hamburgers cause traffic accidents

Most people who die in car crashes have eaten a hamburger less than a week before the tragic event cuts their lives short. Does this mean eating hamburgers cause traffic accidents? Nope. A connection between the two events has to be established before you can unfurl and plant the “cause and effect” flag.

That's why, when it comes to medical issues, there needs to be numerous studies pointing in the same direction. Studies with mixed results suggest there could be other causes at work besides the one we are investigating.

Consider this: Rich people may live longer because they have access to better health care. Do they live longer because they are rich? Well, sort of. That's what gives them access to the better health care.

The whole cause/effect thing gets especially confusing when things happen around the same time frame. We have a natural desire to tie them together with a big bow. Remember the saying about “trouble coming in threes”? When we begin looking for groups of three, we tend to remember those times when our hypothesis was confirmed. We think it’s true because we don’t notice or simply discount situations when life didn’t fit with our triplet theory.

Stephen Goforth

those who turn back

Those who turn back know only the ordeal, but they who persevere remember the adventure.

 - Milo L. Arnold

the world is a comedy

This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel. 

-Horace Walpole

think about

Think about what it will be like when you are old, when you approach death. Will you have already died inside or will your mind be alive with new ideas that are unmistakably around? -Ken Bain

getting it done

There's usually an inverse proportion between how much something is on your mind and how much it's getting done. -David Allen

Let it Go

You've suffered unjustly. Passed over for the promotion. Mistreated by a spouse. Disrespected by a co-worker, fellow student, or even a member of your church.

Perhaps you lie in bed at night imagining detailed conversations with someone who's wronged you. You daydream about getting back at them. You conspire, hoping to discover ways to embarrass those who've treated you unfairly.

Let go of your bitterness and desire for retaliation.

Romans 12:19 says, "Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: " Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

It is not your job to exact revenge. That's God's responsibility. And he does not need our help doing it. If you hoard hatred and bitterness toward those who have hurt you, the injury will only deepened and hurt you even more. Those around you will suffer as well. Bitterness is a poison that spills over into our relationships. Don’t allow the people who have hurt you keep on doing so.

Stephen Goforth

and THIS is love

“In this is love..” or “In this way is seen the true love” (1 John 4:10). God didn’t look down and say, “Boy, I see you love me. I think I’ll love you.” Or “You’re a nice guy, I really like that.”

Instead: You were rebellious, arrogant, self-centered. God said, “I love you.”You ignored him, fought him, were bored with him. God said, “I love you.” You spit in his face, yelled at him, shook your fist.

God said, “I love you.” That’s what John means here.

We see what real love is by looking at what God did. He loved us with a desire to restore us, to make us whole.What separates real love from the pretenders is the aim. Real love aims at spiritual growth.

Stephen Goforth

business ethics

There is really no such thing as business ethics. There is only personal ethics. 

S.Truett Cathy

security and opportunity

There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity. -General Douglas MacArthur

Three Types of Learners

College students will take - usually without even realizing it – one of three basic approaches to their studies that will determine much of what they get out of school.

“Surface learners” as the psychologists called them, looked for facts and words they could memorize, attempting to anticipate any questions someone might ask them. In subsequent studies, we have learned that surface learners usually focus only on passing the exam nor on every using anything they read.

Meanwhile, other students expressed much different purposes. They wanted to understand the meaning behind the text and to think about its implications and applications, to search for arguments, and to distinguish between supporting evidence and conclusions. These are “deep learners.”

There is a third style of learning that students will take. “Strategic” learners primarily intend simply to make good grades, often for the sake of graduate or professional school.  These people will usually shine in the classroom and make their parents proud of their high marks. In many ways, they look like deep learners but their fundamental concerns is different. They focus almost exclusively on how to find out what the professor wants and how to ace the exam. If they learn something along the way that changes the way they think, act, or feel, that’s largely an accident.

They rarely go off on an intellectual journey through those unexplored woods of life, riding their curiosity into a wonderland of intellectual adventure and imagination. They approach college with a checklist rather than with any sense of awe and fascination.

Ken Bain, What the Best College Students Do

Open Arms

Perhaps because your father questioned you for so long, you question yourself.. just out of habit. Despite the fact there's plenty of evidence to show that you are usually on the right track, a vague nagging feeling persists.  You may not measure up to your father's ideals.

Compare these expectations to those who love you; They don't ignore your inadequacies. Instead, they are willing to pitch in. They cheer for you. They don't run away when you fail. Their arms remain outstretched in acceptance.

Stephen Goforth

a time

There is a time for talking.. and a time for just breathing. And each is equally important.

Shrink the Change

Our emotional side is an Elephant and our rational side is its Rider.

A sense of progress is critical, because the Elephant in us is easily demoralized. It’s easily spooked, easily derailed, and for that reason, it needs reassurance, even for the very first step of the journey.

If you’re leading a change effort… rather than focusing solely on what’s new and different about the change to come, make an effort to remind people what’s already been conquered.

A business cliché commands us to “raise the bar.” But that’s exactly the wrong instinct if you want to motivate a reluctant Elephant. You need to lower the bar. Picture taking a high-jump bar and lowering it so far that it can be stepped over.

If you want a reluctant elephant to get moving, you need to shirk the change.

Chip & Dan Heath, Switch

the old and the new

There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better." -William R. Inge

What Google searches Teach us

You may not be a data scientist. You may not know how to code in R or calculate a confidence interval. But you can still take advantage of big data and digital truth serum to put an end to envy — or at least take some of the bite out of it.

Any time you are feeling down about your life after lurking on Facebook, go to Google and start typing stuff into the search box. Google’s autocomplete will tell you the searches other people are making. Type in “I always …” and you may see the suggestion, based on other people’s searches, “I always feel tired” or “I always have diarrhea.” This can offer a stark contrast to social media, where everybody “always” seems to be on a Caribbean vacation.

As our lives increasingly move online, I propose a new self-help mantra for the 21st century, courtesy of big data: Don’t compare your Google searches with other people’s Facebook posts.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz writing in the New York Times

Just the Right Amount of Practice

Practice too little and you never become world-class. Practice too much, though, and you increase the odds of being struck down by injury, draining yourself mentally, or burning out. To succeed, students must “avoid exhaustion” and “limit practice to an amount from which they can completely recover on a daily or weekly basis.”

How do students marked for greatness make the most of limited practice time? The rhythm of their practice follows a distinctive pattern. They put in more hours per week in the practice room or playing field, but they don’t do it by making each practice longer. Instead, they have more frequent, shorter sessions, each lasting about 80 to 90 minutes, with half-hour breaks in between.

Add these several practices up, and what do you get? About four hours a day. About the same amount of time Darwin spent every day doing his hardest work, Hardy (G.H. Hardy was one of Britain’s leading mathematicians in the first half of the 20th century) and Littlewood (Hardy’s longtime collaborator John Littlewood) spent doing math, Charles Dickens and Stephen King spent writing. Even ambitious young students in one of the world’s best schools, preparing for an notoriously competitive field, could handle only four hours of really focused, serious effort per day.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writing in Nautilus

this is success

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.  -Winston Churchill

off his guard

Surely what a man does when taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is.  –CS Lewis

bricks

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.  -David Brinkley

the secret

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky