From “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation” by Parker J. Palmer The first shadow-casting monster is insecurity about identity and worth.  Many leaders have an extroverted personality that makes this shadow hard to see. But extroversion sometimes develops as a way to cope with self-doubt: we plunge into external activity to […]

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From “Trust the Whisper: How Answering Quiet Callings Inspires Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Grace“ by Kathy Izard As I kept connecting the God Dots in my life, I stopped being surprised by the connections and started being more expectant. In fact, if a week went by without discovering a remarkable story, I would wonder if

From “What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman” by Lerita Coleman Brown Thurman demystified mysticism by framing it simply. Mystics are people who have a personal religious experience or an encounter with God. This description has freed me and many others from thinking that God appears to people only after years

From “Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life” by Henri Nouwen with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird It may be a bit disappointing initially that when we look for clear answers to the burning questions in our lives, we are left only with titles of books, experiences in nature, names of people, and

From “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” by Carol S. Dweck, PhD Jim Collins set out to discover what made some companies move from being good to being great. What was it that allowed them to make the leap to greatness – and stay there – while other, comparable companies just held steady at good?

rom “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation” by Steven Johnson In the early 1920s, two Columbia University scholars named William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas decided to track down as many multiples as they could find, eventually publishing their survey in an influential essay with the delightful title “Are Inventions Inevitable?” Ogburn

From “Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner” by Frederick Buechner There are Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians. There are Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists. There are Disciples of Christ. There are Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. There are Moravians. There are Quakers. And that’s only for starters. New denominations spring up. Old denominations split up and

From “Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Help Others, Do Work that Matters, and Make Smarter Choices About Giving Back” by William Macaskill In the first part, I dedicate each chapter to exploring one of effective altruism’s five key questions: Asking these five key questions can help us avoid common pitfalls when