Robert Moskowitz

It’s totally natural to avoid rejection and seek out acceptance, just as it’s natural we prefer to eat sweetness and spit out bitterness. Unfortunately, rejection is a fairly commonplace event most of us are likely to encounter many more times than we’d like. It feels bad, of course, to lose out or be sent away. […]

If you search the entries in this series or simply read them as they go public, you’ll find I write quite often about consistency. The reason is simple: in almost every field of human endeavor, consistency is critically important for jacking up your overall level of productivity and success. As I learned many years ago

For most of us, feeling uncertain about situations, events, and possibilities creates a lot of stress. This is unfortunate, because we live in an inherently uncertain world. Like it or not, we simply can’t be sure about most of the details we’re going to encounter in our continually unfolding future. This stress resulting from uncertainty

Most of us are familiar with the process of inwardly talking to ourselves. We do it silently, sometimes in abbreviated words, phrases, or our own personal codes. This “inner talk” has been shown to help us understand situations, solve problems, and generate new ideas. But “inner talk” is often far less useful than what might

The open secret of successful meditation is simple: you can’t stop your “monkey mind” from pushing lots of irrelevant thoughts and feelings forward into your consciousness. That’s always going to happen. The best you can do, therefore, is try to give them less attention and, instead, focus a little more on what’s truly important. The

There’s an old joke about two people hiking in a forest who encounter a hungry bear. One person immediately says: “Let’s run.” The other person replies: “That’s useless. You can’t outrun a bear.” The first person makes clear his plan: “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you.” Aside from

It’s not my job to point you toward scientific studies about productivity and success. You can fairly easily find them yourself on the internet. But I do like to point out precursors to and supportive elements of productivity and success, particularly ones you may not already know. And in this case, I’m pointing out positivity.

It’s natural to shy away from tasks, projects, and goals you fear. They may legitimately be too demanding, too far outside your zone of competence, or just plain too risky for the rewards they offer. But if you’re shying away from potentially worthwhile tasks, projects, and goals primarily because they trigger a fear reaction, you

I remember listening to someone explain the importance of systems vs plans, and she said something that stuck with me: “In your car, would you rather have a braking system, or a braking plan?” What’s true for automobiles is true for the world beyond: the differences and advantages of systems over plans are profound. Don’t

We’ve all heard the common criticisms of perfectionism, including: It’s no wonder that perfectionism is often considered a bad way to organize your work and your life. But all those notions are focused – justifiably – on the destructive form of perfectionism. However, there’s another, positive form of perfectionism that’s far more constructive, productive, and