When I first started doing stand-up comedy over 20 years ago, I never said no. I took whatever jobs I could find, and I never questioned the conditions of the deal; I showed up when and where people wanted me, and I accepted whatever amount of money they were offering. The same thing was true…
I like it when people agree with me. I think most of us do. It’s hard not to enjoy hearing that others think our ideas, attitudes, and beliefs are right. In fact, I’m sure the world would be a much simpler place if everyone just agreed with every single thing I ever did or said. …
A couple months ago I wrote an article about how to avoid allowing a mistake to challenge your sense of self-worth. This month, though, I realized I left something out of that conversation. It focused on the personal benefit of learning to accept that mistakes are a natural part of the learning process. This month,…
This year, you probably asked Santa for a pony. Or a laser cannon, or socks – I don’t really know, but you probably didn’t ask for better work-life balance, even though it’s something you probably want. Most of us do. So, operating under the assumption that Santa didn’t put that one under the tree, I’m…
There are a lot of ways to handle conflict. A popular one is to escalate them by avoiding the contentious subject, shouting at people who disagree with you, and other fun things like that. But if you’d like to, I don’t know, reduce the pain and agony of your next conflict, then active listening is…
Recently my wife and I were in Barcelona, visiting her family and 87 of their closest friends. (Not quite, but there were a lot of people.) We were outside, it was a beautiful day, and it was time to decide where to have dinner. The only thing everyone agreed on was that we wanted to…
Hello, and welcome to one of the most difficult jobs you might ever be unfortunate enough to face – telling somebody they smell bad. I’ll be honest, I’m amazed and saddened by how often someone has asked me how to do this. Apparently there are millions of people blindingly unaware of their own foulness. Why…