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Browse every published article connected to H. Les Brown, with exact attribution and full-archive search.
Articles
Browse every published article connected to H. Les Brown, or search within this exact expert archive.
For the past few days, I've been reading Dr. Jed Diamond's newest book, The Irritable Male Syndrome with rapt attention (in advance of interviewing him on my upcoming internet radio program). In my estimation, this book is required reading for anyone in the helping professions. It explores a ...
What an absolutely amazing time to be a 'Boomer! If you're a person who likes a challenge, you'll absolutely love 2009! There's nothing quite like the fear of financial insecurity to stress every system in your life (your career, your relationships and your health) to within an inch of its ...
You see all those fancy letters after my name? The 'MA' (at least one of them) is the result of my fascination with Western (Greek) philosophy. These ancient brilliant minds, after all, laid the foundation for our entire cultural perspective. What to us 'sophisticated' contemporary thinkers ...
I was determined not to have a midlife crisis. I had one. The scary part of it all was that the results lasted over a period of about 20 years. By 'results', I mean there were unresolved issues that hung on for that length of time. That's one of the most uncomfortable aspects of a midlife ...
Here's a double spoiler for you, first for the 1983 movie, War Games, then for this article: as the computer, Joshua, comments at the end of this picture: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." It works as well for global thermonuclear war as it does for the age-old conflict ...
Unpleasant surprises don't necessarily have to be a necessary part of the process of midlife transition. 'Shock and awe' may have have some usefulness in military operations, but they clearly don't belong in a well-managed life. Although it's impossible to predict all the eventualities of ...
"Xenophobe: A person unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign peoples" [Wikipedia]. Regardless of where you fall personal on the spectrum of political opinion, you have to be at least a little awestruck at the recent US presidential election. ...
Over the past number of years, there has been an explosion of advertising around pharmaceuticals that are designed to alleviate problems with ED [erectile dysfunction] in men (for the drug companies and advertising agencies, the embarrassment of ED has apparently replaced the heartbreak of ...
You know what they say: "Time and tide wait for no man." And, you know, they're right. Time's up, guys! Tide's gone out, and there's not enough water left to float your boat. For the past four months, I've been focusing my energies on addressing the single most critical time in a person's life ...
Yesterday I went for my biennial eye exam. I had all the drops and the blinding equipment scanning my cornea and retina. I read the charts so often that I had the bottom line memorized by the time I was finished: O V T C Z 2. Naturally, my eyes were a little worse than they were two years ago, a ...
Several years ago, my friend, Dr. Jed Diamond explained how masculine acculturation was creating a huge obstacle for men in the workforce: both young and old. As the world moves from an industrial model to a "post-industrial" (or knowledge-based) economy, the skill sets most in demand evolve ...
This is my first day back in my home office since I left on my Vancouver trip last week. In the meantime, something unpleasant happened to me: some kind of nasty, lingering stomach virus that has left me wanting to do nothing more than just sleep. Getting sick is one of life's most unpleasant ...
Do you remember a time when your work was fun? Do you remember when you looked forward to going to wok? (If you don't remember these things, then you'd better start taking a closer look at the career you've chosen for yourself!) When you remember these good times, see if you can make a list ...
About fifteen years ago, I was unemployed for about six months. To be honest, it wasn't exactly my finest hour. I had plenty of speaking and counseling experience (from my time in the ministry), but I had no 'official' training nor a license to practice. I had experience in tech writing and ...
Saturday was the first (and the biggest) costume party of the Halloween season around here. I went as the scariest thing I could think of: the New York Stock Exchange. Sadly, I didn't win the 'Scariest Costume' prize . . . I lost out to a store-bought devil. I'm not sure whether this particular ...
You may or may not recognize the 'drop,' depending on your age and what are of the country or the world you may be inhabiting. The 'drop' is that cataclysmic moment when the executioner pulls the lever, the trap door flops down, and the condemned plummets earthward . . . to an extent. Many ...
Here's to a new beginning. You're off to a fresh start. You have new hope, new prospects, new horizons, a new vision. Your life is half over, you're dissatisfied with what you've accomplished, and here's your chance to get moving. No time like the present, you say. You look at what your boss ...
Our local Giant supermarket has introduced hand scanners so that you can just walk up and down the aisles, collecting your groceries, while scanning them and bagging them right in your cart. Checkout involves downloading the inventory from the hand scanner into a self-serve checkout station. ...
I think that one of the biggest differences between the way women approach the midlife transition and the way men do derives from the very strong tendency that men have toward avoidance of significant midlife issues. It's also one of the biggest dangers that men face going into midlife, because ...
...and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. There's not a person in our Western culture alive today who wasn't brought up hearing or reading Clement Clark Moore's poem from 1823, "A Visit from Saint Nicholas." Regardless of your religious beliefs and ...
Just before we moved from Connecticut to Delaware (where we now live), I was only about a month away from earning my instrument rating on my private pilot's license. From everything I've heard, the instrument rating is the most difficult rating for a private pilot to achieve. If I were to ...
I've been away . . . yes I have. But all that's behind me now, and this month is shaping up to be a transitional one. I'm needing to take my business from a disappointing conclusion with the end of 2008 into something even more dynamic and transformational as we move more deeply into 2009. ...
Economist and Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein wrote this morning that most of those who are in charge of the governing of the world's economy just don't 'get it:' they've underestimated the severity of the economic crisis that's in the process of swallowing up the world's financial ...
What happens when your clock strikes twelve? There's no fairy godmother, no pumpkin coach or coachmen, no ball gown or glass slippers, no Prince Charming. Nothing left but some very hard work. Everybody's clock hits midnight once in a while. When it does, especially when you're in the midst of ...
As a coach, I know very well how important goal-setting is. Also, as a coach, I know that goals aren't all that they're often cracked up to be. As critical a competency as goal-setting is, if misused, sometimes it can have some very unfortunate consequences. I want to take some time in this ...
According to the news today, marital fidelity in males has a genetic component. About 40 percent of the men studied exhibited a genetic makeup that made it more difficult for them to establish intimate, long-term relationships and strong family ties. The other 60% (who lacked that particular ...
Once upon a time, there was a man. Although he was still young, he was an extraordinary man in many ways. Yet, in spite of his many talents and successes, he was very much like the other men of his age: he didn't want to hear bad news. So, he did the same things he saw all the other men around ...
It sure seems like when a guy hits middle age, it all hits the fan — and all at once. You know what they say: 'feelings aren't facts', but it certainly seems that way, doesn't it? At the same time, many people don't count on how statistics conspire together to make you the target of ...
I've said this before in public, and so I might as well repeat it: I'm a huge wuss when it comes to not feeling well. I've heard women complain that men don't do sickness well, and when I hear that, I silently have to agree — at least in the case of this one man. My mind generally travels ...
Quick: stop reading right now and write down your top three core values. Do it now! . . . How hard was that? How long did it take you? Did you have to stop and ask yourself, "What does he mean by 'core values'?" Did you have to stop and think, confused by a long list of things that seem very ...
If I didn't know better (but I'm not sure that I do), I'd say the world was having a midlife crisis. Whether it's about half-way through it's life span, I don't know; but I do think that it's behaving just like a middle-aged guy. As I read my morning Washington Post today — with one eye ...
Yesterday evening, I was working away at my desk, prepping for my Thursday evening internet radio program, when up pops an e-mail announcing that I had been befriended by someone over at BlogCatalog.com. Curious (I have few friends over there, since I'm a recent member), I stopped by to view ...
When people think of the midlife transition, most often their minds go straight to the infamous midlife crisis and the radical changes that go along with it. People change their looks, they change their jobs and — way more than is necessary — they change partners. In fact, I ...
Of all the columnists in The Washington Post, one of my favorites is Shankar Vedantam who writes "Department of Human Behavior." He's not only a good, clear writer, his research is excellent, and he has no axes to grind. He tells it like it is. In his recent column entitled "The Power of ...
I wanted to write an article that somehow relates the midlife transition with the Thanksgiving Holiday (as I'm writing this, it's the day before US Thanksgiving). The answer that came to me was surprisingly simple: all that would be necessary would be for me to point out that you can't be angry ...
The three emotional characteristics that most clearly define a man in midlife are 'restless', 'irritable' and 'discontent'. No wonder they 'can't get no satisfaction'! There's quite a significant difference between the ways that men and women deal with this bucket of emotional pain: women ...
Every day you live, you collect stuff. Just imagine the sheer volume of information that passes into your psyche every day, from what you see, what you read, what you experience, what you think, what you do (consciously or unconsciously), and the decisions you make. Every second — awake or ...
Last Friday, I had an unsettling experience. I've been spending the past few months scouring the web, looking for places where men leave — and find — wisdom-droppings. You know what I mean by 'wisdom-droppings' don't you? They're those little sayings or stories or insights that you ...
We're quickly coming into an age when multiple generations are experiencing the midlife transition simultaneously. Perhaps we're already at that point. From my research, it's becoming clear that a far broader range of age groups self-identify as 'middle-aged': people from their mid-thirties into ...
On last night's internet radio program, I interviewed rock musician and author, Steve Mayfield, about his new album and book, Afterlife Crisis. One of the principle themes (that became a song on his album) was that, even when we've gotten through the midlife transition, we still can't find a ...
Have you ever been traveling from one city to another, and you're in the airport at the gate, waiting for your flight to load? You look out the wall of glass at the workers moving around on the ramp, unloading and loading baggage while the plane disgorges its complement of arriving passengers. ...
23255031Even though the information (from the Center for Research on Organizational & Managerial Excellence) may be a little dated, the basic truth behind the facts reported in a 2003 survey from Texas remain very relevant. If you're between 30 and 50, you have an almost 60% chance of being ...
Never fear: this is not a political exposé. Instead, it's a reflection on a fascinating conversation that I had with Dr. Jed Diamond last night on my internet radio program. As you may know, Dr. Jed is the author of the best-selling books, Male Menopause and The Irritable Male Syndrome. ...
In 1980, singer Grace Jones released her version of the song, "Love is the Drug" and it soon became a hit on the disco circuit. It's true: though we don't always think about it in those terms, love is a very potent drug. Who doesn't love being high on love? To be sure, though, it's not the only ...
If I were to have to choose the single most disruptive element of the midlife transition, it would have to be an irreversible transformation in core values. There's a certain inevitability about that seismic shift, since the essence of the midlife transition centers around the breakdown of ...
I want to begin my article series for 2010 with the seemingly incongruous topic of 'death' for a number of very good reasons, the first of which would be having experienced the unexpected death of a favorite aunt only a few days ago on New Year's eve. We certainly had not planned on ringing in a new decade with the rituals of mou ing. However, life's vagrancies pay no attention to our expectations. Not ever. Yet, as a culture, we seem to be obsessed with the denial of death.
Today, my partner and I celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary (OK . . . I'll admit it: we were both late bloomers and re-treads). As usual, these annual celebrations present an opportunity to look back over the years, to see what worked well (and what worked not-so-well), to take stock of how ...
"Nothing's certain but death and taxes," they say. I have to ask, "What's so certain about death and taxes?" The only certitude that we really have is that stuff will happen: some of it enjoyable, some of it painful, some of it avoidable, most of it not. There's an aspect of midlife that becomes ...
According to the majority of the respondents on my little unscientific survey, what conce s people most about the midlife transition is facing physical deterioration and the loss of youth and beauty. Is it because looking in the mirror starts to remind you of your own mortality? Or, do you feel ...
Did you ever see the movie Defending Your Life with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep? The movie begins with hapless Daniel (Brooks) meeting an untimely end and appearing at the judgment with other recently deceased, among whom is young Julia (Streep). They fall in love. Daniel has to defend ...