Get out of Your Head, by Jennie Allen

“How we think shapes how we life.” (pg 5).

“75 to 98 percent of mental, physical, and behavioral illness comes from one’s thought life” (pg 6).

“What we believe and what we think about matters” (pg 10).

“Every lie we buy into about ourselves is rooted in what we believe about God” (pg 15).

“Doubt steals hope. And with no hope, everything that matters doesn’t feel as important anymore” (pg 23).

“Our fixations come out in our words, in our feelings, our decisions. They are the focus of the books we read, the podcasts we subscribe to, the websites we scour, the groups we join, and the obsessions we pursue” (pg 41).

“What we think about, our brains become” (pg 42).

“Because for all the good that self-help does, that help always come up short in the end” (pg 55).

“We don’t simply need our spiraling thought to stop; we need our minds to be redeemed.

Bondage necessitates rescue.
Oppression needs to be lifted.
Blindness waits for sight.
Waywardness must be transformed

We are not made to think more good thoughts about ourselves. We are made to experience life and peace as we begin to think less about ourselves and more about our Creator and about others” (pg 56).

“We build entire narratives that begin to take on lives of their own based on assumptions and our overactive imaginations - all because we attend to fears, attend distractions, attend to worst-case scenarios” (pg 76).

“Help me see things not as they seem to me but as they truly are” (pg 81).

“No lie is more often believed than the lie that we can know God without someone else knowing us” (pg 87).

“We weren’t made to celebrate victory alone. We weren’t made to suffer hardship alone. We weren’t made to walk through the dailiness of life alone. We weren’t made to be alone with our thoughts. We were made to reach out, to connect, to stay tethered. We were made to live together in the light” (pg 93).

“The irony here is that many of the people you think don’t care about your are feeling the very same way”. . . so “go be the botherer first. Reach out. Take the risk. Say what you’re feeling. Listen well. Be the friend you wish others would be for you” (pg 103).

“I think it is a gift that God built our bodies to send us signals that we might be spiraling in a dangerous direction” (pg 107).

“God is real. He is not going anywhere, even if my mind jumps to all kind of dark places. I can’t rely on my thoughts or feelings to hold my faith in place. God holds my faith in place” (pg 116).

“Cynicism puts our minds on things of this earth, and we lose hope. Beauty points our gaze toward the heavens and reminds us of hope” (pg 135).

“When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly . . . Jesus did nothing wrong and held His tongue when falsely accused” (pg 147).

“When we’re not busy being consumed with our own selves, we notice other people in the world, people we might be able to serve. We see them with fresh perspective. We see their fragility and their need” (pg 160).

“Victimhood is yet another enemy of our minds that keeps us fixated on something other than the God of the universe, believing the lie that we are at the mercy of circumstances” (pg 169).

It is What You Make of It: Justin McRoberts

“We dishonor our creator when we give in to “it is what it is” thinking (pg xi).

“Time never healed a single wound without the loving, attentive way people have spent that time after hurting one another” (pg xii).

“When I give in to ‘it is what it is’ thinking, I dishonor the creative, redemptive, and loving God who made me and holds me together” (pb 4).

“Human history is shaped by the ideas, the dreams, and ultimately the will and work of the women and men who actively create, tear down, reimagine, and rebuild” (pg 6).

May we have friends who are “people who believe in who you are becoming, long-term - who believe it enough to invest and stay and celebrate along the way” (pg 21, 22).

“We are being shaped into people who make things that look as though God was involved rather than people who sit around expecting things to fall out of the sky, untouched by human hands” (pg 32).

“What are you going to do with the time, talent, resources, and relationships you have on hand?” (pg 33).

“How many projects or dreams or relationships are lying around your life in some form of disarray because you never took a moment to let yourself actually be disappointed and then, after a spell, got back up to see what you ahve on hand and started to tinker . . .

and build

and laugh

and disassemble

and talk

and plan

and tinker again

and build . . .

and eventually become the kind of person who makes the things you want to make - the kinds of things God created you to make?” (pg 34).

Peter “wasn’t just an accumulation of his mistakes; he wasn’t defined by his wrongdoings” (pg 43).

“Nobody was thinking about whether or not I’d done a good job - not even Jeff. Nobody in the room was thinking about me at all. I really liked that feeling. I might have even loved that feeling. The feeling of having been part of something beautiful” (pg 99).

“If Seth Godin is right that art is anything you and I make that helps forge a connection between people, then love is the primary characteristic of good art. Is it interesting? That’s good. Is it well done? That’s excellent. Are people loved by you in and through it? That’s art” (pg 121).

“Do I love it enough to learn to do it differently (maybe for the hundredth time)?
Do I love the people I do it with or for enough to take my injury seriously but not take it personally so that I don’t become resentful?” (pg 132).

I hadn’t felt capable of making something ‘better’ out of my circumstances. So I changed my circumstances and made something smaller. Turns out I made something more human” (pg 158).

“Like it or not, you are the gift you are always giving in and through the things you make and do. That will forever be true, and there is nothing you can do about it. On the other hand, there is plenty you can do about who you are and who you’d like to become. So, when things go sideways (because they will, beloved; over and over, things will fall apart), you’ll get the change to find out who you really are. I pray you fall in love with that person and believe you’re worth passing on. And may that, more than any set of circumstances or glorious setup, grant you confidence and assurance to adapt and create and reinvent and rethink and tear down and build back up” (pg 162).

Questions to Consider:

1. What hopes and dreams do you have for someone? Would you consider telling them the potential you see in them, and the person you can imagine them becoming?

2. What plan has gone sideways or maybe not even made if off the ground, and how can allowing disappointment, sadness, and frustration actually help you move on?

3. Once the dust settles and you’ve been able to grieve, what needs to happen next before you are able to take a realistic and thankful look at what you have on hand and start working from there?

4. What plans need to change, or what dreams might have to die (at least in part), in order for you to change and become completely a person God designed you to be?

5. What can you honestly say you love doing? Not just what makes you feel good, but what makes you feel like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself?

6. When have your strengths and gifts and talents drowned out the voices of others in the places you’ve worked or served? In the future, which of your gifts and talents could you add to (not take over) a project that isn’t yours?

7. Maybe you’ve been quiet too often when you should have spoke up about something you love doing. What is worth standing up for and being louder about? And how can you work with egotistical loudmouths?

8. What does it look like for your work to be an act of love - not sentimental feeling, but service and care and attention toward other humans?

9. What work have you done that did not communicate love? Why did that happen?

10. Where and when have you felt cared for because of the way someone did their job? What made you feel that way? How did it motivate you to do your work?

11. What would it look like for you to take interpersonal or professional injuries seriously while not taking them personally?

The Choice: Embrace the Possible, by Dr Edith Eva Eger

“When we force our truths and stories into hiding, secrets can become their own trauma, their own prison. Far from diminishing pain, whatever we deny ourselves the opportunity to accept and becomes an inescapable as brick walls and steel bars. When we don’t allow ourselves to grieve our losses, wounds, and disappointments, we are doomed to keep reliving them.
Freedom lies in learning to embrace what happened. Freedom means we muster the courage to dismantle the prison, brick by brick” (pg 6).

“Why is it such a challenge to bring life to life?” (pg 7.

“We are hungry. We are hungry for approval, attention, affection. We are hungry for the freedom to embrace life and to really know and be ourselves” (pg 7).

“There is no hierarchy of suffering . . . being a survivor, being a ‘thriver’ requires absolute acceptance of what was and what is. If we discount our pain, or punish ourselves for feeling lost or isolated or scared about the challenges in our lives, however insignificant these challenges may seem to someone else, then we’re still choosing to be victims” (pg 8).

“The little upsets in our lives are emblematic of the larger losses; the seemingly insignificant worries are representative of greater pain” (pg 9).

“We can choose what the horror teaches us. To become bitter in our grief and fear. Hostile. Paralyzed. Or to hold on to the childlike part of us, the lively and curious part, the part that is innocent” (pg 42).

“There is always a worse hell” (pg 65).

“Each moment is a choice. No matter how frustrating or boring or constraining or painful or oppressive our experience, we can always choose how we respond” (pg 156).

“Learned helplessness: when we feel we have no control over our circumstances, when we believe that nothing we do can alleviate our suffering or improve our lives, we stop taking action on our own behalf because we believe there is no point . . . Suffering is inevitable and universal. But how we respond to suffering differs” (pg 170).

“To change our behavior, we must change our feelings, and to change our feelings, we change our thoughts” (pg. 171).

“Freedom is about CHOICE - about choosing compassion, humor, optimism, intuition, curiosity, and self expression” (pg 173).

“Very often it is the crisis situation . . . that actually improves us as human beings. Paradoxically, whle these incidents can sometimes ruin people, they are usually growth experiences. As a result of such calamities the person often makes a major reassessment of his life situation and changes it in ways that reflect a deeper understanding of his own capabilities, values, and goals” (pg 174).

“It’s important to assign blame to the perpetrators. Nothing is gained if we close our eyes to wrong, if we give someone a pass, if we dismiss accountability” (pg 175).

“It’s easier to hold someone or something else responsible for your pain than to take responsibility for ending your own victimhood . . . most of us want a dictator - albeit a benevolent one - so we can pass the buck, so we can say, “You made me do that. It’s not my fault.” But we can’t spend our lives hanging out under someone else’s umbrella and then complain that we’re getting wet. A good definition of being a victim is when you keep the focus outside yourself, when you look outside yourself for someone to blame for your present circumstances, or to determine your purpose, fate, or worth” (pg 204).

“This is the work of healing. You deny what hurts, what you fear. You avoid it at all costs. Then you find a way to welcome and embrace what you’re most afraid of. And then you can finally let it go” (pg 209).

“It is too easy to make a prison out of our pain, out of the past. At best, revenge is useless. It can’t alter what was done to us, it can’t erase the wrongs I’ve suffered, it can’t bring back the dead. At worst, revenge perpetuates the cycle of hate. It keeps the hate circling on and on. When we seek revenge, even nonviolent revenge, we are revolving, not evolving . . . To forgive is to grieve - for what happened, for what didn’t happen - and to give up the need for a different past. To accept life as it was and as it is” (pg 212).

“Doing what is right is rarely the same as doing what is safe” (pg 255”

“There is no forgiveness without rage” (pg. 258).

“Time doesn’t heal. It’s what you do with the time. Healing is possible when we choose to take responsibility, when we choose to take risks, and finally, when we choose to release the wound, to let go of the past or the grief” (pg 263).

“There is the wound. And there is what comes out of it” (pg 269).

“We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but no one can take away from you what you put in your own mind” (pg 271).

“To run away from the past or to fight against our present pain is to imprison ourselves. Freedom is in accepting what is and forgiving ourselves, in opening our hearts to discover the miracles that exist now . . . You can’t change what happened, you can’t change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose how you live now” (pg. 272).

You can also listen to her story on this Brene Brown episode. So good.

Grade: A

Books can often be defined by the time of life with which you read them. This one, assuming everyone has endured pain and suffering to some extent at some point in their lives, is a must read for everyone. Powerful, purposeful, and extremely helpful in healing, forgiving, and moving on.

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Teach, Reflect, Learn : by Pete Hall and Alisa Simeral

“Having a high-quality teacher, even for one year, can have a tremendous impact across many measures” (pg 7).

“How do we accomplish lofty goals? . . . We engage in rigorous, ongoing self-reflection about our professional responsibilities” (pg 13).

“Doing the right thing matters: self-reflection matters more” (pg 14).

“The difference between learning a skill and being able to implement it effectively resides in our capacity to engage in deep, continuous, rigorous thought about that skill” (pg 15).

“We’re better served when we’re oriented toward a learning goal (learning strategies to better address the needs of individual learners) rather than performance goals (increasing the percentage of proficient students on a unit of assessment)” (pg 19).

“Intentional thought contributes to effective teaching” (pg 21).

“Being unaware is not a sign of weakness; it’s only a sign of weakness if you don’t do something about it” (pg 47).

“Education is famous for its pendulum swings that create a chorus of ‘This too shall pass’ in the staff lounge. We’re actually promoting the idea you should learn as much as you can about every initiative so you can better evaluate the effectiveness of each” (pg 47).

“An enormously important key for building intentionality into your repertoire is to write it down. All of it” (pg 53).

Grade: A

Time does not heal. Nor does it make us better, necessarily. Intentional time with constant reflection is how we heal, how we grow, and how improve. This book is a great reminder how to do that, as leaders, teachers, and individuals.

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May It Be So, by Justin McRoberts : Forty Days with the Lord's Prayer

“Not having my life together meant losing my place in line.”

This book stumbled upon my doorstep. I don’t remember ordering it, but it came at just the right time. And for a man who struggles with religion, who has endured more pain from those who “follow Christ” and attend His church and proclaim His name, this book was a glass of cool water to the soul. It brought me back to the basics of prayer and life and living. It reminded me of who I am and who He is.

It inspired me to hope.

Some of my favorites:

“My I offer help more readily and joyfully than I offer critique.”

“May I never allow disappointment to lead me into despair but always toward a more resilient and active hope.”

“May I have vision in and through my seasons of trial rather than search for ways to escape.”

“May I have the wisdom to exchange control and safety for the opportunity to love and serve.”

“May I have the wisdom and patience to let questions planted in me wait, rest, and germinate rather than anxiously harvest answers whose season has not come.”

“May the fear of being afraid never keep me from facing the things I am afraid of.”

“May I allow guilt to convict me without letting shame define me.”

Grade: A+

Without a doubt. Especially for those lost in the midst of pain and suffering or overcome by the weight of doubt and despair. A great devotional/morning read of encouragement.

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Givers and Takers, by Adam Grant

“Everytime we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?” (pg. 4).

“Givers and takers differ in their attitudes and actions towards other people. If you’re a taker, you help others strategically, when the benefits to you outweigh the personal costs. If you’re a giver, you might use a different cost-benefit analysis: you help whenever the benefits to others exceed the personal costs . . . if you’re a giver at work, you simply strive to be generous in sharing your time, energy, knowledge, skills, ideas, and connections with other people who can benefit from them” (pg 5).

“There’s something distinctive that happens when givers succeed: it spreads and cascades” (pg 10).

“It takes time for givers to build goodwill and trust, but eventually, they establish reputations and relationships that enhance their success” (pg 15).

“My default is to give. I’m not looking for quid pro quo; I’m looking to make a difference and have an impact, and I focus on the people who can benefit from my help the most” (pg 22).

If you give only so you can succeed, it probably won’t work (pg 26).

“Although takers tend to be dominant and controlling with subordinates, they’re suprisingly submissive and deferential toward superiors. When takers deal with powerful people, they become convincing fakers. Takers want to be admired by influential superiors, so they go out of their way to charm and flatter” . . . they are “obsessed with making a good impression upward, but worried less about how {they} are seen by those who follow {them}” (pg 32).

“Takers often rise by kissing up, but they often fall by kicking down” (pg 32).

“It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others” - John Andrew Holmes (pg 61).

“Highly talented people tend to make others jealous, placing themselves at risk of being disliked, resented, ostracized, and undermined” (pg. 75).

“Responsibility Bias: exaggerating our own contributions relative to others’ inputs” (pg 81).

“To effectively help colleagues, people need to step outside their own frames of reference” (pg 90).

“When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“When people focus on others, as givers do naturally, they’re less likely to worry about egos and miniscule details; they look at the big picture and prioritize what matters most to others” (pg 114).

“Takers tend to worry that revealing weaknesses will compromise their dominance and authority. Givers are much more comfortable expressing vulnerability: they’re interested in helping others, not gaining power over them, so they’re not afraid of exposing chinks i their armor. By making themselves vulnerable, givers can actually build prestige” (pg 133).

“If people give too much time, they end up making sacrifices for their collaborators and network ties, at the expense of their own energy . . . givers end up exhausted and unproductive” (pg 155).

Selfless givers are people with high other-interest and low self-interest . . . successful givers are otherish: they care about benefiting others, but they also have ambitious goals for advancing their own interests” (pg 157).

“When people give continually without concern for their own well-being, they’re at risk for poor mental and physical health” (pg 170).

“Those who volunteered between one hundred and eight hundred hours per year were happier and more satisfied with their lives than those who volunteered fewer than one hundred” (pg 173).

“Trust is one reason givers are so susceptable to the doormat effect: they tend to see the best in everyone, so they operate on the mistaken assumption that everyone is trustworthy . . . in reality, they ‘re wildly inaccurate” (pg 190).

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12 Rules for Life, by Jordan B. Peterson

Rule 1: Stand up Straight with Your Shoulders Back:

“Sometimes the defeat can have even more severe consequences. If a dominant lobster is badly defeated, its brain basically dissolves. Then it grows a new, subordinate’s brain - one more appropriate to its new, lowly position” (pg. 7).

“In my kingdom, you have to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. No one standing still can triumph, no matter how well suited” (pg 13).

“Many bureaucracies have petty authoritarians within them, generating unnecessary rules and procedures simply to express and cement power. Such people produce powerful undercurrents of resentment around them which, if expressed, would limit their expression of pathological power. It is in this manner that the willingness of the individual to stand up for him or herself protects everyone from the corruption of society” (pg 24).

“They see they can and must stand up, because they begin to understand how genuinely monstrous they will become, otherwise, feeding on their resentment, transforming it into the most destructive of wishes” (pg 25).

“To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order . . . to stand up straight with your shoulders back means building the ark that protects the world from the flood, guiding your people throughout the desert after they have escaped tyranny, making your way away from comfortable home and country, and speaking the prophetic word to those who ignore the widows and the children . . . it mean withstanding the ensuing uncertainty, and establishing, in consequence, a better, more meaningful and more productive order” (pg. 27).

Dare to be Dangerous! “Then you may be able to accept the terrible burden of the World, and find joy” (pg 28).

Rule 2: Treat Yourself Like Someone You are Responsible for Helping

“Chaos is the despair and horror you feel when you have been profoundly betrayed. It’s the place you end up when things fall apart; when your dreams die, your career collapses, or your marriage ends . . . Chaos is also the formless potential from which the God of Genesis I called forth order using language at the beginning of time. It’s the same potential from which we, made in that Image, call forth the novel and ever-changing moments of our lives” (pg 35, 36).

“Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn insisted, the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being” (pg. 47).

“If we wish to take care of ourselves properly, we would have to respect ourselves - but we don’t, because we are - not least in our own eyes - fallen creatures. If we lived in Truth; if we spoke the Truth - then we could walk with God once again, and respect ourselves, and others, and the world. Then we might treat ourselves like people we cared for. We might strive to set the world straight. We might orient it toward Heaven, where we would want people we cared for to dwell, instead of Hell, where our resentment and hatred would eternally sentence everyone” (pg. 58).

“You must determine where you are going, so that you can bargain for yourself, so that you don’t end up resentful, vengeful and cruel. You have to articulate your own principles, so that you can defend yourself against others’ taking inappropriate advantage of you, and so that you are secure and safe while you work and play” (pg. 63).

Rule 3: Make Friends with People Who Want the Best for You

“People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results. It is in this manner that those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it” (pg. 75).

“Maybe your misery is the weapon you brandish in your hatred for those who rose upward while you waited and sank. Maybe your misery is your attempt to prove the world’s justice, instead of the evidence of your own sin, your own missing of the mark, your conscious refusal to strive and to live” (pg 81).

“People who are not aiming up will do the opposite” (pg. 82).

“They will become jealous when you succeed, or do something prestine. They will withdraw their presence or support, or actively punish you for it. They will over-ride your accomplishment with past action, real or imaginary, or their own . . . they are dragging you down because your new improvements cast their faults in an even dimmer light” (pg. 83).

Rule 4: Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, not to Who Someone Else is Today

“If the internal voice makes you doubt the value of your endeavors - or your life, or life itself - perhaps you should stop listening. If the critical voice within says the same denigrating things about everyone, no matter how successful, how reliable can it be?” (pg 87).

“Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do. THere’s some real utility in gratitude. It’s also good protection against the dangers of victimhood and resentment” (pg. 89).

“What you aim at determines what you see” (pg. 96).

“The world, as perceived, as maya - appearance or illusion. This means, in part, that people are blinded by their desires. Your eyes are tools. They are there to help you get what you want. The price you pay for the utility, that specific, focused direction, is blindness to everything else” (pg 98).

“Our values, our morality - they are indicators of our sophistication” (pg 102).

“You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act” (pg. 103).

Rule #5: Do Not Let Your Children Do Anything that Makes You Dislike Them

Rule #6: Set Your House in Perfect Order Before Your Criticize the World

“After the experience of terrible atrocity, isn’t forgiveness just cowardice, or lack of willpower? Such questions torment me. But people emerge from terrible pasts to do good, and not evil, although such an accomplishment can seem superhuman” (pg. 152).

“A hurricane is an act of God. But failure to prepare, when the necessity for preparation is well known - that’s sin. That’s failure to hit the mark. And the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). The ancient Jews always blamed themselves when things fell apart. They acted as if God’s goodness - the goodness of reality - was axiomatic, and took responsibility for their own failure. That’s insanely responsible. But the alternative is to judge reality as insufficient, to criticize Being itself, and to sink into resentment and the desire for revenge” (pg. 157).

Rule 7: Pursue What is Meaningful (Not What is Expedient)

“If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, therefore, it’s time to examine your values. It’s time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions. It’s time to let go. It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, instead of staying where you are” (pg 170).

“If you cease to utter falsehoods and live according to the dictates of your conscience, you can mainitain your nobility, even when facing the ultimate threat; if you abide, truthfully and courageously, by the hightest of ideals, you will be provided with more security and strength than will be offered by any short-sighted concentration on your own safety; if you live properly, fully, you can discover meaning so profound that it protects you even from the fear of death” (pg 173).

“Soldiers who develop post-traumatic stress disorder frequently develop it not because of something they saw, but because of something they did” (pg 180).

“Power also means the capacity to take vengeance, ensure submission, and crush enemies” (pg 184).

#8 Tell the Truth - Or, At Least, Don’t Lie

“Pride falls in love with its own creations, and tries to make them absolute'“ (pg 210).

“A sin of commission occurs when you do something you know to be wrong. A sin of omission occurs when you let something bad happen when you could do something to stop it” (pg 211).

“If you will not reveal yourself to other, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself . . . when you explore boldly, when you voluntarily confront the unknown, you gather information and build your renewed self out of that information . . . You have to say something, go somewhere and do things to get turned on. And, if not . . . you remain incomplete, and life is too hard for anything incomplete.

If you say to your boss, or your spouse, or your mother, when it needs to be said, then you transform yourself into someone who can say no when it needs to be said. If you say yes when no needs to be said, however, you transform yourself into someone who can only say yes, even when it is very clearly time to say no. If you ever wonder how perfectly ordinary, decent people could find themselves doing the terrible things the gulag camps guards did, you now have your answer. By the time no seriously needed to be said, there was no one left capable of saying it” (pg 212).

“What saves is the willingness to learn from what you don’t know” (pg 218).

“Things fall apart: this is one of the greatest discoveries of humanity. An d we speed the natural deterioration of great things through blindness, inaction, and deceit. Without attention, culture degenerates and dies, and evil prevails” (pg 228).

“To tell the truth is to bring the most habitable reality into Being. Truth builds edifices that can stand a thousand years. Truth feeds and clothes the poor, and makes nations wealthy and safe. Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word, so that he can become a partner, rather than an enemy. Truth makes the past truly past, and makes the best use of the future’s possibilities. Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource. It’s the light in the darkness.

See the Truth. Tell the Truth.

. . .

If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it paradise.

Tell the truth. Or at least, don’t lie” (pg 230).

Rule 9: Assume That the Person You are Listening to Might Know Something you Don’t

The Book of Longings, by Sue Monk Kidd

“I had nothing to offer her but my willingness to sit there while she endured her pain. ‘I’m here,’ I murmured” (pg 71).

“It isn’t meekness I need, it’s anger” (pg 72).

“Grief and anger streamed from my fingers. The anger made me brave and the grief made me sure” (pg 73).

“Could we know the ways of God or not? Did he possess an intention for us, his people, as our religion believed, or was it up to us to invent meaning for ourselves. Perhaps nothing was as I’d thought” (pg 84).

“I’m not like other women - you’ve said so yourself. I have ambitions as men do. I’m racked with longings. I’m selfish and willful and sometimes deceitful. I rebel. I’m easy to anger. I doubt the ways of God. I’m an outsider everywhere I go. People look at me with derision” (pg 135).

“I wondered if he knew who he was, or if God had yet to break the terrible news to him” (pg 214).

I’m not sure I would recommend this book to many, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth reading. There is something great yet difficult about reading something that is so contrary to my evangelical upbringing, which is precisely why I think I need to read them. But that doesn’t mean it’s worth spreading around:)

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News of the World, by Paulette Jiles

I was trying to distract myself. I found, instead, that the struggle of others mirrored my own. Which is probably why these quotes stood out so much.

“It was not worth being alive when one was alone among aliens” (pg 32).

“So many people. So much harm” (pg 39).

“Cultures were mine fields” (pg 140).

They made a movie out of this sweet little novel. With Tom Hanks as the lead, it can’t go wrong.

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The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead

To be honest, I read this during a very difficult and destracting time. I remember very little.

Sorry Mr Whitehead.

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Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage, by Dan Crenshaw

“Outrage is weakness. It is the muting of rational thinking and the triumph of emotion” (pg 3).

“I can sit and feel pretty good about myself because, man, you see how woke I was, I called you out. That’s not activism. That’s not brining about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do” (pg 7).

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you . . .” - Rudyard Kipling

“In this day and age, victimhood is power” (pg 9).

“With many big problems cured, reduced, or eliminated, our small problems have been elevated remarkably in our public discourse” (pg 32).

“Character is mostly a consequence of choice” (pg 34).

“Heroes are more abstract. They are archetypes - symbols or stories that project a set of ideas, values, and collective knowledge. In another sense, heroes are the visualization for a set of goals that you are setting for yourself” (pg 37).

“A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spire of overwhelming obstacles” (pg 39).

The Big Five personality traits of heroes are:

1. Openness to Experience - receptive to new ideas and new experiences

2. Conscientiousness - tendency to be responsible, organized, and hardworking; to be goal directed; and to adhere to norms and rules.

3. Extroversion - tendency to search for novel experiences and social connections that allow them to interact with other humans as much as possible

4. Agreeableness - tendency to be cooperative, polite, kind, and friendly

5. Neuroticism - tendency toward anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and other negative feelings (pg 40).

“Guys who took criticism to heart were forgiven, and guys who became defensive were deemed to be thin-skinned. I learned to humbly accept criticism as a result” (pg 42).

“It is unfair. It is offensive. It is hard. It is riddled with unexpected obstacles and inconveniences. Oftentimes those inconveniences are perceived as actual problems, when in fact they are just inconveniences or temporary setbacks. The hero you aspire to be knows the difference and reacts accordingly” (pg 47).

“Be someone who actually listens and internalizes someone else’s point of view before speaking to them. Have at least the decency to be police in your response. Fully and reasonably rebuke their argument, avoiding the accusatory habit of saying, ‘You just don’t care’ or ‘You aren’t listening.’ The dismissive and insulting tone of today’s political debate is reflective of mental weakness” (pg 48).

“The problem with our current cultural trend is that we are far more likely to be cheered on if we embrace victimhood” (pg 54).

“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain” (pg 57).

“Good leaders build their subordinates, but also correct them when they’re wrong” (pg. 112).

“A good leader allows {complaining} to happen, to an extent. A good leader understands that part of cultivating a healthy social enviornment is allowing some complaining. Allowing your team to blow off steam over the small stuff is natural and healthy. Trying to stifle it will not make it go away, just hide it, only to see it boil over later on when you least want it to. A good leader even partakes in some of the complaints, but they are careful how they go about it” (pg. 123).

“Try hard not to offend. Try harder not to be offended” (pg. 136).

“Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-based repentance makes us hate the sin” (142).

“Feeling shame is actually good. It is synonymous with feeling accountable for our actions, and consciously admitting that our actions might not have been the right ones” (pg 146).

“The road to mental toughness is paved with the knowledge that we don’t always do what is right, but we are willing to take responsibility for it, humbly correct it, and be stronger as a result. A mind that cannot bend to admit wrongdoing is easily broken” (pg. 157).

"Suffering brings people together and is much better than joy at creating bonds among group members . . . misery doesn’t just love miserable company; misery helps alleviate the misery in the company” (pg. 193).

“The difference between normal citizens and the abnormal outrage: One tells stories about what they’ve done wrong, and the other tells stories about what was done to them. One is about accomplishments, the other grievance” (pg 200).

“It’s actually easy to see why people fall prey to this unique form of self-pity and buck-passing. It’s seductive, simple, and often yields quick and favorable results. Personal growth is hard work, and self-reflection is frequently unpleasant. It doesn’t help that there’s a whole industry out there fueled by grievances and propelled by narratives that tell individuals they’re victims of forces beyond their control” (pg. 204).

“Which actions of mine caused this? What could I have done differently? What will I do when and if it happens again?” (pg. 206).

“For an individual or a group to move forward or progress, something unpleasant must be endured (suffering) or something unpleasant must be give up (sacrifice). Humanity’s most effective and inspiring spiritual leaders have sustained immense suffering, made harrowing sacrifices, or both. These leader’s suffering and sacrifice set them apart from ordinary people who deny, decry, or defy these seemingly unsavory experiences” (pg 214).

Grade: A

This book, for so many reasons, would never end up on my shelf. But a friend asked that I read it, and because I really don’t want to surround myself or ideas that only fit myself and ideas, I read it. And I am so thankful that I did. Not only did it challenge me, it even encouraged and (in some ways) inspired me. Which, was a great reminder.

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Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know, by Adam Grant

The “I’m not biased” bias is when “people believe they’re more objective than others. It turns out that smart people are more likely to fall into this trap. The brighter you are, the harder it can be to see your own limitations. Being good at thinking can make you worse at rethinking” (pg. 25).

“The purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs” (pg 26).

“Recognizing our shortcomings opens the door to doubt . . . if knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom” (pg. 28) and “The curse of knowledge is that it closes our minds to what we don’t know” (pg 31).

Dunning-Kruger effect: “those who can’t . . . don’t know they can’t . . . the less intelligent we are in a particular domain, the more we seem to overestimate our actual intelligence in that domain . . .the first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club” (pg 40).

“Arrogance is ignorance plus conviction,” blogger Tim Urban explains. “While humility is a permeable filter that absorbs life experience and converts it into knowledge and wisdom, arrogance is a rubber shield that life experience simply bounces off of” (pg 45).

“If we care about accuracy, we can’t afford to have blind spots. To get an accurate picture of our knowledge and skills, it can help to assess ourselves like scientists looking through a microscope. But one of my newly formed beliefs is that we’re sometimes better off underestimating ourselves” (pg 48).

“If we never worry about letting other people down, we’re more likely to actually do so. When we feel like impostors, we think we have something to prove. Impostors may be the last to jump in, but they may also be the last to bail out” (pg 52).

“We don’t have to wait for our confidence to rise to achieve challenging goals. We can build it through achieving challenging goals” (pg 53).

“Great thinkers don’t harbor doubts because they’re imposters. They maintain doubts because they know we’re all partially blind and they’re committed to improve their sight. They don’t boast about how much they know, they marvel at how little they understand . . .arrogance leaves us blind to our weaknesses. Humility is a reflective lens: it helps us see them clearly. Confident humility is a corrective lens: it enables us to overcome those weaknesses” (pg 54).

Ideas survive not because they’re true, but because they’re interesting (pg 59).

Givers have higher rates of failure than takers and matchers - but higher rates of success too (pg 61).

“Being wrong is the only way I feel sure I’ve learned anything” (pg 62).

“The best performers are the ones who started their jobs believe their work would have a positive impact on others . . . givers would (therefore) be more successful than takers, because they would be energized by the difference their actions made in others’ lives” (pg 62).

“Even positive changes can lead to negative emotions; evolving your identity can leave you feeling derailed and disconnected” (pg 63).

“If you don’t look back at yourself and think, ‘Wow, how stupid I was a year ago,’ then you must not have learned much in the last year” (pg. 63).

“It’s a sign of wisdom to avoid believing every thought that enters your mind. It’s a mark of emotional intelligence to avoid internalizing every feeling that enters your heart” (pg 68).

“If we’re insecure, we make fun of others. If we’re comfortable being wrong, we’re not afraid to poke fun at ourselves” (pg 72).

“The apathy of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy” (pg 80).

“Dissatisfaction promotes creativity only when people feel committed and supported - and that cultural misfits are most likely to add value when they have strong bonds with their colleagues” (pg 84).

“Most people immediately start with a straw man, poking holes in the weakest version of the other side’s case. He does the reverse: he considers the strongest version of their case, which is known as the steel man” (pg 108).

“A single line of argument feels like a conversation; multiple lines of argument can become an onslaught” (pg 111).

“It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear” (pg 143).

“Presenting two extremes isn’t the solution; it’s part of the polarization problem. Psychologists have a name for this: binary bias. It’s a basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories” (pg 165).

“Perspective-taking consistently fails because we’re terrible mind readers. We’re just guessing . . . What works is not perspective-guessing but perspective-seeking: actually talking to people to gain insight into the nuances of their vies” (pg 178).

“It turns out that even if we disagree strong with someone on a social issue, when we discover that she cares deeply about an issue, we trust her more. We might still dislike her, but we see her passion for a principle as a sign of integrity. We reject the belief but grow to respect the person behind it” (pg 179).

“If you spend all of your school years being fed information and are never given the opportunity to question it, you won’t develop the tools for rethinking that you need in life” (pg 193).

“Every year I would aim to throw out 20 percent of my class and replace it with new material. If I was doing new thinking every year, we would all start rethinking together” (pg 195).

“Good teachers introduce new thoughts, but great teachers introduce new ways of teaching” (pg 203).

“Education is more than the information we accumulate in our heads. It’s the habits we develop as we keep revising our drafts and the skills we build to keep learning” (pg 203).

“It takes confident humility to admit that we are a work in progress” (pg 215).

“In performance cultures, people often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once we’ve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time. We preach about its virtues and stop questioning its vices” (pg 216).

“A bad decision process is based on shallow thinking. A good process is grounded in deep thinking and rethinking, enabling people to form and express independent opinions” (pg 217).

“The more people value happiness, the less happy they often become with their lives” (pg 237).

“When we’re searching for happiness, we get too busy evaluating life to actually experience it . . . we spend too much time striving for peak happiness, overlooking the fact that happiness depends more on the frequency of positive emotions than their intensity . . . when we hunt for happiness, we overemphasize pleasure at the expense of purpose” (pg 238).

People who are happy don’t focus on being happy, they look for contribution and connection (pg 240).

Grade: A

Adam Grant is one of my favorites.

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Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children, by Dr. Golinkoff

What if we could create a world in which the educational system matched what we know about how children learn? What if school actually offered programs that matched the demands of the future world that our children will inhabit” (pg 3).

“What would you count as success for your child? And second, how should we prepare children to meet those goals in ways that are sensitive to your culture and your life?” (pg. 13).

“Content has to be expansive and to include truth, beauty, and goodness” (pg. 17).

“It is estimated that graduates today will hold 10 jobs in their lifetime and that eight of those jobs have not yet been invented” (pg 18).

“With content as king, there is room for little else, especially when high-stakes evaluations loom. Somewhere along the line, we forgot that being happy and social and a good person are also key ingredients to our children’s future” (pg 23).

“What counts as success in school or in life? And did the tests that were available measure those skills?” (pg. 26).

“The benchmarks became the outcomes and the test makers and curriculum developers are seeking ways to scrip learning toward these outcomes and test directly for them” (pg. 27).

Referring to teach-to-the-test practices, “That kind of education will fail to produce people who can discover and innovate, and will merely produce people who are likely to be passive consumers of information., followers rather than inventors.” (pg. 27).

“If testing focused on narrowly defined outcomes was to be the measure of success, then children who memorized the material to be learned or tested were by definition successful” (pg. 29).

“From a U.S. perspective, it’s hard to believe that for Finnish 7-and 8-year-olds, the road to success is packaged in a 4-hour school day with no homework and no tests!” that “teachers are paid and respected as top professionals, that they collectively design the curricula without resorting to ready-made scripted lessons, and that as a consequence, they feel completely responsible for the success or failure of the children in their charge” (pg. 37).

“Soft Skills are centrally important for human capital development and workforce success. A growing evidence base shows that these skills rival academic or technical skills in their ability to predict employment and earnings, among other outcomes . . . ‘soft skills’ include collaboration, the ability to regulate your emotions, and executive function - a fancy term for being flexible in your thinking or finding another way to solve a pesky problem without perseverating” (pg. 43).

Other “Soft skills” include

• adaptability

• autonomy

• communication skills

• integrity

• planfulness

• positive attitude

• professionalism

• resilience

• self-control

• self-motivation

• social skills

• teamwork skills

• responsibility

• leadership

• learning to learn skills

• persuasiveness

• organization

• initiative

• character

• goal orientation

  “Despite the fact that these are seen as key factor for success in the workplace, in school, and beyond, we are still fixated on the hard skills” (pg 44).

”If we truly embrace the broader definition of success we have offered, then whether our children become good people and people who are good to others is also part of the equation” (pg 46).

“Business leaders, as well as leaders in many industries, are looking for thinkers and problem solvers, not fact grinders” (pg 46).

”At the end of the day, these kids might be really smart, learning the techniques they need to play on the pro tennis circuit and signing up to help those disadvantaged children in a far away land. But these kids are also stressed out” (pg 53).

”Social skills matter, and they matter a lot - even when you are in kindergarten. Social skills predict children’s successful lives and careers in adulthood” (pg 55).

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has” - Margaret Mead (pg. 57).

“We are people who need people” (pg 59).

”Silo Syndrome: when units within a corporation have difficulty talking to each other, they are much less likely to innovate because no one is thinking big picture. These cultures breed insular thinking, redundancy, and suboptimal decision-making (pg. 65).

”Collaboration thrives on differences in opinion, not similarities” (pg 74).

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change” (pg. 122).

“Drawing and painting, dance, music, and drama enhance children’s capacities for learning information deeply. Creating a drawing of a scene from a story and explaining it to your teacher is a powerful way to increase your comprehension . . . The active mastery of content means doing something with the material” (pg 142).

”Although content should not be king, it is definitely important for children to learn content. But it is also important for them to learn how to learn and how to be life-long learners (pg. 155).

Grade: B+

A lot of really great stuff in the beginning, but then it seemed to drag on.

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Educated, by Tara Westover

“Curiosity is a luxury reserved for the financially secure” (pg 203).

A couple things:

1. Religion scares the shit out of me and should be band all across the world.

2. Tara is a beast of a woman.

3. I forget. I still can’t get over her head being shoved in a toilet and a murdered dog and her parents doing NOTHING about it.

Grade: A

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Paddle Your Own Canoe, by Nick Offerman

“Damn it all, you have been given a life on this beautiful planet! Get off your ass and do something!” (pg 50).

“Loyalty. Honor. Have a set of rules, a code of ethics, that you will do your best to uphold and defend, whether you’re on horseback in Cuba in 1898, or at a school board meeting next week., or merely at the water cooler with your coworkers. Pursue decency in all dealings with your fellow man and woman. Simply put? Don’t be an asshole” (pg. 51).

Another “meh” book. Again, there’s some nuggets of worth-while truths, but nothing too ground breaking or original. There are other books worth your time, and mine.

Grade: C

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The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck, by Sarah Knight

I’m never a huge fan of books or ideas that stand on truths such as, “Does it bring joy?” and if the answer is no, toss it! For sure that advice can apply to a variety of situations, but never is it that simple.

This book, like many like it, has goodness and truths, but it is also potentially damaging in that it opens the door for people to be assholes. She tries to compensate for it by addressing the issue, but it isn’t enough.

“Give a fuck” might be a better, more worthwhile book. For me at least.

Grade: C

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Mosquitoland, by David Arnold

I bet he liked the book, Catcher in the Rye as a kid.

More than a bit predictable, wraps up pretty neatly, and a protagonist not worth hanging out with - in real life or fiction.

If you see this book, keep looking.

Grade: D- (Only because the cover is so cool.)

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