Most Likely to Succeed: A fictional short-short story

Combining Your Interests: A way to become more special, professionally and personally

Former TIME editor-in-chief and head of the Aspen Institute, Walter Isaacson, has written a series of biographies and wrote that a criterion he uses for choosing his subjects is whether they have combined disparate interests. For example, Da Vinci merged art and science. Ben Franklin excelled in invention and politics. Steve Jobs described Apple’s philosophy as the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. When Einstein was stuck on a physics problem, he often pulled out his violin.

Few people will rise to such accomplishment, but the concept of combining interests and expertise remains useful to us all. It can build a personal identity that differentiates you from the crowd, and it can facilitate your having an unusual career niche, making it easier to brand and market yourself.

My Psychology Today article today offers examples from my clients as well as from my own life.

12 Probing Questions to Ask Yourself

Many people would like to know themselves better, perhaps so they can make wiser moves. My clients have found helpful the 12 questions I list in my Psychology Today article today. For each, ask yourself, “Are there any implications for what you want to do now?”

Head Transplantation: What Makes Us Who We Are?

The Atlantic and the BBC report that 31-year old Valery Spiridonov has a disease that is wasting away his body.   As a last-ditch effort to save his life, he has agreed to a first-of-its-kind surgery that would attach his head to a healthy body that had just died, for example, from a gunshot to the brain.

Whether or not it works (and the quoted mainstream experts predict it won't,) it raises an interesting ethical issue and asks us to consider our identity: What makes us who we are?  
I explore those questions in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

What Should Be Your Theme Music?

If you’re like many people, you’re searching to figure out who you are at your core, your essence. It might help a bit to identify a piece of music that’s quintessentially you. An example might elucidate. The 16 pieces of music I link to in my PsychologyToday.com article today reflect my essence. 

Few of you will want to adopt one of those as your theme music but perhaps listening to them might encourage you to find your own. At minimum, they should provide a bit of respite from your packed day. These are excellent performances of each piece, all with video. It’s wonderful that we can, with a click of a mouse, experience them, let alone for free.