flowing ForwardnBy Bill Cottringe n“In anything, perspective is everything.” ~The autho Perspective: Personal point of view; how you view something; different aspects of an object in thought from a particular standpoint. I hope Lao Tzu doesn’t ...
WE MAKE HELPING TOO COMPLICATEDnBy Bill Cottringe n“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~Anne Franknn We tend to make things much more complicated than they need to be. I am not sure why we do this. Maybe out of boredom and ...
YES…THE MORE PLAN B’S AND C’S THE BETTER! BynBill Cottringe n“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.” ~Henry David Thoreau. This is an interesting quote unless you have read an even more interesting one by Søren Kierkegaard. He maintained that “Life has to be lived ...
THE FIVE C’S OF SUCCESSFUL REALITY REPAI By Bill Cottringe n There is a mighty roadblock in the way of successful reality repair—fixing broken realities (social problems, economy crises, wars) and creating new and better ones we want (equal access to and enjoyment of abundance and ...
ANGRY HEARTSnby Bill Cottringe nn 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 ...
NO-NONSENSE “P” POINT MANAGEMENTnBy Bill Cottringer "A shortcut is the longest distance between two points." ~ Annonymous. Management information, like everything else today is on overload, so here is a quick system of No-Nonsense “P’ Point Management to help you accomplish a lot by ...
Exercise Your Thinking Muscles “Sometimes you must give up the good to get to the great. The key is knowing what to keep and what to discard from your mind.” ~The author.
What We All Want and The Simple Game We Play to Get ItnBy Bill Cottringe n“Life is very simple; men insist upon making it complicated.” ~Confucius. It has taken me 4 decades of self-improvement giving and receiving, but I think I finally understand the penetrating meaning of the above ...
Dealing With The Pressure For Instant In And Out Results At Work Or AnywherenBy Bill Cottringe n 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, ...
MENTAL SLICING & DICING YOUR WAY TO HALF-HAPPINESSnBy Bill Cottringe nn“All colors are friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.” ~Marc Chagall. I am well into the second half of my life and in looking back I think I can openly admit that I goofed greatly in the first ...
Beating the COVD Holiday Blues Byr 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 the COVID situation that is trying to hold us all hostage. But in an effort to not let that happen, here are a few suggestions on keeping the holiday spirit alive and well:r
Healing the Divide: A Few Partial Solutions Worth Considering. Byr Bill Cottringer “Until we can reconcile mind and matter as just being different sides of the same coin, dualistic thinking will continue to take things apart rather than put them back together where they belong. ~ The author.
Humility Is At Least Half-King By Bill Cottringe nn There is one critical virtue I can’t get enough of these days and I don’t think we ever appreciate its ultimate importance and value until the lack of it comes back to bite us in our butts. I think humility should be right up there with ...
MANAGING THE OVERLOADnBy Bill Cottringe n“Offices, desks, drawers, attics, basements, table tops, backyards, closets, medicine cabinets, garages, mailboxes, minds…all getting full of clutter and spilling over.” ~The author. nnn Everything I read, see, think, talk about, and experience these ...
ESSENTIAL REALITY REPAIR Rx: Fixing Broken Realities & Creating Better Ones. BynWilliam Cottringer, Ph.D.nnn“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” ~Arthur Schopenhauer. I believe I may ...
“Success is what you do and get from finding the abundance that has your name on it.” n~ The author. At home and work, we are all part of realities we often don’t particularly like and sometimes desperately want to make better. These realities can be uncomfortable conflicts in ...