the importance of effort

From “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” by Carol S. Dweck, PhD We have lots of sayings that stress the importance of risk and the power of persistence, such as “Nothing ventured, nother gained” and “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” or “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”) By the way, I

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the value of noise and error

From “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation” by Steven Johnson Nemeth has gone on to document the same phenomenon at work in dozens of different environments: mock juries, boardrooms, academic seminars. Her research suggests a paradoxical truth about innovation: good ideas are more likely to emerge in environments that contain a

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Questions

From “Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner” by Frederick Buechner On her deathbed, Gertrude Stein is said to have asked, “What is the answer?” Then, after a long silence, “What is the question?” Don’t start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks. 

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God as the source

From “The Discipline of Inspiration: The Mysterious Encounter with God at the Heart of Creativity” by Carey Wallace Songwriters as diverse as Brian Wilson, Carole King, Burt Bacharach, and Lamont Dozier all name God as the source of their inspiration, along with Jimmy Webb, who says, “I believe that He’s the author of all this

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identifying your own privilege

From “Wired to Lead: Being the Leader the Church Didn’t Think You Could Be” by Suzanne Nadell Some of you may be questioning why you are even reading this book. You may be thinking, “Suzanne is a liberal journalist disguised as a Christian who tricked me into reading a book that discusses white privilege.” You

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“She will walk, run, and sing.”

From “Walk with Me: A Journey through the Landscape of Trauma” by Ellen Corcella Family lives are disrupted and turned upside down by devastating genetic and developmental diseases. Parents must make unbearable decisions about the care of their children. A young girl was failing to thrive at the end of her life. Her parents decided

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The Impact of Trauma on Education

From “Dropout to Doctorate: Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice” By Terrence Lester, PhD I’ve worked through much of my own pain and trauma to even understand all the inequities that were barriers to the educational goals in my life. The lack of stability in my home, as well as the social conditions and systemic

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AI Edge Eloquent

By Shelly Palmer “Google quietly launched “AI Edge Eloquent,” an offline-first dictation app for iOS that cleans up your speech and removes filler words. The app uses local Gemini models to transform rambling speech into polished text, with options for “Key points,” “Formal,” “Short,” and “Long” formatting. It can import keywords from Gmail and work

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