Blog
Check in on Your Friendships: A Quick Checkup
Article Summary: Many people get so busy that they neglect their friendships—only to regret it later. Strong friendships don’t happen by accident. This article offers a quick friendship checkup tool, plus 11 ways to nurture deeper connection with your friends. +++ How are your relationships with your friends? The quality of your friendships can have a big impact on your happiness and quality of life. Strong friendships bring joy, support, and meaning to your life. But friendships aren’t always easy to maintain. You may be busy with work and family obligations, or separated by distance. “…signs suggest that the role
A Quick Family Relationship Checkup
Article Summary: Many people get so busy with work and other obligations that their family relationships end up suffering. Strong family bonds don’t happen by accident. This article gives practical tips to nurture trust, love, and connection with your children, parents, and siblings—plus a quick, family relationship checkup to see how your family is doing. +++ How are your relationships with your family—your children, parents, siblings, or other close relatives? The quality of those relationships can have a big impact on your quality of life. Strong family bonds bring joy, support, and meaning, while strained ones can drain your energy
A Quick Relationship Checkup
Article Summary: Many people struggle to maintain a strong relationship with their spouse or partner. This article offers practical insights to help you strengthen your bond and show up more intentionally—and a quick checkup tool. +++ How is your relationship with your spouse or partner? When you hear the Righteous Brothers sing “You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling,” does it ring true a little? Does it feel “gone, gone, gone”? The quality of your closest relationships can have an enormous impact on your quality of life. A strong partnership can bring joy, support, and meaning, while a strained one can drain
Health and Vitality: Keys to Your Quality of Life
Article Summary: Without health and vitality, even success and good relationships can feel empty, as stress, fatigue, or poor habits drain your joy and resilience. This article guides you through the 12 most important elements of physical and mental well-being—like nutrition, sleep, exercise, mindfulness, and resilience—so you can identify gaps, take practical steps, and build a foundation for thriving in life. +++ You want to live a good life and you want to do well at work, but without health and vitality, everything else suffers. You can achieve success and build healthy relationships, but if your body is run-down or
Elevate Your Life with a Strong Personal Core
Article Summary: We all want to have a good quality of life but too often we don’t know how to get it, especially given the demands we face. Here we identify how you can elevate your quality of life with a strong personal core, a foundation that includes contentment, happiness, meaning, gratitude, and more. +++ In a world full of pressure and constant change, it’s easy to get pulled in a dozen directions—reacting to demands and losing sight of what truly matters. Without a strong personal core, you risk drifting or living by someone else’s script. But when you anchor
The Most Common Myths about Passion and Work
Just follow your passion. Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life. So goes the common advice from scads of college graduation speeches. As if it were so simple. Is it good advice? How can you find your passion anyway? What are the most common myths about passion and work? And what are the realities that bust those myths? It helps to start with what passions are and aren’t. Researchers have defined passions as strong inclinations toward activities you value and like or love, and in which you invest your time and energy. I like
How to Help Others Stop Playing the Victim
Do you know or work with someone who has a victim mentality? Perhaps they believe their hardships are always someone else’s fault and that things will never change, so there’s no use trying. Maybe they see themselves as powerless, hopelessly stuck in negative circumstances. The cost of having a victim mentality is steep. It drains their energy, triggers resentment, and fosters bitterness. Essentially, they’re taking a bad situation and making it worse. It can lead to withdrawal and other harmful coping behaviors. Over time, it erodes their sense of agency and well-being, trapping them in a downward spiral. Let’s pause
The Biggest Mistakes New Graduates Make
Dear new graduate: Congratulations and hats off to you! You’ve come a long way and reached a major milestone in your life. Maybe you’ve been so busy finishing assignments and getting to graduation that you haven’t taken much time to think about what comes next. (If so, you’re not alone!) With that in mind, here are some of the biggest mistakes new graduates make: ❌ Putting too much pressure on yourself to have it all figured out right away. ❌ Committing too early to a career path without vetting it deeply and remaining open to new and better possibilities. ❌
Thriving Amidst Chaos and Uncertainty: 12 Tips
Are you facing chaos and uncertainty in your life and work now? Finding it hard to manage things or lead? You’re not alone. You may have noticed a few disruptions lately: economic instability (including tariff uncertainty and supply chain disruptions) political polarization and the erosion of democratic norms technological disruption (including AI risks, scams, deepfakes, and more) geopolitical conflicts (including wars in Ukraine and the Middle East) climate change and extreme weather events Such disruptions come and go, but if you let them, they can have brutal impacts on your life, work, and leadership. Chaos and uncertainty can cause: anxiety
The Problem with Complacency
Complacency is one of the most dangerous and devious traps we can fall into. It lulls us into a false sense of comfort, blinding us to the risks we should be addressing and the growth we could be pursuing. Whether it’s our health, relationships, career, or leadership, complacency keeps us stuck instead of moving forward. Examples abound. For instance, a worker might stay in a role she’s outgrown, missing out on more challenging and fulfilling opportunities. A manager may ignore early signs of conflict among team members, allowing tensions to escalate. A husband might stop expressing appreciation for his wife.
The Problem with Avoidance
Avoidance is a natural coping mechanism that can protect us from danger. But when it’s overused, as in putting off difficult tasks or dodging hard conversations, it can backfire and make things worse. It’s a common phenomenon. A manager avoids dealing with a worker’s toxic behavior because it’s a high performer. A worker avoids asking for a raise because it’s uncomfortable. A husband ignores growing signs of his wife’s dissatisfaction. A wife settles for a lack of connection and intimacy. Both partners feel unappreciated but never express their needs. When you’re in avoidance mode, you’re deliberately steering clear of thoughts,
Purposeful Aging–Still Growing and Giving
Article Summary: People today are living much longer, yet we still have the old narrative about aging as decline. We need a new narrative focused on purposeful aging. Excerpts from my conversation with best-selling author, Richard Leider, in the wake of the publication of the 4th edition of The Power of Purpose: To Grow and to Give for Life, with David Shapiro.* +++ Gregg Vanourek: Richard, I’ve always been fascinated by your Inventure Expeditions, where you’ve taken groups of people to Tanzania. Tell me about them. Richard Leider: I started in 1983. I was on the board of Outward Bound.
The Spiritual Side of Purpose
Article Summary: How are purpose and spirituality related? How about calling? Excerpts from my conversation on purpose and spirituality with best-selling author, Richard Leider, in the wake of the publication of the 4th edition of The Power of Purpose: To Grow and to Give for Life, with David Shapiro.* +++ Gregg Vanourek: Richard, I want to ask you about defining moments or phases of your life that have been purposeful. What’s your personal experience with purposeful living? Richard Leider: Well, I think we’ve all had fortuitous encounters with people in our life who have made a difference in some way,
Unlock Your Purpose–3 Key Elements
Article Summary: Knowing and living your purpose is hard for many. It helps to break it down to the three key elements of purpose. Excerpts from my conversation with best-selling author, Richard Leider.* +++ Gregg Vanourek: Richard, you have something you call the “napkin test.” You’ve written that calling, which you sometimes use as a synonym for purpose, is a function of your gifts and your passions and your values: G + P + V = C “’Finding your purpose’ is misleading, however, because it’s not something we have to go out and ‘find.’ Rather, purpose is revealed when we turn
Purpose Demystified
Article Summary: Many people resist thinking about their purpose, in part due to common misunderstandings about it. Excerpts from my conversation with best-selling author, Richard Leider.* ++++++++++++ Gregg Vanourek: Richard, congratulations on your new book, the fourth edition of The Power of Purpose: To Grow and to Give for Life, with David Shapiro. Great to see it doing so well. I want to start at the beginning. Many people, when they think about purpose, might be a little skeptical. They might struggle with it. Some might come to you and say, Purpose sounds a little abstract, Richard. It sounds a
