I’ve been asking people inside and outside Microsoft what their definition is of … the good life. I think it’s important, so you know what it is when you’ve got it, or you know what is is that you’re chasing, so you can make smarter choices.

Some things bounce back, and some things don’t … Sometimes the right metaphor helps us see things in a new way, or just right. In his 30 second speech on work-life balance, Brian Dyson (CEO of Coca Cola) gives us a powerful metaphor for thinking about what bounces back, and what does not:

“Life is a big canvas, throw all the paint on it you can.” — Danny Kaye

The Web is a fountain of knowledge, especially if you know where to drink from. This post is a quick tour of some of the main sites I use that make me think.

“If I tell you I love you, can I keep you forever?” – Casper

When you’re in love the birds sing, the sun shines, and the flowers bloom. When you’re broken hearted, the world turns cold and black.

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I decided to put together a collection of love quotes for your browsing pleasure. I reached far and wide across songs, movies, and famous people to find some of the best quotable quotes.

Editor’s note: Meet Nadia Ballas-Ruta. Nadia is author of the bountiful blog, Happy Lotus, and her super skill is spirituality. She was trained by a Buddhist master and this turned out to be one of her most powerful, life changing events. Nadia fondly recalls this as meeting her Master Yoda, the way Luke Skywalker did in Star Wars.

While working on my latest book, I had more than a few people ask me about spirituality. They wanted a succinct explanation or a simple model. I started going through various definitions, models, and testing what I could find. Here’s what I arrived at …

This is a guest post from bestselling author, Michael Michalko. Michael’s super skill is creative thinking. In fact, he organized a team of intelligence specialists to research, collect, and categorize all known inventive-thinking methods.

To the right is a drawing. What does it look like to you?

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” — Maria Robinson

A simple way to think about designing your life is — your job, your village, and your hut. These three together shape a large part of your every day experiences. Your job is what you do, your village is where you hang out and who you spend your time with, and your hut is your family and your home.

Movies can be an amazing source of insight and inspiration. They fill our hearts and heads with heroes, stories, songs, and scenes we can draw from.

Maybe you think of the theme song to Rocky when you work out. Maybe you think of “waxing the car” or “painting the fence” while you master your craft. What’s important is that you choose the stories, scenes or heroes that serve you.

Here is a sampling of 16 movies and what they can teach us about life and leadership:

I’m back from my epic adventure. I took a 30 day road trip with my wife across the U.S. from WA to N.J. to Key West to Las Vegas … 10,000 miles and 26 states. It’s a fairly unique experience and perspective, so I’ll share it here with you.

I’ll be back. Rather than keep it indefinite, let’s just say I’ll be back in November. Every now and then I take some down time. It’s one of my renewal patterns. It’s partly why I like doing projects and why I like the change of seasons. Great down time, helps me with great up time. I remember Deepak Chopra once saying something like the child sleeps so well, because the child plays so hard.

So tell me … are you feeling lucky? You can build a “lucky mindset” that either works for you or against you. If you think the world conspires with you, or if you think the world conspires against you, you’re right. Your views on luck can dramatically influence your success.

If you know the cycle you’re in, you can make more effective decisions. You can anticipate instead of react. I’ve been trying to get a handle on the economy to know what to expect and to figure out what the best moves are. The New Economy Cycle is apparently one of the most important financial planning cycles for your life, your investments, and your business. It’s less about the day to day decisions, and more about the big structural decisions you make in your life, such as where to live, what jobs to do, what to learn in school, … etc.

When it comes to sleep patterns, some people really are night owls or early birds. According to John Medina in the book, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School , 30 % of the population is an owl or a lark (an early bird in scientific literature.) The rest of us are called hummingbirds where some of us are more owlish and some are more larkish and some are in between.

Here they are, my top 10 life lessons boiled down. I regularly ask people I know for their 10 best lessons in life. Everybody has lessons to share whether it’s about their best skill or it’s their life lessons learned. I figured since I regularly ask people for their best lessons, I might share some of mine. This particular set is the result of me thinking really hard for 10 minutes (at which point I had to send my email), so they are likely to change as I give them more thought.

In this video, the “Last Lecture,” Randy Pausch talks about his dreams, enabling the dreams of others, and what lets you get to achieve your dreams.  The idea of the last lecture is a hypothetical question, “if you knew were going to die, and you had one last lecture, what would you say to your students?”  For Randy, it wasn’t hypothetical.  He was fighting pancreatic cancer.  This talk is not about death, though.  It’s about life and how to live.  Specifically, it’s about achieving childhood dreams and about how you …

In my previous post, I wrote about the power of Hot Spots. In this post, I’ll show you how I apply Hot Spots to life. These are the categories I use for skilled living. This is the big picture. It’s how I chunk up my overall time and energy. There are certain areas in life that if I invest in, I get rewarded. On the other hand, if I ignore these categories, I get penalized.

I’ve been thinking of my life as a business. Without getting too carried away with the analogy – after all, life’s way more than business – it gives me a helpful frame, along with patterns and practices, to draw from. Rather than think of a business that makes money, I think of a business that creates value (the mark of an enduring business.) In this case, value for yourself and others.

Unleash a version of your best self — quickly find your purpose, values, and personal success patterns.

Whenever I hear people debating whether life is an intelligent design or an evolutionary process, I can’t help but think that evolution is an intelligent design! When I think of design, I don’t think of veneer or appearance. Instead, I think of it as the soul of a thing, a sort of creator’s signal of intention.