No doubt about it, some people have a gift for organization. Me? I was behind the door when that gift was handed out. Be that as it may, even the organization-challenged can learn new habits and organizational skills for a greater degree of order and efficiency. While home organization comes to…

One of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has got to be unpopular with the self-seeking, personal agenda of most of us these days. The habit is number five, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” This principle is at the heart of empathic listening. Listening is essential to…

I learned how to do deep breathing about thirty years ago while watching the PBS program, “Lilias, Yoga, and You.” This half-hour yoga class was taught by the sweet-spirited Lilias Folan and featured the expected lotus, fish, and shoulder stands familiar to anyone who’s explored this form of exercise. The thing that has…

Jack Canfield, in chapter 6 of The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, admonishes us to become “inverse paranoids.” If you’ve ever known anyone with paranoid tendencies, you know that no matter what someone says or does, this person will be suspicious…

When young people are first starting out in life, either as college students or young workers, debt looks like an easy solution to the shortage of money that seems to go with this period of life. It’s only a temporary fix, however, and will set a person back in the long run. Suze…

One of the seventeen principles of success in the book Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude by Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone is that of “inspirational discontentment.” The idea is that a person needs to be just discontented enough with his or her income or standard of living that it inspires them to…

Productivity is a desirable but elusive quality. Just what can be done to progress from average or marginal productivity to a high level of achievement? One thing that is at the forefront of any attempt at self-improvement is a written statement of goals. Written goals, especially if they are broken down into…