Chum in the water

I’m guessing we’ve all heard the business adage: “People do business with people they know, like, and trust.” It’s practically tattooed on the foreheads of networking gurus and business coaches everywhere. But, after years of coaching...

Step Away From Your Dissertation

I was at a writers’ conference one weekend when a bright-eyed woman approached me during cocktail hour. “I’ve just finished my PhD in organizational psychology,” she told me, “and I think it would make a terrific book.” (Back in the...

Haters are going to hate

I was 26 the first time I realized that what people thought about me had more to do with them than with who I was/am as a person. Such an epiphany should have freed me; unfortunately, it didn’t. When I’d first moved to Iran, I wanted two things more than...

The silliest thing that changed my life

I got to thinking about this bike rack I refused to buy because it looked like way too much bother. Anything that requires me to read a user’s manual, well, I I just don’t need it badly enough. Yet, if I hadn’t been nagged to death to buy the damn...