Two things fill the mind

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Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily reflection is occupied with them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me. Neither of them need I seek and merely suspect as if shrouded in obscurity or rapture beyond my own horizon; I see them before me and connect them immediately with my existence. -Immanuel Kant (born April 22, 1724)

A growth mindset

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A growth mindset suggests that you can grow, expand, evolve, and change. Intelligence and capability are not fixed points but instead traits you cultivate. A growth mindset releases you from the expectation of being perfect. Failures and mistakes are not indicative of the limits of your intellect but rather tools that inform how you develop. A growth mindset is liberating, allowing you to find value, joy, and success in the process, regardless of the outcome. 

Cultivating a growth mindset can begin with shifting your inner dialogue from beliefs about your ability (a fixed mindset) to beliefs about your opportunities and needs (a growth mindset)—for example, from “I’m terrible at giving presentations” to “I need more practice presenting in front of others.” 

Similarly, “I’m not good enough to be promoted to supervisor” might become “I need some additional experience before I’ll be ready for promotion.” Simple restatements have a dramatic impact on what you believe about your own abilities. A fixed mindset often runs deep; it may take constant practice to reframe your default thoughts.   

Lisa Christensen, Jake Gittleson, and Matt Smith

Safe Solutions

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If your state of mind is coming from a place of fear and risk avoidance, then you will always settle for the safe solutions—the solutions already applied many times before. Sometimes, the path already taken is the best solution. But you should not follow the path automatically without first seeing it for what it really is. When you are open to possibilities, you may find that the common way is the best way for your particular case. However, this will be a choice you made not by habit, but by reflection and in the spirit of a fresh beginner with fresh eyes and a new perspective. 

Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen

Diminishing our Pain

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People say to me, "Things in my life are pretty hard right now, but I have no right to complain—it’s not Auschwitz." This kind of comparison can lead us to minimize or diminish our own suffering. 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. We’re judging ourselves. I don’t want you to hear my story and say, "My own suffering is less significant. " I want you to hear my story and say, "If she can do it, then so can I."

 Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger in her book The Choice

Self-Renewal & Motivation

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The self-renewing man is highly motivated and respects the sources of his own energy and motivation. He has the priceless quality of enthusiasm.  He knows how important it is to believe in what he is doing. 

He knows how important it is to pursue the things about which he has a deep conviction. Enthusiasm for the task to be accomplished lifts him out of the ruts of habit and customary procedure. Drive and conviction give him the courage to risk failure. (One of the reasons mature persons stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.) And not only does he respond to challenge, but he also sees the challenge where others fail to see it . . . 

John Gardner, Self-Renewal

The Nazis hung him (on this date in 1945)

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Nazi in 1943 for his work with the resistance. He had been warned not to speak publicly.  He did so anyway and was hanged April 9, 1945. Ethics is a gathering of his notes for an intended work on the subject, hidden in a garden before they could be seized by the police. Here is one paragraph contrasting the Ethics of Kant to Christ: 

Christ did not, like a moralist, love a theory of good, but He loved the real man. He was not, like a philosopher, interested in the 'universally valid,' but rather in that which is of help to the real and concrete human being. What worried him was not, like Kant, whether the 'maxim of an action can become a principle of general legislation', but whether my action is at this moment helping my neighbor become a man before God. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

Stephen Goforth

 

Change, Paradigm Shifts

Renewal and Friendship

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The self-renewing man has mutually fruitful relations with other human beings. They are capable of accepting love and capable of giving it – both more difficult achievements than is commonly thought. And what has that to do with self-renewal? The man or woman who is incapable of accepting love or of giving it is imprisoned, cut off from a great part of the world of experience. Love and friendship dissolve the rigidities of the isolated self, force new perspectives, alter judgments, and keep in working order the emotional substratum on which all profound comprehensive of human affairs must rest.

John Gardner, Self-Renewal