Crows can do some pretty amazing things. They can shape hooks from wire to extract bugs from crevices in trees. They can be taught to identify a triangle from a group of various shapes. Beyond these skills, they even seem to be able to do some rudimentary abstracting. For example, once they’ve learned how to make hooks, they can make them out of new materials they have never seen before. If they’ve learned how to identify triangles made of one substance, they can correctly identify the triangle even if its color or material differs from the triangle they were trained with. 

Swimming at night, on the surface, with blood in the water. Three things you are not supposed to do if you want to avoid being attacked by a shark. And yet, the camp counselor I was talking with did all three of these things regularly during his night-time spearfishing adventures.

Unlike the future, the past is fixed. Since 2022 has already happened, the fruit is ready to harvest. All we have to do is to examine our year. Author and podcaster, Tim Ferris, has a great process for doing just this, called a Past Year Review. A Past Year Review leads us to prioritize the things that lead us to flourish and to be aware of those things that do not.

A consequence of being a social animal is that we care about what other members of our species think of us. Our reputation in our community is an important factor in determining our success. In order to be perceived as reliable, we must honor the agreements we make with others. For all of the above reasons, we have a strong desire to appear consistent with our word.

“If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential.” As with foreign language acquisition, making progress in anything means risking failure.

While reading the book, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, written by hostage negotiator Chris Voss, I was surprised to learn how much the FBI has borrowed from therapy to improve the effectiveness of their hostage negotiations. Voss writes, “Most of the time you’ll have a wealth of information from the other person’s words, tone, and body language. We call that trinity ‘words, music, and dance.’ ”   

“Peekaboo!” I said to my baby son with a smile, as I popped my head up over the railing. He grinned, laughed, and squealed with glee. Why do babies experience so much joy at being surprised? For that matter, why is surprise an element in so many aspects of adult life as well? We conceal Christmas gifts with wrapping paper. We prefer that marriage proposals happen at an unexpected moment. We marvel at surprise-twist endings in the movies. There seems to be no clear survival benefit to doing these things. Could there be some deeper significance to surprise? 

There is an architecture that shapes your person much more than the building you live in. The complex web of your thoughts, actions, and relationships all work together to shape who you will become. The good news is that just as you can remodel the building you live in, you can also change the thoughts you dwell upon, the actions you take, and the relationships you choose to cultivate. 

A fish wheel is an ingenious machine that is used to catch salmon in Alaska. A giant wheel is propelled by the current of a river and as it turns, its large baskets occasionally scoop up fish. Even if it isn’t successful on each turn, over the long run, it can produce a substantial catch.

When we jump into the middle of a movie, even our best inferences about the path that led up to the current scene are likely to be mistaken. Similarly, we usually only see people’s external actions, and we can be mistaken in how we trace the path from their actions, to their emotions, to the thoughts they may be having.

Fifteen minute gaps can add up to a lot of time. Even if you only had one such opening per workday, they would add up to over eight full workdays over the course of a year. So how can we ensure that we put this time to good use? 

As I gazed at my baby, I was flooded with love for him. Simultaneously, I was overwhelmed by a thought too large to think: God the Father loves me more than I love my son. As beautiful and full as my love for Francis is, God’s love for me is infinitely more complete. Since this revelation, I’ve started to ask myself: What feedback might God have for me? How would I view myself if I were able to see myself through the loving eyes of the Father?  

At the end of my lunch hour, I like to enjoy a cappuccino. The problem is that many other people also like to get coffee after lunch. Sometimes I wait 15 minutes or more for my drink, and occasionally, I am late to my one o’clock appointments as a result. One day, a solution dawned upon me.

Prepositions define relationships between things. As such, prepositions frequently show up in the language we use to relate to our work. Because our language shapes how we experience reality, it is important to be mindful of how we use prepositions. For example, how we use for and from can lead to very different results. 

Suppose you have an important phone call to make. You know you could make it today, and part of you wants to, but you feel intimidated. When you make the decision to postpone the call, you experience a temporary relief from stress. Your mind perceives this as a net gain, and the learning that has happened increases the probability that you will avoid the call again in the future.

What does success mean for you? Until I read Visioneering by Andy Stanley, my answers to the question above would likely have been related to what he calls the “rewards of success.” In contrast with the rewards of success, Stanley defines true success as “remaining faithful to the process that God has laid out for you.” Under this definition, success for the above examples would be:

If you had asked me two years ago, “Would you like to commit to writing 100 short articles?” I don’t know if I would have embraced the challenge. And yet, if my count is accurate, here I am writing the 103rd issue of the Good Leaven Letter, and I am grateful. Here are some of the things I am grateful for.

Perhaps you’ve experienced it when you’ve bought a new car. All of a sudden, you start to notice that lots of other people have also bought the same make and model that you have. The truth is that those cars were already on the road before your purchase. It’s just that the mental image of your newly purchased car is at the forefront of your mind and so you more easily spot the other vehicles that reinforce your concept. This pattern can happen with the thoughts we choose to focus on as well.

Matt and Erin Ingold from Metanoia Catholic Coaching explain how many clients interpret the question, “What do you seek?,” as “What should I seek?” They give answers like “holiness” or “sanctity,” when in reality this isn’t yet the desire that is currently at the forefront of their heart. Matt and Erin have noticed that many of their clients “dream muscles have atrophied.”

Crucial conversations are often handled poorly. They can quickly devolve into conversational combat. A way to create a more cooperative environment when conversations turn “crucial” is to look for and acknowledge the partial truth in what the other party has said. In a debate, we fight to be right; in a dialogue, we work together to find the truth.