Life

7 Simple Yet Powerful Metaphors that Will Change the Way You Think

02.07.2023 by Marc Chernoff // 6 Comments

A metaphor is not an ornament. It’s a necessary lens of perception that allows us to experience and think about ourselves and the world more clearly. Metaphors have a way of relating to us in a profound way, by clarifying immense life lessons and truths in fairly minimal space.

Angel and I have shared the following metaphors and corresponding stories with our students, coaching clients, newsletter subscribers, and conference attendees dozens of times over the past 15 years, and we usually get thanked for doing so. The specifics differ slightly every time we share them, but the core lessons carry onward.

My challenge for you today is to read the first metaphor [Read more…]

5 Things You Forget About the Precious Little Time You Have Left

02.03.2023 by Marc Chernoff // 20 Comments

May you truly live every day of your life.

The Girl Who Didn’t Make It

Alyssa was my best friend. She was a talented musician, a graceful gymnast, a brilliant writer, and a deeply passionate human being. She cared about people. Love bled from every facet of her being. When she spoke, her eyes were as sincere as her words. And she always wanted to understand what was wrong so she could strive to make it better.

But Alyssa woke up one day during her senior year in college with a strange pain in her chest. The on-campus doctors didn’t understand why, so they referred her to a specialist. After several MRIs and blood tests, they determined that she had a rare escalated case of Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a form of cancer. She spent the next three years suffering through varying degrees of pain and sickness as multiple doctors treated her with radiation and chemotherapy. And although these doctors were initially hopeful, Alyssa’s condition worsened, and she eventually succumbed to her cancer, dying on her [Read more…]

6 Tiny Daily Rituals that Will Change Your Whole Life (in 6 Months or Less)

01.31.2023 by Angel Chernoff // 14 Comments

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
– Annie Dillard

Are you willing to spend a little time every day like most people won’t, so you can spend the better part of your life like most people can’t?

Think about that question for a moment. Let it sink in. You ultimately become what you repeatedly do. The acquisition of knowledge doesn’t mean you’re growing — growing happens only when what you know changes how you live on a daily basis (most people miss the second part).

And isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different? That’s the power of daily rituals.

Now it’s time think about your rituals — the little things you do every day.

Because these little things define you.

All the results in your life come from [Read more…]

8 Wake-Up Calls You Need to Receive in Life Before it’s Too Late

01.27.2023 by Marc Chernoff // 21 Comments

You’ve come a long way, and you’re still learning and growing. Be thankful for the lessons. Take them and make the best of things right now.

For my 18th birthday, many moons ago, my grandfather on my mom’s side gave me four lightly-used flannel shirts that he no longer needed. The shirts were barely worn and in great shape; my grandfather told me he thought they would look great on me. Unfortunately, I thought they were odd gifts at the time and I wasn’t thankful. I looked at him skeptically, gave him a crooked half-smile, and moved on to the other gifts sitting in front of me. My grandfather died two days later from a sudden heart attack. The flannel shirts were the last gifts he ever gave me, and that crooked half-smile was the last time I directly acknowledged him. Today, I still regret the little thing I didn’t say when I had the chance: “Thank you Grandpa. I appreciate you.”

That was a huge wake-up call for me — one that has served me well for over two decades now.

And here are eight wake-up calls for YOU — some important life lessons worth learning before it’s too late: [Read more…]

10 Painfully Obvious Truths About Life Everyone Forgets Too Soon

01.23.2023 by Angel Chernoff // 22 Comments

The truth does not disappear when it is ignored.

You know how you can hear something a hundred times in a hundred different ways before it finally gets through to you? The ten truths about life discussed here fall firmly into that category – timeless lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of since, but for whatever reason we haven’t fully grasped them yet.

This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all…

1. The average human life is relatively short.

We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to [Read more…]