Alan C. Fox's Blog, page 28

Many people never say “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry for them because they are going to offend people in the same way the next time around. I’m sorry for those other people because they’re going to be offended again. This hurts relationships.

When my wife, Daveen, and I arrived home late Saturday evening after a full day – a play in the afternoon, dinner with friends, then a musical in the evening – she said, “You seem distant. Does that have anything to do with me?”

“Yes, it does.”

“What?”

“At dinner wh...

How many times in your life have you sung the “If Only” blues? You know how it goes:

“If only I had won the lottery.”

“If only my customer had completed the purchase.”

“If only my parents had . . . ”

Each of these refrains share one common chord: “The problems in my life are outside of me, and therefore beyond my control.”(A companion solo piece is the “Poor Me” symphony for an orchestra of one—you.)

I seldom sing the “If Only” blues, but whenever I do I quickly remind myself that, in doing so, I...

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I am often asked, “What is your favorite People Tool?” My answer changes from day to day because I have many favorites. If you want to make your life easier, however, then try “Stuff It into Your Sub.”

When I was a freshman in college I read one paragraph in my Psych 101 textbook which presented an idea I have used with outstanding success ever since. I have to admit that in college my primary goal was not to learn anything. I just wanted to get the best grades I could, with minimum effort. Ye...

I’m reflecting on the play A Trip to Bountiful, in which an elderly lady escapes the slammer of her son’s big-city apartment to revisit the rural home of her youth. Tom Wolfe, who wrote You Can’t Go Home Again, published after his death, might have forewarned her to expect a ramshackle building rather than the childhood home in her memory. Tom says it all changes, leaving only a remnant in each of us.

A woman named Jill and I lived together more than forty years ago. We never intended to marry...

I’m more than a little angry tonight and if it shows, it should. I’m seventy-four years old and I have no time for excuses, either from myself or others. An excuse is entertaining. Other than that it accomplishes less than nothing. And I’ve heard too many excuses this week, including the following:

From an escrow officer who failed to close a sale on time: “My staff and I have worried about this for two weeks, and all of us have spent many sleepless nights.” Perhaps they should read the chapte...

In the 1976 movie, The Marathon Man, the hero “Babe” Levy, played by Dustin Hoffman, is restrained in a dental chair. The demented dentist, played by Laurence Olivier, is torturing him with a dental drill. While Olivier is drilling into Hoffman’s teeth, he keeps repeating the question, “Is it safe?”

Is what safe? Hoffman’s character doesn’t have a clue what the dentist is talking about and it looks like “bye-bye” teeth.

I’m going to turn this scene around and apply it to real life. How many tim...

One Sunday afternoon when I was a kid, my family drove to the beach. I had more energy than sense, swam out into the ocean, and was promptly slammed to the sand by a huge wave. I ran, crying, to my mother.

“Mommy. Mommy. I have something in my eye. I have something in my eye!”

She examined my right eye. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s there. It hurts, Mommy. It hurts me.”

“Maybe it’s a grain of sand.”

She took me by my hand to a drug store, bought some eye wash, and showed me how to use it. Finally,...