Self Improvement

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies… The man who never reads lives only one.” – George R.R. Martin No one is going to die your own death FOR you, and so no one has the

When you say yes to others, make sure you aren’t saying no to yourself. – Paulo Coelho Once upon a time, I said yes to just about everything. It wasn’t the enthusiastic “yes!” of an adventurous person facing

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell I got fired on

I was recently asked to be godfather to a very special young man; the ritual requires godparents to oversee the lad’s ‘spiritual education.’ Not being a great churchgoer, I thought I’d rather leave him my thoughts on what it takes to be a good man, if not necessarily a religious one.

I just saw a movie with the boy’s mom; it was called The Descendants, starring George Clooney. Afterwards she described the main character as a ‘good man.’ It occurred to me what an undervalued concept that has become in today’s society; men today tend to think of themselves as successful or not successful, sexy or not so much, cool or nerds.

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of being charismatic. It seemed like such an exotic and fascinating trait to have, and at one moment in my life I believed that I lacked it entirely. So soon enough, I decided to try and become charismatic.

The first thing I did was to read about the behavior that makes a person charismatic and to study the behavior of people around me who were deemed charismatic. Then, with fierce determination, I started trying to adopt the very same type of behavior. Often, this is a good approach to developing certain traits. You deconstruct them into specific behaviors and you practice those behaviors until they become second nature. Paradoxically though, with trying to be charismatic, this approach failed me miserably. Not only that I did not become more charming, but I actually became tenser in social situations and I started enjoying them less.