Sublime

And as they experienced themselves as separate beings, they encountered the next big question: “Can I trust you? Can I depend on you? Are you consistently there for me? Am I safe in your care?”

Small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas. And in Jamesian solitude, Sociopaths find ideas contending in their minds. The creative destruction they script in the world of Losers and Clueless is mirrored by a creative destruction in their minds. This process creates power, but destroys meaning, especially th

The sociologist George Herbert Meade called this “the interiorized other.” That is to say, we have a kind of interior picture, a vague sense of who we are, and of what the reaction of other people to us says about who we are. That reaction is almost invariably communicated to us through what other people say and think, but soon we learn to maintain

Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior (Hawkins, [1995], 2012).

Leaders are a positive force for good and a negative force against bad. You know what they are for and what they are against.

Becoming a trusted advisor at the pinnacle level requires an integration of content expertise with organizational and interpersonal skills. Trust doesn’t just “happen” with the passage of time. Typically it requires a form of personal courage—the will and the skills to raise difficult issues, to communicate empathy and understanding, and the abilit

The CEO guides and leads others with confident efficiency. She doesn’t use an unsure, questioning tone, get angry or emotional. Our child needs to feel that we are not nervous about his behavior or ambivalent about establishing rules. He finds comfort when we are effortlessly in charge.

The developmental need of aggressive-patterned people is to feel safe by being held, contained, and protected by something bigger than them — something good and kind, but also stronger and more capable than they are. Within this safety, they need to have all parts of them accepted, valued, and reflected back, especially the small, weak, needy parts

If fully met in childhood, the self-importance typical of this phase of development will evolve into healthy self-assertion along with a recognition of boundaries. By the proper setting of realistic limits by the parents, the child learns that the universe does not exist just to cater to her every fleeting desire. It is precisely in experiencing th