Ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Stephen Goforth
Learning to be slow to anger gives us the time and freedom of mind to decide how we should solve our problems or how we should express our anger. Being slow to anger allows us to respond to conviction, to confess our sins of anger, and to rise above hate to forgive those who have offended us.
Mark Cosgrove, Counseling for Anger
My own happiest times have not been when all was secure but rather when I was stretching to learn to fulfill a task which called for more than I have to give – and I was trying to give it.
New data shows that the confidence, intelligence and extroversion that have long propelled ambitious workers into the executive suite are not enough online, because they simply don’t translate into virtual leadership. Instead, workers who are organised, dependable and productive take the reins of virtual teams. Finally, doers lead the pack – at least remotely.
The study shows that, instead of those with the most dynamic voices in the room, virtual teams informally anoint leaders who actually do the work of getting projects done. “They are the individuals who help other team members with tasks, and keep the team on schedule and focused on goals,” says lead author Radostina Purvanova,
As expected, the face-to-face teams chose leaders with the same confident, magnetic, smart-seeming extroverted traits that we often see in organisational leaders. “The people who portray themselves as organised, dependable and reliable look to us like effective leaders,” says Purvanova. But those chosen as remote leaders were doers, who tended towards planning, connecting teammates with help and resources, keeping an eye on upcoming tasks and, most importantly, getting things done. These leaders were goal-focused, productive, dependable and helpful.
In other words, virtually, the emphasis shifts from saying to doing.
Arianne Cohen writing for BBC WorkLife
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud. – Henry Rollins
“I was surprised by the consistency of the findings. No matter the individual or the context, disagreeableness did not give people an advantage in the competition for power — even in more cutthroat, ‘dog-eat-dog’ organizational cultures,” said Berkeley professor Cameron Anderson.
The researchers found those who scored high on disagreeable traits were not more likely to have attained power than those who were generous, trustworthy and generally nice.
That’s not to say that jerks don’t reach positions of power. It’s just that they don’t get ahead faster than others, and being a jerk simply doesn’t help, Anderson said. That’s because any power boost they get from being intimidating is offset by their poor interpersonal relationships.
Read more in Berkeley News
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. -CS Lewis
Never build a wall until you know what you're walling in and what you're walling out.
We are always in search of patterns. The tendency means that sometimes we even find patterns where none really even exist. Our brains are so trained in this way that we will even make sense of chaos to the extent that we can.
Because our training wires us to seek out patterns, it’s crucial to remember the simple maxim that correlation does not imply causation. Just because two variables move in tandem doesn’t necessarily mean that one causes the other.
This principle has been hilariously demonstrated by numerous examples. For instance, by looking at fire department data, you notice that, as more firemen are dispatched to a fire, the more damage is ultimately done to a property. Thus, you might infer that more firemen are causing more damage. In another famous example, an academic who was investigating the cause of crime in New York City in the 1980s found a strong correlation between the number of serious crimes committed and the amount of ice cream sold by street vendors. But should we conclude that eating ice cream drives people to crime? Since this makes little sense, we should obviously suspect that there was an unobserved variable causing both. During the summer, crime rates are the highest, and this is also when most ice cream is sold. Ice cream sales don’t cause crime, nor does crime increase ice cream sales. In both of these instances, looking at the data too superficially leads to incorrect assumptions.
Rahul Agarwal writing in Built in
No one in a relationship problem is ever totally innocent or totally guilty. With this belief, people can always keep the door open to their own faults without engaging in excessive, guilty-provoking self incrimination. Holding back anger for even a short time and engaging in self-analysis in private has the effect of tempering the expression of anger. Confession alters our goals from changing others to changing the relationship.
Mark Cosgrove, Counseling for Anger
Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them. –Leo Tolstoy (born Sept. 9, 1828)
There is a chain of events follow the awareness of a loss that starts with mind-body chain of events that leads to depression. While it mind can resolve the loss, the body still needs time to recover. The biochemical changes accompanying the depression take time to return to normal. One may continue to feel depressed long after the problem seems to be resolved.
This is important to remember because many people who experience such temporary losses do not allow time for the body’s chemistry to heal. They are likely to interpret their continued low mood as a sign of failure, reject themselves, and create further loss and depression. Many depressions are perpetuated this way.
The healthiest way to deal with sadness following restoration of the loss is simply to accept it. Give the body time to heal after the mind is recovered.
Archibald Hart, Counseling the Depressed
The future will not be delivered like the morning paper; the future comes looking like something else. Don't be fooled. I think that even though you may not have told yourself yet in so many words, you know some very important things about the next chapter of your work life. Tell yourself whatever you know now.
William Bridges, Transitions
Most people tend to overcompensate.. people who are riddled with doubts tend to be dogmatists who are never wrong –John Powell
We picture lovers face to face but friend side by side, their eyes looking ahead. That is why those pathetic people who simply “want friends” can never make any. The very condition of having friends is that we should want something else besides friends. Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing, those who are going no where can have no fellow-travelers.
CS Lewis, The Four Loves
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