June 2012
1 post
Corky - A Dogs View Of Motivation
I love dogs and have had some kind of big dog, usually lab size, in my life for as long as I can recall. While I love dogs I also know they’re dogs, not people. I don’t dress mine up, pretend they have human qualities, and certainly avoid projecting too much emotional understanding on them. I do have voices for all my dogs, and I frequently use that voice to engage in two way...
May 2012
7 posts
5 tags
The Risk Of Happiness
Harvard Business Review seems to devote a fair amount of ink to the “happiness at work” movement with yet another article appearing today on my LinkedIn home page. A simple Goog search of “happiness at work” turns up a load of links on all manner of well being in the workplace. We apparently want to be happy at work.
I know something about jumping up the juice at work...
Bring To Form
I’ve been accused of seeing everything through the narrow lens of performance. It’s a fair nudge against my overtly simple way of viewing the patterns and possibilities of human relationships. But my view of “performance” goes beyond entertainment or doing a schtick for people, rather more closely related to a “promise” or a “purpose”, to...
7 tags
The Strength We Need
I was talking with a young woman on Saturday afternoon about the condition of her life. Her family is and has been in turmoil for the past several years and while mom and dad are in a cold war, she and her sisters have done their best to keep moving on with their lives, but it hasn’t always been easy. It has resulted in eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse and other “destructive...
7 tags
The Boldest Move
In all of the years I spent wandering around the Minnesota Renaissance Festival with a dirty face and shit-brown costume I am fortunate that I can count on one hand the number of times someone has threatened to kill me. Now, that may seem to be a roughly high number since I’m guessing few of you have had someone threaten to kill you as a result of something you said. Not so with me. Some...
9 tags
Don't make me laugh!
Besides having been a walk about street performer, I’ve also spent a great deal of time working in and around motivational speakers, a group I’ve come to call the “preachers-of-jack-you-up!”. It’s a big revival tent of well manicured individuals, some of whom have a tin stamped story about overcoming insurmountable challenges to becoming the fantastic, super awesome...
Reading Out Loud
My third grade teacher, Ms. Hanson, was a miserable old bitty who ruled the small school I attended as a kid with an wrinkled liver spotted fist. She was the kind of teacher that made karma believable and important. I suppose, way back before when, she might have been a descent person but by the time I attended her third grade class at Park Hill Elementary she was two feeble steps away from a...
New chapter from the forthcoming book
The Take...
April 2012
14 posts
6 tags
Getting Old Whilst Staying Young
It’s Friday and already my ADD brain is strategically deciphering the codes of possibility. Hmmm, we could meet friends at a very loud bar and engage in shouting style conversations amidst the drunken twenty somethings. No, not this week. Maybe, Saturday night we could go to the Gay 90’s, a very gay lounge in Minneapolis where we go to dance or watch homos in high heels and evening...
6 tags
Habits & Loops
I have a good friend of mine that is a professional street performer. Actually, I have several friends who’ve made a living doing street shows in parks, lanes and festivals all around the world. Hell, I co-wrote “Top Performer: A Bold Approach To Sales And Service” a book based on the street performer as an icon of engagement, connection and novelty, and my new book...
5 tags
Restless Summer
(I wrote this a few years ago, but I’d like to think of it as a nice preamble to the hot summer days ahead.)
Getting older is like traversing a narrowing ledge that runs across the deeper and more treacherous cliff faces we encounter with age. Wisdom is earned through trial and endless error, which teaches us the necessary caution we believe we must execute to safely arrive to the place were...
My voice work continues to grow and expand, and...
5 tags
Out To Pasture
I’ve been critical of my own tendency to put technology first. I’m as much of a knuckle dragging gadget grabber as most guys are, but lately I’ve started to take note of the cost this has had on my relationships, my focus and how I manage my time. Obviously, I use my laptop and smartphone to help keep me on task and organized, fine, but there is also this image in my mind, one...
I’ve been producing my own voice overs and...
Infinitely, better.
I read James Carse interesting little book, “Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility”, and was struck by his provocative notion that we are either playing our life as a finite game, where we are committed to winning and there are winners and losers, or we’re playing the infinite game, where it isn’t about winning a game, but about continuing to...
Why Titanic Sinks...
I’m not prone to writing movie reviews, nor am I a cinephile with a great depth of the history of film. I reviewed movies on the radio for a couple of years, and have spent quite a bit of time working on the fringe of the movie business, but have no other qualities that make my opinion special. None the less, with the latest revamp of Titanic, now a 3-D big deal spectacular that will have...
4 tags
No and...
At what point in history did we endow “Yes!” with such value while considering the lowly “no” with such trepidation? It was Viola Spolin, the legendary goddess of improvisation theater who coined the term “Yes and…” some 40 years ago as a methodology for creating and building “scenes” in improvised theater performances. While there is value in...
March 2012
11 posts
3 tags
Our indignant world
I don’t watch much television, and certainly ignore nearly any network news program. I don’t believe news directors have bad intentions, they need to deliver ratings, and in order to do that they have to polish up the poop to have the scoop. Still, my monkey brain feeds on the salacious and tawdry bananas that the mainstream broadcast media peels and throws at us. I can’t watch...
8 tags
1 tag
Shut up and be happy (repost)
The world continues its accelerated descent into the abyss of chaos and unrest, the Arab countries are burning with riots, Christchurch, New Zealand is in ruins, gas prices are inching towards $5 a gallon, inflation is on the rise, unions are getting the boot, unemployment remains high and mighty,the economy is still emaciated and Bieber cut his damned hair..oh my.
Things are horrible, people are...
Don't Hold Me "Accountable"!
I’ve been around this leadership and management business one too many years. I’ve always felt that the reason I’ve managed to do so well in this line of work, is because I don’t know what I don’t know. That used to be true, but I’m autodidactic, and I’ve been reading literature on leadership, engagement, management and culture for the past 12 years and now...
Bring it with you
One of the challenges of writing, at least it is for me, is keeping track of the ideas and inspirations that appear in the course of the day. The moment I actually begin putting something together on a page, I have to calibrate my awareness, and I start to notice more in the landscape around me, I hear things in conversations I didn’t before. I often find the best new thinking when I’m...
Mr Teller In Smithsonian →
February 2012
8 posts
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January 2012
7 posts
5 tags
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WatchI’ve been a “working creative” nearly my entire life. I don’t know what that means, entirely, but how I see it is that I’ve used my creative ability, whether it’s performance, improvisational theater, writing, speaking, photographic work, to advance a few ideas I’ve had about engagement, energy and collaboration. I’m not an “artist”...
My favorite things
I’m not sure I will list 2011 as one of my favorite. While there were some stunningly good highlights, a breakdown with some friends and some professional challenges for Marian, gave the year a gritty finish. At the same time, it was also the year I met Robin (my photographic partner), started a partnership with The Discovery Forum, and returned to photography as an art form.
Here are a...
December 2011
8 posts
