"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is wisdom.  Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power."

                                                                                                   - Lao Tzu

This power is already within you.

Several times each year I have the honor to co-facilitate, with my business partner, Theresa Byrne, our life-changing personal empowerment workshops we call, Higher Self-Defense. 

Higher Self-Defense (HSD) is an adrenal self-defense training where adults/teens from various backgrounds, life experiences and skill levels come together to experience what they tell us is a truly life changing event. 

In the HSD workshops, students go through scenario-based training that begins with staged verbal assaults (80% of physical assaults begin with verbal confrontation/intimidation) against a teacher/attacker called a "woofer" (me). 

In these scenarios, students are supported by their "coach" (Theresa) and t...

“Leadership ………. is like a big door that swings.  But that big door of leadership swings on the small hinge of character.”

                                                                                          - Admiral James Stavridis (Ret.)

I was recently listening to an interview with Retired Admiral James Stavridis, who was out promoting his new book on leadership, Sailing True North: Ten Admirals and the Voyage of Character.   

I have to admit, I was half-listening to the interview while I was working out, when the admiral said something and made me immediately stop and go running for a pen and paper to write it down when he shared,

“Leadership is how we influence others.  It is like a big door that swings.  But that big door of leadership swings on the small hinge of character.”

These words have stayed with me over the last week since listening to this interview.  I have asked myself time and again, “How can I bring a greater degree of character to my lead...

“Déjà vu is when you think you’re doing something you’ve done before; it happens because God thought it was so funny, He had to rewind it for his friends.”

                                                                                                         - Anonymous

Déjà vu, almost all of us has experienced it.  We are in the middle of doing something, and we get this overwhelming feeling that we have been at this same place doing this same thing before.  In French, this phrase is literally translated as “already seen”.  While some interpret this phenomenon as a paranormal premonition, mainstream science attributes déjà vu to a wide range of causes including simple fantasy and wish fulfillment, a mismatching in the brain that confuses the present for the past, or a medical condition known as temporal-lobe epilepsy.

While the cause of déjà vu is clearly up for debate, what is true is that most of us (up to 70% of the population, according to scientists) will undergo this experi...