Method over Goals

Little by little, preoccupation with method, technique and procedure gains a subtle dominance over the whole process of goal seeking. How it is done becomes more important than whether it is done. Means triumph over ends. Form triumphs over spirit.

Method is enthroned. Men become prisoners of their procedures, and organizations that were designed to achieve some goal become obstacles in the path to that goal.

A concern for “how to do it” is healthy and necessary. The fact that it often leads to an empty worship of method is just one of the dangers with which we have to live. Every human activity, no matter how ennobling or constructive or healthy, involves hazards. The flower of competence carries the seeds of rigidity just as the flower of virtue carries the seeds of complacency. “There is a road to hell,” said John Bunyan, “even from the gates of heaven.”

John Gardner, Self-Renewal

Solving problems

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. -Albert Einstein

Paradigm Shifts

Steven Covey offers a moving example in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as to how context can change our outlook. Covey was riding the subway when a man and his children boarded the car. The kids were loud and rowdy, throwing things and disturbing everyone in the car. The man seemed oblivious.

It was very disturbing and yet the man sitting next to me did nothing. It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive as to let children run wild like that do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, “Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?

The man lifted his gaze and said softly, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died. I don't know what to think and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either."

Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently, and because I saw things differently, I thought differently, I felt differently. My irritation vanished. I didn’t have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart was filled with the man’s pain. Feelings of sympathy and compassion flowed freely.

While this change of perspective could be momentary, it doesn't have to be. We are continually faced with decisions about how we will approach life's circumstances.

Remember that piece of music you heard that suddenly lifted your spirit and changed your whole outlook in the middle of the day? Do you remember that pleasant smell that took you back in time to fond memories? Remember when you exited a movie theater seeing an exhilarating film, inspired to change the world? Imagine putting your feet to those sentiments.

If change is possible, that puts the responsibility on our shoulders to make it happen. It's a thought that's downright scary—and motivating.

Stephen Goforth

As we grew older

We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves. -Lynn Hall

We can choose

We cannot choose to have a life free of hurt. But we can choose to be free. -Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger

Neighbor gives up COVID-19 vaccine appointment to stranger in need

#GOODNEWS

Grandmother Emily Johnson of Austin, Texas, was in need of open-heart surgery, but her doctor said she had to have one vaccination before the operation. ABC News has a video report below or you can read the story here.

The way to love

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. -G. K. Chesterton

Getting ahead

The way to get ahead is to overdeliver. -Jack Welch

Getting the Big Picture

Without some grasp of the meaning of their relationship to the whole, it is not easy for individuals to retain a vivid sense of their own capacity to act as individuals, a sure sense of their own dignity and an awareness of their roles and responsibilities. They tend to accept the spectator role and to sink into passivity.

John Gardner, Self-Renewal

the widest possible difference

Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference. -Frederick Douglass (died Feb 20, 1895)

Inconvenient Conclusions

Conspiracy theories may be deployed as a rhetorical tool to escape inconvenient conclusions. People selectively appeal to a conspiracy among scientists to explain away a scientific consensus when their political ideology compels them to do so—but not when the scientific consensus is of no relevance to their politics.

Stephan Lewandowsky & John Cook, The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

The unexamined life

The unexamined life is not worth living.  –Socrates

The creative spirit

Children are naturally creative, playful, and experimental. If you ask me, we were the most human when we were young kids. We "worked" on our art. Sometimes for hours at a time without a break, because it was in us, though we did intellectualize it. As we got older, fears crept in, and doubts, and self-censoring, and over-thinking. The creative spirit is in us now, it’s who we are. We just need to look at the kids around us to be reminded of that. And whether you are 28 or 88 today, it’s never too late, because the child is still in you. 

Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen

The contours of our heart

The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart.  -Ortega T Gassett

The sacred present

Here you are! In the sacred present. I can’t heal you—or anyone—but I can celebrate your choice to dismantle the prison in your mind. Brick by brick. 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. 

Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger in her book The Choice

Shaped & Fashioned

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. -Johann Von Goethe

If you want to test a man's character

Nearly all men can stand adversity. but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -Abraham Lincoln (born Feb 12, 1809)

Two wrongs

Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left.

Guilt v Shame Culture

In a guilt culture you know you are good or bad by what your conscience feels. In a shame culture you know you are good or bad by what your community says about you, by whether it honors or excludes you. In a guilt culture people sometimes feel they do bad things; in a shame culture social exclusion makes people feel they are bad. 

David Brooks writing in the New York Times