Category: Books
-
7 Takeaways from Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
I love this book. Read it twice in 2 weeks and am making some serious changes as a result. My key takeaways along with a very impressive illustrative quote from Gilbert: 1. Be your own patron. “To yell at your creativity, saying, ‘You must earn money for me!’ is sort of like yelling at a cat; it has…
-
Learn Better
I was curious. Learning better seemed like a great skill to have today. So I picked up Surprising Truth About How, When and Where We Learn and Why it Happens by Benedict Carey (2014). He integrates very old (1874) and newer studies (up to 2012) about various learning topics. I read the book, despaired of…
-
The Triangle of Self-Leadership
I ran into an interesting concept while reading The Restless Executive: Reclaim Your Values, Love What You Do and Lead with Purpose by career coach Jo Simpson. The concept is The Triangle of Self-Leadership. The Triangle of Self Leadership has 3 sides: Self-Care: You (apply your value) to You Service: You (apply your value) to Others Surrender:…
-
When Pollen Gets in Your Thinking
“Eventually everything connects.” Charles Eames Spring. Flowers. Here today. Gone tomorrow. In California, in a few short weeks, everything will be brown. This is when our new year should be. Not the dead of dark winter. This is the time of possibility and change. When pollen gets in your thinking, new things happen. When I…
-
3 Great Reads for the Holidays
How to be Interesting in 10 Simple Steps by Jessica Hagy was on an end-cap at beloved Powell’s in Portland. It’s a great sketch noted thought starter for how one might want to approach things differently in the new year or anytime, whether you want to be interesting or not. For example, Step One: Go Exploring…
-
Sketchnotes for NBCC Published
It’s great when you find a use for your gifts in service of others. Four of my sketchnotes of sermons at New Beginnings Community Church Bay Area have been published on the NBCC Facebook page. People seem to enjoy them so I am sharing them here also. All of the sermons and sketchnotes relate to a…
-
Self-Compassion
I hardly know where to begin. I discovered the self-compassion work of Dr. Kristin Neff through Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection e-course. Dr. Neff has a really long title. She’s an Associate Professor in Human Development and Culture in the Educational Psychology Department at the University of Texas at Austin. Whew. Dr. Neff spoke at TEDx Manitoba…
-
Imperfect and Enough with Brené Brown and Oprah
I’ve been participating in Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection Oprah’s Lifeskills Class over the last 2 weeks. If you don’t already know who she is, check out her TED talk about Daring Greatly (with over 11 million views.) One of the exercises in the first week, Charting the Wholehearted Journey, was to change our focus…
-
An Altar in the World
Barbara Brown Taylor’s meditation on reverence in her book A Geography of Faith: An Altar in the World (2009) put words to what causes me to pick up the camera to take a picture. With the help of classical philosopher Paul Woodruff she defines reverence as “the recognition of something greater than the self” (p21) Even…
