Condescension is a behavior people can see right through

Life & Living
“Of what use is it to be tolerant of others if you are convinced that you are right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong? That isn’t tolerance but condescension.” - Anthony de Mello The word condescension is familiar to most, but few actually know what it truly means. Condescension is an attitude or behavior exhibited by those who truly believe they are more intelligent or better than other people. Beyond not knowing what the word means, many more fail to realize how often they practice condescension among their peers, their subordinates, their friends and their family. Dr. Frank J. Ninivaggi shared his thoughts on the subject in an article he appropriately titled, “Condescension is Manifest Envy”. In it he writes, “A common phenomenon illustrating the surfacing of envy is…
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Make it count – how well are you spending your time?

Life & Living
"I have one life and one chance to make it count for something." - Jimmy Carter If there’s one thing humanity continually takes for granted, regardless of circumstance, it’s time. We naively believe there’s an endless reserve of sand in the hourglass, but the reality is time is not infinite – you need to make it count today. So, the one thing humanity takes for granted is time, and the one thing we always say is there never seems to be enough of it. I agree on that point. Between work, household chores, relationships and hobbies, it’s not often easy to find time in one’s schedule for all the things we need to do and want to do during any given week. Something inevitably gets shunned and shortly thereafter we’re left…
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Healing doesn’t come without work and admission

Healing doesn’t come without work and admission

Life & Living
"If there's no breaking then there's no healing, and if there's no healing then there's no learning." - One Tree Hill The other night, I took part in a Fusion Healing Yoga Class at Prizm Yoga & Fitness. The class combines yoga and individualized energy healing, designed to help you work through your energetic issues and blocks, while experiencing a more open mindset. Healing has been somewhat elusive to me over the last decade, regardless of counselling and self-help books geared towards changing my cognitive behaviors once and for all. Yes, they’ve provided me with invaluable tools in order to cope through my daily existence, but I’m not sure any of them provided me with longstanding benefits. At some point, you settle into normalcy and convince yourself that you’ve been able…
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The moon is a constant companion we often take for granted

Life & Living
“I never really thought about how when I look at the moon, it’s the same moon as Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at.” - Susan Beth Pfeffer, Life As We Knew It There are some nights, when I’m walking towards a large expanse of windows at the back of my house, that I’m mesmerized by the cool, crisp, unobstructed light of the moon. It bathes my entire yard with an intense glow one might assume is coming from an exterior house light. I find myself just standing there like a young boy – utterly amazed by the astronomical body high above my head. But beyond any famed or revered individuals from our history, it’s somewhat comforting to know that my grandfather, and his father before him,…
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A contribution is about more than just being a doer

Life & Living, Love & Relationships
“Great ambition and conquest without contribution is without significance. What will your contribution be? How will history remember you?”  - William Hundert It’s been almost four years since my wife and I moved to Colorado from New Jersey. While we both were fortunate to secure jobs early on, I’m not sure they were truly “careers” for either one of us. Eventually, we found ourselves asking the question, what is my contribution? Three years into her career, my wife was blessed to find a new position with ideal circumstances to suit her. But as my organization continued to evolve, I found myself growing frustrated over the reality that I had become a “doer” not a “contributor”. David Lagercrantz once wrote, “You either have a useful contribution to make or you don’t,…
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