MeaningfulMonitoring

"That which is not monitored..............................is optional." 

Those were the words of a school administrator I once worked with. The truth therein is self-evident and weighty.

Monitoring, however, can become a burdensome tool. The process can also take on the look/feel/smell of being bogus and hollow.

How can we bring meaningfulness to the monitoring process? Consider some of the following as effective tools by which to assess the pursuit of continual improvement (aka monitoring):

• Make clear the goals we are pursuing. 
• Make conversations always about the goals, not the people.
• Keep monitoring focused on the WHOLE more than just the parts.
• Embed discussions about our goals into conversations pervasively.
• Discuss those goals with ALL stakeholders, both internal and external.
• Create some kind of metrics around which those conversations can be had.
• "We" and "Us" and "Our" must always be the pronouns of use, not "I" or "You" or "They."
• Brevity Rules! One short, informal conversation each week will yield better results than one half-day meeting each month.

We can do better. 

Every day. 

On purpose. 

EverythingIsTuberculosis

I recently read Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green (2025).

 JG is most well-known as a writer of fiction. He undertook this work as a departure from his usual foci, as much as anything out of curiosity as to why tuberculosis, with a known cure, seems so recalcitrant.

My top takeaways:

Ø  Roughly 30% of all humans have been infected with TB.

Ø  90 percent of people infected with TB will never become sick.

Ø  Inexplicably, 20-25% of people recover from active TB without treatment.

Ø  It is foolish to think that history belongs to the past.

Ø  Since TB thrives in crowded living and working conditions, it is often seen as a disease of poverty.

Ø  “Courage” and “Encourage” are powerfully related words in that they tend to call forth our best selves.

Ø  The colonial British Empire was excellent at building systems, with the intent of resource-extraction.

Ø  “Poor” is almost always multidimensional in nature.

Ø  In places where formal healthcare systems are not particularly effective more trusted spaces and people—like churches and faith healers—are often viewed in higher regard than doctors and hospitals.

Ø  Tuberculosis is listed in Guinness World Records as the oldest contagious disease.

Ø  “Inspire” = breathe in; “Expire” = breathe out, all the way out.

Ø  Many diseases exist where the cure does not; and the cure is where the disease is not.

Ø  Disease, and its treatment, are not only issues of biology; they also have nutritional, educational, economic, social, and political dimensions.

Ø  There are vicious cycles, and there are also virtuous cycles. The differentiators are CARING and LOVE.

Ø  What constitutes a good time and manner of death is purely subjective.

Ø  To effectively fight pernicious disease we need an entire set of robust systems that work perfectly in concert with each other.

Ø  We lose 1,250,000 people each year to tuberculosis. A curable illness.

 

My favorite quotes:

“Looking at history through any single lens creates distortions, because history is too complex for any one way of looking to suffice.” (p. 19)

“Once, when Isatu talked to me about her childhood, the interpreter used the word “woven.” ‘Myself and my friends were woven.’” (p. 27)

“History is often imagined as a series of events, unfolding one after the other like a sequence of falling dominoes. But most human experiences are processes, not events.” (p. 77)

“Before the germ theory of disease, we did not know that around half the cells in my body do not, in fact, belong to my body—they are bacteria and other microscopic organisms colonizing me. And to one degree or another, these microorganisms can also control the body—shaping the body’s contours by making it gain or lose weight, sickening the body, killing the body. There’s even emerging evidence that one’s microbiome may have a relationship with thought itself through the gut-brain information axis, meaning that at least some of my thoughts may belong not to me, but to the microorganisms in my digestive tract. Research indicates that certain gut microbiomes are associated with major depression and anxiety disorders; in fact, it’s possible that my particular microbiome is at least partly responsible for my OCD, meaning that the microbes are the reason I’m so deeply afraid of microbes.[*]” (p. 94)

“And this is why I would submit that TB in the twenty-first century is not really caused by a bacteria that we know how to kill. TB in the twenty-first century is really caused by those social determinants of health, which at their core are about human-built systems for extracting and allocating resources. The real cause of contemporary tuberculosis is, for lack of a better term, us.” (p. 182)

“In a world where everyone can eat, and access healthcare, and be treated humanely, tuberculosis has no chance. Ultimately, we are the cause. We must also be the cure.” (p. 184)

“This is the gut-wrenching, heartrending injustice of living with tuberculosis in the twenty-first century: You live if you’re rich. And if you’re not, then you hope to get lucky.” (p. 187)

Glad my lovely bride recommended that I put my nose in this one. Enlightening.

Self-Deceptioin

 We deceive ourselves when...

     > We think we're smarter than everyone else.
     > We consider talking of more value than listening.
     > We accept blame and excuses as proxy for solutions. 
     > We assume that ignoring a problem will make it go away.
     > We underestimate the power of our words -- for good or for hurt.
     > We decide others need our unsolicited criticism. 
     > We lose sight of the power of genuine caring.
     > We conclude that we've learned enough.

When we tell ourselves these lies, we lose. As do those who depend on us.

Or, we can quit deceiving ourselves, and win. Which results in betterment for all concerned.

EffectivenessRecipe

I once heard physician and leadership guru Dr. Eddie Erlandson say, "At the end of the day, we all just want to be more effective." An excellent point.

A number of years ago McKinsey & Company (a multi-national consulting firm), conducted a study of leadership effectiveness that included responses of 189,000 folks, from around the world, and from all kinds of organizations. You can read about it HERE. 

The researchers identified 20 key practices of effectiveness:

1. Be supportive.
2. Champion desired change.
3. Clarify objectives, rewards, and consequences.
4. Communicate prolifically and enthusiastically.
5. Develop others.
6. Develop and share a collective mission.
7. Differentiate among followers.
8. Facilitate group collaboration.
9. Foster mutual respect.
10. Give praise.
11. Keep groups organized and on task.
12. Make quality decisions.
13. Motivate and bring out the best in others.
14. Offer a critical perspective.
15. Operate with a strong results orientation.
16. Recover positively from failure.
17. Remain composed and confident in uncertainty.
18. Role model organizational values.
19. Seek different perspectives.
20. Solve problems effectively.

Interestingly, they also found that the four displayed in bold font above account for 89% of the effectiveness of the leaders of the highest performing organizations.

Note to self...

Standard(ized)

 Standardization is not always a good thing. 

Standardization is good when...

     > the 34" waist-sized pants have 34" waist measurement

     > the stopwatch accurately times the 400 meter race, just like the other stopwatches

     > the height of the bridge underpass is truly and consistently measured

     > the automobile tires we purchase fit the rims on our car

Standardization is not so good when...

     > We mistake fairness with equal treatment

     > Academic test scores are considered proxies for the quality or worth of the tested

     > Compliance is viewed as a moral equivalence

     > Blind obedience absent ethical consideration is expected and required

Standardization in "stuff" is an excellent starting point.

Standardization in the judgment and treatment of humans is not.

In both domains, Excellence goes beyond any attempt at standardization. Excellence is a far better goal than standardization. 

EnforcementFailures

I worked once for an impactful leader who taught me much about how to think and behave if I wanted the best from others. Dr. Tom Gaul regularly reminded us that he "didn't hire us to enforce policy, but rather, to do what was right for our students (aka customers)." 

TG's argument comes down to the mindset of the leader, and whether it comes from an insistence on compliance, or conversely, an intrinsic commitment to worthy and noble outcomes.

The Enforcement Bosses I've worked for over the years focus on:

• Endless compliance monitoring.
• Layer upon layer of "permission" mechanisms.
• Systems grounded in DIStrust.

Stagnation and self-preservation are almost always the result of compliance-based systems.

Pretty sure we can do better than that...

AmbiguityResponse

Things change. That's the surest constant.

Housing if far different that it was 1,000 years ago. Travel has changed a little in the last 500 years. Clothing is a bit different now than it was 100 years ago. Communications systems are not even close to what they were 50 years ago. "Community" means something different than it did 25 years ago. Technological tools are far more robust than they were.....last year.

How we deal with the ambiguities of work, of our social lives, of managing our health, of being all we can and should be is a challenge each and every day. Ambiguity Rules! seems an understatement.

When "what's next" seems most unclear to us, we can hang our hat -- our thinking and behavior -- squarely on the principles upon which we stand. 

Probably worth our time to be clear about what those principles are.

DecisionPacing

One of my most influential mentors over the years has rattled around in my brain for decades, particularly so on the subject of WHEN an important decision is to be made. He advised me to "take as much time as is allowed to make important decisions, collecting as much data and feedback as possible before doing so. Understand, however, that the best decision in the world made one minute too late ... is of no consequence."

Dr. Blair's counsel has guided my thinking and served me well over the years. And continues to do so. 

Difficult decisions always hinge on a myriad of mitigating and confounding variables. Those variables include things like...

• Affordability
• Implementation contingencies
• Time constraints 
• Available talent
• Legal considerations
• Political contexts

ALL of those variables must be mulled and considered and calculated.

What should NEVER enter the thought process, however, are prospects for personal gain (tangible or intangible) or ethical compromise.

I heard this week amidst the eulogy of a community "hero" one of his life-mantras:

It is never the wrong time to do the right thing.

Happy decision making...

TeachingWithAI

I recently read Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning, by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson (2024).  

My top takeaways were:

Ø  Ethical use of AI must be baked into our curriculum and practice.

Ø  AI can always produce C-level work, more cheaply than humans.

Ø  AI has created new ways to analyze DNA, music, computer code, and brain waves.

Ø  AI also generates (interesting) misinformation.

Ø  Relationships with humans take time and care; relationships with an AI do not.

Ø  AIs are much more focused listeners than humans.

Ø  We are going to be able to think differently using AI, maybe even better.

Ø  Those who use AI well will have an advantage in the marketplace.

Ø  Used well, AI is a collaborator.

Ø  An emerging learning outcome for schools is AI literacy.

Ø  We are experiencing only the first wave of AI-inspired jobs; subsequent waves are still unknown.

Ø  Ideally, the AI does not think for us but helps us think better.

Ø  AI is exceptional at weeding out the 99 bad ideas to get to the 1 good one.

Ø  AI is recursive in that everything it produces also goes back into the dataset, as does every question we ask of it.

Ø  The ability to think and adapt is golden currency in the workforce.

Ø  The range of quality in responses from AI is consistently higher than that of humans.

Ø  It is just as easy for faculty to build a case to accuse any student of cheating with AI as it is for students to cheat using AI.

Ø  Asking the right question (prompt) is the premium human skill.

Ø  Language barriers will disappear as result of AI.

Ø  Historical definitions of plagiarism no longer apply.

Ø  More encouragement and less instruction = better effort, higher self-efficacy, and more learning.

Ø  The easy out would be to say that AI can be used for everything or nothing; not likely, not doable.

Ø  A motivating model for effort: I Care, I Can, I Matter.

Ø  Just-right challenges are not too easy or too difficult: at either extreme, we quit.

Ø  “All assignments are now AI assignments.” (p. 198)  

Ø  Good writing is good editing.

 

My favorite quotes:

“If the internet changed our relationship with knowledge, AI is going to change our relationship with thinking.” (p. 2)

 

“What we call cheating, businesses see as innovation.” (p. 5)

 

AI will eliminate some jobs, but it is going to change every job: those who can work with AI will replace those who can’t. (p. 28)

 

“Most problem solving, however, is a combination of both divergent thinking (what might I be missing? How else could I look at this?) and convergent thinking (What is the best solution?).” (p. 46)  

 

“Still, the way to get better at everything is to get better at something.” (p. 105)

 

“Pedagogy is about improving the odds that students will learn.” (p. 130)

 

“It would be much simpler if we could either say that AI can be used for everything or nothing, but neither seems likely or prudent.” (p. 143)

 

“Feedback is essential for learning, and we’ve long known that the best feedback is like a tennis net: objective, immediate, and specific (Chickering & Gamson, 1987).” (p. 162)

 

“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” John Wooden, Hall of Fame basketball coach and player (p. 184)

 

“I may not be there yet, but I am closer than I was yesterday.” Misty Copeland, Principal dancer, American Ballet Theater (p. 235)

 

“Education, parenting, and democracy have always managed an uneasy tension between what to think (content) and how to think (process). As the internet provided more immediate access to content, it profoundly shifted that balance to process. Our new future is teaching students how to think with AI.” (p. 238)

 

I read this book in a team study with other interested educators. A most worthy learning endeavor. I can highly recommend it to any educator at any level.

Unsure51

 I am UNSURE ...

• Why she agreed to that first date 51 years ago today.
• Why she consented to the second and following ones.
• Why she wed me despite that most awkward proposal scenario. 
• Why she chose to have children with me, fully aware of the genetic risks.
• Why she repeatedly pulled up stakes and followed my professional journey.
• Why she continues to forgive me each and every day.
• Why she tolerates my exasperatingly poor communications skills.

I am SURE ... thankful she did, thankful she does, and immensely thankful she seems inclined to persist.

WhoWe?

We are...

• What we think.
• What we read.
• What we eat.
• Who we admire.
• What we believe.
• What we listen to.
• Who we love.

....in control of each of those choices. And each one shapes Who We Are.

AginnerSyndrome

Some folks just seem to be against anything or everything that's not the same thing.

We all know them. They object relentlessly. They immediately find fault. They resist any sort of change, LOUDLY.  "Yeah, but..." seem to be their two favorite words. 

These folks constantly proclaim, "I'm agin it!" 

How can we avoid slipping into that Aginner Syndrome ourselves?

• Avoid arguing with the Aginners.
• Pose questions around possibilities and what might be.
• Focus persistently on outcomes over processes.
• NEVER be snarky or take cheap shots.
• Keep our eyes, our conversation, our attention forever and always on the future.

Most of the time, the Aginners can't help it. 

We can love them anyway.

Ritualistic

Rituals are collective habits. They provide symbolism for our culture. They're almost like social tattoos.

Why are rituals so important in promulgating our culture?

• We schedule them regularly, thus making them habitual.
• They showcase the best version of our culture.
• They remind us of what really matters.
• They motivate and empower us.
• They pull us together - cognitively, physically, spiritually.
• They provide a clean, clear, and fairly simple expression of "our brand."

Rituals make us richer.

Ripplefication

A well known tenet in the field of psychology is the rule of reciprocity. In essence: "I'll give you something, then you feel compelled to return the favor, somehow." We see this strategy deployed all the time, particularly in sales and con schemes. 

The idea of reciprocal bounceback is compelling, but it's grounded in egocentricity.  The bedrock of servant leadership, however, is just the opposite. Rather than giving with intent of return, servant leadership is service with an outward rippling effect. 

Not only does that outward rippling occur, it gets magnified by those influenced by the servant leader. 

Think of it as ripplefication. 

GO!

PresenceVsProductivity

Our society often measures human worth in how much we accomplish, how much money we make, what titles and awards we accumulate, and how big of a splash we make.

Often lost in that rat race is the importance of connection and engagement with those in our sphere of influence. 

We make choices about how we spend our minutes, hours, and days. When we look at our past, those cumulative decisions reflect how we have spent our lives.

A life spent truly noticing others, authentically engaging with them, learning from them, being fully present to them might well prove to be the most productive of lives.

We get to choose ..... this minute, this hour, this day ..... this life.

TrustTells

Poker players are always looking for the "tells," the little clues in an opponent's posture, moves, voice, eyes, or demeanor that suggest the quality of the cards they hold.

Trust Tells help us determine who we can trust. It's much easier to trust people who...

• Give away trust to others freely.
• Win with modesty and lose with dignity.
• Debate vigorously, on the facts, without making it personal.
• Treat others respectfully, even when they may not deserve it.
• View every other person as a unique child of God.
• Engage openly and freely with others. 
• Express gratitude pervasively. 

With that rubric in mind, we can now look in the mirror...

ForceMultipliers

Organizational work can be kind of a drag. It doesn't matter if your organization has a membership of three, or three hundred, or three thousand, or three million.

Some well known things that make an organization feel and perform more effectively and affectively can be thought of as Force Multipliers. What might those things be? 

Some examples include:

• When many participate and few observe (not the other way around).
• When there is safety for dissent and open discourse (not fear and reprisals).
• When options and autonomy abound (not standardized behavior and action).
• When communications run in all directions (not just top down).
• When brevity is the golden standard (not endless blather).
• When kindness and respectfulness are the rule (not the exception).

May the Force Multipliers be with you...

EnergyIgnition

Some people energize us. Some do not. What's the difference?

Some work energizes us. Some does not. What's the difference?

Some energizers we realize, from both people in our universe and the work we do...

• They make us feel impactful.
• They allow us the safety to fail upward.
• They draw out of us our best strengths/talents.
• We have agency in the relationship or intended outcomes.
• The time and effort we invest in them feels like it boomerangs.

Mirror time: How and how well do I ignite the energy in others?

It is not happenstance. Rather, it springs from choices we make.

De-Focus

We focus. On something. Continually.

Most of the time we focus, out of habit, on that we deem urgent: getting to work on time, finishing that project, organizing our day, meeting a deadline .......

Not as often, however, do we focus on our own strengths. It is through our strengths that we have the highest prospects to ...

• Make the most impact.
• Reach our fullest potential.
• Realize our most worthy goals.
• Energize ourselves and those around us. 
• Serve the most folks in the most meaningful ways.

On the flip side, when we choose to focus on our weaknesses, OR those of the folks with whom we work and live, none of that bulleted menu above becomes reality. 

What we choose to focus on, or DE-focus on, matters. It's a choice. A daily choice. A consequential choice. 

Gitter-r-Doners

Leadership occurs whenever two or more people are involved/engaged in some kind of relationship. 

Whether we're in relationship with only one other person or with tens of thousands, our thinking, intent, and behavior influences that of "the team" (ourselves included) and, thus, the outcomes we achieve.

Think of it as the Gitter-r-Doner effect.

Some of the best Gitter-r-Doners I've observed follow a very pithy script:

• CLARITY - Keep the direction our team is going worthy and simple. Tattoo and bumper sticker worthy messaging increases clarity and coordination. 
• TRUST - Having trust among and between the individuals and organizational teams is worth its weight in gold. Transparency, vulnerability, and honesty are priceless as trust generators and sustainers. 
• PEOPLE - All the fancy tools and technology in world cannot replace committed humans. Investing in the people is the surest way to positive achievements.

Enacting that triad is not so much exact science as it is art. And, yes, we can begin improving our craft as Gitter-r-Doners today...

Today'sLearning

When I worked as a school principal and later as a superintendent I would often see students on the bus line at the end of the day. I would regularly ask this question of them:

"What did you learn today that you didn't already know?"

Too frequently they could not think of anything. Which led to a short conversation about learning.

It's not a bad question to ask of ourselves, regardless of age, at the end of the day....

What did I learn today that I didn't already know?

MissedOppMitigation

I have observed a lot of leaders over the last five decades. Some do an OK job of "staying open and staying legal." The literature aptly describes this as "satisficing." Good enough is good enough.

A few of the leaders I have observed, however, are masterful at their work. For them, good enough is NOT good enough. Part of the skill set of those folks includes their ability to see and seize opportunities that present themselves. 

From watching those Opportunity Maestros, here are some of the things they do in that regard:

• Their eyes are always on the horizon, gauging the trends, the changing landscape, the shifts.

• They are prolific networkers, building relationships beyond their profession, wheelhouse, and age cohort.

• They foster cultures that support and reward risk taking with the team.

• They personally own "the failures" while giving credit to others for "the wins."

• They mine both soft and hard data relentlessly, from all directions, then make consequential decisions based on those data.

• They work mightily to embed adaptability into both the processes and the people. 

Continuous LEARNING is the assumed mindset of those Opportunity Seekers. 

Look at the horizon. What see you?

MotivationMonsters

What we choose to chase in life has both implications and consequences:

When we choose to chase...

MONEY    or    STATUS    or    PRESTIGE    or    FAME

It almost always comes at a cost.

To quote a line from the popular Randy Travis song: "It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it's what you leave behind you when you go."

We choose what we chase..........daily.

VolunteerJuice

The late Dr. Phil Schlechty oft reminded us that the people we work with, our internal and external customers, and even our students (for the educators among us) should be viewed as volunteers. 

Each and every one of them extends to us their time, effort, attention (and sometimes money) in direct proportion to how engaged they are with us and with the actions/progress/vision we propose.
 

If we drink Dr. Schlechty's koolaid, then what should we be be doing to increase the level of engagement of that wide range of stakeholders we serve? 

Worth considering is this menu...

• TRUST - Seek mightily to foster trust between and among the individuals and groups with which we engage.
• LEARNING - Heavily invest time and resources toward the advancement of knowledge and skills with those on our team, and with those from whom we seek support.
• TRANSPARENCY - Be open and equitable with information flows and resource allocation. 
• FOCUS - Craft clear and very concise messaging regarding what we are about and what needs to be done to achieve our goals.
• DISCIPLINE - Follow the advice of Coach Phil Jackson: "Chop wood, haul water." Every day, all day, in many ways.
• LISTEN - Intently listen to all stakeholders, with our ears, with our eyes, with our hearts.

We can never get it all right, all the time, but ...... we can get better at each, every day.

Today is an excellent day to begin raising the engagement level. No telling what we can accomplish...us and our volunteers, that is.

Relationship&Progress

Patience and persistence go hand in hand. That is especially the case when improved performance (whether personal or organizational) is our goal.

A common misstep in the path toward improvement is when we choose to harm -- or destroy -- a relationship in the interest of hastening our progress.

That choice almost always works against our goals, and more often than not, hinders the pace for which we pine. Funny how often inordinate pushing, pressing, demands, and expectations land us in a ditch. 

PULL seems a better deployment mechanism than PUSH.

BeingBecoming

Most of us look at ourselves in the mirror each day. Probably many times each day. A quick look at pictures of ourselves over the years irrefutably documents that what we look like today is NOT what we looked like 10 or 20 or 50 years ago. 

Our beingness -- who we are --  has also changed similarly over the years. The work we do or don't do or have done or haven't done with regard to our physical appearance cannot be ignored, nor denied.

The same goes for the work we choose to do on who we are becoming as a person. Arguably, attention to our beingness is even more important than our physical appearance. 

Step 1: We think intentionally about who we aspire to be. 

Step 2: We go to work shaping that person we envision.

Just as in the physical domain, it will most certainly mean abandoning some habits and acquiring some different ones. 

Today is a good day to start. The only day, really. The footprint we leave on the planet matters. 

Mind2Matter

I recently read Mind to Matter: The Astonishing Science of How Your Brain Creates Material Reality by Dawson Church (2018).

 

I love it when books make me think, take me to places I hadn’t considered or even considered possible. This one did.

 

My top takeaways:

Ø  Experience enriches brain circuitry. Novel events/learning enrich that experience. 

Ø  Per recent scientific research, matter looks more and more like pure energy.

Ø  Our consciousness affects the material reality around us.

Ø  As with building muscle, neural circuits grow with exercise.

Ø  Consciousness can be controlled and point in a discrete direction.

Ø  The nocebo effect is opposite of the placebo effect.

Ø  Change the field and you change the matter.

Ø  Our individual energy field is just as unique as our fingerprints.

Ø  Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) uses acupoints to impact psychological state.

Ø  Our cells, organs, bodies, social networks, and the planet have fields; those fields can be changed with intention.

Ø  Mystics point to the direct experience of oneness.

Ø  Emotions are contagious.

Ø  Emotional contagion shapes the world.

Ø  Each second, over 810,000 of our cells are being replaced.

Ø  Every cell in our skin is replaced each month.

Ø  There are five brain “waves,” each of which implicates different states of consciousness, and functionality, within us.

Ø  MIND CHANGE = FIELD CHANGE = CELL CHANGE

Ø  High cortisol (stress hormone) levels are driven up by negative thinking. Persistent high cortisol levels are debilitating.

Ø  HEALTH is physical and mental and emotional-spiritual. They are interconnected and interdependent.

Ø  A coherent brain trumps physical strength and coordination.

Ø  The four fundamental forces in physics: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force.

Ø  Scientists affect what they’re studying, through their minds. Many times and in many ways, the scientist influences the outcomes.

Ø  In the quantum world, all possibilities exist simultaneously, then condense into probabilities. The resulting reality is the “collapse” of those possibilities into one observed outcome.

Ø  We live and function in five life areas: Work, Love, Money, Health, and Spirituality.

 

My favorite quotes:

“And as you’ll learn in this wonderful book, recent studies show that just an hour of focused concentration on any one subject doubles the number of connections in your brain related to that subject. The same research tells us that if you don’t repeat, review, or think about what you’ve learned, those circuits prune apart within hours or days. Thus, if learning is making new synaptic connections, remembering is maintaining those connections.” (p. xi)

 

“When an electric current is passed through a conductor, it produces a magnetic field. This is true whether the conductor is a power cord or a neuron.” (p. 11)

 

Biologist James Oschman states, “Energy is the currency in which all transactions in nature are conducted” (Oschman, 2015). (p. 11)

 

“Genius inventor Nikola Tesla is often quoted as saying, “If you wish to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.”” (p. 15)

 

“When our stress levels drop, biological resources are freed up for cell repair, immunity, and other beneficial functions.” (p. 78)

 

“Prior research has shown that brains synchronize when sharing information. When one person speaks while another listens, the brain regions active in the speaker light up in the listener too.” (p. 97)

 

“The lining of your digestive tract also undergoes rapid turnover. It’s replaced every four days. Your lung tissue? Every eight days. Even the densest of tissues, your bones, are constantly regenerating, with 10 percent of your skeleton being replaced each year.” (p. 112)

 

“Our bodies are programmed to heal. Healing is not something we get from a prescription, a doctor, an herb, or an alternative therapist. Healing is what our bodies do naturally and normally every second of every day. The deeper our understanding of the healing process, the better equipped we are to turn mind to matter.” (p. 114)

 

“When every one of those 810,000 new cells that your body creates each second is born in an energetic environment of kindness and love, it shapes their development.” (p. 118)

 

“The big picture, however, is that our bodies are sensitive to the frequencies generated by our brains, from the slowest waves of delta to the fastest waves of gamma, and that by understanding these links, we can use our brain waves to heal our cells.” (p. 134)

 

“There are two basic survival questions: Can I eat it? Will it eat me? … The very skill that kept our ancestors alive—looking for the bad stuff and ignoring the good stuff—is killing us today. Our minds have become a major threat to our survival. Caveman brain is a fatal condition.” (p. 156)

 

“We can’t think straight when the blood and oxygen flow to our brains is reduced as a result of being stressed. The caveman doesn’t have to be able to do long division in his head; he just needs to be able to escape from the tiger.” (p. 167)

 

“In science, that something is happening is usually observed before we understand how something is happening.” (p. 183)

 

“Science is not, in fact, the objective measurement of matter. It’s a dance between the inner consciousness, or mind, of the scientist and the material world of matter. Change mind, and matter changes right along with it.” (p. 197)

 

“As philosopher C. S. Lewis exclaimed, “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see” (Lewis, 1970).” (p. 209)

 

“Einstein said, “The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion” (as cited in Calaprice, 2011).” (p. 223)

 

“He even shows how waves of movement propagate through flocks of birds and schools of fish. There’s no leader, master plan, or supercomputer coordinating these millions of intricate movements. Organization arises spontaneously from within the flock, herd, or cell, synchronized by nature.” (p. 238)

 

“Einstein said: “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man” (as cited in Calaprice, 2002).” (p. 246)

 

“Sir John Eccles, who earned a Nobel Prize for his work on the brain’s neural synapses, says that “We have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world” (Popper & Eccles, 2012).” (p. 262)

 

“The field of love we create opposes no one. We don’t judge, condemn, or complain. We simply love.” (p. 287)

 

This book pushed my thinking. Across domains. Across application possibilities.

 

Read it if you don’t mind having your thinking challenged.