Moving Forward

Even if you fall on your face, you're still moving forward.

Robert Gallagher

On the Right Track

Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.

Will Rogers

A Measure of Sadness

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Carl Jung

Driving History

Evangelicals for most of their history have had a curious emphasis on the brakes rather than on the steering wheel.

Calvin Miller

Standing on the Shoulders of Others

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

Socrates

Real Growth

Embracing the changing circumstances around you is not the same as personal growth. Real growth, real transition into adulthood, is an internal process.

The Path to Greater Success

Why are some people so much more effective at learning from their mistakes? After all, everybody screws up. The important part is what happens next. Do we ignore the mistake, brushing it aside for the sake of our self-confidence? Or do we investigate the error, seeking to learn from the snafu?

(A new study detailed in Psychological Science) is premised on the fact that there are two distinct reactions to mistakes, both of which can be reliably detected using EEG. The first reaction is called error-related negativity (ERN). It appears about 50 milliseconds after a screw-up . The second signal, which is known as error positivity (Pe), arrives anywhere between 100-500 milliseconds after the mistake and is associated with awareness. It occurs when we pay attention to the error, dwelling on the disappointing result. In recent years, numerous studies have shown that subjects learn more effectively when their brains demonstrate two properties: 1) a larger ERN signal, suggesting a bigger initial response to the mistake and 2) a more consistent Pe signal, which means that they are probably paying attention to the error, and thus trying to learn from it.

(note: This finding has a practical implication. Studies show that when students are praised for their intelligence rather than their hard work, they will choose easier paths in order to maintain that success. But students who are told their success is the result of hard work are more likely to select more difficult pathways. They possess greater confidence that a similar effort of hard work will bring them continued success - Stephen Goforth).

Praising kids for their innate intelligence — the “smart” compliment — misrepresents the psychological reality of education. It encourages kids to avoid the most useful kind of learning activities, which is when we learn from our mistakes. Because unless we experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong — that surge of Pe activity (in the brain) a few hundred milliseconds after the error), directing our attention to the very thing we’d like to ignore — the mind will never revise its models. We’ll keep on making the same mistakes, forsaking self-improvement for the sake of self-confidence.

Jonah Lehrer writing in Wired Magazine

The Mark of Education

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence.

Robert Frost

Total Recall

Microsoft research scientist Gordon Bell says we’re headed toward the day when electronic devices will be able to digitally capture our every moment. Technology will follow us, recording each person we meet, each walk around the block, each moment of disappointment and triumph. We’ll be able to tap into a digital database at any time in order to see our exact location at a specific time. His book Total Recall envisions easily finding our lost keys or discovering the name of a person we briefly bumped into on the street. We’ll be able analyze our routines and find ways to make our lives more productive.

What will happen to our sense of privacy? The courts may have found legal grounds for itin the constitution while at the same time, technology has pushing toward limiting it. Do we really want the ability to preserve all of our past?

Psychologists will tell you that when it comes to our past, we have selective amnesia. Like a cheerleader’s megaphone (with a small mouth on one end and a large opening on the other) we filter parts of our past, preserving only select memories. You can’t retain it all, so the types of events you decide to recall says something about you. Many mothers say they don’t remember the pain of childbirth, only the overwhelming feelings of bonding and holding their own child for the first time during its first moments of life.

But what happens when there’s no escaping what we’ve been through in life? Instead of painful memories fading over time, we’ll have the option of replaying them vividly in our mind over and over again. Some of us already do that... living in history's prison - unwilling to forgive ourselves or someone else and move on.

Stephen Goforth

Laughter

The earth laughs in flowers.

ee cummings

Explaining Yourself

Don’t explain yourself: Your friends don't need it and your enemies won't believe it.

The Limb

Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.

H. Jackson Browne

Relationship over Rightness

Doctrinal rightness and rightness of ecclesiastical position are important, but only as a starting point to go on into a living relationship -- and not as ends in themselves.

Francis Schaeffer

Prayer

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.

Phillips Brooks

Conflict

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

William Ellery Channing