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Many people attempt to identify what is the best ever.

Several minutes on the internet reveal the best ever meatloaf, jeep, chili recipe, book, movie, banana bread, handgun, gift card, and pinball machine.  This list is possibly infinitely long and never correct – my wife has the best ever chili recipe, and it’s not the one found on the internet.

The problem with best ever is, first, it is subject to opinion, which means it is not factual – and probably not even close to being factual.

If you don’t lead your thoughts, your thoughts will lead you. In order to move forward in your life, you must take control of wrong thinking.  The Bible is all about correcting wrong thinking. And wrong thinking is only corrected by replacing it with right thinking.

Studies now universally show that happy people are better workers.

Those who are engaged with their jobs and colleagues work harder — and smarter.

And yet, an alarmingly high number of people aren’t engaged.

nfluencing up is when you take the time to cultivate a productive working relationship with decision-makers by understanding their strengths and weaknesses and then use that relationship to affect their decision-making process.

It is easy to see how conflicts between personal success and corporate success arise.

Personal success is me-centric, and business success, which is still me-centric, is focused on the goals and performance of others.  The business’s mission may conflict politically, emotionally, or environmentally with personal objectives—corporate management occasionally focuses on issues that contradict personal opinions.

There are flaws in our social and moral practices that we can’t quite see, but knowing this, we can seek out these moral blind spots and throw light on them.

Looking back at such horrors [such as slavery and the Holocaust], it is easy to ask: “What were people thinking?” Yet, the chances are that our descendants will ask the same question, with the same incomprehension, about some of our practices today.

Consider that we live in a time where Instagram influencers or YouTubers (most with no technical skill, academic knowledge, or talent) have reached celebrity status and have accumulated significant wealth through their various platforms.

And many of their followers aspire to be like them.

And why not?

Well, for one reason, this celebrity status changes us for the worse.  Universally, this status requires a selfishness and a worldly focus for only gaining things –  money, power, and prestige.

Creativity might often be viewed more as an enjoyable jolt of insight than an effortful process, but, in fact, both insights and persistent effort can lead to good ideas.

If we prefer and expect easier insights, we will be less likely to struggle through an ideation process and discover our best ideas.  Thus, we will confuse difficulty for quality and stop when we should push on.

Conversational skills are essential for establishing connections, nurturing relationships, and achieving success at work.  In addition, good conversationalists show genuine concern for others through their tone of voice and body language.  

Learning to be a better conversationalist can help business leaders share information with colleagues, friends, and family members more effectively.

In the business world, manipulation is often referred to as a nudge. 

We all know that people are not fully rational.  Our physical or emotional environments influence people’s choices and behavior.  The arena of charity fundraising is a classic example of playing with our heartstrings to get us to donate more money than we might typically consider.  They use photos and graphic stories to “nudge” us to increase our giving.

Business leaders and entrepreneurs must apply nudges to get our customers to buy our products and services.  We need to use well-written ads, great graphics, and exceptional personal salesmanship to cause our potential buyers to select us over everyone else.