We all knew people like this when we were younger: they were brash; they didn’t take crap; they didn’t keep quiet. If they disagreed with something you said, or didn’t like something you did, they said something to you. They hated hypocrites. They shook their heads at the compromises that they saw older people make….

Some parents want their kids to know how to read.  We want more than that. We want our kids to be obsessed. We want them to hunger for books. We want them to read like they’re on a mission. In his 1930 memoir, Winston Churchill tells how that switch had been flipped in him as…

Florence Nightingale was a precocious child. As a toddler, she always went her own way. Then, unlike many girls her age at the time, she wasn’t interested in parties or getting married or fancy things. She wanted to do something different with her life.  When she began making moves towards volunteering in hospitals, her parents…

No person has a perfect track record. Certainly, no parent does. We all mess up. We all fall short. We get our priorities wrong. We make mistakes. We lose our temper and our patience. We all handle certain situations in ways we wish we hadn’t.  Is there anything worse than that feeling? Knowing that you…

When Cato’s son Marcus fell at the second battle of Philippi in 42 BCE, his final act was to shout his father’s name. When Cato’s daughter Porcia wanted to prove her mettle to the conspirators as they plotted against Caesar, she simply told her husband, “I am Cato’s daughter.”  That’s the power of legacy. That’s…

The writer Susan Straight was helping her mother move, when she found an old painting thrown in the trash can. Sensing that this wasn’t something that her mother had bought, she asked her about it. “I took a painting class at the YMCA,” her mother explained. “Then I found a book—teach yourself to paint. My…

You’re a patient person. You don’t get road rage. You don’t snap at your employees. You accept apologies when offered. You treat strangers well. Because these are the rules of polite society. Because this is the secret to success in business and life. Wonderful. But when you do lose your temper, who does it inevitably…

Maybe your kid is into weird stuff. Maybe their heavy metal band sucks—or their talents as a white MC are almost offensive. Maybe you can’t stand the shows they like, or maybe their dream is an unlikely one at best.  What’s your job? Your job is to be a fan. Just be a fan. Of…

We all know that what we went through in life is what made us who we are. The breakups, the failures, the losses and the mistakes. Some of us grew up poor. Others grew up rich but with absent parents. Others grew up around addiction or dysfunction.  We didn’t like any of this, but we…

When Charles Lindbergh was thinking about attempting the first transatlantic flight, he ran into an issue. It wasn’t that he had very little money. It wasn’t that he was a nobody. It wasn’t even that he hadn’t flown more than a few hours in one stop before. It wasn’t even that others who had tried…