Do not expect a narrow-minded person to be open-minded. My most popular post! We can spend an enormous amount of energy trying to explain things to people who neither understand nor care to understand. It often leads to frustration, because no matter how carefully we explain, their world is too limited to take in what we are saying. The frog that lives in the well will never grasp the vastness of the ocean. That doesn’t make it a bad frog or a stupid frog. It simply means it is a well frog. Expecting it to see beyond its walls is unfair to the frog and exhausting for us. In life, some people simply cannot see beyond their own well. Instead of wearing ourselves out trying to make them, we can accept their limits, move forward, and invest our energy in places where it will make a difference. Life is good. Marshall

Start where you are now. You cannot begin your journey from anywhere else. At this moment, your life is what it is. Make peace. Acceptance does not mean approval. Making peace with what is does not mean settling. Find joy in your journey. Life is good. Marshall THANK YOU for reading my thoughts on leadership, coaching and life. Please visit MarshallGoldsmith.ai and try it out. It may help on your journey.

You are not perfect. I am not perfect. Life is not perfect. It is often messy. Make peace. You, my readers, tend to be very hard on yourselves. You care. You set high standards. You want to do well and make a positive difference in the world. These are wonderful qualities.It is fine to have high aspirations. It is fine to work hard and keep growing. What is not so fine is turning those high standards into a source of ongoing dissatisfaction. Make peace with being human. Make peace with making mistakes, falling short, and sometimes feeling overwhelmed. Being human does not mean lowering our standards. It does mean accepting life as it is while still working toward the life we hope it can become. Do your best. Learn from your mistakes. Forgive yourself and others. Celebrate small daily victories. Enjoy the process of life, as imperfect, complicated, and messy as it may be. Life is good. Marshall Please visit MarshallGoldsmith.ai. It may help you on your journey through life.

How much money do you need? The answer is simple. Enough. No one can define “enough” for you. Except you. Talk with the people you love. Decide together what “enough” really means in your life. Set a number. And when you get there, declare victory. This is much easier in theory than in practice. Most people need '20%' more - or some other number in their mind. The problem is, when the goal line keeps moving, you never reach it. After you do declare victory, you will probably still choose to work anyway. You may still make more money. But from that moment on, money will no longer be the main factor in how you spend your life. You will be doing what you want to do. You will be doing what you would do if you were not getting paid. Life is good. Marshall Please visit MarshallGoldsmith.ai. It may help you in your journey.

Up is not the only way. That phrase has never been truer than it is today. My wonderful friend Bev Kaye has been writing about this idea for years. In our rapidly changing world of work, we need her wisdom more than ever. We were taught to think of a successful career as a ladder. Each promotion meant we were moving forward. If we were not moving up, we feared that we were falling behind. That old model no longer fits our new reality. Growth can mean moving sideways to learn new skills. It can mean stepping back to create a better life. It can mean becoming an exceptional individual contributor without becoming a manager. It can even mean leaving a successful career to begin an entirely new adventure. A promotion is one form of progress. It is not the only form. Stop asking only, “How can I move up?” Ask yourself, “Where do I want to go, and who do I want to become along the way?” Thank you, my wonderful friend for this timely reminder. Life is good. Marshall

With each promotion, the amount of positive recognition we receive tends to increase. Our jokes somehow become funnier. Our observations sound more profound. People become more eager to agree with us and more reluctant to tell us what we need to hear. If we are not careful, we can begin to believe that we are wiser, funnier, and better than we really are. The higher we rise, the harder it becomes to get good advice and the easier it becomes to believe we no longer need it. Great leaders understand this danger. They have the humility and wisdom to proactively seek out honest advice, listen carefully, and act when change is needed. They make it safe for others to disagree. This post was inspired by my wonderful friend Caroline Webb. Caroline has written an amazing new book, 'Leadership Intelligence'. This science-backed reference guide gives leaders practical tools they can return to again and again as they face everyday management challenges. It may also provide some of the good advice you are no longer getting at work! Life is good. Marshall

In today’s rapidly changing world, organizations need people with outstanding technical skills. They also need people with outstanding people skills. Tomorrow’s leaders will need may sure they work well together. Leaders will need technological savvy - the ability to work effectively with advanced technology without needing to be the expert. They will also need people savvy - the ability to connect with individuals from very different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. One without the other is no longer enough. As Ginger Duncan taught me, being great with technology but weak with people limits your impact. Being great with people but unable to understand the role of technology limits your effectiveness. As a leader, your job is not to choose one side. Your job is to build a bridge. When you bring these two worlds together, you create connection, collaboration, and results that neither side could achieve alone. That is the work of leadership today. Life is good. Marshall Please visit MarshallGoldsmith.ai and ask any questions on this, or any other topic you choose!

We are often taught to “find” our purpose in life, with the assumption that once we find it, it will never change. Forget that! We live in a world of constant and accelerating change. The leaders and professionals who thrive are not the ones who cling to one purpose, but the ones who keep learning, growing, and adapting as life evolves. In my own life, my purpose has changed several times. I am now 77. Who would have guessed, even a few years ago, that I would be building my own MarshallGoldsmith.ai or that my LinkedIn posts would be viewed more than 28 million times in a year? Certainly not me! My purpose is now to help you, and as many people as I can, have a little better life. Purpose is not something we lock in forever. It is something we revisit. Be willing to review your purpose and be willing to trade it in, if you find a new one that helps you make a greater positive difference in the world. Life is good. Marshall Thanks to my wonderful partners, Pino Audia and John A. Byrne, who inspired this post.

If you are reading this, you probably take too much responsibility. Almost all of my readers feel 'overly responsible' and almost half feel 'way too responsible'. Do your best. Make peace. You are only human. You cannot be everything to everyone. Enjoy the process of life. Thank you for reading my thoughts on LinkedIn. My hope is that I can help you have just a little better minute, hour, day, year or life. That is enough responsibility for me! Life is good. Marshall Please visit MarshallGoldsmith.ai for some more ideas.

Top professionals know way more about what they’re doing than their manager. Peter Drucker defined this as the essence of a “knowledge worker. ”When we lead people who know far more about their specific work than we do, leadership is not about telling. It is about asking, listening, and learning. Peter taught me this lesson many years ago, and it’s even more relevant today. The dramatically increased pace of change means expertise needs to be everywhere, not just at the top.I f Peter were here now, I might suggest a small update to his famous insight:“The leader of the past knew how to tell. The leader of TODAY knows how to ask.” Life is good. Marshall Speaking of asking, please go to MarshallGoldsmit.ai and start asking questions. It is free and speaks 32 languages!

We admire the success. We rarely think about the changes great achievers had to go through to get there. Real growth is usually uncomfortable, humbling, and invisible from the outside. In most cases, people who become “butterflies” chose to face the hard truths about themselves. They listened. They changed. They kept going. Before we celebrate the outcome, we should honor the courage it takes to evolve. Life is good. Marshall

All any of us can do is our best. This advice has been out there since the Bhagavad Gita was composed thousands of years ago. It still applies to life - every day! Life is good. Marshall

I love this quote! It took me a while to think about it before positing. I have never known a person at any depth who I thought was boring. Many people are afraid of being different, so they learn to act like think they are 'supposed to' act. They try to act like everyone else. They learn to act like boring people. Do the world a favor! Don't try to act like everyone else. If you just act like yourself, you may end up making both your life, and the lives of the people you meet, more interesting. I would love your thoughts. Life is good.Marshall Please visit MarshallGoldsmith.com and MarshallGoldsmith.ai.

Have a higher purpose and vision. Be present in the moment and enjoy your journey. We need both for a great life! We do not need to sacrifice one for the other. Keep focused on 'getting there'. My bestselling book, 'What Got You Here Won't Get You There', focuses on the changes required to 'get there'. My other bestseller, 'The Earned Life', focuses on 'being here'. Do both! Life is good. Marshall THANK YOU for investing your time to read what I write.

A great lesson for all leaders. Before speaking to your team ask yourself, "Will my comment increase their commitment?" If the answer is "No!", ask yourself, "Is it worth it?" One of the great CEOs that I coached, a year after learning this simple lesson, said, "When I had the discipline to ask myself this question, about half of the time, I concluded, 'Am I right? Maybe.' 'Is it worth it?' 'No!' "This does not just apply to leaders. It applies to all of us, at work and at home. In many cases, 'Are we right?' Maybe. 'Is it worth it?' 'No!' Please send comments with your reflections from your own experience in life. Life is good. Marshall

Don't wait for happiness to arrive! Joy is NOT the reward for getting everything right. Life doesn’t work that way. Happiness and success are independent variables - one doesn’t guarantee the other. What we can control is the effort we put into bringing a little more joy into the world each day. Choose to be grateful. Choose to smile. Choose do your best to be happy now. Don’t wait for the world to make you happy. Do your best to bring happiness to the world. Life is good. Marshall

We cannot always do 'big things'. We can always do 'small things'. When you add the 'small things' up, they can be pretty big! Thank you so much for reading my posts. Life is good. Marshall Please visit MarshallGoldsmith.ai. You may get some ideas for the 'small things' or even the 'big things'

Connection is not just important in work, it is important in life. In our new book, The Seismic Shift in You, my lead author Michelle Johnston, Ph.D. and I highlight the importance of connection with your key stakeholders, both at work and at home. We make a strong case for why connection matters from the perspective of leadership, teamwork, and long-term achievement. When leaders build meaningful relationships, their teams feel supported, engaged, and motivated to succeed together. Connection is even more important outside of work. Our friend Robert Waldinger has led the world’s most significant long-term study of life satisfaction. His research clearly shows that loving, supportive relationships are the greatest predictor of a fulfilling life. It is wonderful to reach the top of the mountain. It is even better to have people who care standing beside you when you get there. Life is good. Marshall

Before saying, 'That's just the way I am!' Ask yourself, 'What behavior am I defending?' and 'Why am I defending it?' This problem is very easy to see in others and very difficult to see in ourselves. Please send your reflections for leaders, coaches and professionals. Please send your suggestions to help others. Life is good. Marshall

Most of us spend years trying to fix the world around us - our job, our boss, our partner, our circumstances. That’s the “clever” phase. It is wiser for us to stop waiting for the world to change and start changing ourselves. Don’t wait for your job to engage you - bring your most engaged self to work. Don’t wait to feel happy - do your best to be happy! Don’t wait for others to be perfect before you try to make a positive difference. When we shift from external control to internal responsibility, everything gets smoother. The world doesn’t magically improve, but our ability to navigate it does. We may not change the world. We can all do a better job of improving ourselves! Life is good. Marshall

Reflection is needed to turn experience into wisdom. Experience alone doesin’t guarantee learning. Every one of us has had experiences, both good and bad, without reflection, they can just keep passing by without leaving lasting lessons. The real learning happens when we pause, look back, and ask ourselves: What worked? What didn’t? What would I do differently next time? Think about your own life. Perhaps you made a bold choice that didn’t succeed. Instead of dismissing it as failure, reflecting on it could give you clarity for the future. Or maybe you had a success. Reflection helps you understand why it worked so you can repeat it. As John Dewey taught, reflection transforms events into insights. When we reflect, we move from just living through moments to truly learning from them. Life is good. Marshall Please visit MarshallGoldsmith.ai. You can ask as many questions as you wish to help you reflect.