You may have heard the saying, 'When you're in love, smoke gets in your eyes.' Well when you're talking, smoke gets in your eyes and ears. Once you're on a roll, it's very easy to not notice that you've worn out your welcome.

Without the ambition to raise oneself to life's challenges, growth and innovation would never happen.

One of the best ways to see how critical being present is to effective leadership is to notice what being absent, distracted, hiding something, and/or agenda-driven does to people's ability to trust, respect, and have confidence in you.

When winning is everything and everyone does whatever they need to win and to not lose, including lying, you have a world in which 'basic trust' is lost.

When men act up by being degrading, dismissive, condescending, shut off, or sullen, that can often dumbfound you as a woman and get you off balance. At that point, you can feel and look like a deer in the headlights, which makes you even more vulnerable to such a man's next volley of vitriol.

Self-esteem should not be confused with self-confidence. Self-confidence is believing in your competence and your ability to do something, whereas self-esteem is believing in your goodness.

When you know you haven't been connecting with, persuading, or getting through to someone, consciously pause before meeting them and say to yourself, 'During this conversation, I am committing to being present and to connecting.'

Braggarts are insecure and need attention, and bragging often has the opposite effect on most people when you're trying to gain their respect and increase your influence.

One reason some people are long-winded is because they're trying to impress their conversational counterpart with how smart they are, often because they don't actually feel that way underneath. If this is the case for you, realize that continuing to talk will only cause the other person to be less impressed.

Feeling alone makes negative feelings worse. When you feel alone, frustration quickly can become anger, fear quickly can become panic.

I have heard it said that the measure of a civilization is how it treats those who have hurt it. I think a further measure is how it treats those who deeply disappoint it.

Over time, many CEOs realize that being able to quickly and effectively confront conflict in their company is a leadership opportunity because people's respect often rises and falls on whether their leader deals with conflict head on or avoids dealing with it.

Given the choice between instant gratification and the lasting satisfaction of earning the esteem of someone you respect and admire, all but the most small-minded would choose the latter.

Connecting is always better than disconnecting.

I am blessed to count among my friends and colleagues people who are very thoughtful and who deeply care about our country.

President Reagan preached 'trickle down economics' but naively did not reckon on the fact that the wealthy would only care about getting more for themselves instead of caring about helping those with less.

Be it terrorists or 'blinded by greed' capitalists or 'deaf and dumb and siloed' officials, special interests will always tyrannize the common good.

Denial is not always a bad thing. Without it, you couldn't function. For instance, if you were hyperaware and hypervigilant regarding all the dangers in the world - from driving your car to crossing the street to eating food that might have contaminants in it to taking medications that have many side effects, etc. - you would become frozen.

The crux is this: you can't be sincerely empathic towards and angry at someone at the same moment. In other words, you can't walk in someone else's shoes and step on their toes at the same time.

I can still remember my first experience of standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon and looking into it. It was so awesome, it took a fair amount of restraint to prevent me from jumping into it, because I was certain I could fly.

There is something calming and emotionally restoring when you focus on gratitude for a known deed that helped you, instead of fear of the unknown.

If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy couples accentuate the positive.

Leadership is more about clarity than it is about control.

Know what's important and what isn't. Have the wisdom to know the right thing to do, the integrity to do it, the character to stand up to those who don't, and the courage to stop those who won't.