I came upon these two “No Thinspiration” blog posts recently while doing some research on eating disorders*:
The stunning size 12 model branded ‘too fat’ for TV competition
Marianne Berglund from ‘Make me a super model’ TV show

The comments are quite telling - so many (presumably from their names) female comment posters seem to support and look up to these unwell-looking ultra-thin models, and don’t really …

Many of (most of? ALL of?) us maintain multiple facades. We are one person at work, a different person when with our friends, parents, partners; and yet another person when on the Internet. And it even varies depending on where on the Internet!

Imagine if we could harness and channel the energy we spend on maintaining these façades towards something more constructive!

The same situation exists for businesses too. We …

There are those who believe and expect the best out of others. And there are those who believe and expect the worst. Which are you (most of the time)?

Our beliefs about others determine how we treat others, and how we expect to be treated.

We can approach the world with openness and generosity, and receive the same in return. Or we can expect every …

Ken Warren wrote about the 10 pitfalls of operating a private practice as a counsellor/therapist. Although targeted at a very specific audience, these points are nonetheless just as valuable for other service businesses to ponder.

Here’re some of the pitfalls, with my thoughts on each:

Operating your business like a charity.

There is a distinction between giving everything away for free (especially because you feel sorry …

I caught up with a friend the other day and we had an interesting conversation which has bearing on what we have been talking about.

She is a life/personal/business coach/consultant. Over the past three years or so she has been trying to find her place, to clarify what she is about and how she does business. She did courses, created workshops, wrote books, did …

“The first thing that we have to remember is that the good guys need to win – it makes the world better.”

By Max McKeown & Philip Whiteley. ISBN 0-273-65614-7.

There are plenty of oh-too-believable horror stories of show-pony bullies, egomaniacs, and win-at-all-costers who do bad things, hurt people and spoil businesses. More importantly, the authors present plenty of evidence that the nice guys …

We live by rules and principles daily. We modify our behaviour to work within (or outside of) them on a continual basis. On the surface, they both affect (or control) our actions. But there is a subtle and important difference between them.

Principles are: bought-into, believed-in, understood innately, interpreted individually (inclusive of individuality), lived, makes sense to the individual, congruent with individual and organisational …

The word “lifestyle” really gives me the shits. Apart from the fact that it is yet another meaningless gumpf word endemic in advertising, it belittles Life itself.

Someone said to me last week that when they bought an Apple computer, they were not just buying a computer, but rather buying the Apple “lifestyle”.

All well and good for Apple, but isn’t the idea of buying …

When I clicked on the Compare Products feature on the Sony site, this window popped up. It only took up a quarter of my screen. There is obviously quite a lot of content.

OK, I will make the window larger so I can better scan through the table and make the comparison. And … I get the annoying stupid result shown below….

The great pictures on this Creating Passionate Users blog post: Too many companies are like bad marriages reminded me powerfully of my personal experience with Apple years ago (my version of their pics above).

I started my business on a Mac Powerbook G3 in 1998. It was easily twice the price of a comparable Dell. Plus several thousand dollars of software. As a …