Instead of striving to be superior to other people, we should aim to be superior to our previous selves. It can be easy to assume, judging from the content people post on social media, that they lead perfect lives. As we sift through photos of Facebook friends sunbathing in the Caribbean, sharing cheesecake at a 5-star restaurant with a partner, or driving away in a souped up Mercedes Benz, we may find ourselves green with envy. But comparing ourselves to others -- whether our coworkers, our neighbors, or are friends -- is an exercise in futility. Really, people are not some monolithic group. We have different tastes and interests, goals and fears, struggles and challenges. While it's good to look up to others and admire what they've accomplished, there's no sense in wishing for the lives they have. After all, they may be doing a good job at masking the fact that their lives leave a lot to be desired. They may very well be having health, money, or marital problems...

Just the other day, I came across the following quote: "Make sure everyone in your 'boat' is rowing and not drilling holes when you're not looking." In other words, know your circle. Familiarize yourself with the company you keep. Not every person who smiles at you and tells you nice things is your friend -- let alone someone in whom you should confide your biggest secrets. As I've stated in recent posts, some people are masterful at faking it. They're pretenders. It's not always easy to distinguish genuine people from fakers, but one of the telltale signs is when their actions don't seem to mirror their words. For example, in the workplace they may claim to be working hard, but that might not jell with the fact they're always trying to leave early or dump their work on subordinates. Then there are those friends who say they care about you, but never seem to spare a moment to call you or reply to your texts. Again, when what peo...

What do you think the three most precious things we can give someone are? If things like a whole lot of cash, a fancy car, or jewelry come to mind, you're not even close. The things I'm alluding to are intangible virtues that go far deeper. The three biggest gifts we can provide are our love , our trust , and our time . Love : This one is a no-brainer. Human beings seek others' love from the moment they're born. As adults, we turn to our partners, relatives, friends, and even our coworkers for love and support. If we can say that we truly love someone, it means they occupy a special place in our hearts, and we'd be willing to do virtually anything to make them happy. Trust: It can be difficult for us to trust people. After all, once someone breaks our trust, not only are we reluctant to trust that particular individual again, we make it harder for other people to earn it. To trust someone is to become vulnerable. Essentially, you're giving that person ...

They say the only constant in life is change, and people are certainly no exception to that maxim. Partners, friends, relatives, coworkers, acquaintances -- they evolve, for better or worse. Wishing things could revert to how they used to be in any given relationship sets one up for major disappointment. The fact of the matter is that you may have a friend who's very different today from how she was in, say, 2012. Shifting priorities, new experiences, and changing views each play a role in our evolution as people. Unfortunately, such changes can be detrimental to a relationship. Your friend gets married or starts a family and forgets you exist. Your boyfriend has to relocate for his job and now you hardly hear from his anymore. Your closest cousin is hanging out with a different crowd and no longer seems like the person you grew up with. It's understandable that such life events would make people less available. Gone are the days when you could arrange outings on ...

Many of us can't help but grumble about our jobs, whether it's the low pay, obnoxious coworkers, or lousy commute. But what we fail to realize is that we can make our jobs much more tolerable if we only made a couple of mental adjustments. Below are two things you can do that will most definitely make your job easier to stomach. 1. Don't depend on the job to fulfill you. While we should like our work enough not to feel miserable doing it day in and day out, we should never think of our jobs as the be-all and end-all. A job will never fulfill you completely; that's what hobbies are for. I know certain jobs can certainly be fulfilling (e.g., charity work), but let's face it: the vast majority of jobs have an ugly side to them. Politics, red tape, layoffs, and other negatives are part and parcel of virtually all organizations. The less pressure you put on a job to fulfill you, the happier you'll be. You can always leave for another opportunity if your current...

No matter your career, goals, or dreams, today's as good a day as any to work hard toward whatever you want to achieve. Whenever the urge strikes to put it off until tomorrow, cancel that thought out mentally at once. Focus on being the very best you can be. Immerse yourself in your passions and believe wholeheartedly that you can accomplish anything you set your heart and mind to. Ignore the naysayers and follow your instincts. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will. Make believers out of those who doubt all the great things you're capable of. And if achieving your dreams means not adhering to societal norms -- including pressure your friends, relatives, and coworkers put on you to do things their way -- so be it. It's your life to live, not theirs. Forget about tomorrow. Do your best today, and tomorrow you can build on that.

We'd all agree that working with younger people has its advantages and disadvantages, as does working with more seasoned coworkers. But what one finds to be a pro or con about a certain age group really depends on their own age, experience, and other factors. In general, though, you can probably pinpoint a few characteristics of younger and older employees that would hold no matter where you work. For starters, many younger employees -- those in their 20s and 30s -- are eager to prove themselves, sometimes leading them to angle for the big projects and clients before they've earned their stripes (much to the chagrin of some bosses who want to keep those for themselves). While people can still be ambitious in their 50s and 60s, they may not be as aggressive in showcasing their skills or fishing for plum projects. At this juncture, they're usually settled and averse to job hopping, especially as they eye retirement. I've also observed that younger employees se...

Some of us have a tendency to become very attached to people in our lives, whether friends or coworkers. Maybe we grew up with them, have worked them for 20 years, and/or have shared a bevy of great experiences with these people. Sometimes we can't help but hold people in high regard, going so far as to consider them more like family than our actual relatives. However, as noted in many of my posts -- including some within the last week or two -- we often have a hard time accepting changes (whether abrupt or gradual) in their behavior, which ultimately change the dynamics of our relationship with them. Here are a few examples of ways people can change: 1. They get in a relationship, tie the knot, and/or have kids, leaving them with little or no time for you.  I have a friend who fell off the map last year while he was in a relationship with his ex. Once the relationship ended, he reverted back to his old ways, wanting to hang out with my wife and I almost every weekend. Ne...

It isn't low pay or long hours, though they most definitely can be contributing factors in one's decision to bolt. At least those issues stand a chance of being resolved with some form of compromise, whether a raise or change of schedule. But being unable to get along with the boss -- no matter how hard we've tried -- is very difficult to stomach for 40 or more hours each week and the primary reason so many of us leave our jobs. In fact, many people admit that they leave specifically to get away from that individual; everything else about the job itself could be nearly perfect -- the salary, benefits, coworkers -- but they don't care. The boss has simply become too much to bear. What makes us reach that breaking point? It could be that the boss: Disrespects/belittles you Persistently takes you for granted Takes all the credit for your work Prevents you from growing within the department or company Shows favoritism toward others Is a slave driver Is a m...

I've made what I -- and several others -- consider to be an astute observation:  Many people become highly obnoxious when they get together with other people -- whether their friends, coworkers, or others they're close to.  They become looser and less conscious of their surroundings, which often translates into firing off cuss words and lame jokes. Such behavior is only magnified when drinks are involved. I don't take any issue with people having fun with their friends. It's being so silly as to be annoying -- getting drunk, joining forces to demean others, making fools of themselves -- that gets on my nerves.  As I've pointed out in prior entries, people tend toward civilized behavior when they're alone because there's no audience to impress. They don't have to worry about channeling someone else's behavior -- being "part of the group" -- because no one else is there. Thus, when people are alone, they're more vulne...

When we were younger, we were often asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Some of the careers we had in mind at the time were real doozies, from baseball player to fireman to world-renowned singer. Needless to say, many of us went on to pursue careers that aren't remotely related to those we aspired to as children. Perhaps our interests changed as we got older, or we decided to venture into an area we found more practical. I guess you can say what I do now doesn't stray too much from what I envisioned as a kid. I always knew I wanted to be a writer, and that I became -- just in a different area. When I was 10, I thought I'd end up becoming a sports columnist. Instead, I wound up as a copywriter in the travel industry. It is my hope that even if you don't work in the field you set your sights on in your childhood, you love -- or at least can tolerate -- whatever it is you do now. We work too damn hard not to derive some enjoyment from our ...

The notion that there's a perfect job out there for everyone is, in a word, absurd. Sure, there are jobs that would suit us far better than others, but that in no way means they're perfect in every way. There's always at least one thing about every job that we wish we could change. Many employees can't stand their boss or at least one fellow coworker. Others are paid poorly, work ridiculous hours, have a nightmare of a commute to contend with each day, or just don't feel inspired or challenged anymore. If work were perfect, we really wouldn't be able to call it work, would we? It'd be more like a hobby. Like everything else in life, work is a definite trade-off: we give an employer our time in exchange for money with which we support ourselves and our families. As part of the deal, we consent to adhering to the employer's policies and working with other employees to advance the company's mission and meet or exceed its goals. However, at...

I've noticed that every time I request a couple of days off, one of my co-workers immediately asks, "So where are you going?" They assume that if a person plans to be out for three or four days, they must be planning a vacation. While that's always a possibility, what happened to requesting time off just to relax? I've done this on several occasions over the years. Reality check: Some of us actually like using the free time to:  Sleep in  Binge-watch Netflix in our underwear or  pajamas  Catch up on our reading  Watch a movie at the local theater  Hit up a nearby beach  Do things around the house, like clean,  organize, or renovate Traveling can be fun, but it can also be awfully draining. Between planning, packing, walking, and hailing cabs, it can often feel like work in itself. In other words, people sometimes take time off to travel and end up feeling as tired -- if not more so -- when they come back home than if they had go...

In recent weeks, I've written various posts with one common refrain: You should never change just to please other people. Still, many of us find it hard to contain this impulse. We place such a high premium on others' approval that we go to the ends of the earth to get people's attention, fishing for their compliments whenever and wherever possible. A generous compliment every now and then is nice, but isn't your validation of yourself sufficient? I know people who tailor everything about themselves -- from their hairdo to their car to their home -- to others' specifications. And I'm not just talking friends and family members -- these people cater to even their coworkers. When did going with our own opinion -- the one that really matters -- go out of style? Why give someone else so much power over your decisions? I understand that at times we may take our cue from others who are more knowledgeable in certain areas. For example, maybe your cousin o...

Many of us go to great pains to be better than others. We strive to have better cars than our neighbors, better clothes than our coworkers, more money than our friends. In the grand scheme of life, none of this makes us happier in the long term. What we should do is redirect our focus toward growing, toward improving ourselves. In essence, it's about being better this year than who we were last year -- being considerably better today than, say, the 2012 version of you. Everyone has his or her own definition of what makes a better person, or what constitutes personal growth. Here are a few examples: Losing weight and being healthier Getting a promotion and making more money Getting into a relationship  Being married Starting a family Traveling more Making new friends At the end of the day, how much our friends make and which cars our neighbors drive should be the least of our concerns. Concentrate on bettering and being competitive with yourself. Up the ante each Ja...

Many of my coworkers have been working at my company -- and in the same department, no less -- for 20 or more years!  It's doubtless a rarity in this day and age of frequent job hopping.  Most of them lament staying there so long. Promotions have been hard to come by, not to mention they feel utterly stagnant in their jobs. Some tell me they can't remember the last time they actually learned something new. It certainly doesn't help that our department is run by two overbearing women -- my boss is one of them -- who are completely stuck in their ways.  Now in their 50s and 60s, they concede that it's too late to think about moving. They're more focused on retirement now than anything else. Competing for jobs with people as old as their kids, they say, is a losing proposition.  When asked why they stayed there so long, they admit that they became complacent over the years. I can attest to the fact that the company provides employees with a handsome salary...

Some men refuse to date women who don't cook, whether it's because they don't know how to cook or have no interest in doing so. I actually have a few female friends and coworkers who have likely never boiled an egg in their life. Thankfully, my wife likes to cook, and she isn't too shabby at it. If it turned out that she didn't cook, I wouldn't hold it against her. That would be akin to her giving me a hard time about my not being a good handyman. She knows I am not a DIY kind of guy and doesn't mind in the slightest. I think men and women alike get hung up on traditional gender roles. Let's face it: We're in the 21st century. Women aren't just taking care of kids at home anymore while dad brings in the bacon. This is a wildly different world than the ones our grandparents came to know. Men who still believe that a woman's place is in the kitchen are displaying the worst kind of chauvinism. Women should neither like nor be expected to d...

Contrary to popular belief, it isn't how much money you make, how engrossed you are in your work, the work/life balance the job affords, or whether you feel what you do makes a difference in the world. While those things are certainly important, the single biggest determinant of on-the-job satisfaction is whether you get along with your boss and co-workers . I have several friends and a couple of relatives who have resigned from their jobs despite genuinely enjoying the work and being handsomely compensated. In each case, they either had a toxic boss or one or more co-workers who had a penchant for stabbing them on the back. Let's face it: No amount of money an employer throws at us -- whether it's $75,000 or $5 million a year -- can compensate for having to tolerate an abusive supervisor or conniving co-workers. Given that most of us spend 40 or more hours at the office each week, having to put up with such behavior can eventually take a serious toll on us -- physi...

When it comes to our jobs, we all gripe about something -- whether it's the salary and benefits, obnoxious boss, nosy coworkers, or endless red tape. In my case, I tend to grumble about things that are outside my control, such as: Having to work late hours Having to attend boring meetings or events Not being able to use creativity on the job Needing to get 3 sign-offs to do practically anything Once we're at wits end, we resolve to find a different job -- one that offers the promise of a better tomorrow. And in our unbridled optimism we presume that the new job will entail working conditions and responsibilities that are more to our liking. That might very well be the case, but it's critical you do your homework and ask questions during the interview. For example, if you are dead set against traveling for your job, be sure to ask if your job requires any travel. You don't want to get a rude awakening one month into the job and find out you'll have to ...