Jeff Vankooten | Motivational Keynote Speaker

Play like Jeremy Lin: The one way to be famous

mazeway@earthlink.net — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 05:23:00 +0000

The recent wave of hysteria surrounding Jeremy Lin has been fascinating. It doesn’t hurt he has a last name that can be used for all sorts of wordplay: linsanity, lindercella, linoleum, etc. It only adds to the furor. Everyone’s been asking who the heck this guy is and how did he rise so suddenly to [...]

Eighteen Most Common Self-Defeating Behaviors

mazeway@earthlink.net — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:02:47 +0000

Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. It’s not that we can’t be successful and find fulfillment in life. It’s that we too easily sabotage our attempts to do so. Here are eighteen behaviors that can get the better of us and prevent us from thriving. Procrastinating. If you’re always late on completing tasks, people [...]

Flash of a scabby fish knife

mazeway@earthlink.net — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:31:03 +0000

This was written by Calvin Seerveld, the uncle of my best friend. It’s a reminder to me of the power of small acts and the significance of work no matter how mundane. Heck, washing the dishes can be a sacred act… My father is a seller of fish. We children know the business too having [...]

The Lesson of the Moth

mazeway@earthlink.net — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:27:12 +0000

i was talking to a moth the other evening. he was trying to break into an electric light bulb and fry himself on the wires. why do you fellows pull this stunt, i asked him, because it is the conventional thing for moths or why if that had been an uncovered candle instead of an [...]

Like Rip Van Winkle Waking Up

mazeway@earthlink.net — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:57:17 +0000

In an essay entitled, “The Man on the Train”, Walker Percy recounts the life of a man very much in control. He gets up at the same time every morning, eats the same breakfast, goes to work taking the same train at the same time. He manages his routines carefully at work and goes home [...]

Tactics for Tough Times: Practice Bricolage

mazeway@earthlink.net — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:47:39 +0000

An oxygen tank in the service module of the ill-fated Apollo 13 space capsule ruptured and the astronauts were slowly asphyxiating from a build up carbon dioxide gas. The NASA engineers on the ground in Houston were tasked with creating a filtration system using only the materials that were available to the Apollo 13 astronauts. [...]

Tactics for Tough Times: Don’t Go it Alone

mazeway@earthlink.net — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:23:20 +0000

Our country values the myth of the “rugged individualist”. We are enamored with the resolve of one person to succeed in the midst of adversity. We have been socialized through cultural influences to believe that we, too, must be a rugged individualist. In fact, popular culture perpetuates the message that you are the most important [...]

Is Depression worth it?

mazeway@earthlink.net — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:16:59 +0000

I read a very interesting article in the New York Times. It investigated a question I’ve asked for a long time: Is there an evolutionary advantage to depression? In other words, why is it still around? Does its hanging around confer an advantage to live stronger lives? Because of my bipolar disorder, I’ve lived with [...]

Tactics for Tough Times: Take time to think

mazeway@earthlink.net — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:09:05 +0000

There’s concern we’re googling more and thinking less. When an answer is an easy mouse click away, we don’t need to do the hard work of thinking through an answer ourselves. With an increasing amount of information being offered through an unending array of choices, we tend to become numb to it all. We can [...]

Tactics for Tough Times: Let go of what’s going away

mazeway@earthlink.net — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:21:19 +0000

There is always a renewed sense of purpose and resolve when we begin a new year. We try to put the stale year behind us and move forward into a new fresh one. But it isn’t always easy. In fact, we get pretty enamored with old, ineffectual ways of doing things. They become like our [...]