• Columnists

Laura Berger, Executive Coach, The Berdéo Group

COLUMN = EXECUTIVE COACHING

An executive advisor and founder of The Berdéo Group, Laura Berger has 15 years’ experience as a consultant advising leadership in the areas of global operations management and strategy, project and change management, solution development, and implementation. She is a confidant of CEOs and senior executives who consistently realize their potential as leaders to see their companies flourish.

Having worked with many Fortune 500 companies, her clients include leaders at JPMorgan Chase, State Farm Insurance, United Airlines, General Motors, Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, McDonalds Corporation, American Hospital Association, Leo Burnett Worldwide, Starcom MediaVest, and Walt Disney World. She takes great pride in assisting captains of business to bring value and creativity to their organizations.

Laura is generous in spirit when sharing what and whom she knows. She helps clients to achieve clarity and weigh alternatives, while they see and own obstacles and opportunities from the outside looking inward. Her ease and zeal for building lasting relationships, acquaintances, and productive introductions between people is her personal trademark. She has stretched her own spirit and will to combine her passions with her professional pursuits, and she shows others how to live true to their core.

Laura exemplifies this commitment to the life path in a book she is co-writing with her husband, Glen Tibaldeo, to be released in the near future. The book chronicles the humorous side of the successes and challenges they experienced living in the remote jungles of Costa Rica.

For more information, visit www.berdeogroup.com.

You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

– Steve Jobs

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

– Henry David Thoreau

‎No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

I’ve come to confirm that one’s title, even that of president, says little about how well one’s life has been led. No matter how much you’ve done, or how successful you’ve been, there’s always more to do, to learn, and to achieve.”

– Barack Obama

Don’t follow, lead. Don’t copy, create. Don’t start, finish. Don’t sit still, move. Don’t fit in, stand out. Don’t sit quietly, speak up. (Not all the time, sure, but more often.)”

– Seth Godin

The good ideas are all hammered out in agony by individuals, not spewed out by groups.”

– Charles Brower, Advertising Hall of Fame

By your stumbling the world is perfected.”

– Sri Aurobindo

Your own words are the bricks and mortar
of the dreams you want to realize.
 The words you choose and their use establish the life you experience.”

– Sonia Croquette

Ripeness is all.”

– William Shakespeare

To follow, without halt, one aim: There’s the secret of success.”

– Anna Pavlova

If you want to be busy, keep trying to be perfect. If you want to be happy, focus on making a difference.”

– Lisa Earle McLeod

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers

How do you stay resilient? It’s about momentum. Like riding a bicycle. If you stop you fall over. So I keep pedaling.”

– Diane Lane

Entrepreneurs are willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”

– Victor Kiam

Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”

– Eckhart Tolle

A lot of people have ideas, but few decide to do something about them now. Not next week. But today.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Atari

We are not meant to resolve all contradictions, but to live with them and rise above them.”

– William Blake

As each woman realizes her power, she transforms the world.”

– Patrice Wynne, WomanSpirit Sourcebook

A man without a smiling face
 should not open a shop.”

– Chinese Proverb

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”

– Helen Keller

If you would create something,
 you must be something.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I don’t do very well without fear. There needs to be a part of me saying, ‘That’s going to fail,’ so I can prove myself wrong.”

– Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. 
Now put foundations under them.”

– Henry David Thoreau

That which grows fast withers as rapidly; that which grows slowly endures.”

– J.G. Holland, novelist

The goal of Life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with nature.”

– Joseph Cambell

You only live once. But if you do it right, once is enough.”

– Mae West

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it”

– Andrew Carnegie

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

– J. Kristnhamurti, The First and Last Freedom

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”

– Thomas Edison

Don’t wait for someone else to lead you to your right life; that privilege—and responsibility—is yours alone.”

– Martha Beck

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

Remember that it’s okay to ask for help when you’re stumped, because sometimes you really can’t be expected to handle everything alone.”

– Martha Beck

Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

Things don’t change. You change your way of looking, that’s all.”

– Carlos Castaneda

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try going to sleep with a mosquito in your room.”

– A wisdomism

We are perfectionists. We are hungry to work all the time. We are entertained by every aspect of business and we never want to stop working.”

– Suzy Welch

The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”

– William James

Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what nurtures creative thinking.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.”

– John F. Kennedy

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.”

– Ajahn Chah

Some things are destined to be—it just takes us a couple of tries
to get there.”

– J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth. Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.”

– Noela Evans

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

– Magical

Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.”

– Gandi

If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”

– Jesse Jackson

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

– Anais Nin

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

– William Shakespeare

If people like you they’ll listen to you; if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

– Zig Ziglar

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.”

– Henry David Thoreau