Not long ago I asked a friend if he’d talked to a mutual friend of ours. He responded by saying, “I called him a few months ago, and I never heard back. I’m not calling him again. It’s his turn.” Turn? Since when do friends take turns? I call people and occasionally get disappointed when I don’t hear back. And I’m sure I’ve let some return calls fall through the cracks because of the insanity of keeping up with the world. But friends shouldn’t take turns. Life is too short to lose communication with someone because we won’t call them again because it’s not our “turn.” We become more engaged (at work and home) when we successfully weave together five aspects of our lives – career, relationshi
My wife and I don’t check our mailbox nearly enough. We get most of our bills online, so it’s normally full of junk mail and catalogs. Nothing we care to read. December is always the exception. Every day is exciting because we look forward to getting Christmas cards from family and friends. We all love to get cards. According to the Greeting Card Association, Christmas is the most popular card-sending holiday of the year, accounting for more than 60 percent of all individual season cards sold. Valentine’s Day is second. Americans purchase nearly 7 billion greeting cards every year, which is great news for the 3,000 greeting card publishers in America. Quite frankly, I’m surprised Americans p
It’s that time of year again when we take a personal inventory to determine what improvements we need to make in our life. Millions of people will resolve to change their lives for the better, starting today. Sadly, research indicates it won’t last for most people. Author Oscar Wilde once wrote, “A New Year’s Resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.” It seems statistics prove him right: only 75 percent of those who make a resolution make it past the first week, 71 percent make it past the second week, 64 percent make it past a month, and only 46 percent hang on past six months. These statistics aren’t very encouraging, and are the primary reason I have one single word
