Personal Development for Smart People^TM

Last week Yaro Starak interviewed me for his blog, Entrepreneur’s Journey.  If you’d like to read the interview, it comes in three parts:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
This interview addressed topics such as how to overcome apathy, thoughts on the future of blogging, and Western vs. Eastern values.

Although I don’t have a boss, I understand that keeping one’s boss happy is a big priority for many people in the workplace.  Humor can help you build and improve your relationship with your boss without appearing like a suck-up and without requiring you to take on extra work.  It can even give you more job […]

There’s a time to be funny, and there’s a time not to be funny.  For most people it takes only basic common sense to know the difference.  But sometimes people use humor inappropriately.  Actually in most situations it’s not the use of humor that’s inappropriate but rather the type of humor.  Telling off-color jokes in a professional […]

Many people think the best way to open a speech is with a joke, and in some situations that can work well, as long as you aren’t merely retelling an old joke your audience has heard before.  The best speakers incorporate abundant humor throughout their speeches.  In the Toastmasters International speech contest, it’s common for a […]

My friend John Kinde has been speaking in front of audiences about as long as I’ve been alive.  By his own admission, John was not born funny.  During the Cold War, he managed a nuclear weapons training facility, and he found humor an effective way to release tension in what could be a very stressful job.  Over a […]

My friend, fellow Toastmaster, and fellow improv performer S. Frank Stringham (he actually goes by “S” as his first name) has been in the entertainment and motivational speaking industry for 25 years.  He’s one of the most talented people I’ve ever met — a singer, a comic, a pianist, and one of the world’s top balloon artists.  […]

If there’s such a thing as a born comedian, my friend George Gilbert would certainly qualify.  He’s been performing before audiences since he was 11 years old, and his parents were a popular comedy duo who traveled and performed with Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, and many other famous comedians.  After doing comedy for decades and witnessing […]

For the remainder of this week, I’ll be blogging a series on humor as it relates to personal development.  Several of my friends are humor speakers with decades of experience, and they’ve agreed to contribute plenty of interesting content for this series.  All of them have started blogs of their own this year (thanks in […]

StevePavlina.com Personal Development for Smart People podcast #13:  Beyond Religion
Many readers/listeners have asked me privately about my particular religious and spiritual beliefs.  Sometimes people also email me after making certain assumptions about what belief system I must follow, based on reading a subset of my articles.  If you’ve actually read all of my articles and tried to […]

An exercise I’ve found helpful to practice living in the present moment is to go for what I call a presence walk.  This is just something I made up, but I doubt the idea is original.  Here’s how it works:
1. Go for a walk alone — anywhere you like, as long as you want.
2. As […]