Showing results by narrator "Jim Petersen" in All Categories

We paint our lives with our nose against the canvas. Every stop adds a color, both the ones we choose and the ones we never would have chosen, and we stand too close to todays color to see what the whole picture has been composing all along. In early 2026, a longtime colleague told Jim Petersen...

Most of us are waiting for happiness to arrive....The promotion, the relationship that finally works, the calendar to clear. We plan our lives around a feeling just past the next milestone. The surprise is getting there and feeling nothing. Author Jim Petersen spent four decades as a Naval Academy graduate, nuclear submarine officer, and executive coach, watching this pattern play out in the lives of high-achieving, deeply committed people. He found their goals weren’t wrong —they were looking in the wrong direction.

On January 23rd, 1967, Lt. Colonel Barry Bridger and his copilot, Dave Grey, launched a mission over Vietnam in their Phantom F-4 fighter jet in treacherous weather. It was Colonel Bridger’s 75th mission and the only one he had attempted in the daylight hours. Suddenly, his plane was split in half by a ground-to-air missile. He and Grey ejected while the plane was going 600 miles per hour and began their descent into the unknown below. When Bridger finally landed on terra firma, he found the North Vietnamese army waiting for him.

The Barking Dog Pound is in crisis. Donations have dried up. The city council is ready to shut the doors. And the dogs who call this place home are running out of time. Mr. Big, the beloved Great Dane, has always been their cheerleader—but popularity can’t fix a broken budget.

When effort doesn’t match outcome, what do you do next? You did the work, built the case, followed the rules—and still got passed over, rejected, or ignored. Welcome to life, where perception trumps proof, and where “fairness” is optional.