Educated

Being educated doesn’t necessarily mean you have a university education. It means you take time to educate yourself on your interests and on life in general. Educated people have the humility to learn and recognize they don’t know it all.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

Posted ago by Matthew

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini As a life-long learner I’m always looking for new books to read.  Sometimes the books aren’t new to market, but they’re new to me.  This is one such book.  Written back …

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Switch – Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Posted ago by Matthew

About two weeks ago I was sitting by myself at a cafe reading, when a man comes up to me and asks “What do you think of the book?” I was reading Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s book Switch: How …

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Commitment

Posted ago by Matthew

Sometimes it takes a long time to learn the value of commitment.  This one took me more than five years. About eight years ago, my wife and I committed to volunteering with Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Calgary.  It’s …

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Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

Posted ago by Matthew

Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers,” came out in 2008 as a follow-up to his popular book “Blink”.  In “Outliers” Gladwell writes a compelling argument that “it is not the brightest who succeed, nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and …

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What My Grandfather Taught Me – Lesson #1

Posted ago by Matthew

One hour a day, three days a week, pretty well every week for ten years my grandfather (Opa) would teach me either Lithuanian or German language. At the time it was gruelling.  I called it “the dungeon”, even though we sat …

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Are you on track? Ten questions to help you find out…

Posted ago by Matthew

Happy new year! Here are ten questions you can start your year with.  These questions can be used to help you re-focus and set some meaningful goals for 2011. I find it can be helpful to have a few guiding …

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New Habits

Posted ago by Matthew

It’s very easy to live the same way every day and have very little or nothing change. I try to not live my life that way. I was once told that as soon as you stop changing you become old. …

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More on Perspectives

Posted ago by Matthew

I thought more about perspectives since entering yesterday’s blog, and I realised how my perspective is quite different to most people’s. This is mainly because I have travelled to many countries (31) and lived in four – Australia, Germany, England, …

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Perspectives

Posted ago by Matthew

We live in a world with many where there seem to be many “truths” and absolutes. It’s wrong to steal. Giving is good. Drugs are bad. But these and all the other “rules” we live our lives by are not …

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My effort. My results.

Posted ago by Matthew

5:30pm May, 1989. We had just finished dinner and my father says to me, “Matthew we need to chat about your report card.” “Yes Dad.” I knew it wasn’t going to be a good chat. I hadn’t seen my report …

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