#25 – Take Responsibility for Your Learning

This is #25 in the series, “50 Ideas Worth Fighting For.” Here’s another good one. Jia Jang is inspiring. He feared rejection so much that he decided to pursue it directly with the hope that he would learn to respond to it more positively and more productively. He recounts his “100 Day Rejection Challenge” in a

#2 – Change Starts Within

Between now and March 22, I am happy to share “50 Ideas Worth Fighting For.” If I could only write about one thing it would be this: all meaningful, sustainable change starts from within. For so many years I blamed my parents, my bosses, my siblings, my friends, my children, and even perfect strangers for

When It Got Interesting

A brief summary of my 27-year career as told in single words and brief phrases: Quit. Quit. Quit. Quit. Fired. Quit. Quit. Started a company. Starting a company. You know when it got interesting? Do you know when it stopped being a list of jobs and started being a career? Yes, of course you do.

That’s Not My Job

Imagine that your job is to paint the stripes down the middle of the road. And not just any stripes, but the double yellow ones that create a powerful visual safety barrier on a well-traveled two-lane road. Imagine that you’ve reached the line that demarcates city from county and you are told to stop painting

An Admonition

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life. {Mary Oliver} It is difficult, if not impossible to imagine feeling whimsical without also having a deep reservoir of personal responsibility. Whimsy feels like freedom. A whimsical person is less interested in the judgments and

Because of You

If you’re a leader, everything you do and everything you say is being watched, recorded, memorized and replicated. That may not be the most comforting image but it is the most accurate one. Whatever you are seeing from your team; the energy, the focus, the camaraderie, the expense of discretionary effort…that’s because of you. Whatever

Playful Responsibility

I see my life as the gradual integration of two separate selves. There’s the playful, joking, attention-seeking, naive, risk-taking, laughing, entertaining youngest of six children. And there’s the serious, controlling, responsible, (hyper)sensitive, brooding, melancholic man who always seems like the oldest guy in the room. Neither of those is a person I’d like to take

Small Voice / Big Voice

Small voice: There’s not enough. Big voice: There’s plenty, and there’s more on the way. Small voice: I’m pretty sure they owe me something. Big voice: What can I do for them? Small voice: I’m keeping score. Big voice: I learn something new every time I play this game. Small voice: I deserve better. Big

Taking Responsibility

“We can’t trust ourselves to be perfect; we can’t trust ourselves to be the best at anything; we can’t trust ourselves to succeed; we can’t trust ourselves to never cause harm or hurt. What we can trust is our disciplined effort to get to know ourselves. We can learn to know our triggers, our habitual reactions,

Leadership and Fatherhood

Leadership and fatherhood: taking complete responsibility for teaching and supporting others to take complete responsibility; for themselves, for the welfare of others and for any cause worth fighting for. DAVID BERRY is the author of “A More Daring Life: Finding Voice at the Crossroads of Change” and the founder of RULE13 Learning. He speaks and writes about the complexity of leading in a