Did you ever wonder what it would be like to beat a world record?  We had the chance to interview world record holder Caleb McEvoy about his experience. He officially holds the world record for solving the most Rubik’s cubes while riding a unicycle. It might surprise you to learn that Caleb was only 15 years old when he conquered this record.

Caleb’s process is a perfect example of how aligning your talents with activities you enjoy, combined with gaining knowledge and practice can lead to mastery.  

His official entry in the Guinness World Records reads: "The most Rubik’s cubes solved on a unicycle is 250, achieved by Caleb McEvoy (America) in Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea, on 31 March 2018. Caleb spent over 2 hours 35 minutes on his unicycle whilst achieving his record."

Like most teenagers Caleb enjoys foods like “pizza, chicken, ice-cream and chocolate.” And like most teenagers, he is just looking for things to do that he enjoys. He is...

What is the connection between being happy and our talents? Our talents can provide insight to what truly makes us happy.

Happiness is one of the central themes of Positive Psychology—a branch of psychology that’s exploded over the last two decades. Until studying Positive Psychology, happiness was a vague concept and had preconceived notions that happy people were the ones who were always smiling and giddy—two traits that would not describe me, for example. 

Positive psychology helped expand my understanding of happiness to include other qualities: serenity, sense of fulfillment, and curiosity to name a few. While I couldn’t relate to smiling and giddiness, I could certainly relate to these three. It wasn’t long before I realized how to expand my definition of happiness.

Researcher Sonja Lyubomisrky, author of The How of Happiness, describes the happiness pie

She offers a formula: A person’s happiness = their happiness set point, + life...

Successful strengths coaching can be summed up as “the transition from contrast to alignment.” One of the most universally applicable tools in our work is based upon my observations of 20 years consulting to various organizations which boiled down to one fundamental concept: There was some degree of tension between the ways things were and the desired vision for the way things should be; and my word for that is “contrast.”

Now, contrast goes by many names: drama, discord, stress, anxiety. The causes vary but the experience of contrast is universal. It is characterized by negative emotions. It’s our hard wired way of knowing when there is contrast. The problem is that negative emotions warp our vision so we do not see clearly. While this is true, contrast provides information we cannot otherwise gain. The realization of what it is we want. If only we could suspend the tumult caused by negative emotions long enough to ask one question: If this is what I...