If we could cross pollinate the optimist and the pessimist, we might get a working hybrid, one that the true optimist already embodies either consciously or unconsciously.

Too many people deny the possibilities of an optimistic view, rejecting the notion of taking a positive approach to life as "looking at life through rose-colored glasses."

Are we in fact dreaming, or finding ways to discount and distort what this younger set is saying over and over? They are clearly angry, and it might benefit us all if we took some time to just listen more carefully.

Overcoming obstacles on the job is no easy task. If it were everyone would have done it already.

Ask yourself what your life might look like if going to work was the best and most empowering aspect of being alive.

As 2011 gets underway, Russell Bishop, Senior Editor at Large of The Huffington Post and author of "Workarounds That Work," draws on his own times of adversity as sources of strength, optimism and creativity.

When we hit obstacles in life, too often we are tempted to get angry or give up. The best and usually least used alternative is to "workaround" that obstacle.

Though our daily lives are filled with work and work-related activities, we rarely contemplate our work process.

How you frame a problem is the problem, says Russell Bishop, Senior Editor at Large of The Huffington Post and author of "Workarounds That Work: How t...

Led by gratitude and with spirit stronger than ever, I welcome this new year with only the best of intentions. I hope I will continue to see you along my path, no matter where I go or how I get there.

WE need to take responsibility for our lives. We need to band together and form communities of people helping each other, rather than expecting help to come from outside, because it's not coming, folks.

It should also be clear that simply holding the positive thought that there's a good job out there for you won't be enough to land it either -- you still have to get off your "buts" and do something.

As you build a track record of making and keeping commitments, you will build a more substantial base of personal integrity from which to live your life. Even if no one else notices, you will!

"I'm a truthful, upstanding person of strong moral character. I just happen to lie sometimes." Could this be what you have to tell yourself in order to become a (politician, business person, etc) in today's world?

Pursuing perfection can lead to perfection paralysis. There will always be one more iteration, one more change that will help move things along. But moving things along is motion, not perfection.

Impeccable is taking integrity to a whole other level. I can't explain the mechanism involved, but when I put those words down on paper it created a powerful experience -- a profound consciousness shift.

Self interest seems to trump "doing what is right," dragging the world into more and more of the kind of "caveat emptor" thinking that helped created the economic crisis that seems to pervade life these days.

Listening to understand is quite different from listening to prove a point, pick a fight, or win an argument. The real point of listening has to do with what the underlying message or meaning is.

My limited understanding of Hellenistic philosophy suggests that cynicism originally developed as an approach to life intended to deliver happiness and freedom in an age of uncertainty.

This is no longer simply a conversation about "saving the planet." It is a conversation about our own survival and about having lives worth living. It is about creating a world that is habitable.

One of my mentors puts it this way: a negative situation is already sufficiently negative without having you add negativity to it.