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: 71
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: 147
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: 159
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: 242
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: 250
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: 228
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: 261
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: 292
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: 291
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: 352
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: 323
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: 255
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: 249
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: 333
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: 295
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: 236
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: 271
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: 407
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: 397
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: 591
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: 355
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: 423
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: 375
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: 451
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: 658
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: 419
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: 459
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: 364
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: 520
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: 337
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: 743
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: 543
Ten Easy Ways to Increase Your Common Sense
By
Bill Cottringer
“Commonsense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.” ~Rene Descartes.
If this quote were true, we wouldn’t have any of the challenges, problems, ... Views: 368
Exercise Your Thinking Muscles
“Sometimes you must give up the good to get to the great. The key is knowing what to keep and what to discard from your mind.” ~The author.
Success today requires proper diet and exercise in both the physical and mental realms. Here are some healthy ... Views: 416
The Baker’s Dirty Dozen Gaps Between What’s
By
Bill Cottringer
“The main challenge in life is to close the gap between where you are now and where you really want to be.” ~The Author.
We all have much work to do to close the above gap. Here are a Baker’s Dirty Dozen Gaps we need to ... Views: 393
Successful Thinking Tipping Points
By
Bill Cottringer
“Successful people are just those with more successful habits than others.” ~Brian Tracy.
Success today requires more than just raw IQ points in pure brain power. To achieve success today, you must develop and practice ... Views: 535
Re-Braining for 2020
By
Bill Cottringer
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” ~Albert Einstein.
2020 brings a new decade of Information Age challenges, requiring some major transformational re-braining to navigate the mine fields ahead hidden away in the ... Views: 604
Taming Our Terrible Twin Within
By
Bill Cottringer
“I have noticed that even people who claim that everything is predetermined and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.” ~Stephen Hawking.
We are all on a mission to become our best selves and to help ... Views: 389
Ten Team-Building Essentials for Leaders
By
Bill Cottringer
“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” ~Ryunosuke Satoro.
There is a sure prescription for effective team-building for leaders to be successful in their efforts. Here are the ten essential ingredients ... Views: 501
The Compromise Imperative
By
Bill Cottringer
“I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle. ~Andrew Carnegie.
Our main thinking paradigm today is still stuck somewhere between a ... Views: 574
The Main Challenge for Leaders Today
By
Bill Cottringer
“Diversity: The art of thinking independently together.” ~Malcolm Forbes.
There are two sound reasons for diversity: (a) It is the right thing to do from a human-kind perspective, and (b) the differences brought by diversity ... Views: 638
The Two Main Goals of Personal Development
By
Bill Cottringer
“Small daily improvements are the key to staggering long-term results.” ~Anonymous.
Our personal development efforts in learning, growing and improving are aimed at increasing two very important capacities: (a) our ... Views: 588
Three Key Success Factors in Effective Management
By
Bill Cottringer
“The effective management of others always starts with effective self-management.” ~The author.
There are libraries of books on how to manage effectively, but since there is already too much information and too ... Views: 651
GAP-CLOSING
By
Bill Cottringer
The most serious problem we have today is the growing divide/gap between this and that group of people and the ineffective gap-closing activities we waste valuable time engaging in. The gaps and divide just keeps getting wider and wider, creating more ... Views: 758
A Disturbing Reality
By
Bill Cottringer
“Logic will never change emotion or perception.” ~ Edward de Bono.
After studying things like success, happiness, failure, frustration and anger for several decades now, I have come to the conclusion there may be a very disturbing reality too ... Views: 866
Furiously Frustrated
By
Bill Cottringer
In my previous article, “Seeds of Anger,” I think I overlooked the main problem with which we should have more empathy for ourselves and others. The real problem of our day is the frustration that leads either a quiet life of desperation or ... Views: 934
Seeds of Anger
By
Bill Cottringer
I think most people would agree that the main problems of our day are: (a) the artificially dualistic, unfair sharp divide between those who have abundance, power and all the other desirable things in life, and those who don’t have enough of these ... Views: 1084
WHY PRISONS DON'T WORK (AS WELL AS THEY COULD)
By
William Cottringer
“Men simply copied the realities of their hearts when they built prisons.” ~ Richard Wright.
I do not want to offend all the good people who have devoted their entire careers to positive prison reform, but the very ... Views: 970
LIFE”S HARDEST LESSON
By
Bill Cottringer.
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.” ~Rick Warren.
A doctor and her patient were having a defining-moment discussion about life’s hardest lesson. “So tell me what it is, said the impatient patient to ... Views: 1289
The Only Unwinnable Conflict Worth Trying to Win
By
Bill Cottringer
“There is one conflict that will never go away until we either figure out how to communicate past it or die trying. This conflict involves arguing for the beliefs and truths we are most certain about.” ~The Author.
... Views: 969