Author Archives: Matt Balleza

For me, the beginning of a new novel project is a little bit chaotic – it reminds me of the art studios in elementary school with the long paint-splattered tables and the big coffee tins of moist paint brushes and pottery kilns and random piles of rumpled canvas and smocks. Yes, definitely smocks. It’s colorfulContinue reading “Show and tell: What I’m working on”

A lesson in perspective. Occasionally, not every time, I get dreamy on planes. I mean, I get that little twinge of excitement at liftoff as the plane lurches off the planet and we get airborne. The big city shrinks and the loud belching highways turn to silent silver threads scrawled across the land. The land!Continue reading “The Mind on Airplane Mode”

What words have changed your life for good? Who spoke them? In my previous post I suggested we remember these words – the blessings we’ve received over the years, and call them out of hiding. We should use them like buoys to guide us on the blustery seas of life. If done intently, this isContinue reading “Living up to ourselves – Pt. 2”

Furrowed somewhere at the back of our minds we have a catalog of the things people have said to us. Beautiful and horrible things. And also magnificent truckloads of nonsense like, Hey, have you seen my Bieber tshirt? Most of that nonsense passes out of the system, but the other stuff – the compliments andContinue reading “Living up to ourselves – Pt. 1”

Regarding work and ways of working, there are certain stock phrases that populate my mind readily. ‘Don’t make extra work for yourself’. ‘Work smarter, not harder’. I don’t know when or where I absorbed these nostrums, but they are so second nature by now I hardly think of them. They can all be boiled downContinue reading “The Joys of Making Work for Yourself”

Years ago I made friends with cuddly pessimist — the kind of person who sighs for pleasure and enjoys being enraged and eats happy people for breakfast. Naturally, I delighted in this person. Being myself less disposed to dour visions of the world, I nonetheless found their dourness amusing, even amiable. Whenever we met, itContinue reading “Pessimism, Persuasion, and the Nimble Art of Priming”

I’ve been thinking of a conversation I had a while back with one of my mentees, a guy who played baseball in college. I wanted to know if there was anyone on the team who, baseball skills aside, stood out, who all the other guys respected — a motivational outlier. He said yes, there wasContinue reading “Get to: how to build a better attitude with two words”

The other day I had an experience which reminded me how contagious our attitudes are and how deadly despair is. I was standing in line at the dollar store waiting to check out. The man in front of me was next in line. He was plucking a huge bouquet of bright, colorful, fake flowers fromContinue reading “Disarming despair”

I’ve noticed a change in the way my friends talk about the future; especially the way they talk about their future careers. Many of them who years ago laid out long, detailed projections of their career path – companies they wanted to work for, dream roles they wanted to have, advanced degrees they needed toContinue reading “Being proactive”

A few days after I posted an article on the connection between delight and work, I watched an awesome video about the musician, Jack Johnson. The video, which is part mini-documentary, part acoustic jam sesh, not only elevates my respect for the King of chill, but elaborates my so called ‘theory of delight’. I wantContinue reading “How to delight: a lesson from Jack Johnson”