Divide and Conquer
By
Bill Cottringer
“Divide and rule, the politician cries; Unite and lead, is watchword of the wise. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gedichte.
In war, the divide and conquer rule has always gotten the expected results. Ironically though, this same principle can also ... Views:375
Commonsense Solutions to Our Three Main Conflicts
By
Bill Cottringer
“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” ~Eugene Ionesco.
To help identify the source that drives our three main conflicts, I am taking the liberty of expanding the meaning of the ... Views:391
Ten Life Lessons You Can Only Learn the Hard Way
By
Bill Cottringer
“Though nobody can go back and make a new beginning, anyone can start over and make a new ending.” ~ Chico Xavier.
Here are ten valuable lessons about life that lead to success and happiness. Unfortunately this ... Views:370
Today’s Primary Problem: Commonplace Evil
By
Bill Cottringer
“The way in which you define something has a lot to do with how much or how little of the thing you have in hand, both quantity and quality.” ~The Author.
Such is the case with the greatly misunderstood term evil. ... Views:359
Benefits & Callenges of Diversity
By
Bill Cottringer
“Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi.
The rest of the workforce diversity story is unfolding as every great social change brings sometimes unexpected ... Views:366
Looking for Greener Pastures
By
Bill Cottringer
“The grass on the other side of the fence isn’t always greener. Sometimes it is just a different shade of brown and other times it comes with unwanted weeds and underground pests. ~The Author.
Having played fierce musical chairs for ... Views:552
Writing Options
By
Bill Cottringer
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ~Ernest Hemingway.
Writing is both an art and science involving both the right and left hemispheres of the brain, including the thinking and feeling brain functions. ... Views:373
Job-Getting Reminder Tips
By
Bill Cottringer
Although the post-pandemic job market is starting to lean toward favoring employees over employers, it is still a difficult challenge to find the right job today. Success requires some serious preparatory work in the following three areas, ... Views:408
The Three Core Conflicts
by
Bill Cottringer
“Unresolved conflicts usually return as noisier versions with more intensity, vengeance and difficulty.” ~The author.
There are three core conflicts for humans: (1) Us vs. life (2) Us vs. others, and (3) Us vs. ourselves. We all ... Views:441
Time: The Ultimate Yin-Yang Urstoff
by
Bill Cottringer
“The hidden portal to real time is the precise now moment of when the past and future collide into the present.” ~The author.
To see true time,
You need double vision,
One eye for convention
The other for imagination.
First ... Views:414
Managing Success for a Better Destiny
by
Bill Cottringer
“It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” ~Tony Robbins.
May needless failures start with the illusion of being able to control even the uncontrollable things, and end with the frustration and ... Views:358
ARE YOU LUCKY OR UNLUCKY?
by
Bill Cottringer
“Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation, while bad luck is when lack of preparation meets reality.” ~Eliyahu Goldratt.
Are you lucky or unlucky? I suppose how you answer this question depends upon how you define “luck.” The ... Views:391
The ABC’s of Success
By
Bill Cottringer
“Success is what you do to get what you consider to be a success.” ~The Author.
The only “luck” that is involved with success comes from two sources: (a) You are lucky enough to be among the few to be born into an established success ... Views:363
SEVEN VERBS TO DEFEAT ANGER
By
Bill Cottringer
“Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” ~Ambrose Bierce.
Anger is a strong, unpleasant feeling you usually get when someone else, something else or you yourself, may be getting in the way of ... Views:653
Ten useful Suggestions on Improving the Quality of Your Life
by
Bill Cottringer
“Our egos are utterly convinced that ‘quality of life’ is found in the ‘domineering of life.’ And a very simple way to effectively destroy the whole of your life is to live by this for the smallest part of your ... Views:396
Seven Sure Paths to Self-Actualization
By
Bill Cottringer
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” ~Theodore Roosevelt.
There is common consensus that the goal of personal development is to learn, grow and improve into your best self—self-actualization as Abraham Maslow ... Views:354
Psychology for Dummies (Like Me & You)
By
Bill Cottringer
“Common sense is the simple knack of seeing things the way they are and doing things the way they need to be done.” ~ Mark Twain.
1. Most of what we think we know really isn’t so, whether we like that reality or not because it ... Views:489
We Are Alike & We Are Different
By
Bill Cottringer
“It is a darn shame that we spend so much time arguing and being annoyed with our differences, and not enough time understanding and celebrating them.” ~The Author.
An important insight to apply for success is knowing the ... Views:540
Hopelessness: The Only Real Enemy Worth Defeating
By
Bill Cottringer
“Hopelessness is a feeling. It's not a fact.” ~Anohni
Hopelessness is the main cause of all the world’s problems and hope is the only real antidote. Thank heavens for the reality of the quote above, that ... Views:477
Beating the COVD Holiday Blues
By
Bill Cottringer
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Wishing you happiness during this holiday season.” ~Helen Keller
This year the normal holiday spirit may be dampened by ... Views:614
What’s Behind the Curtain of the Political Divide in America?
By
Bill Cottringer
“We divided ourselves among caste, creed, culture and countries but what is undivided remains most valuable: a mere smile and the love.” ~Santosh Kalwar.
Don’t be fooled into believing the divide in ... Views:683
Healing the Divide: A Few Partial Solutions Worth Considering.
By
Bill Cottringer
“Until we can reconcile mind and matter as just being different sides of the same coin, dualistic thinking will continue to take things apart rather than put them back together where they belong. ~ The ... Views:616
The Trouble with Beliefs
By
Bill Cottringer
“Man is what he believes. ~ Anton Chekhov.
The main trouble with beliefs is that people take them, along with themselves and the certainty of their beliefs being true, too seriously. The other half of that problem is that it is a belief ... Views:620
Accidental vs. Intentional Careers
By
Bill Cottringer
“Our strongest gifts are usually those we are barely aware of possessing. They are a part of our God-given nature, with us from the moment we drew first breath, and we are no more conscious of having them than we are of breathing.” ... Views:552
The Three Main Highways to Success
By
Bill Cottringer
“Knowing how to succeed is the easy part. The hard part is in translating your desire into hard work and maintaining perseverance through inevitable setbacks.” ~ The Author.
If you do a Google search on “success” there are ... Views:580
Various Versions of Happiness
By
Bill Cottringer
“Happiness is what you do to stumble upon it.” ~The Author.
The pursuit of happiness is something we all engage in, to some degree or another. And the last I heard, it is still an inalienable constitutional right of Americans and ... Views:676
Developing Emotional Intelligence
by
Bill Cottringer
“Having both intellectual intelligence (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ) is necessary to be successful. What you lack in IQ points, you can make up for by having emotional intelligence.” ~The author.
I know the above quote is ... Views:713
Leadership Skills
By
Bill Cottringer
If your want to be a leader, feel free to test your potential against this self-assessment instrument. And if you are already a leader, you can assess the level of leadership skills you have achieved and the ones still needing some work. The scoring ... Views:783
The Dynamics of Dishonesty
by
Bill Cottringer
“Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne.
One of the most important ingredients in any relationship is trust. Trust is enhanced by honesty, while dishonesty is a hungry termite that ... Views:861
A VERY ANNOYING HABIT
by
Bill Cottringer
“I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.”
~Jane Wagner.
What could anyone complain about regarding this beautiful day? Oh, I imagine we can find something: The inconvenient travel and other ... Views:687
The Only Two Ways to Heal the Divide
By
Bill Cottringer
“Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
There is no denying that we have a great Divide going on in our country, that has reached the point of begging ... Views:619
BECOMING YOUR BEST SELF
by
Bill Cottringer
“Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true strength.” ~Lao Tzu.
An earlier Psychologist, Abraham Maslow, proposed a hierarchy of needs that all people had a ... Views:656
Developing a Winning Success Style
by
Bill Cottringer
“When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less.” ~ Paul Brown.
A person can generally be a winner with a big dream, solid game plan on translating the dream into reality, a good character with which to do that, a lot of hard ... Views:587
Good Sense About Getting Along with Others During Troubled Times
by
Bill Cottringer
“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” ~Theodore Roosevelt.
Despite the physical 6-foot rule of social distancing keeping us apart, ... Views:566
Psychological Power Points of Effective Writing
by
Bill Cottringer
“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.” ~Virginia Woolf.
Earlier on in my prison administration career, a colleague, Herb Gross, ... Views:774
Communicating with Today’s Workforce
By
Bill Cottringer
“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.” ~Peter F. Drucker.
In managing a wide variety of workforces for nearly six decades now—private and public settings and large and small organizations ... Views:840
Good People, Bad Ethics
by
Bill Cottringer
“In my college ethics class, someone stole my textbook and I thought that was rather ironic.” ~The author.
In the section on ethics which I teach in criminal justice classes, I define ethical behavior as, “The ideal standard of what is ... Views:921
A Prescription for Resolving Interpersonal Conflicts
by
Bill Cottringer
“All conflict can be traced back to someone’s feelings getting hurt, don’t you think?” ~Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies.
We all get stuck in messy emotional interpersonal conflicts with others from ... Views:987
GREEN, YELLOW & RED LIGHTS
By
Bill Cottringer
“Three things cannot be long hidden: The sun, the moon, and the truth.” ~Buddha.
The sheer power of the number three, or dividing things into thirds, is probably one of the first governing principles of the universe discovered and ... Views:789
FOUR CRUCIBLES OF SUCCESSFUL LEADERSHIP
By
Bill Cottringer
"A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better." ~Jim Rohn.
The four crucibles of successful leadership include: Becoming an expert at ... Views:896
Modernize Your Mind
by
Bill Cottringer
The year 2020 might be a good time to think about modernizing your conventional mind, that is, if life hasn’t already forced you to do this. Here are some low-resistance, practical tips on facilitating mind- modernization:
1. Meta-thinking. ... Views:735
A Belief Worth Questioning
By
Bill Cottringer
“Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.” ~John F. Kennedy.
All the world’s dreadful problems and the unwanted miseries they bring, are caused by one ... Views:779
Better Time Management for 2020 and Beyond
by
Bill Cottringer
“Time is the one resource that is equally distributed, but unequally used.” ~The Author.
This combining millennium will likely just continue to overload us with more and more information, where we end up never having ... Views:1080
A Few More Thoughts About Happiness
by
Bill Cottringer
“Breathe in common sense and breathe out nonsense.” ~The Author.
Happiness has as many different definitions and ways to get it as there are people on the planet. Here are a few more thoughts about happiness I have had recently, ... Views:791
DO WHAT MATTERS MOST
By
Bill Cottringer
“There's a mess inside you: You clean the outside.” ~Anonymous, The Dhammapada.
Do what matters most. I once wrote a book with that title. It took me more than 600 pages to wade through some extreme complexity to get to the profound ... Views:890
Having Enough Hope in Motion for Success
By
Bill Cottringer
“You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world's problems at once but don't ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be ... Views:630
Train Your Brain in Mindfulness
by
Bill Cottringer
“Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.” ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Why train your brain in “mindfulness?” Because mindfulness is what facilitates the other major components of emotional intelligence—self, ... Views:884
Our Common Denominator
By
Bill Cottringer
“Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.” ~Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code.
One of the more important common denominators people have is: (a) being unique and different on the one hand with personal ... Views:613
Ten Tips for Successful Presentations
By
Bill Cottringer
Successful selling is often preempted by the requirement of giving a formal presentation to convince the customer to go with your product or service. These presentations require some sensible prep work to result in successful ... Views:1125
Some Uncommon Sense Needed today
By
Bill Cottringer
“You can see a lot by observing and hear a lot by listening.” ~Yogi Berra
Originally back in the day, common sense was the useful knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA’s) people needed to use to survive the challenges of living day ... Views:838