Too many of us are locked in self-consciousness. We worry about how we will be perceived by friends and family, or colleagues, or that great nameless, faceless mass of folks known as “the public.” Anxiety of that kind is the enemy of creativity because creativity requires the courage to be judged. Whether writing or painting […]
I want you to be wildly creative. What does that mean? It means that you’re not going to get anywhere staying in your lane and thinking what you’ve been taught to think and doing the things you’ve been told to do, because they’re safe, predictable or make you look productive. If you’re going to actually […]
ASK YOURSELF ONE TWO-WORD QUESTION When I began writing novels, I reached out to a writing coach named Gary Provost. Gary, who has since passed away, had a remarkable talent for simplifying the process of creating storylines. It was partly because of his excellent guidance that I began my Frank Clevenger series of mysteries. Gary […]
PLAY YOUR GAME! (Or How to Keep Your Self-Esteem High, when the Rewards Only Come Later) One of my favorite scenes in a movie is the scene in Miracle, when Kurt Russell, playing U.S. Olympic hockey team coach Herb Brooks, yells at his players, “Play your game!” The last minutes of the now famous U.S. […]
HERE’S HOW So many of my counseling clients (The Ablow Center) and creative consulting clients (Keith Ablow Creative) can envision the next chapter of their life stories, but need some help actualizing the next chapter. Why? Sometimes it’s about resources, but very often it is about the resolve to let go of something they have, […]
I recently was fortunate to have my book To Wrestle with Demons: A Psychiatrist Struggles to Understand His Patients and Himself published in a leather-bound collector’s edition by Gryphon Editions’ Classics of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Library Holding the book in my hands made me think a little bit about the moment at which we […]
Boston, MA For Immediate Release According to a recent Veteran’s Department study, more than 20 veterans and active duty personnel commit suicide each day. A prior VA study put that number closer to 22. The toll of military service could not be starker than the way it manifests in those men and women who come […]
The great novelist J.D. Salinger got a lot of things right. Among them, he wrote that one of the only questions that will be asked of us when we die is this: Were most of your stars out? Now, obviously, no one can know God’s plans for us. And I am sure I have readers […]
None of us has time or words to spare, when you really think about it. Our lives on the planet are brief, and our opportunities to impact others are not infinite. Given this, I want to share three ways I believe you can truly move people when you interact with them, whether in your personal […]
There are plenty of resources that provide advice on delivering a speech and which focus on organizing the material, providing visuals, selecting a topic and being a commanding presence. My advice is more ambitious: What keys make a speech something that changes people, in meaningful ways, within the scope of 20 or 30 or 60 […]