If setting goals and trying to use willpower doesn’t work, what other options do we have?
Is there a way to use the New Year as a new beginning without setting ourselves up for failure?
Make it easier (based on neuroscience)
Andrew Huberman came up with the term “limbic friction” to describe how our limbic system (which pulls us towards comfort) creates resistance to doing things that take discipline, things that aren’t fun when we do them. In this great podcast, he describes a different way to make resolutions, a system he developed based on neuroscience:
Pick 6 habits you want to change.
For 21 days, try to do 4 of them every day (which means you can skip 2).
If you miss days or do less than 4 don’t try to make them up (or beat yourself up).
After 21 days, go on “autopilot” for 21 days to see which ones have “stuck”. No habit trackers, no long term failures, just a tiny experiment (thank you Anne-Laure Canff!) that you can repeat as you often as you want.
Set New Year Destinations (instead of resolutions)
To move us away from the usual rigid “discipline” of New Year’s resolutions, Ryder Carroll suggests that we think of our goals as lighthouses, not rules. You still need to write them down and revisit them often, but only to see if you need to adjust your course, not to celebrate a win (or punish a failure).
“By all means, set specific goals. Build your brilliant lighthouses along the alluring shores of all the places you wish to explore. Just see them for what they are: concepts, ideas, mental landmarks we construct to prevent us from getting lost at sea as we make our way from where we are, to where we want to be. Like lighthouses, goals are only as good as what they allow you to see.”
She suggests that instead of “instead of asking “What should I do?“, we should ask a better, harder question: “Given the constraints of my life right now, what is one small choice that would make my days more humane?” And once you have the answer to that question, she wisely says to limit the answer to something you can do on your worst days… not a lofty goal that requires you to be at your best.
We don’t need resolutions that prove our strength. We need ones that respect our limits. Because the goal isn’t to become invincible. It’s to become someone who can keep going—tenderly, truthfully—inside a life that will always be unfinished.
There is no cure for being human. But there is grace for being human, anyway.
The following is the text of a sermon preached on December 28, 2025 at Bering Church.
Last week I had a conversation with Diane and Calvin about preaching from the lectionary. During that conversation, Diane said something important that stuck with me: “Preaching from the lectionary makes you read the parts of scripture that are hard…the parts you don’t really want to deal with.”
Advent, the season of waiting for the Light, ended on Christmas Eve as we retold the nativity story. We woke up the next morning to the wonderful chaos of the Christmas celebration… and we are still celebrating Christmas. Today is the 3rd day of Christmastide (otherwise known as the 12 days of Christmas), the season that lets us dive deeply into the miracle of Christ’s birth, the gift of God putting on skin to come live with us and within us.
The 3rd day of Christmas is also Childermas in the calendar of the church, the “children’s mass”. We don’t celebrate feast days the way our siblings in the Catholic church do, but they are reflected in our lectionary… and so today, our gospel lesson is about the Slaughter of the Innocents.
It seems a little on the nose that the Sunday I was asked to preach the text is about Herod ordering the murder of every boy in Jerusalem under 2 years of age.
Because, as a pediatric surgeon, I have personally witnessed the slaughter of children.
I have heard the anguished cries of their parents.
I know exactly what Rachel’s weeping sounded like…
You don’t have to be a pediatric surgeon working in an urban hospital to witness the slaughter of children today.
The news is filled with images and stories of children dying from bombings in Gaza, Ukraine, Syria, and so many other places…Children dying from starvation and disease because food and medicine are being deliberately withheld…Children dying from gunshot wounds on beaches and in our cities.
It’s understandable that we just want to look away…to protect our tender hearts from this horror, from this darkness.
What do you do with a Christmas text about something this horrible? And why is this part of the Christmas story?
Today’s text reminds us that in the midst of Christmas lights, presents, and celebrations… there was, is, and will always be darkness in the world. But it doesn’t stop there. I think it also provides some guidance on what to do…how we are to bring light into the darkness.
Lament
Jesus wept.
It’s not only the shortest verse in the Bible, it’s a directive for those of us who have chosen to follow Jesus. Like Rachel, like the mothers in Bethlehem, in the face of unthinkable tragedy, it’s not only ok that we mourn, it is important that we lament, that we embody our sorrow… that we weep, tear our clothes, cover ourselves with ashes.
Like Rachel and the mothers in Bethlehem, we need to let our hearts be broken by that which breaks the heart of God.
Be angry
Profound sorrow is often accompanied by anger, even if we try to (or have been taught to) suppress it. Rebecca Solnit, who is one of my favorite philosophers and activists, quotes Rev. Dr. Renita J Weems who teaches that “rage is a form of prayer”. It’s a form of prayer because rage is not primarily about the anger, it’s about the love and care that underlies that anger.
So don’t worry if you feel rage with your sorrow… it’s holy.
Watch for the way opening
Today’s scripture lessons start by teaching us that in the face of unbearable sorrow we are to lament, weep, and even shake our fists at God in anger. But then, we need to let go, we need to “put our trust in YHWH’s unfailing love.” (from another of today’s readings, Isaiah 63:7-9)
When I say “let go”, let me be clear. I’m not talking about letting go of the grief – I’m talking about transforming it in a way that allows us to “watch for the way opening” as the Quakers say.
The mothers in our story never stopped grieving. Each of them had waves of grief that were unrelenting, waves of grief that tumbled them in the surf of sorrow and then threw them to the ground. But as time went on they began to realize, like everyone who has experienced this kind of intense grief, that although the waves never stop, they begin to decrease in intensity and frequency. In the midst of grief there are moments where we can finally stand up without being knocked down… and in those moments sorrow can be transformed.
Joseph must have felt sorrow, too… along with tremendous anger. His fiancee became pregnant, but not by him. He had to obey a ruthless tyrant and take Mary to Jerusalem so Herod could know how many people to tax. And then, when they got there, it was so crowded there was no place to stay…
And, yet…
Joseph got up.
Not once, not twice, but three times.
He had three different dreams and each time the same thing happened…
He had a dream not to divorce Mary… and “Joseph got up and did as the angel of God directed.”
He had a dream to escape with Mary and Jesus to Egypt… and “Joseph got up, awakened Jesus and Mary, and they left that night for Egypt.”
He had a dream to return to Israel with Jesus after the death of Herod… and “Joseph got up, awakened Jesus and Mary, and they returned to the land of Israel.”
The word in Greek that is translated as “dream” in Matthew is specific for a dream that is a clear message sent by God. This word is used only 21 times in the Bible, and only 6 times in the New Testament… all in the Gospel according to Matthew.
We believe that God is still speaking to us in dreams, events, conversations, natural beauty, art, poetry, imagination… Sometimes it’s with a loud voice…urgent messages like the ones Joseph heard, but more often it’s a whisper, words that enter our awareness like a sacred secret. As John C. Dorheur, pastor and former President of the UCC explains “Sacred moments and new truth and inspired wisdom can come to us along many pathways. Some moments of insight are approached through disciplines we cultivate for that very purpose. Other epiphanies come utterly by surprise, the product less of our cultivation than of some unexpected inspiration that the universe conspires to create.
So I return to the questions I started with…
What do you do with a Christmas text about something this horrible? And why is this part of the Christmas story?
Today’s gospel reading reminds us that darkness has always been and will always be present in the world, that there are times that it will drop us to our knees in grief or fear. But it also gives us a glimpse about how to move through that darkness, to remember that Light was born into the world, a Light that shines in the darkness, a Light that darkness cannot overcome. (John 1:5).
We are to bear witness.
When faced with unbearable tragedy, when we find ourselves in the throes of darkness, we are to bear witness, to not look away. As painful as it is, we are to let our hearts be broken by that which breaks the heart of God.
Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack, a crack in everything that’s how the light gets in.
We are to lament (and not be surprised if we are angry).
We are to embody our sorrow and feel rage at the injustice… honest emotions, felt deeply.
We are to trust.
Having faced the darkness, felt deep sorrow and anger, we then need to let go. We can’t let sorrow and anger consume us. Through faith we watch for moments that let us begin to transform our sorrow and our anger, looking for the Light that is able to shine through our brokenness …and then we are to take that Light into the world to do what Love would have us do.
May we be open to the many ways that God is still speaking – in our dreams, in the actions and words of angels among us, in quiet whispers and gentle touch, in birdsong and sunrise.
In the dark, in times of sorrow, fear, and anger may we watch for the way opening.
And then, like Joseph, may we listen, get up, and obey.
Amen
Sermons are meant to be heard, more than read. If you want to listen, you can find this sermon here (The sermon starts at 18:43).
Caring for those who are ill or injured is a 24 hours a day job, 365 days a year… including the holidays.
Being on call during the holidays comes with a little sadness, but it’s complicated. If you’ve ever worked in a hospital during the holidays, you know it’s special in a way that’s hard to describe. Somehow everything seems a little gentler. Even though everyone working would like to be home, they also realize it’s even more true for the patients…. especially if they are children. Kids in the hospital at Christmas tug at the heartstrings of everyone except the very few not-yet-transformed Grinches or Scrooges (and even they are not immune).
But it’s not just doctors and nurses, it’s everyone working during the holidays whose work helps to make others whole… because healing isn’t just about procedures, medications, and diagnosis… it’s about making others whole. In fact, the word literally means “to make whole”.
Old English hælan “cure; save; make whole, sound and well,” from Proto-Germanic *hailjan (source also of Old Saxon helian, Old Norse heila, Old Frisian hela, Dutch helen, German heilen, Gothic ga-hailjan “to heal, cure”), literally “to make whole” (from PIE *kailo- “whole;” see health).
Police officers, fire fighters, EMTs, paramedics, 911 dispatchers, social workers, counselors, clergy all work to decrease suffering and heal. So do the people who clean, cooking, answer phones, or do anything to make that healing possible.
So Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and Joyous Solstice to all who are working over the next few weeks… and all who support them in this work. All of our winter celebrations have one thing in common… celebrating light coming into a world that struggles with darkness, light that heals.
If you are working during the holidays, thank you for being that light.
p.s. My family makes this cranberry bread every year for Christmas. It’s delicious, makes your house smell incredibly wonderful, and (BTW) is a fabulous way to say “Thank you!” to a healer in your life who is working during the holidays.
Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl:
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
Combine in a Pyrex measuring cup:
2 Tbsp melted butter
Juice and grated rind of one large orange
Fill with boiling water to make 3/4 cup then add to dry ingredients. Then add the following to the batter
1 egg
1 cup nuts (chopped walnuts)
1 cup raw cranberries (cut in half)
Bake in loaf pan (325° for metal pan, 300° for glass pan) for 1 hour
Test with toothpick
p.p.s. If you are particularly motivated to bake and give some away to neighbors and friends multiplying by 9 is the key to easy measurement:
Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl:
1 5 lb bag flour
1 4 lb bag sugar
1 1/2 tblsp salt
4 1/2 tblsp baking powder
1 1/2 tblsp baking soda
Combine in a Pyrex measuring cup:
1 1/8 cup melted butter (2.25 sticks)
Juice and grated rind of nine large oranges
Fill with boiling water to make 6 3/4 cup then add to dry ingredients
Add 9 eggs
9 cup nuts (chopped walnuts) = 3 lbs
9 cup raw cranberries (cut in half) = 3 12 oz bags
Bake in loaf pans (325° for metal pan, 300° for glass pan) for 1 hour
Get in shape, meet new friends, AND help the environment?
Screengrab photo from here which I learned about here
Spogomi is a new “sport” where teams of people compete to pick up as much litter as they can in a specified time period.
“Some 53 million tonnes of plastic waste and 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are discarded on streets and landscapes globally each year. Japanese runner Kenichi Mamitsuka began scooping up some of them on his morning jogs in 2008, and soon hit on the idea of gamifying his public-spirited act to raise awareness of littering.” From this article
Cash to pay to talk to your doctor after hours?
“My father was on the phone for a long time with the nurse in his primary care doctor’s office working out a challenge with the timing of his various medications. They accidentally got cut off, so he called back… just after 5pm. The phones had been automatically transferred to the answering service and he was told that if he wanted to talk to someone he would have to pay in cash.”
I asked a few questions to make sure I had heard the friend telling me this story correctly (since I couldn’t believe what I had heard…)
Have you experienced this or know someone who has?
The size of life
I hope you enjoy this amazing work as much as I did. Thank you Neal Agarwal and Julius Csotonyi!!
It’s a hard morning in the world today, a morning that follows a series of hard mornings. I feel like we are being inundated with surplus suffering, that our world is carrying so much pain. But as much as we would like to look away, it’s not what this moment calls for.
We need to nurture hope.
Last year, Rebecca Solnit wrote this essay about the despair many of us are feeling.. .and what to do in response to that despair. She helped me understand how to respond to feeling overwhelmed by darkness, how to reclaim our agency so we can shine light into the world.
Hope is a discipline, not a feeling. Which means, like all disciplines, it can be nurtured by specific practices – telling the truth, showing up, being angry (and using that anger appropriately), courage, and using stories to restore ourselves and our communities.
Tell the truth. We don’t have pretend things are ok or try to gloss over the horror of blood on a beach after a celebration of light, in fact it’s a disservice if we do.
When we choose hope we become part of the movement that boldly looks hatred in the face and says out loud “Not this.” When we choose hope, we hold space for others so they, too, can begin to see the possibility of change.
Show up, don’t give up. Presence is far more powerful than most of us give it credit for. Choosing to not look away is a form of presence. So are vigils, cards written to console, protests, prayers, and quiet petitions.
First of all, hope does not mean saying this is not bad, and it does not mean saying that we can defeat it. It just means saying we will keep showing up. That we will not give up.
Be angry. Rebecca Solnit quotes Rev. Dr. Renita J Weems who reminds us that “rage is a form of prayer” because rage is not primarily about anger, it’s about the love and care that underlies that anger. Use the anger as fuel to carry out what love demands of you.
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him,” GK Chesterson once wrote, explaining why it’s so easy to lose sight of the prime mover that is love.
“Make your mind an independent republic of hope.” This may be my favorite of these disciplines. Human beings are hard-wired for fear. We can’t change our primitive (and protective) fears…but we can choose to override them. Said a different way – We can let ourselves be “colonized” by fear (which is almost always what lies beneath hatred and anger) or we can courageously choose to be “an independent republic of hope.”
“Hope it’s not something you’re born with, it’s something you make. It’s something you decide. And then it’s something you do. You get up every morning and you make it again. The next day you put it on just like you put on your shoes.”
Study the heroes. Remind yourself (and your fearful brain) that there are teachers of hope we can emulate. It’s not just about looking for masters of hope… There are heroes of hope everywhere. By all means read about the heroes of history, but don’t forget to look for small acts of heroism, too … acts of kindness or courage, signs of solidarity, courage in the face of oppression.
We learn who we are and our place in the world by telling stories. There is none more familiar or beloved than the hero’s journey, the tale of one who bravely decides to go into the unknown. It is a universal narrative, spanning time and culture. Yet as the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen once observed, “the most personal is the most universal, the most hidden is the most public, and the most solitary is the most communal.” Hearing another person’s courageous journey, we can’t help but consider our own.
Lay up stores of love, care, trust, community and resolve. The practice of hope, of refusing to give in to despair, requires great care. There are times when the darkness feels overwhelming, times when we all need to be able to access our stores of spiritual nutrition and support. Take care of yourself, build genuine community, and keep your moral compass in good working order for the times you will really need it. Make it a practice to collect stories of love, care, trust, community, and resolve, stories you can return to when your reservoir of hope runs low.
Not long ago I saw a post by someone on Bluesky (which I can’t find now) that said we should reread books that “break us open”. I just finished this truly remarkable translation of the contemplative classic, Practice of the Presence of God by the 17th century monk, Brother Lawrence. It “broke me open”, and I’m already halfway through my second reading.
Although Brother Lawrence and Carmen Acevedo Butcher are both from the Christian tradition, I am convinced that the practical contemplative practice of “Turning to Love” that is described here can be reframed only slightly by those who are of other traditions (or none).
Practice of the Presence offers new ways of seeing that surpass our sometimes tense and either-this-or-that mindsets. And my work with this translation seeks to honor and share his positive, open-hearted wisdom.
Carmen Acevedo Butcher
On Oranges, Satsumas, and Not Taking Common Things for Granted
Thanks to my mother-in-law (who asked me this question at Thanksgiving) I got to do a deep dive into something I hadn’t really thought about.
The history of citrus begins around a billion years ago as Algae developed from cyanobacteria and photosynthetic eukaryotes… followed by what we would recognize today as land plants which evolved around 400 million years ago. The family of land plants that evolved into the first citrus plant probably originated in Southeast Asia, specifically in the southeast foothills of the Himalayas. What we recognize now as the three “ancestral” citrus fruits, the pomelo, the citron, and the mandarin, evolved from this original, profoundly acidic (and therefore inedible) citrus fruit.
The three ancestral fruits evolved, in different genetic combinations, into the citrus fruits we know today.
I recently was invited to a meeting where a group of residents and educators were tackling the topic (and reality) of resident fatigue. We started by reviewing the ACGME Program Requirements. When it comes to mitigating fatigue, the ACGME requirements are (in my words):
Teach residents and faculty how to recognize fatigue, why it’s dangerous, and how to mitigate it.
Make sure there are adequate places in the hospital to sleep when residents are on call.
Arrange for alternative transportation for residents who are too tired to drive home.
They also list some strategies for mitigating fatigue; “…strategic napping; the judicious use of caffeine; availability of other caregivers; time management to maximize sleep off-duty; learning to recognize the signs of fatigue, and self-monitoring performance and/or asking others to monitor performance; remaining active to promote alertness; maintaining a healthy diet; using relaxation techniques to fall asleep; maintaining a consistent sleep routine; exercising regularly; increasing sleep time before and after call; and ensuring sufficient sleep recovery periods.”
All of these are great ideas, but it’s important to realize that there is an assumption behind them which is that fatigue is physical, and mostly the result of sleep deprivation.
As someone who survived surgical training prior to the 80 hour duty hour regulations and who practiced for a long time, I know from personal experience that although sleep is foundational, there are a lot of different ways to be tired. It is true that physical fatigue, particularly sleep deprivation, is the primary reason residents, practicing physicians, and other healers are tired. But it’s not the only reason. Saundra Dalton-Smith, MD has thought deeply about this, and thinks there are seven different kinds of tired.
It should be obvious, but it’s worth stating – to get to the top level (where you can achieve your full potential) you have to start at the bottom. If you are hungry, thirsty, or scared you aren’t ever going to be able to give or receive respect and appreciation. And without meeting the four levels of need below the top level you won’t be able to fully show up to heal patients and contribute.
I think most of us would agree that the soul crushing fatigue that comes with recurring moral distress is worse than the fatigue of a non-stop beeper when you are on call, which is worse than the fatigue you feel after an hour charting in the medical record.
So I took Shapiro’s model and asked this – What if fatigue can be thought of as a hierarchy? If the model makes sense, like Shapiro’s work, it should be able to guide us as we work to mitigate fatigue for our trainees.
It’s a draft, but a new idea I think is worth exploring. Let me know what you think.
What a fascinating journey this morning as I travelled 1500 years back in time (via the internet) to this medieval portable altar.
On my first roll of the digital dice on this website that randomly links to other websites, I arrived at a database of portable medieval altars, created by a historian whose research interest is “portable devotion”. Lots to think about here…
“Socializing” an idea
I suspect the word has been around for a while, but I learned that “socializing” has become part of “business speak” in medical centers and hospitals, as in… “Go socialize that idea with them first.”
It turns out this new vocabulary is just a new way of describing what great leaders have known all along…you don’t know what you don’t know.
“Socializing” a new idea starts with determining who might want to “veto” your new idea and then meeting with them, not to persuade them, but to learn from them. With each meeting you learn more which lets you refine the project and, at the same time, allows your organization to evolve with you.
The best thing I learned is that the concept now referred to as “socializing” came from the Japanese concept of Nemawashi (根回し)… “Nemawashi literally translates as “turning the roots”, from ne (根, “root”) and mawasu (回す, “to turn something, to put something around something else”). Its original meaning was literal: in preparation for transplanting a tree, one would carefully dig around a tree some time before transplanting, and trim the roots to encourage the growth of smaller roots that will help the tree become established in its new location.” (Wikipedia)
There are lots of people who spend nights in the hospital to care for others… physicians, nurses, techs, and many others.
Especially for trainees who work long hours, eating well when you are on call is not easy. There are usually few (if any) options available in the hospital, and when you are exhausted it’s hard to prepare and bring your own food.
But eating well is really important …. not just nutritionally, but emotionally as well. Here’s a link to the system I’ve found works the best, but deciding that Diet Coke, graham crackers, and cereal are not major food groups is the critical first step.
p.s. I post recipes that meet the “pizza rule” (less time to cook than it takes to order a pizza) on Bluesky, Facebook, and Instagram with the hashtag #CallFood.
p.p.s Here’s the recipe for my breakfast tacos (which are also the best 2am #CallFood you will ever have).
Sometime in the early1900s a surgeon performed colectomy for a patient who suffered from schizophrenia. Post-operatively, not only was the patient’s colonic pathology cured, but it appeared that their schizophrenia was as well.
Not too long after, another surgeon noted the same thing… he had operated on a patient with schizophrenia who was less psychotic after removal of part of their colon. These two anecdotes became a theory… which led to a large number of schizophrenic patients undergoing removal of their (healthy) colons.
This doesn’t make sense, right? Except that it turns out that major trauma (like a big operation in the early 1900s!) can lead to a temporary relief of psychosis in some patients with schizophrenia. In other words, it probably would have been just as effective – and just as temporary – to induce a high fever…which was also a form of treatment for schizophrenia in the early 1900s. (Ebaugh et al., 1938)
There’s a parable here, one that helps us navigate dangerous, unproven theories that are proposed by (usually) well-meaning people …
Portrait of Baynard Holmes in 1889, from Wikipedia
In the early 1900s there were many well-respected physicians who thought schizophrenia was caused by “autointoxication”.1 Baynard Holmes, Professor of Surgical Pathology and Bacteriology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago, was one of them. His foray into the surgical treatment of schizophrenia was personal; His son Ralph had his first psychotic break as a second-year medical student. Holmes abandoned his other academic work to concentrate on “curing” schizophrenia. He first published a paper showing that schizophrenic patients had delayed transit in the colon and hypothesized that stool “stuck” in the cecum was therefore the cause of schizophrenia.(Holmes, 1920)
Holmes operated on 22 patients, creating an appendicostomy to flush the stool out of the colon.(Noll, 2006) There was a 10% mortality rate… and one of the 2 patients who died was his son, Ralph.(Davidson, 2016)
Henry A. Cotton, Sr, was another authority who promoted, and took advantage of, the autointoxication theory of schizophrenia. He was a psychiatrist who oversaw, and then performed (!), colectomies on over 200 patients with schizophrenia. He reported a success rate of over 80%…. and a mortality rate of 25-30%.(Davidson, 2016)
In 1923, a group of physicians did what needed to be done from the beginning – a randomized controlled trial. Not surprisingly, there was no difference in outcome between patients treated with surgery and those who did not have surgery.(Kopeloff & Kirby, 1923)
It took a long time for these dangerous operations to stop, despite the proof that they didn’t work. We can only imagine how many hundreds of patients underwent this futile and very dangerous procedure before it was finally abandoned. In today’s world of rapidly available communication it takes 17 years for new evidence to change clinical practice. (Morris et al., 2011) We can assume that in 1924 it took longer than that. In addition, there were physicians (like Henry Cotton) who ignored this new data and continued to remove healthy colons from schizophrenic patients because they personally benefitted from doing the operation, either financially or because of their reputation. (Davidson, 2016)
You may add to this list, but I think we can start with these…
We can be blinded by our desire to end suffering (especially if it’s someone we love)
As human beings, our desire to heal can limit our ability to be objective about outcomes… which is why we have clinical trials (and the scientific method).
And finally (and unfortunately), there are charismatic but evil people who take advantage of people who are afraid and/or suffering.
By the way, there are remnants of this theory still with us today in the form of “detoxificaiton” of the body by cleaning out the GI tract with diet, purging, and/or enemas. (It still doesn’t work…)↩︎
Davidson J. Bayard Holmes (1852–1924) and Henry Cotton (1869–1933): Surgeon–psychiatrists and their tragic quest to cure schizophrenia. J Med Biogr. 2016;24(4):550-559. doi:10.1177/0967772014552746
EBAUGH FG, BARNACLE CH, EWALT JR. PSYCHIATRIC ASPECTS OF ARTIFICIAL FEVER THERAPY. Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry. 1938;39(6):1203-1212. doi:10.1001/archneurpsyc.1938.02270060093003
Holmes B. Dementia Praecox: The Insanity of the Young. Dementia Praecox Studies: A Journal of Psychiatry of Adolescence. 1920;3:105-138.
Kopeloff R, Kirby G. Focal infection and mental disease. Am J Psychiatry. 1923;80:1490191.
Morris ZS, Wooding S, Grant J. The answer is 17 years, what is the question: understanding time lags in translational research. J R Soc Med. 2011;104(12):510-520. doi:10.1258/jrsm.2011.110180
Naumann DN, Marsden MER, Brandt ML, Bowley DM. The Bouffant Hat Debate and the Illusion of Quality Improvement: Annals of Surgery. 2020;271(4):635-636. doi:10.1097/SLA.0000000000003623
Noll R. Infectious insanities, surgical solutions: Bayard Taylor Holmes, dementia praecox and laboratory science in early 20th-century America. Part 2. doi:10.1177/0957154X06059446
Sahil Bloom shared this image in a recent newsletter, along with an explanation of how Ohtani used the “Harada system” to become the superstar he is.
The chart Ohtani created as a freshman in high school to meet his goal of being drafted 1st in the Nippon Professional Baseball League.
The story of the Harada system is delightful. It was developed by Takashi Harada, an junior high track and field coach in Osaka, Japan who realized that his young athletes needed more than just drills and strength training to succeed (in all ways). He developed a system for them to define their own goals and actions, and then used it to take his last place team (out of 380 schools!) to 1st place – a position they held for 6 years.
Our ability to pay attention is how we accomplish the things that are important to us, whether it’s being one of the best (if not the best) baseball players in the world like Shohei Ihtani, or finishing a book that has been lying fallow on a computer for too long (Mea culpa).
Thinking about how to better pay attention led me to this post, which summarizes and shares a 4 minute video from Daniel Pink with his 5 step plan to improve our ability to pay attention👇
Set a baseline
See how long can you read a book until you are distracted
As you add steps 2-5 (below), repeat to monitor your improvement
Eliminate distractions
Make where you work a “no phone zone”
Close tabs and anything else on your computer that might distract you
No notifications on any device!
Create a focus ritual
It doesn’t matter what it is, but it matters that it exists
“It’s like hitting play on a playlist your brain already knows.”
Take breaks and move
“Think of your brain like a toddler… It melts down if you don’t give it snacks and naps.”
Reconnect attention to meaning
Take the time to articulate the “why” of what you doing
And how do we promote elevation, which sounds like just what we need in our society right now? According to Nancy Davis Kho, it’s by developing an ongoing practice of gratitude.
“Research published in 2015 in Frontiers in Psychology found that an ongoing practice of gratitude basically rewires our brains to reward us for the positive perceptions we have of the people around us. That begets more gratitude and “elevation,” a lovely scientific term defined in a 2000 article by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt as “a warm or glowing feeling in the chest [that] makes people want to become morally better themselves.” Pour me some elevation, barkeep, and make it a double!”
