Competing Only with Yourself - Breathing Space Blog

Often the most effective way to compete in this world for jobs, lovers and whatever you covet is to not compete at all. Don't compare, analyze, or dwell upon what others are doing. Instead created your own path, follow your internal guidance system, and have faith that your way will work.

Balance - Breathing Space Blog

We must be as good at receiving as we are at giving so that we stay in balance.

Every Last Digital Scrap About You - Breathing Space Blog

As this article by Sara Marie Watson in The Atlantic reveals, Google is collects every last digital scrap about you and sell it to vendors with reckless abandon.

Book: Lions Don't Need to Roar - Breathing Space Blog

A classic worth revisiting: Lions Don't Need to Roar, by D. A. Benton, Warner Books (1992)
You could also say lions don't need to race around frantically, as well!

From a 26-year-old review: Leadership-development expert Debra Benton interviewed and observed more than 100 CEOs, COOs, and company presidents to see what made them successful. "Top people are not magical, blessed, or dramatically different from you or me. They simply have skills and outlooks that the rest of us may not have - but can get."

Far from stodgy, top people:
▪ Like to tell stories that convey a point;
▪ Smile and laugh often;
▪ Know when (and how) to physically touch others;
▪ Often ask for favors, knowing that it makes people feel important.

Benton also debunks myths. Plain old energy isn't necessarily a key to success, for example. People who project "frantic" energy -- those who rush about, maintain rigid time schedules, or wolf down their sandwiches -- don't get far. The successful develop a relaxed energy that lets them work long hours, concentrate on complex problems, and focus on the matter at hand.

World Population Crisis - Breathing Space Blog

An understated headline, to be sure: "Challenges loom as world population hits 7.6 billion."

Leave the Edge - Breathing Space Blog

For years, I stayed on the edge of my savings, my time, my resources, and my energy rather than storing these up for selective use when opportunities quickly presented themselves. As I began to formulate the Breathing Space principles, I realized my folly.

Get off the edge, put more away in savings, rest more often, eat properly and relax periodically throughout the day. Stop substituting motion for accomplishment.

Notes from “Egotopia" - Breathing Space Blog

A 20 year old book Egotopia by John Miller (University of Alabama Press, 1997) has some remarkable insights for today:

"There are moments in history that divide eras--moments that serve to direct our attention, to inform us of a fundamental shift in collective perception, in professed values. The emergence of the New American Landscape is just such a moment whose significance, for the most part, is a steep detection of sociologists, historian, and architectural critics alike.

So little of our historical landscape remains (replaced by the “New American Landscape”) that it’s hard to appreciate our present aesthetic deprivation, having few opportunities for comparison.

We have been transformed from a society modeled on the professed virtues of balance, harmony, rights, and responsibilities to one that unabashedly celebrates excessive behavior and self indulgence in the name of self-liberation.

The ugliness of our environment is a function of our transformation from a society to communal values to one that celebrates and encourages individual self indulgence. Greed, ignorance, mindless science and technology, and excessive materialism contribute to both environmental destruction and a public confusion and ambiguity about aesthetics.

We appear indifferent to the physical and environmental loss of our cultural heritage as authentic small towns and charming country side are paved over. Concurrently, we seemed pleased and satisfied in having created a physical environment in which it is literally possible to be no more than minutes by car away from refrigerated soft-drink. "