Rob does an amazing job of pointing out what adventures can await us as we grow…..older…
He did not mention one of my favorite examples: Saint Patrick. Patrick STARTED his ministry at age 40, and he ended his ministry 40 years later after founding an estimated 800 churches! WOW! Old guys rule!
In today’s excerpt – practice. Rather than being the result of genetics or inherent genius, truly outstanding skill in any domain is rarely achieved with less than ten thousand hours of practice over ten years’ time
“For those on their way to greatness [in intellectual or physical endeavors],
several themes regarding practice consistently come to light:
1. Practice changes your body. Researchers have recorded a constellation of physical changes (occurring in direct response to practice) in the muscles, nerves, hearts, lungs, and brains of those showing profound increases in skill level in any domain.
2. Skills are specific. Individuals becoming great at one particular skill do not serendipitously become great at other skills. Chess champions can remember hundreds of intricate chess positions in sequence but can have a perfectly ordinary memory for everything else. Physical and intellectual changes are ultraspecific responses to particular skill requirements.
3. The brain drives the brawn. Even among athletes, changes in the brain are arguably the most profound, with a vast increase in precise task knowledge, a shift from conscious analysis to intuitive thinking (saving time and energy), and elaborate self-monitoring mechanisms that allow for constant adjustments in real time.
4. Practice style is crucial. Ordinary practice, where your current skill level is simply being reinforced, is not enough to get better. It takes a special kind of practice to force your mind and body into the kind of change necessary to improve.
5. Short-term intensity cannot replace long-term commitment. Many crucial changes take place over long periods of time. Physiologically, it’s impossible to become great overnight.
“Across the board, these last two variables – practice style and practice
time – emerged as universal and critical. From Scrabble players to dart players to soccer players to violin players, it was observed that the uppermost achievers not only spent significantly more time in solitary study and drills,
but also exhibited a consistent (and persistent) style of preparation that K. Anders Ericsson came to call ‘deliberate practice.’ First introduced in a 1993 Psychological Review article, the notion of deliberate practice went far beyond
the simple idea of hard work. It conveyed a method of continual skill improvement. ‘Deliberate practice is a very special form of activity that differs
from mere experience and mindless drill,’ explains Ericsson. ‘Unlike playful
engagement with peers, deliberate practice is not inherently enjoyable. It …
does not involve a mere execution or repetition of already attained skills but
repeated attempts to reach beyond one’s current level which is associated with
frequent failures.’ …
“In other words, it is practice that doesn’t take no for an answer; practice that perseveres; the type of practice where the individual keeps raising the
bar of what he or she considers success. …
“[Take] Eleanor Maguire’s 1999 brain scans of London cabbies, which revealed greatly enlarged representation in the brain region that controls spatial awareness. The same holds for any specific task being honed; the relevant
brain regions adapt accordingly. …
“[This type of practice] requires a constant self-critique, a pathological restlessness, a passion to aim consistently just beyond one’s capability so that daily disappointment and failure is actually desired, and a never-ending resolve to dust oneself off and try again and again and again. …
“The physiology of this process also requires extraordinary amounts of
elapsed time – not just hours and hours of deliberate practice each day,
Ericsson found, but also thousands of hours over the course of many years. Interestingly, a number of separate studies have turned up the same common
number, concluding that truly outstanding skill in any domain is rarely achieved in less than ten thousand hours of practice over ten years’ time (which comes to an average of three hours per day). From sublime pianists to unusually profound physicists, researchers have been very hard-pressed to find any examples of truly extraordinary performers in any field who reached the top of their game before that ten-thousand-hour mark.”
Author: David Shenk
Title: The Genius in All of Us
Publisher: Doubleday
Date: Copyright 2010 by David Shenk
Pages: 53-57
A brief article by Dr. George Spaeth challenges all of us to ask and act on one simple question. The question: What are you doing to make the world better?
Part of Dr. Spaeth’s routine is to ask his elderly patients: What are you doing with your time now? It was disconcerting to him that the vast majority answered: “Nothing.”
This generated his follow up question to 30 of his elderly patients: What are you doing to make the world better? 2 of 30 took up the challenge and began to do something to make the world better. A great change from their prior answer: “Nothing.”
Dr. Spaeth lists many websites that we can go to help change the world; here are a few of those sites:
American Red Cross (www.redcross.org)
Habitat for Humanity (www.habitat.org)
Mentor (www.mentoring.org)
Volunteers in Medicine (www.vimi.org)
Robert Sapolsky was my faculty advisor for my biology major in college. He is a phenomenal teacher and lecturer. He told all his classes not to be doctors, but to consider being a bench researcher because if you are able to create a vaccine, you will immediately cure more people than any doctor could help in their lifetime. He is a world famous specialist on stress hormones. This is an article about his research. An article that reminds us that stress is a source of much of our physical, emotional, and mental hardships.
This book excerpt was very eye opening to someone who hears a lot from friends and colleagues that everything is unraveling, that the political climate, the financial climate is in dire straights… The past was better and brighter than the future looks…. Well, reading history opens our eyes to how crazy, horrible, and frightening the past events were…
In today’s excerpt – the deadlocked presidential election of 1876, during the nation’s centennial, pitted New York Democrat Samuel Tilden against Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. At stake was enough autonomy for Southern states to disenfranchise blacks – and massive voting fraud in states like South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana gave Tilden the electoral edge. President Grant armed Washington against rumored attacks, and the crisis was not resolved until March of 1877 in a deal that gave Hayes the presidency in trade for the tacit authority these Southern states sought:
“As the new year of 1877 dawned, the nation appeared hopelessly deadlocked.
Officially Tilden had 184 electoral votes and Hayes 165, leaving 20 votes up for
grab. Hayes needed them all; Tilden required only a single vote to be president. The framers of the Constitution had not considered such a situation, simply stating that the electoral votes should be ‘directed to the President of the Senate,’ typically the vice president of the United States, who ‘shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates and the votes shall then be counted.’ But who decided which votes to open and read if there were two [different sets of votes] – or, as with Florida, three sets? …
“Congress struggled to find a solution, remaining in continuous session into March. In January, each house appointed a committee to investigate the election. The House committee, dominated by Democrats, discovered that
corruption in the three questionable states meant that all three should go to
Tilden; the Senate committee, dominated by Republicans, concluded that fraud
and voter suppression in the three states meant that all should go to Hayes. This was not helpful. The House judiciary Committee then suggested the appointment of a joint special commission, which, after some very careful negotiation, led to a commission of five House members, five senators, and five Supreme Court justices. Originally the five justices were to be drawn from a hat, but Tilden killed that plan with the bon mot, ‘I may lose the Presidency, but I will not raffle for it.’ While Tilden and many other political leaders doubted the constitutionality of the commission, a consensus emerged that there were so many recipes for disaster that some resolution was required as quickly as possible, no matter how tenuous the legality of the process. Hayes and Tilden reluctantly accepted the commission in order to avoid a civil war. When one of Tilden’s advisers suggested publicly opposing the commission, Tilden shot back, ‘What is left but war?’
“Tilden’s fears found validation in the increasing calls for violence circulating
through the country. It was a time of rumors, disturbing and bizarre – and occasionally true – as well as loud demands for violence. Reportedly, President Grant was planning a coup, while Confederate general Joseph Shelby supposedly announced in St. Louis that he would lead an army on Washington to put Tilden in the White House. Hearing this latter story, Confederate hero Colonel John S. Mosby, the ‘Gray Ghost,’ went to the White House and offered Grant his services to help ensure Hayes’s inauguration. …
“Troubled by the professed willingness of his fellow Americans to take up arms
so soon after their devastating Civil War, President Grant prepared to defend the capital. Grant could call on only 25,000 unpaid troops, most of them in the
West, and had to tread lightly. He could not afford to alienate the Democrats,
but they gave every indication of deliberately weakening the ability of the federal government to protect its democratic institutions. Grant adroitly maneuvered his available units to send a message of resolve while not appearing aggressive, ordering artillery companies placed on all the entrances to Washington, D.C., the streets of which, as the New York Herald reported, ‘presented a martial appearance.’ Grant ordered the man-of-war Wyoming to anchor in the Potomac River by the Navy Yard, where its guns could cover both the Anacostia Bridge from Maryland and the Long Bridge from Virginia. Meanwhile, a company of Marines took up position on the Chain Bridge. General Sherman told the press, ‘We must protect the public property, . . . particularly the arsenals.’ There was no way Sherman was going to let white Southerners get their hands on federal arms without a fight, and his clever placement of a few units helped to forestall possible coups in Columbia and New Orleans.” …
“Members of Congress began bringing pistols to the Capitol, and in Colum-
bus, Ohio, a bullet was shot through a window of the Hayes home while the
family was at dinner.”
Author: Michael A. Bellesiles
Title: 1877
Publisher: The New Press
Date: Copyright 2010 by Michael A. Bellesiles
Pages: 38-41
Tags: Presidency, Elections
I have mentioned the concept of Appreciative Inquiry, the power of appreciation, and the effectiveness of positive psychology in prior posts with plenty of supporting scientific and empiric evidence to support their efficacy. But the sad truth is that our world is convinced that these things either don’t work or they are too hard to impliment. These concepts are so foreign to us that they can be very hard to break old habits.
The typical Inquiry remains the dreaded yearly or quarterly employee evaluation. This is the place where the boss critiques the employee. We have all been ‘evaluated’, and we have all been found wanting. Even if you receive a glowing evaluation, it takes only one ‘but’ to ruin it. “You continue to do an amazing job, BUT you could improve in this or that…” We are convinced that this negative feedback is essential and productive. BUT if you are at all like me, I only hear the negative, and it burns into my heart. I go sleepless for days stewing over my critique. In fact, the negative causes me often to be counterproductive, frustrated, sad, depressed, discouraged, etc.
now in a parallel universe:
Your boss calls you into a room and gives you a list of sincere appreciation. A list of blessings. A list of all the great things that you do. Would your productivity go up? Would you work harder? Would you sleep well that night? Would you wake up excited to go to work the following day? Would you appreciate and encourage my co-workers and boss more? Would we all be more likely to smile, laugh, encourage, and bless those around us???
Now What?
What if we started to sincerely appreciate those around us? What if we took the time each day to choose someone to bless with words of affirmation? Can we all try this? I did. WOW! It almost brought the person to tears…it is THAT powerful. If we all got into a rhythm of daily blessing those around us with words of encouragement, what might happen?? Please share with us your experience in trying this…
I just heard of yet another divorce at work that unraveled by infidelity. Marriage is tough, but the studies support that if you are in trouble, the worst thing to do is divorce. Those couples who divorce are individually statistically doomed for loneliness, depression, anxiety, etc. The marriages on the rocks that decide to make a run at staying together often do, and these married couples when asked 5 years down the line if they are happy usually say yes. And they are very happy that they stuck it out.
What does an intimate, eternal, beautiful marriage look like? How is it done?
A friend of mine’s wife wrote him a special praise message on her breast cancer blog, and it is a beautiful example of love for a lifetime and beyond.
“This entry is dedicated to my wonderful husband… In the words of my mom this past week ” Te ganaste la loteria con este hombre!” translation– ” You have won the lottery with this man” Not only did he sleep in the hospital with me both nights, waking up every hr and a half when the nurses came in to check on me, he came up with my medication schedule ( which I still don’t understand) , makes sure I’m taking them as directed, brought a little picnic table in our master bedroom so we can still eat as a family since I was bedridden for several days, he wakes the kids and gets them breakfast and ready for school everyday, drives them to school, missed his mens bible study because our daughter wanted to walk to school on “Walk to school day”, works from home because I asked him to, answers the phone for me, still works his insane hrs, helps get the kids ready for bed, took our daughter to the drs for a strange bump behind her ear, only to find out she had a fever, has been taking care of our daughter and her medication schedule for the last 3 1/2 days because I can’t risk getting whatever she has, slept in her room to get her whatever she needed throughout 2 nights and coached our son’s 3 flag football games today! Oh, and he had to bathe me twice because I couldn’t lift my arms! The guy is exhausted! I gave him 2 Tylenol pm’s, sent him to sleep alone in the office and pray he gets a full night’s sleep! He has been my knight in shining armor and I love him to death! God has blessed me with this amazing man!”
YES!
Greg Boyd delivers another stinging zinger to challenge our views….
I am re-reading Dale Carnegie’s great book in which he points out that rule #1 in dealing with people is–never condemn, complain, or criticize. Why? Because humans, no matter who they are or what they have done, believe that they are good and with equal confidence are convinced that whatever the issue is it isn’t their fault.
I also just finished Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. He points out that it is not our responsibility to change anybody (and as Carnegie has pointed out, you can’t so stop trying!). We can, however, try and see them as God does (as a beloved son or daughter) and love them as God does (unconditionally). By putting away our ‘judgmentalism and pride and loathing of other people’ and instead treat everybody ‘as though they were [your] best friend’, they will change for the better.
When organizations discover that they are having a problem, they get a team together to look at the problems and try to find a solution better known as problem solving. About 10 years ago, a team of expert problem solvers were hired by a large corporation to come in to ‘fix’ their problems in hopes of increasing their production rates. They found that after their problem solving their production rates actually went down instead of up. Puzzled, they tried a different method. Instead of looking at the problem and filling everyone with negative thoughts about each other and the organization, they looked at the positive. They looked at all the things that worked well, and they focused on making them work even better. The production rate soared. This method is known as Appreciative Inquiry.
It has been thought that allowing and encouraging people to air their grievances about other people in the organization and list their complaints about others and the organization is the path to improvement. This has been shown time and time again to have the opposite effects. It produces negativity, discourages others from working harder to make things better (why bother if you are only going to hear the negative from a select few?!), and it creates a work environment that is defeatist, negative, counter productive, and filled with cattiness and pettiness. So next time your organization decides to send out questionnaires to critique, or wants to create a work group to problem solve, I would hope we all can consider Appreciative Inquiry and the wisdom of Carnegie, Miller, and Christ.
I occasionally do focused study time on certain topics that capture my interest. These brief studies usually last as long a a book or 2 or a lecture series. My recent study has been World War 2-a very unikely topic for me to be interested in. What have I learned?
Human nature is inherently corrupt, and as my friend recently said: “The Bible teaches 3 basic truths-Good is good; evil is evil; and God will redeem evil into good.” I am re-reading Dale Carnegie’s great book in which he points out that rule #1 in dealing with people is–never condemn, complain, or criticize. Why? Because humans, no matter who they are or what they have done, believe that they are good and confident that whatever the issue-it isn’t their fault. I am also reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller who also points out in his funny way that we all think that we are so cool that the truth is that we are all fallen, flawed humans. My study of WW 2 points out these truths in vivid details.
“Len, you’re in as much trouble now as you’re ever going to be. If you get out of this, nobody can ever do anything to you that you ever have to worry about.”-Private Len Griffing of the 501st just prior to jumping behind enemy lines in the early morning hours before D-Day invasion
Books:
The Victors: Eisenhower And His Boys The Men Of World War II by Stephen Ambrose
The Rising Tide, The Steel Wave, and No Less Than Victory by Jeff Shaara
World War II: A Military and Social History Lecture Series by Professor Thomas Childers
I recently picked up Carnegie’s book AGAIN to reread AGAIN! It is definitely in my top 10 books of all time. It has amazing Christian principles. His 5th principle is simple but powerful: Smile. Smiling has shown to program and produce in the smiler a happier disposition through brain chemistry; smiling is also beneficial for the smilee as well…
This is principle #5 in Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Lowndes book, How to Talk to Anyone also points out the importance of smiling.
Besides the Bible, I have read many books over the years. A few have made it into the ‘top 10’ or well maybe the ‘top 20’. This is one for the top 10. A book with foundational Christian principles. It can transform your life and relationships if you let it.
How to Win Friends and Influence People is an old book that I wish that I had memorized in high school! I have listened to it on CD several times now, and it continues to teach me key life principles that are also for the most part Biblical principles as well.
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (I recommend the hardcover to allow for taking notes in the margins…yes, I am a GEEK!)
This sermon opened my eyes to a richer and deeper meaning to Jesus parable of the lost coins. It turns out that in the 1st century women would wear a necklace of 10 silver coins around their neck if they were engaged to be married! So the lost coin was not just any lost coin. This was a special silver coin (1 of 10). This coin was one that represented the love of her husband or betrothed.
Westernized Christianity can seem dull, and most of the time, Christians don’t appear any different than their non-believing counter parts.
My friend in the Middle East visited again this summer to super charge and challenge my thoughts on signs and wonders. The Bible is filled with supernatural signs and wonders. The western world teaches that these were only for the time ‘back then’ or explains these events away by claiming that people ‘back then’ were very naive. These miracles never actually happened, were fancy analogies/examples of key teaching principles, or misunderstood by superstitious people back in the past.
What if these signs and wonders could be seen today?
This is the 1st of 3 sermons given by my friend from the Middle East. I would love to know what you think….
My friend in the Middle East has transformed his outreach to non-Christians by adopting the Acts/early church model of outreach: He prays for people and they are healed. The New Testament is FILLED with miracles, exorcisms, and other bizarre supernatural events that challenge our western, modern, scientific minds. Here is a video clip of a miracle. Is this real? What do you think? More to follow…
The church in America would do well to take lessons from the church throughout the world that is exploding with prayer. A missionary friend of mine has seen an explosion of miracles and healings (more on that to follow).
These quotes challenge and empower me to ‘pray without ceasing’:
Today’s post is about IQ. From a very early age, I was taught that all that mattered was how smart you are and how high your IQ is. I have always struggled with such a notion because there are many happy and successful people that are not geniuses. It is sad to have such a rigid, narrow, and ignorant perspective. The people that I have met who claim that IQ is so important tend to be those who are mostly unhappy, lonely, and proud-living in an ivory tower of their own making. It turns out that it is NOT about IQ!
“Over the years, an enormous amount of research has been done in an attempt to determine how a person’s performance on an IQ test…translates to real-life success…The relationship between success and IQ only works up to a point. Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.”
After listing where the last 25 Nobel Loreates in Chemistry and Medicine gradutate from college, it is clear that you don’t have to go to Harvard to be successful. “To be a Nobel Prize winner, apparently, you have to be smart enough to get into…college…That’s all….”
“In a devastating critique, the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin once showed that if Terman had simply put together a randomly selected group of children from the same kinds of family backgrounds as the Termites–and dispensed with IQs altogether–he would have ended up with a group doing almost as many impressive things as his painstakingly selected group of genisues. ‘By no stretch of the imagination or of standars of genius,’ Sorokin concluded, ‘is the ‘gifted group’ as a whole ‘gifted.'” By the time Terman came out with his fourth volume of Genetic Studies of Genius, the word ‘genius’ had all but vanished. ‘We have seen,’ Terman concluded, with more than a touch of disappointment, ‘that intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated.”
“You can have lots of analytical intelligence and very little practical intelligence, or lots of practical intelligence and not much analytical intelligence…so where does something like practical intelligence come from? We know where analytical intelligence comes from. It’s something, at least in part, that’s in your genes…But social savvy is knowledge. It’s a set of skills that have to be learned. It has to come from somewhere, and the place where we seem to get these kinds of attitudes and skills is from our families.”
“What was the difference between the As and the Cs? Terman ran through every conceivable explanation. He looked at their physical and mental health…he compared…what their precise IQ scores were in elementary and high school. In the end, only one thing mattered: family background. The As overwhelmingly came from…homes filled with books…etc…the Cs lacked…a community around them that prepared them properly for the world.”
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
A poem written by my daughter-
Unnoticed Wonders
Dedicated to the small things we love, but never pay attention to
A brand new box of sharp, colorful crayons
The way the ocean feels on bare feet
A leaf’s delicate design
The taste of fresh, red apples
A puppy’s velvety ears
The smell of a new book
The wind blowing in your face
Splashing in puddles
The birds’ chirping
Roasting marshmallows
A sense of accomplishment
Laughter
Dessert
The way your hair floats around you when you’re underwater
Riding a roller coaster
Being told that you’re good at something
Catching your first fish
Swinging on a swing
Being with your friends
Dressing up
Getting a present
Doing a fun craft
Sitting by the fire
Watching lightning flash across the sky
Drinking cool lemonade on a hot July day
Imagining what it would feel like to fly
Playing an exciting game
Staying up late
Watching a movie while eating popcorn
Jumping on the trampoline
Playing tag
Rob Bell shares a powerful Bible story that helps put into perspective the importance of seeing the world and our time here as sacred.
My Mom died last week: December 16, 1929-July 12, 2010
I was asked to give her Euology:
believe, love, live
believe.
My Mom was proud of her English degree from Berkley. She would always tell me of the time that she got spit on while she was riding on the San Francisco trolly with her African American girlfriend, and the special privileges she got as an English major. Only the English majors were allowed to read the books in the locked cabinet in the library–catcher In the Rye and Chaucer books.
When it came time for me to decide between Berkley and Stanford the decision was made easy by Mom. “You are going to Stanford!” much to her surprise I came back a changeling as she sometimes would call me.
I believe-I remember exactly where I was standing in our house when I first broached the subject of faith with Mom. She said, “You didn’t become born again did you!” I simply told her that I discovered that there is a God who loves us and is all perfect and all loving who wants to be in relationship with us. It is like taking a test and I have taken a lot of tests. If God is perfect, then He gets 100% on the moral test of life, mother theresa gets on her best day 90%, and well I might get to 50%. The only way to be in an intimate relationship with a perfect, all Holy Being is to ace the moral test which no one can accept God. Solution: God came down in human form as Jesus to take the test for us. All we have to do is accept His gift and say I believe. The following day Mom said, “well, I prayed to accept Jesus into my heart, but nothing happened.” She didn’t like to talk about her faith much or mine for that matter. It was 15 years later when she showed up and sat in the back of the auditorium while I was teaching about the evidence of God from science and philosophy that we spoke again of faith. She said afterwards, “of course I have always known Christianity to be true and I wish that all the kids were here.” she ended a lot of her sentences that way.
She believed in Christ and she believed in all of us. When we were discouraged she would always be there to lift us up. When I had no friends and felt like the world was ending in 7th grade she said, “you have always been a good swimmer. Why don’t you join a swim team.” her belief in me and many of us changed the course of our lives.
She was an avid reader and she loved Langston Hughes poetry. She shared her favorite one with each of her kids….a poem of inspiration and of believing in us…
Well…I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So…don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps.
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
love.
Prodigal son-there is an ancient story modernized by Brennan Manning…there was a bright young man….this is the love of God…unconditional, outrageous, crazy
Mom didn’t speak of her faith but she showed it through her unconditional love of me and my kids…an amazing and rare gift to give to all of our kids and those around us…
live on.
Grandma is so lucky! The night mom died I was trying to think of something to say when I tucked my oldest son in for bed…but before I could say anything..he said, “Grandma is SO lucky!” We have been so lucky, so blessed to love her. But we must remember that she is the lucky one.
We think we live in disneyland let me tell u this is not disneyland…a friend of mine has told me the story of his sons first trip to Disneyland. They went through the gate and he saw all the flowers and just knew that he had made it into Disneyland, and when his dad tried to tell him that this wasn’t Disneyland he refused to budge. We think we r in Disneyland when in reality we r only at the entrance.
“follow the balloons”-when my sister was visiting with Mom in the hospital, and she told Mom that she was going to go down stairs to the cafeteria to get something to drink. Mom said, “just follow the balloons..” This is a time to celebrate because Grandma, Mom has followed the balloons pass the entrance and through the gates to the real Disneyland and she lives on…and she is SO lucky…and we will see her again…it is not good bye but see u later…release the balloon to know that mom is now finally at Disneyland…
Let us release these balloons, and remember the lessons she taught all of us…to believe and to love….
