Dan J. Harkey

Master Educator | Business & Finance Consultant | Mentor

Personal Growth & Development

Dan’s personal and professional growth guide can be a powerful tool for success. Dan's many articles cover success practices, such as goal setting and time management, sales approaches like relationship building and negotiation, time allocation, and reinventing yourself.

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“Tip of the Iceberg:” The Origin and Meaning- Expanded Read

The phrase “tip of the iceberg” is a widely used metaphor for a small, visible part of a much larger, hidden issue or structure. It evokes the image of an iceberg floating in the ocean, with only a small portion—typically about 10%—visible above the surface, while the vast majority remains submerged.

Symbolism in Bob Seger’s “Hollywood Nights” vs. “Night Moves:” Glamour, Memory, and the Price of Desire:

Bob Seger’s catalog often reads like a map of American longings. Nowhere is that clearer than in the symbolic architectures of “Hollywood Nights” (1978) and “Night Moves” (1976). One song races up canyon roads toward the glittering promise of reinvention; the other idles at a drive-in on the edge of town, where the past glows like a marquee long after the film has ended. Taken together, these tracks form a diptych about place, time, and the costs attached to our most persistent dreams.

Bob Seger: Glamour, Memory, and the Price of Desire

The symbolism of Bob Seger’s “Hollywood Nights” vs. “Night Moves”

Too Many Balls in the Air: Origin, Meaning, and How to Put a Few Down Without Dropping the Rest

“Too many balls in the air” is one of those phrases that needs no translation. You can feel it. It conjures the image of a juggler trying to keep one more ball aloft than physics—and human attention—will allow. In modern life, the idiom has become a shorthand for overcommitment, cognitive overload, and the risk of failure through excess. This article traces the expression’s roots, clarifies its meaning and nuance, and offers practical techniques for anyone who feels like a circus act in a stiff headwind.

Too Many Balls in the Air: Why This Idiom Still Hits Home

Ever feel like a circus act? That’s the essence of the phrase “too many balls in the air.” It comes from juggling, where adding one more ball makes the entire act exponentially harder. In business and life, it means overcommitment, cognitive overload, and the risk of dropping the ball on something important, leading to decreased productivity and increased stress.

Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz: An Overview

About the Book • Author: Maxwell Maltz (plastic surgeon turned self-help pioneer) • Published: 1960 • Core Idea: Your self-image determines your success, happiness, and behavior. Change your self-image, and you change your life.

“Rising Tides Lift All Boats.” How Does This Apply to Income Inequality?

The phrase “a rising tide lifts all boats” is often used to suggest that overall economic growth benefits everyone. However, when we look at income inequality, the picture is more nuanced:

She Insisted on Pink Because Her Pronoun Is “She.”

Workplace Flirtation Across the Decades: A Cultural Series

Our Truth-seeking Institutions are Under a Coordinated Siege of Sabotage: We are facing a Critical Infrastructure Breakdown that demands our immediate attention.

Our societal fabric, once woven with truth and the American way, is now being torn apart by systemic illusions. These illusions, crafted for the pursuit of power, preference, free stuff, and money, are creating a mass hysteria, to a point of mass mental illness, that is profoundly impacting our society, threatening the very core of our values and beliefs. Mass illusions turn to mass hysteria, which turns to mass mental illness.

Defining Deviancy Up and Down:

Deviency occurs from sociological and cultural discussions about shifting standards of acceptable behavior. Daniel Patrick Moynihan popularized it in his 1993 essay, “Defining Deviancy Down,” and later others expanded on the idea of “defining deviancy up.”

Defined Deviancy Down—meaning behaviors once considered unacceptable have become normalized or tolerated: Quick Read

Regular and Corporate Board Meetings: The Structure and Execution

Avoid turning a Board Meeting into a Bored Meeting. Some board meetings meander all over the place, frustrating everyone from the leader to the participants.

Unitrol: The Healing Magic of the Mind

Alfred J. Cantor’s 1965 Blueprint for Mental Mastery and Self Healing

Bite Off More Than You Can Chew: A Modern Idiom Explored

The phrase “bite off more than you can chew” is a vivid idiom that has endured for over a century, maintaining its relevance across generations and contexts. It serves as a cautionary metaphor for overcommitment, unrealistic ambition, and the consequences of taking on more than one can reasonably handle.

Dealing with Sociopaths in the Business World

A sociopath is generally understood as someone with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), a condition characterized by persistent patterns of disregard for others and social norms.

Regulatory and Law Overreach Enslavement: When Rules Become Shackles-Technical Read

Regulatory and Law overreach enslavement occurs when legal frameworks and administrative rules expand beyond their intended scope, imposing excessive restrictions on individual or business autonomy. This form of captivity is systemically rooted in bureaucracy and compliance mandates rather than brute force.

Bobby McGee: Written by Kris Kristofferson- Part II

Freedom Is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose. A few lines in music capture the paradox of liberty like the refrain from Me and Bobby McGee:

Off the Hook: A Dive into This Versatile Phrase

“Off the hook” is a versatile phrase that can mean escaping responsibility or describing something amazing. It’s a phrase that sounds casual but packs a lot of meaning, making it fun and engaging in everyday conversations.

Bobby McGee: Freedom Is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose- The Paradox

Few lines in American music have captured the tension between liberty and loss as vividly as Kris Kristofferson’s phrase, immortalized by Janis Joplin in Me and Bobby McGee: