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Browse every published article connected to William Cottringer, with exact attribution and full-archive search.
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Browse every published article connected to William Cottringer, or search within this exact expert archive.
n“It’s not what you do, but how much love you put into it that matters.” ~Mother Teresa. One very interesting research study I came across a few years ago was done with very senior citizens who were all over 95-years of age. What interested me most were the top regrets these people had ...
ANGRY HEARTSnby Bill Cottringe nn There is an undesirable phenomenon going on today that we can all feel—angry hearts. Like any other problem we want to solve, we have to understand it and then figure out what we can do about it as individuals. Divisions between people seem to be ...
The Terrible Twins Within: Our Psychological vs. Moral ConsciencesnBy William Cottringer, Ph.D. “The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.” ~Mahatma Gandhi. We start out and end up at the same place in finding and knowing ...
Reality Repair RXnBy Bill Cottringe n“Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.” ~Gustave Flaubert. This is a good question: What is reality? Reality = “Anything about the past, present or future you believe to be actual and true because it comes from trustworthy sources such ...
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN? BynBill Cottringe n“Adam and Eve are like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it.” ~Philip Pullman. I have been ...
SUCCESS IS A BELIEF SYSTEMnBy Bill Cottringe n“Success is what you get from doing what you are doing to get it.” ~ The author. By now most of us realize we have moved into total overload—too much to know and do and too little time to get it all done. One special area of overload with ...
BECOMING YOUR SIGNATURE SELFnBy Bill Cottringe nn What do Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney, Jack Canfield, Tiger Woods, Nichole Kidman, Katie Keric, and Alex Rodriguez all have in common besides being extraordinarily good looking, rich and famous, and masters of their trades? Better yet, what ...
Are You Asking The Right Questions? Byr Bill Cottringer “Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” ~Tony Robbins.
HOW TO TALK WITH GOD By Bill Cottringe n The other day I text messaged God’s Administrative Assistant to ask him how God would prefer for us to talk with Her. Since he was very well organized, as would be expected for an administrative assistant of the whole universe, he suggested I just ...
THE FOUR CORNERSTONES OF A HAPPY MARRIAGE By Bill Cottringe nn There are very good reasons why marriage failure is such a widespread epidemic. The four cornerstones of a happy marriage represent life’s toughest tests; and they are not lessons most people are skilled at learning right off ...
ANGRY HEARTSnby Bill Cottringe nn There is an unexpected side-effect of being mentally and spiritually healthy: You become more aware of and obligated to help resolve the phenomenon of angry hearts. And this can be more time consuming, draining and beyond what you may think you are ...
7 Locked Doors to Un-Doing Problem Behavior Byr Bill Cottringer “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” ~Mark Twain.
ANY RELATIONSHIP CAN GO SOUTH QUICKLYnBy Bill Cottringe nn“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” ~Henry Winkler. Great, good or ghastly relationships can go South in a New York second if they are not prepared ahead of time for the Big “S”—the inevitable stress that challenges ...
“BEST RELATIONSHIP SUCCESS: Via Better Thinking and Better Communication” “Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” ~Henry Winkler
CHOICES, CHOICES, CHOICES By Bill Cottringe nnn Probably the one thing we think about and do more than anything else in life is making choices. Many times we even have to choose to make a choice or not. We generally make choices from either our heads or our hearts, but usually somewhere in ...
LANGUAGES OF THE HEAD, HEART AND SOULnBy Bill Cottringe nn“Truth is that sweet spot in time and place where your head, heart and soul hover over something from which nothing can be added, subtracted or changed.” ~The Author. I have been a student of conflict resolution and good ...
AN IRRECONCILABLE CONFLICT? BynBill Cottringe nn“There is no squabbling so violent as that between people who accepted an idea yesterday and those who will accept the same idea tomorrow.” ~Christopher Morley. In his recent movie, Gone Baby Gone, Director Ben Affleck leaves his brother ...
AN IDEA WHO’S TIME HAS COME By Bill Cottringe nn Thanks to the relatively recent science of neuromarketing, brain research has begun to identify the central role of the reptilian part of the human brain (old brain)—below the thinking and emotional semi-conscious mental activities we ...
THE PLUS SIDE OF ADHDnBy Bill Cottringe nnn I have studied ADHD for nearly 60 years now and am ready to share the results of one very in-depth, classic case study—myself. As a child I would have gotten double “X’s” on every symptom checklist available. I ran and climbed constantly ...
“Reality is hard to see, harder to talk about and hardest to agree upon.” ~The author. It has taken me awhile, but I think I have finally figured out something very important. We all spend a great deal of time trying to repair broken realities we don’t like and trying to create new and ...
The Best Way To Love Byr Bill Cottringer “Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
The True Master Of The Clock & Calendar Has Neither! Byr Bill Cottringer “Time is our most important resource which is equally distributed to all, but unequally used by most.”rn~The author. Wasted Time— Some on past memories, More on future hopes, Most on not being here, Now and in the present, Using our time wisely, Doing what matters most.
Growing Your Knowing Byr Bill Cottringer “A huge part of life is to live, learn and leave a legacy of that living and learning.” ~The author. To be able to leave this legacy of living and learning, you have to successfully navigate a roadmap of four levels of learning so you know what it is you have to do to bump up your knowing growing to the next level. All these four levels really help you answer this basic question better as you go: How do I know that what I think I know is really so, (for sure)? Clue: Never.
Relationship Reality Repair byr Bill Cottringer “Man is a knot into which relationships are tied.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Successful relationships are all about keeping things in proper perspective. This is especially true about the different perceptions of the realities of the relationship, and what happens when the water starts getting a little rough on its way to being a tsunami. People get drawn into relationships for many different reasons (some overlapping), and of course it is best if these reasons are mutual, whatever they may be:
Adaptable Leadership for our VUCA Worldr By Bill Cottringer
Check Your Beliefs at The Door byr Bill Cottringer “Beliefs are choices. First you choose your beliefs. Then your beliefs affect your choices.” ~Roy T. Bennett.
The Difficulties Of Selecting The Best Of The Bunch Byr Bill Cottringer “Never make predictions, especially about the future.” ~Casey Stengel. I won’t argue with Mr. Stengel’s wisdom when it comes to baseball; but in business, employers have way too much to lose without at least trying to be good predictors. And one of the areas that is too costly as a result of poor prediction by employers is the one of employee selection. The adverse effects of ineffective employee selection practices by an employer, can literally kill the bottom line.
Getting In Sync with The Way of Lifer By Bill Cottringer “In anything, timing is everything.” ~Benjamin Disraeli. During our lives we are all part of one main conflict, which is us vs. life. Of course, our everyday lives involve two other conflicts within this main one, which are us vs. others and even us vs. ourselves. The path of least resistance to resolving all these conflicts requires us to get more in sync with the Way of Life. Here are the seven behaviors that help us find this path so we can enjoy the benefits of being in sync with the Way of Life. 1. Slow Down.r
Resurrect Your Dreams Byr Bill Cottringer “Deep down, nobody is ever quite satisfied with the amount of their childhood dreams they have actually realized and we are all disappointed with the amount that slipped away.” ~The author.
Several Sound Sources of Happiness Byr Bill Cottringer Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. ~Mahatma Gandhi. Unhappiness is easy to have, but having authentic happiness is one of life’s greatest challenges because of the many adversities that inevitably occur in our lives. In this article we will first go for the low hanging fruit and then work our way through the weeds to explore the more complicated ways to be happy. Happiness can simply be defined as what you get from what you are doing to get it.
Enemies of Truth byr William Cottringer, Ph.D. Truth is like the beauty of a great sculpture—all that is left when you can’t take away, add, or change anything more. ~Anonymous. At times there seem to be more enemies of truth than friends. If you are a real truth seeker, here are a few truth “enemies” of which to be more watchful: 1. The Brain.
Life’s Ground Rules byr Bill Cottringer Reality is the composite of the a priori laws of the universe which are left over from when we strip away all the perceptions, beliefs, interpretations, and assumptions that have been made. ~ The author.
BELIEFS & BEHAVIOR byr William Cottringer, Ph.D. You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. ~C.S. Lewis.
The Pursuit of Happiness byr Bill Cottringer Words can rarely capture the essence of an experience in life, especially common or over-used ones. Oddly though, the way you choose to define things like success, happiness, justice, freedom, and love, can often determine how much or how little of these things you actually have in hand. ~The Author. Happiness Lost What is happiness? Easier to say what it’s not— Not frustration, failure, or fiction, Or suffering, sadness, or sorrow, Have we hidden happiness, Just to enjoy finding it more? Seems harder to find,r
Be a Winner of the Conflict Trifecta Byr Bill Cottringer Conflict is the beginning of consciousness. ~M. Esther Harding.
Unifying the Divide byr Bill Cottringer A house divided against itself cannot stand. ~Abraham Lincoln.
The Problem of Our Time Byr Bill Cottringer “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” ~Albert Einstein.
The Dynamics of Trust byr Bill Cottringer “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” ~Ernest Hemingway. Trust is an essential ingredient to successful resolution of the three main conflicts which we all must deal with in life: (a) us vs. life (b) us vs. them, and (c) us vs. ourselves. In a sense, our lives are a series of these three main conflicts in various forms. Much of the problem of distrust in these conflicts comes from the traditional competitive, win-lose mentality, whereas more trust seems to follow the newer cooperative, win-win approach.
Spiritual Intelligence byr Bill Cottringer “Spiritual Intelligence is seeing past what you are looking at; or better yet, it is seeing the unseeable and knowing the unknown.”
Reality is Not What it Seems byr Bill Cottringer Every once in a while, I stumble upon a book that helps me reconcile harsh polarities into a bigger, better, and more useful truth, usually emerging from somewhere in-between the given opposite possibilities. Such is the case with the quantum gravity researcher, Carlo Rovelli’s book, in Reality is Not What it Seems.
Reality is Not What it Seems byr Bill Cottringer Every once in a while, I stumble upon a book that helps me reconcile harsh polarities into a bigger, better, and more useful truth, usually emerging from somewhere in-between the given opposite possibilities. Such is the case with the quantum gravity researcher, Carlo Rovelli’s book, in Reality is Not What it Seems.
The Only Two Ways to Heal the Divide Byr Bill Cottringer “Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Job-Getting Reminder Tips Byr Bill Cottringer Although the post-pandemic job market is starting to lean toward favoring employees over employers, it is still a difficult challenge to find the right job today. Success requires some serious preparatory work in the following three areas, in making the attempt to market yourself better and stand out from the rest of the crowd. Job
The Three Main Highways to Success Byr Bill Cottringer “Knowing how to succeed is the easy part. The hard part is in translating your desire into hard work and maintaining perseverance through inevitable setbacks.” ~ The Author.
The Truth Shall Set You Free Byr Bill Cottringer “The beautiful irony about the truth is that it hates dark places. It despises being hidden. It loves the limelight, and it always forces itself out.” ~Mitta Xinindlu. From my research, there seem to be two main opposing sources for interpreting the true literal and the intriguing metaphorical meanings of the biblical passage from John 8:32: “The truth shall set you free.” The Bible
Small Thinking Can’t Solve Big Problems Byr Bill Cottringer “Logical, intellectual thinking can prove or disprove relative beliefs and at best most of these turn out to be half-truths which are not worth clinging to. But only whole-brained rational and spiritual intelligence combined can discover the absolutes that are worth dying for.” ~The Author.
Benefits & Callenges of Diversity Byr Bill Cottringer “Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.”rn~ Mahatma Gandhi.
SEVEN VERBS TO DEFEAT ANGER Byr Bill Cottringer “Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” ~Ambrose Bierce.
Commonsense Solutions to Our Three Main Conflicts Byr Bill Cottringer “Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” ~Eugene Ionesco.
Various Versions of Happiness Byr Bill Cottringer “Happiness is what you do to stumble upon it.” ~The Author. The pursuit of happiness is something we all engage in, to some degree or another. And the last I heard, it is still an inalienable constitutional right of Americans and should be for all people on the planet. But this pursuit of happiness is where the commonality starts disappearing—in the many paths people choose to follow to find it. Below are several different paths to happiness people travel.