“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
A birthday is a special day for many of us. We all make wishes on our birthdays. Yet it seems that this is more of a ritual as most […]

“[Appreciative Inquiry] deliberately seeks to discover people’s exceptionality – their unique gifts, strengths, and qualities. It actively searches and recognizes people for their specialties – their essential contributions and achievements. And it is based on principles of equality of voice – everyone is asked to speak about their vision of the true, the good, and […]

I’ve been a bit of a grump today.  Not a bad, grump.  Just some tacky, negative comments.  I said as I started out this morning that I was feeling that way, and I know I was a bit terse with my staff a time or two during  the day.  When I got home this evening, I was still […]

If you’ve never seen a wrestling match, you’ve never seen one of the grittiest athletic spectacles known to man, and one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to watch as a nervous mother (through laced fingers over my eyes, to be honest). And if you haven’t heard about Dustin Carter, you’re about to learn […]

I have always been drawn to the quote by Friedrich Nietzsche that “Freedom is to struggle with no hope for reward.” There a great deal of courage in that line. There is comfort in the notion that something can us keep us going, even when the circumstances seem insurmountable. As I have maneuvered the various […]

As I meet with individuals and couples, either in my role as a church leader or in my role as the Human Resources officer for my employer, I often find people who have lost hope.  They have lost hope in their careers, they have lost hope in their relationships, and they have lost hope in […]

Psychological Capital (Oxford University Press, 2007), by Fred Luthans, Carolyn M. Youssef, and Bruce J. Avolio, introduces both a significant stream of research and an important framework for the application of positive psychology to organizations. The stream of research involves a construct they call “PsyCap” — a composite construct made up of self-efficacy, hope, optimism, […]

We’ve all heard the sayings: “A penny saved is a penny earned.”� “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”� “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”� “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
But how accurate and helpful are these sayings, anyway?� I started to wonder about this […]

Europeans generally don’t celebrate Thanksgiving[1]; we have important, though quieter harvest festivals, and we wish you North Americans ease.  Sitting between Diwalli (Hindu) and Christmas (pagan in its timing), the Thanksgiving celebration of harvest brought in rests well.   Celebrations matter in the rhythm of life.
Goodwill is the hallmark of autumnal and winter festivals across the […]

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I have attached a letter my grandfather sent to my grandmother from the western front. It was dated November 7th, 1918, and she wrote on the envelope “Telling about the war stopped.”