There are 175 posts filed in Uncategorized (this is page 7 of 18).
I remember Seth Godin saying one time that he’s the same he was 20 years ago except for the people he’s met and the books he’s read. Russell Moore recently quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson with a similar line that I liked maybe even better.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
via Russell Moore
This is really good and a helpful foundation to return to.
All of these are tremendous, but the parts about not using conversations as an opportunity to show off and using open-ended questions to find out about other people really resonated with me.
1 Thessalonians says that we are to “always seek to do good to one another and to everyone” and one of the ways we can do a better job of that is through conversation that encourages and exhorts.
I read this passage this morning, and I thought it was a sweet sliver of solace in a mad world full of noise, fear and frustration. I believe, help my unbelief.
I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord
Psalm 27:13-14
in the land of the living!
Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!
Andy Crouch on anything is terrific, but this quote stood out to me in Strong and Weak. I so often struggle to define leadership even as I actively pursue it and participate in it in a number of different spheres. This is a helpful way to think about it.
Leadership does not begin with a title or a position. It begins the moment you are concerned more about others’ flourishing than you are about your own.
Strong and Weak (pg. 111)
I loved this interview with Danny Meyer, who invented Shake Shack (among several other amazing businesses). His six characteristics of a good hire blew me away, mostly because I desire to be strong in all of them. Here they are.
I don’t know that I could draw up a better list than that, and I think listening to interviews like that one both encourage me and also help give me a vision for what the future could look like. That I don’t have to only think one day ahead at a time (which is sometimes what it feels like).
One verse I’ve really been meditating on and thinking a lot about, especially given how this year has gone and how much suffering has happened around me is Psalm 94:19.
When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.
Psalm 94:19
When the cares of my heart are on what’s going on in and around my life, you cheer my soul. When the cares of my heart are irreconcilable, you cheer my soul. When the cares of my heart are on worldly things, you cheer my soul.
Thankful for a God who does not treat our relationship as quid pro quo but rather enters in with the greatest grace and kindness to give us a consolation we so often need.
I really loved this from Ed Yong on journalism and writing and media in 2020.
The best one might be the last one: Accrue social capital so you can spend it on people. The one I have found to be the most helpful: Park downhill at the end of the day.
I enjoyed this from Paul David Tripp.
Love is being more committed to unity and understanding than you are to winning, accusing, or being right. It’s also being willing, when confronted by another, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.
PDT
How rarely am I quick to either of those things.
This episode of How I Built This with Milk Bar Christina Tosi was tremendous, and I love her quirky but vigilant demeanor. But something she said at the end overwhelmed me.
It’s something I’ve thought about often but never really put the right words to. She was asked — as all HIBT guests are asked — whether her success was due to luck or hard work.
It’s an impossible question that she nailed.
“It’s more opportunity than it was luck,” she said. “I don’t consider myself to have great luck, but I show up and mean it. I’m a big believer in people who show up and mean it winning in the end.”
Show up and mean it. It doesn’t guarantee success — that would be an affront to folks who haven’t made it — but without it, you have nothing.
