Contentment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Martin Luther (2016)

  If the change to married life was jarring for anyone, it must have been jarring for Kathie. She moved from Cranach’s palatial and extremely well-appointed home to the near stable that was the Black Cloister. Since the monastery had been deserted, only Luther and another monk named Brisger lived there, plus Luther’s servant Sieberger, who was famously unacquainted with cleanliness and order. Brisger was soon married and moved out, and Sieberger built a small adjoining house for himself, so that the vast, tumbledown monument to men without women became Martin and Kathie’s to care for. To say that it benefited from this one woman’s touch would be a historical understatement. That Luther had previously lived as the quintessential bachelor is borne out by the following disgusting admission: “Before I was married the bed was not made for a whole year and became befouled with sweat.”20 The gag-inducing image of a straw mattress soaked with the perspiration of Martin Luther to the extent that it should become “foul”—even in his eyes—is enough to make almost anyone cheer at his having taken the plunge into marriage. And indeed, the fetid horrors of the Black Cloister would soon be exorcised by the dramatically capable Kathie. There is no question that she ran the household, doing more things than can be enumerated. Her work ranged from overseeing the much-needed paint and plaster repairs, to eventually raising hogs, cattle, and even fish. Kathie actually oversaw a fishpond that gave them trout, perch, pike, and carp, gathered via net. And then there was a nearby orchard that provided apples, pears, nuts, and peaches. Kathie also oversaw the barnyard. In addition to the pigs she raised, there were cows, ducks, and hens. It is a matter of record that the noble former nun did the slaughtering herself. Luther was in charge of the garden, where he grew melons, cucumbers, peas, lettuce, cabbage, and other things. He did much of the work himself there and was endlessly bothering his friends about sending seeds.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Lux is in place, and my wineglass has been swept away, replaced by ice water. I ask for the bread basket and tear off a piece of the rough Tuscan bread and dunk it in the peppery green olive oil—never has bread tasted so good. I gobble up three pieces before the salad comes. For most of the meal, I sit dumb as a stump, honestly listening to other people’s tales with little thought for where I can wedge in a comment to justify all the chow I’m wolfing down. As the dessert plates are being cleared away, Toby nudges me to ask after Mother, whose travails I regaled him with as a student. Since I’ve just been in Texas to clear out her ex-boyfriend’s belongings that summer, her latest romantic misadventure is fresh in my head. Toby says, This was your mother’s new boyfriend? What happened to the nurse? She got sober. He didn’t, the nurse. That’s the hell of it. She picked this subsequent guy sober. At first Mother described the new guy as a boarder. Ben Barker, his name was. I expected some homely local Joe, but in the picture she sent, Ben towered over Mother with the lean frame of a basketballer. He had steely razor-cut hair and deep blue eyes. A health nut, Ben occupied a room in a house whose curtains were saturated with menthol smoke. He introduced to Mother’s kitchen the Cadillac of vegetable juicers along with a flat of wheatgrass for squeezing all the chlorophyll out of. It’s supposed to clean your liver, Mother told me. It’s filthy stuff to drink. How can you tell your liver’s dirty? I said. That’s what I wanted to know, Mother said. Tell me he’s got a job at least, I said. He’s retired, she said. I thought he was, like, fifty. (Which, by the way, was way younger than Mother.) She told me Ben had done well farming all over the Midwest, but the crop prices kept dropping and he’d sold out. He kept his truck parked in the garage but mostly tooled around the county on a racing bike worthy of the Tour de France. He also had a fancy fiberglass kayak he took out in the bayous at dawn among the alligators and morning glories. He got Mother taking pricey vitamins by the fistful. He wanted her to flush out her nose with salt water snorted from the spout of a porcelain Indian neti pot, but she eschewed that and kept burning cigarillos, though she did sip infusions of Chinese herbs he bought at the Buddhist temple run by Vietnamese monks. One morning Mother called me to ask a question I found strange. Did you ever meet somebody you thought wasn’t who they said they were? I hadn’t. I’d met all manner of strange individuals. But other than a tripped-out guitar player who’d told everybody he was Moses, I’d never met anybody whose stated identity I questioned.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Lying back in the fragrant water, I let a washcloth obliterate my features, rewinding to the days and hours before I got on the train. It’s the old story. Underslept and underfed, I’d been running with my shoulder bag thumping against my butt, doing quarterback dodges and rolls on crowded holiday streets, while behind me, pedestrians dove for cover. I was behind in every conceivable way. So the old attack dog started howling through my head as I’d loped. Take the subway, the sane voice had said. Take the subway, you can buy a sandwich. Then counterattack claimed I needed cardio for the blubber on my ass. A sandwich isn’t the solution. You need to refinance. You need five hundred dollars this week or Dev’s Christmas is Tiny Tim’s. You might as well call it the voice of the Adversary, for once I tune in to it, I’ve lost my real self—the God-made one, akin to others. The Adversary’s voice can suck me into the maelstrom of my tornado-force will, which’ll chew up anybody in its path, me included. The washcloth steams my features soft, and once the water’s cold, I oil myself up like a bodybuilder, slip on sweats, then towel-wrap my hair like a Turkish pasha. Heating up meatballs for Dev and his pals loudly playing air hockey in the basement, I do Patti’s list of what’s changed in ten years. The boys clattering downstairs are a nightly antidote to the shipwrecked household I grew up in, and we no longer have to roll coins from the sofa cushions in order to afford meatballs. Last month at Mother’s surprise birthday, I floated in the pool alongside her and Lecia while brother-in-law Tom worked the grill and Dev and his cousin did cannonballs. The night after the train debacle, I drive under a sky black as graphite to meet my new spiritual director for the Exercises—a bulky Franciscan nun named Sister Margaret, patiently going blind behind fish-tank glasses that magnify her eyes like goggles. Asked my concept of God, I mouth all the fashionable stuff—all-loving, all-powerful, etc. But as we talk, it bobs up that in periods of uncertainty or pain—forlorn childhood, this failed relationship—I often feel intentionally punished or abandoned. How’s that possible, I say, if I have no childhood experience of a punishing God? Margaret says, We often strap on to God the mask of whoever hurt us as children. If you’ve been neglected, God seems cold; if you’ve been bullied, He’s a tyrant. If you’re filled with self-hatred, then God is a monster making inventor. How do you feel sitting here with me now? I don’t know, like some slutty Catholic schoolgirl. She laughs at this and says, I see you—she peers through those lenses—what I can see of you, as my sister, God’s beloved child. The hairs on your head are numbered, and we’ve been brought together, you and me, to shine on each other a while. So you don’t judge me?

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  Most of the offs women experience have nothing to do with sex, and many of them have straightforward, pragmatic solutions. Chronically stressed? Complete the cycle with a good cry, a brisk walk, a primal scream, or other physical release, as described in chapter 4. Give yourself a solid twenty to sixty minutes to allow the stress of the day to wind down with whatever rituals or practices help. Baths, walks, exercise, cooking, meditation, yoga, a glass of wine, whatever works. Constantly monitoring for footsteps in the hallway? Arrange for a time when no one else is home. Tired? Take a nap, or even just rest for twenty minutes. Squicked out by grit on the sheets? Change them! Cold feet? Put on socks! Sometimes it really is this simple. Other offs are more complex and require longer-term solutions, such as those I addressed earlier: self-critical thoughts or other body image challenges, lack of trust in your relationship, trauma history, sexual disgust. It took decades of planting and cultivation to create the garden you currently have. It won’t change overnight. Give yourself permission to make progress gradually, and celebrate all the incremental steps between where you are now and where you’d like to be. And the most important turn-off-the-offs practice of all: self-kindness. Too often women get stuck in their sexual growth because they can’t get past their belief that something “shouldn’t” hit their brakes. It shouldn’t turn them off to have the lights on, they shouldn’t be so hung up about their bodies. “Should” is all about what you’re “doing wrong.” Pop quiz: Does a belief that you’re Doing Something Wrong with sex hit the accelerator… or the brakes? Yeah. So when something hits the brakes, what do you do? You take it seriously. Listen to it. Be gentle with it, like a sleepy hedgehog. Even if you wish something like having the lights on didn’t hit your brakes, the fact is it might, and that’s okay. It’s also okay to wish it didn’t. But believing it “shouldn’t” only hits the brakes more. Recognizing that frees you up to do something about it—something like having sex with unlit candles in the room for a week or two, then with one lit tea light candle, then two, then three… You see, sex is not context dependent—sex can happen more or less anywhere. Pleasure is context dependent. Create a context where you can experience pleasure, and sexual ecstasy will follow, given time, practice, and genuine solutions to turn off the offs. Appendix 2 offers instructions for achieving ecstasy. Try it! Remember: Each member of the flock has its own needs and motivations. Turn off all the offs, and turn on all the ons.

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  Scenario 1. You’re feeling very calm and happy and trusting, not doing anything in particular, and your partner comes over and touches your arm affectionately. The touch travels from your arm, up your spine, to your brain. In this state of mind, your central nervous system is very quiet, there’s very little other traffic, and the sensation of your partner’s touch says, “Hey, so, this is happening. What do you think?” And your brain says, “Affection feels nice.” The stimulation continues, your beloved partner touching your arm affectionately, and the sensation travels up to your brain and says, “This is happening some more. What do you think?” And your brain says, “Affection feels really nice,” and tunes its attention more to that sensation. Then your partner starts kissing your throat, and that sensation makes its way to your emotional brain and says, “Now this is happening, too. What do you think?” And by then the brain says, “That is fantastic! Go get more of that!” In that context, sexual desire feels responsive. Scenario 2. You’re stressed, exhausted, or overwhelmed, it’s very noisy in your brain, there’s heavy traffic, lots of yelling and horns honking about all the stuff that’s stressing you out. Your partner’s affectionate touch travels from your arm, up your spine, to your brain, and it says, “This is happening. What do you think?” And your brain says, “WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER ALL THIS NOISE!” And by then the sensation is over. (Sensations are a little bit like Snapchat.) If your partner keeps touching you, the sensation keeps asking your brain, “This is still happening. What do you think?” And eventually it might get your brain’s attention, and your brain might say, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I’VE GOT ALL THIS OTHER NOISE TO CONTEND WITH!” And if the sensation ever gets noticed enough to expand out of your brain’s emotional One Ring, it comes out in the form of, “Not now, honey.” Scenario 3. Your sexy, sexy partner has been away for two weeks, but you’ve been sending each other frequent texts, which started out flirty but have been gradually escalating in explicitness and intensity as you get more and more into teasing and tormenting each other. By the end of the two weeks, just the sound of your phone receiving a text makes you gasp and tremble. There’s noise in your brain, but all of it is chanting, “Sexy, sexy partner!” By the time your partner gets home and touches your arm affectionately, you’re set to go off like a rocket. In that context, sexual desire feels spontaneous.3 In all three scenarios, stimulation comes first, whether it’s your partner’s touch or just the idea of your partner’s touch. If the context is right, the stimulation feels good and leads to desire. All three scenarios are normal, healthy sexuality.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Method 6: Tailor Development to the IndividualHaving frequent and honest career-development conversations with employees allows managers to better discover the ways in which their people need to enhance their skills and are most interested in doing so. To reduce unnecessary anxiety, development should be tailored to individuals. This point was stressed to us by Dan Helfrich, CEO and Chairman of Deloitte Consulting. He’s a terrific practitioner of a tailored approach, and it’s won him the loyalty of his people, not to mention contributed to his promotion to a lofty position in his company. Helfrich starts career one-on-ones by asking his direct reports: “What do you want to get better at?” This is so much more engaging for employees than being coached to fill skill gaps they have absolutely no interest in. Helfrich says, “I want to know about a challenge they feel ready to take on but haven’t been given the chance. Then as the time goes along, wow, the alignment that comes from giving them small tasks or opportunities that comport with what they shared with you builds their confidence that what they say really matters.” He told us about a member of his team who was the hub of coordination in the office. “But,” he said, “she was starting to feel like a reporting mechanism and wasn’t being given a chance to think creatively or strategically. She had this skill set as a conductor that was highly regarded, but it felt limiting to her.” While some managers might encourage the employee to lean into this strength, Helfrich knew that if she wasn’t allowed to stretch and grow, he might lose her. He asked if the employee would like to take the lead on a new project, allowing her to guide the creative process, which, he says, “unlocked career growth that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.”

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  If not, they probably don’t need to be working on it.” As a new step in creating roadmaps, involving the entire group in the process of developing team targets is powerful for a few key reasons. First, team members are better than bosses at knowing how much time particular tasks will take, and what impediments they may hit to getting them done; and when a manager really listens to this input it helps reduce unnecessary stress going forward. Second, by working transparently as a group, everyone can understand and align on the most critical priorities for the team as a whole. Third, research has shown that giving teams a greater sense of control over their collective goals is a boon for engagement and productivity. We’ve known this for some time. For instance, in 1939, Kurt Lewin conducted what we believe is the first study to identify if group expectations would strengthen achievement at the Harwood Pajama Factory in Virginia. Several teams of workers at the factory were given a chance to set their own goals, and the participants met for thirty minutes each week to talk about challenges they were facing and collectively discuss whether they were ready to increase productivity or keep it the same. During the weekly meetings, it became clear that workers were using different methods to accomplish the same tasks on the line, which led to improvements and standardizations in processes that enhanced productivity. At the end of each meeting, the group voted on whether to increase their daily output, to what level, and over what period of time. As a result, they eventually voted to enhance output from seventy-five units an hour to eighty-seven over a period of five days. A few weeks later, they agreed they could increase output again. Throughout the next five months, the group maintained its growth and achieved output well beyond anything seen before. Lewin believed that this democratic way of decision-making was the key to productivity growth. In fact, groups tested later—that had no democratic voting, and where a manager set the goals—did not achieve anywhere near the same productivity growth. We find a collaborative goal-setting process like this can also build team spirit.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  As Adam Goodman, director of the Center for Leadership at Northwestern University, writes, “Working toward something together, that you’re committed to, forms strong bonds and fosters collaboration.” Open, mutual discussions like Lewin observed with team members help create a sense of shared vision; and according to our research, employees are much less likely to burn out when they can easily see the connection between their work and their team’s or organization’s larger mission and vision in a way that makes them feel that their job is vital and that the work they are doing is making a real difference. Method 2: Balance Loads As part of the collaborative roadmap process we just described, it’s essential to ensure that workloads are well-balanced among team members to avoid certain members becoming overwhelmed. In many teams we visit, we find a handful of stressed-out workhorses putting in seventy-hour weeks while other employees appear happy-go-lucky, heading home at five every day. How can a manager ensure everyone on the team has the right amount of work? DeNooyer of Keurig Dr Pepper adds that she monitors her team’s workload regularly and tries to create an environment where team members help each other during peak times to ensure no one gets overloaded too often. “I have weekly touchpoints with my team, and when I can tell that it’s getting too much, I’ll say, ‘Okay, what’s the list of things? And which ones do you have to do? Which ones can be shared with somebody else? Which ones can wait?’” By balancing in this way, she is methodical about setting priorities for the coming week, and is transparent about what trade-offs must be made, projects that can be delayed, and who else they might need to get involved. With this, we know some anxious employees are driven intrinsically to impress and take on more and more, and managers can tend to over-rely on these people because they are so willing. These folks end up doing disproportionately heavy lifting until it becomes too much. Yet it’s dangerous to conflate hours worked with productivity, as that can create more anxiety in the team. Hours and results are not the same thing. Some employees can get an incredible amount done in a typical workday and head out at five, and there’s nothing wrong with that. “It’s important to make sure your employees understand you don’t equate hours with productivity,” says Liane Davey, cofounder of 3COze Inc. The best way to do this, she says, is to openly praise strong performance, irrespective of hours worked. “If José put up great numbers last week—even if he leaves at 4:30 every day—you need to celebrate him in a public forum. If people complain [about his hours] or you pick up on gossip, head it off at the pass.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Hamid al-Din Kirmani (d. 1021), a later Ismaili thinker, described the immense peace and satisfaction that this exercise produced in his Rahaf al-aql (Balm for the Intellect). It was by no means an arid, cerebral discipline, a pedantic trick, but invested every detail of the Ismaili’s life with a sense of significance. Ismaili writers frequently spoke of their batin in terms of illumination and transformation. Tawil was not designed to provide information about God but to create a sense of wonder that enlightened the batini at a level deeper than the rational. Nor was it escapism. The Ismailis were political activists. Indeed, Jafar ibn Sadiq, the Sixth Imam, had defined faith as action. Like the Prophet and the Imams, the believer had to make his vision of God effective in the mundane world. These ideals were also shared by the Ikwan al-Safa, the Brethren of Purity, an esoteric society that arose in Basra during the Shii century. The Brethren were probably an offshoot of Ismailism. Like the Ismailis, they dedicated themselves to the pursuit of science, particularly mathematics and astrology, as well as to political action. Like the Ismailis, the Brethren were searching for the batin, the hidden meaning of life. Their Epistles (Rasail), which became an encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences, were extremely popular and spread as far west as Spain. Again, the Brethren combined science and mysticism. Mathematics was seen as a prelude to philosophy and psychology. The various numbers revealed the different qualities inherent in the soul and were a method of concentration that enabled the adept to become aware of the workings of his mind. Just as St. Augustine had seen self-knowledge as indispensable to the knowledge of God, a deep understanding of the self became the kingpin of Islamic mysticism. The Sufis, the Sunni mystics with whom the Ismailis felt great affinity, had an axiom: “He who knows himself, knows his Lord.” This was quoted in the First Epistle of the Brethren.6 As they contemplated the numbers of the soul, they were led back to the primal One, the principle of the human self in the heart of the psyche. The Brethren were also very close to the Faylasufs. Like the Muslim rationalists, they emphasized the unity of truth, which must be sought everywhere. A seeker after truth must “shun no science, scorn no book, nor cling fanatically to a single creed.”7 They developed a Neoplatonic conception of God, whom they saw as the ineffable, incomprehensible One of Plotinus. Like the Faylasufs, they adhered to the Platonic doctrine of emanation rather than the traditional Koranic doctrine of creation ex nihilo: the world expressed the divine Reason, and man could participate in the divine and return to the One by purifying his rational powers.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  It was awarded by one team member to another in recognition of the other’s contribution to rolling up sleeves and helping out during the week. The new recipient then had a week to decide who would receive the trophy next. The effect: It caused everyone to come to the Thursday meeting asking themselves if they’d done enough to help other team members, and they got to consider all the things that others on the team had done to help them. The leader also initiated rules to help enhance inclusion. For example, all emails between team members would be responded to within twenty-four hours (Monday to Friday), team members wouldn’t interrupt each other during discussions, and the group would commit to a no-meeting Friday schedule (so they could get work done or use vacation time). Finally, knowing that many of her new team members might stress about how they were performing in this new setting, she spent time at the end of each day sending specific feedback notes to her people to help them know that she knew about the work they were doing and valued their contributions. One of her employees we interviewed told us that within just a few weeks, he felt bonded to his new team members. He also said that while in prior teams he had been focused almost exclusively on his own performance, he was now considering daily how he could contribute to the overall success of the group. The thoughtful inclusion tactics by the manager helped anyone feel that they were valued as part of the team. Method 2: Find a Common CoreFor teams we are asked to work with that are struggling to mesh strong personalities, we find the journey from exclusion to connection can be complex and has to be founded on shared values. We had a chance to interview Mitt Romney not long after he retired from Bain Capital and before his election as Massachusetts governor and his run for president. We were most interested in his work helping launch the investment firm that today has more than $100 billion under management. He confessed that at one point in its early days, the Bain Capital partners were eyeing the door with what he called “intractable conflicts.” In a last-ditch effort to save the firm, six of the founders agreed to attend a weeklong program that reportedly had helped other teams. “It was worth a try,” Romney recalled. The extent of the team dysfunction became evident in one of the early sessions. Each member was asked to openly and honestly describe the things he would change in each of the other individuals.

• From A History of God (1993)

  It was a rigorous discipline that must be used carefully; it could only be safely practiced under an expert director. Gradually, like a Buddhist monk, the hesychast would find that he or she could set rational thoughts gently to one side, the imagery that thronged the mind would fade away and the hesychast would feel totally one with the prayer. Greek Christians had discovered for themselves techniques that had been practiced for centuries in the oriental religions. They saw prayer as a psychosomatic activity, whereas Westerners like Augustine and Gregory thought that prayer should liberate the soul from the body. Maximus the Confessor had insisted: “ The whole man should become God, deified by the grace of the God-become-man, becoming whole man, soul and body, by nature and becoming whole god, soul and body, by grace.” 21 The hesychast would experience this as an influx of energy and clarity that was so powerful and compelling that it could only be divine. As we have seen, the Greeks saw this “deification” as an enlightenment that was natural to man. They found inspiration in the transfigured Christ on Mount Tabor, just as Buddhists were inspired by the image of the Buddha, who had attained the fullest realization of humanity. The Feast of the Transfiguration is very important in the Eastern Orthodox Churches; it is called an “epiphany,” a manifestation of God. Unlike their Western brethren, the Greeks did not think that strain, dryness and desolation were an inescapable prelude to the experience of God: these were simply disorders that must be cured. Greeks had no cult of a dark night of the soul. The dominant motif was Tabor rather than Gethsemane and Calvary. Not everybody could achieve these higher states, however, but other Christians could glimpse something of this mystical experience in the icons. In the West, religious art was becoming predominantly representational: it depicted historical events in the lives of Jesus or the saints. In Byzantium, however, the icon was not meant to represent anything in this world but was an attempt to portray the ineffable mystical experience of the hesychasts in a visual form to inspire the nonmystics. As the British historian Peter Brown explains, “Throughout the Eastern Christian world, icon and vision validated one another. Some deep gathering into one focal point of the collective imagination ... ensured that by the sixth century, the supernatural had taken on the precise lineaments, in dreams and in each person’s imagination, in which it was commonly portrayed in art. The icon had the validity of a realized dream.” 22 Icons were not meant to instruct the faithful or to convey information, ideas or doctrines. They were a focus of contemplation (theoria) which provided the faithful with a sort of window on the divine world.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Focusing on improving things from 95 percent to 100 often bogs down opportunities. It’s easy to get tunnel vision in getting something perfect that can cost more than it does to move on to the next project. Let me give you an example I saw where you might have applied this lesson. In both examples, the manager relates to Jared right away, expressing common ground with the issue. She lets him know she understands where he is coming from and explains that they both have high standards. Great. This establishes a sense of comfort and connection. And yet in the first example the phrase “let me coach you” we believe would introduce an elephant into the room, letting Jared know that correction was coming and he might need to protect his feelings. In the second exchange, when the manager says, “I’ll tell you something I had to learn,” it delivers a sense that she’s about to offer wisdom gained in the trenches, and the discussion is an opportunity to learn rather than correct. We can just imagine Jared leaning in. Similarly, in the second example, the manager avoids “you” statements, and refers to the problem with such proclamations as “It’s easy to get tunnel vision” instead of “You can get tunnel vision.” This isn’t just a trick of semantics, but an important part of helping team members understand that this is a constructive discussion about a change in behavior that will help the employee learn and grow versus an indictment of their overall worth. Another good way in these discussions to help perfectionists accept needed improvements to their work, without putting them on the defensive, is asking them to propose solutions—asking what they would do differently in the future to keep their projects on task or make faster decisions. Now, even with these methods, perfectionists may get their hackles up when receiving feedback, and they might deflect what they see as blame onto others on the team or even their manager (you). This is not acceptable, of course, but it’s important to keep in mind that it’s a knee-jerk impulse. People who get defensive may have had negative experiences in their past that make them wary of being seen as inadequate. For us, as leaders, signaling that we care about employees’ feelings can make them feel more secure and tone down the rhetoric, which can help them be less likely to criticize in the future. In Chapter 6, we introduce a methodology that can help deliver feedback more directly: Issue, Value, Solution. Instead of saying something such as “You are too negative,” you might talk about an issue you have witnessed, e.g., “I want to speak with you about your call with ABC Corp on Thursday.” You then relate this to a core value you are trying to live in the team: “One of our values is creating a positive environment for each other and our clients, and as such we attempt to be friendly on every call.”

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Her meetings may not have had the chaotic excitement of some brainstorming sessions, but her anxious people felt included and safe to speak up in this calm setting, leading to a tremendous amount of creative ideas flowing from the group. The team also started handing around a traveling trophy in those meetings, in this case a bowling loving cup the manager had bought at a Goodwill store. It was awarded by one team member to another in recognition of the other’s contribution to rolling up sleeves and helping out during the week. The new recipient then had a week to decide who would receive the trophy next. The effect: It caused everyone to come to the Thursday meeting asking themselves if they’d done enough to help other team members, and they got to consider all the things that others on the team had done to help them. The leader also initiated rules to help enhance inclusion. For example, all emails between team members would be responded to within twenty-four hours (Monday to Friday), team members wouldn’t interrupt each other during discussions, and the group would commit to a no-meeting Friday schedule (so they could get work done or use vacation time). Finally, knowing that many of her new team members might stress about how they were performing in this new setting, she spent time at the end of each day sending specific feedback notes to her people to help them know that she knew about the work they were doing and valued their contributions. One of her employees we interviewed told us that within just a few weeks, he felt bonded to his new team members. He also said that while in prior teams he had been focused almost exclusively on his own performance, he was now considering daily how he could contribute to the overall success of the group. The thoughtful inclusion tactics by the manager helped anyone feel that they were valued as part of the team. Method 2: Find a Common Core For teams we are asked to work with that are struggling to mesh strong personalities, we find the journey from exclusion to connection can be complex and has to be founded on shared values. We had a chance to interview Mitt Romney not long after he retired from Bain Capital and before his election as Massachusetts governor and his run for president. We were most interested in his work helping launch the investment firm that today has more than $100 billion under management. He confessed that at one point in its early days, the Bain Capital partners were eyeing the door with what he called “intractable conflicts.” In a last-ditch effort to save the firm, six of the founders agreed to attend a weeklong program that reportedly had helped other teams. “It was worth a try,” Romney recalled.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  One last hard truth about this process is that sometimes coming to a clear understanding with an employee about the path they need to be on may lead to them leaving your team. And that might be optimal for the company and employee. That was the view of the CEO of a large insurance company we worked with. We conducted motivation training for about a thousand leaders. Many were able to better align their daily tasks with their key drivers. As we sat down with the CEO to discuss the results, he told us three of his valued managers had decided to move on because of the training—one to become a teacher, another to open a small business, and the third to go back to university. We were a little nervous how he’d react, but he was just fine. “If they aren’t happy, their employees are going to smell it on them,” he said. “And to lose only three out of a thousand is pretty good. We have to be doing something right.” Like this CEO, good leaders aren’t afraid to have their tribe members really consider what drives them at work—even if they may leave one day. A bonus is that this process can alleviate employee anxiety about advancement as well. And managers who help their employees learn what they’ll be motivated by at work become known as great bosses to work for. Bestselling author and former Oracle executive Liz Wiseman calls these leaders “talent magnets.” She told us, “Smart, capable people find these bosses because of the reputation they build. They get known as the managers everyone wants to work for because of their ability to tap into people’s native genius.” As Wiseman describes it, native genius is that thing you can do that makes you unique, a specific way your brain is wired that helps you add value—even if it may have been perceived as a negative in the past. She gave us a real-world example: Brian admitted he’d been called “Dr. No” in other places he’d worked. He couldn’t help himself: He could immediately see flaws in any plan suggested by others. Instead of coaching Brian out of that habit, a talent magnet leader would work with it. She’d say, “Brian, this is great.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Naturally the new Temple was central to P’s Judaism. In the Near East, the temple had often been seen as a replica of the cosmos. Temple-building had been an act of imitatio dei, enabling humanity to participate in the creativity of the gods themselves. During the exile, many of the Jews had found consolation in the old stories of the Ark of the Covenant, the portable shrine in which God had “set up his tent” (shakan) with his people and shared their homelessness. When he described the building of the sanctuary, the Tent of Meeting in the wilderness, P drew upon the old mythology. Its architectural design was not original but a copy of the divine model: Moses is given very long and detailed instructions by Yahweh on Sinai: “Build me a sanctuary so that I may dwell among you. In making the tabernacle and the furnishings, you must follow exactly the pattern I shall show you.”65 The long account of the construction of this sanctuary is clearly not intended to be taken literally; nobody imagined that the ancient Israelites had really built such an elaborate shrine of “gold, silver and bronze, purple stuffs, of violet shade and red, crimson stuffs, fine linen, goats hair, rams skin, acacia wood …” and so forth.66 This lengthy interpolation is heavily reminiscent of P’s creation story. At each stage of the construction, Moses “saw all the work,” and “blessed” the people, like Yahweh on the six days of creation. The sanctuary was built on the first day of the first month of the year; Bezalel, the architect of the shrine, was inspired by the spirit of God (ruach elohim) which also brooded over the creation of the world; and both accounts emphasize the importance of the sabbath rest.67 Temple-building was also a symbol of the original harmony that had prevailed before mankind had ruined the world.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  [image "49. Lucas Cranach the Elder, True Portrait of Luther, 1546. By the early 1530s, Luther had filled out, and the memorial images of the reformer produced the year he died show a bulky figure, a substantial man of authority very different from the lean, ascetic-looking young monk." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_058_r1.jpg] [image "49. Lucas Cranach the Elder, True Portrait of Luther, 1546. By the early 1530s, Luther had filled out, and the memorial images of the reformer produced the year he died show a bulky figure, a substantial man of authority very different from the lean, ascetic-looking young monk." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_058_r1.jpg] 49. Lucas Cranach the Elder, True Portrait of Luther, 1546. By the early 1530s, Luther had filled out, and the memorial images of the reformer produced the year he died show a bulky figure, a substantial man of authority very different from the lean, ascetic-looking young monk. [image "HIS330544 Martin Luther and Frederick III of Saxony kneeling before Christ on the Cross, 1532-1600 (woodcut) by German School, (16th century); 11.8x15.2 cm; Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, Germany; (add.info.: Martin Luther (1483-1546); Frederick III (1463-1525) Elector of Saxony;); © DHM; German, out of copyright" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_059_r1.jpg] [image "HIS330544 Martin Luther and Frederick III of Saxony kneeling before Christ on the Cross, 1532-1600 (woodcut) by German School, (16th century); 11.8x15.2 cm; Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, Germany; (add.info.: Martin Luther (1483-1546); Frederick III (1463-1525) Elector of Saxony;); © DHM; German, out of copyright" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_059_r1.jpg] 50. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Luther and the Saxon Elector in Front of a Crucifix. This image and variations on it became extremely influential. It was used in the 1546 edition of Luther’s New Testament, published by Hans Lufft, and in several volumes of Luther’s collected works on the title pages. The image also underlines the importance of the crucifix in Lutheran devotion, which Karlstadt had repudiated. By the early 1530s, with both his parents now dead, Luther had become “the oldest in my family,” as well as father to a brood of children of his own. He had also become less mobile, intellectually as well as physically, as he ensconced himself in his study and held court at the table. Now a man of substance, his married life had transformed his theology. He had shed asceticism for a remarkably positive conception of human physicality, and a flexible, pastoral attitude toward the marital dilemmas of his parishioners. This vision would separate him not only from the old Church, but also from the rule-bound communitarian moralism of those influenced by the Swiss reformers and their heirs, the Calvinists.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Kathie also managed their money, which Luther had always done very poorly, mainly because he needed little to live on and because whatever he got he tended to give away. He was notoriously generous, so much so that his friends sometimes had to step in to correct him. “I do not believe,” he said, “I can be accused of niggardliness.”21 Even when they received a wedding gift that seemed to him too luxurious, Luther intended to give it back, but the savvy Kathie hid it, preventing him. Luther received no income from his torrential publications because even though the publishers made a mint from them, Luther refused to take a penny, nor did he take money for all of his preaching. He simply wanted to spread the Word and trust God would provide. But he was not averse to actual menial work. Besides what he did in his garden, he at one point decided a capital way to bring in some extra income would be by woodworking. So in the first year of his marriage, he ambitiously ordered a lathe and other woodworking implements; however, he was not adept enough to turn a profit, whether with a lathe or otherwise, so in the end this project fell by the wayside. Still, he was cheerfully game to do what he could, so whenever they tore, to save the money of a tailor, Luther always mended his own pants. One steady source of income for them was the many boarders they took in at the Black Cloister, where they provided room and board for many University of Wittenberg students. Of course this kept Kathie extremely busy. In latter years, she bought a farm in nearby Zühlsdorf and spent time there too. Luther’s letters to her greeted her comically: “To the rich lady of Zulsdorf [sic], Mrs. Dr. Katherine Luther, who lives in the flesh at Wittenberg but in the spirit at Zulsdorf.” Or “To my beloved wife, Katherine, Mrs. Dr. Luther, mistress of the pig market, lady of Zulsdorf, and whatsoever other titles may befit thy Grace.” She and Luther seem to have teased each other endlessly but always good-naturedly. Who would have thought that Martin Luther and marriage would have gotten along so well together? At the end of his first year with Kathie, he wrote, “My Kathie is in all things so obliging and pleasing to me that I would not exchange my poverty for the riches of Croesus.”22

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  With his mention of the “three huts,” Luther was referring to the three things he planned to work on while here. Luther had always had a fondness for Aesop’s fables, but many editions included things that were unsuitable for children, and so he planned his own translation, hoping it would be used by families together in the evenings. Luther was less concerned with the morals of the stories than with the realistic pictures they gave of the fallen world in which we lived. He thought it a good way to help children to understand the world, with its various kinds of sinners and sins to be dealt with, “so that you can live wisely and peacefully among wicked people in the treacherous, evil world.”8 Luther obviously wasn’t of that tribe that felt children must be restricted to reading Bible stories, nor of that tribe that insists on stories being used as bludgeons toward moral lessons. Just as in his letters from the Wartburg, Luther now entertained his friends with wry observations on the birds all around him: Here you might see proud kings, dukes, and other noblemen of the kingdom who seriously care for their belongings and offspring and who with untiring voice proclaim their decisions and dogmas through the air. Finally, they do not live, or rather they are not locked up in, such holes and caves as you people call (with but little reason) palaces. Rather, they live under the open sky, so that the sky itself serves them as a paneled ceiling, the green trees as a floor of limitless variety, and the walls [of their palaces] are identical with the ends of the earth.9 Luther dragged the joke forward, never stopping. “I have not yet seen nor heard their emperor,” he writes. And then, “Like knights they preen themselves, wipe their bill, and flap their wings, as if anticipating victory and honor [in their raids] against grain and malted barley.”10 On the wall, Luther painted or chalked the words of Psalm 118: “I shall not die, but live, and proclaim the works of the Lord.”11 These words had particular meaning for Luther and were even at some point set to music by his friend Ludwig Senfl, at Luther’s request As happened a decade earlier in the Wartburg, Luther turned his silence to writing productively. One of his first projects was a pamphlet self-explanatorily titled Exhortation to All Clergy Assembled at Augsburg for the Imperial Diet of 1530. Though he might not be at the diet in person, his thoughts would not long be absent. He finished the manuscript on May 12 and immediately sent it back the four-day, 150-mile journey to Wittenberg, where it was quickly printed and the five hundred copies promptly taken the 300 miles to Augsburg, where they quickly sold out. As ever, it was strong tea:

• From A History of God (1993)

  Like Jesus again, these Galilean holy men often had a large number of women disciples. Others argue that Jesus was probably a Pharisee of the same school as Hillel, just as Paul, who claimed to have been a Pharisee before his conversion to Christianity, was said to have sat at the feet of Rabbi Gamaliel. 3 Certainly Jesus’ teaching was in accord with major tenets of the Pharisees, since he also believed that charity and loving- kindness were the most important of the mitzvot. Like the Pharisees, he was devoted to the Torah and was said to have preached a more stringent observance than many of his contemporaries. 4 He also taught a version of Hillel’s Golden Rule, when he argued that the whole of the Law could be summed up in the maxim: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 5 In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is made to utter violent and rather unedifying diatribes against “the Scribes and Pharisees,” presenting them as worthless hypocrites. 6 Apart from this being a libelous distortion of the facts and a flagrant breach of the charity that was supposed to characterize his mission, the bitter denunciation of the Pharisees is almost certainly inauthentic. Luke, for example, gives the Pharisees a fairly good press in both his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, and Paul would scarcely have flaunted his Pharisaic background if the Pharisees really had been the sworn enemies of Jesus who had hounded him to death. The anti-Semitic tenor of Matthew’s Gospel reflects the tension between Jews and Christians during the 80s. The Gospels often show Jesus arguing with the Pharisees, but the discussion is either amicable or may reflect a disagreement with the more rigorous school of Shammai. After his death, his followers decided that Jesus had been divine. This did not happen immediately; as we shall see, the doctrine that Jesus had been God in human form was not finalized until the fourth century. The development of Christian belief in the Incarnation was a gradual, complex process. Jesus himself certainly never claimed to be God. At his baptism he had been called the Son of God by a voice from heaven, but this was probably simply a confirmation that he was the beloved Messiah. There was nothing particularly unusual about such a proclamation from above: the Rabbis often experienced what they called a bat qol (literally, “Daughter of the Voice”), a form of inspiration that had replaced the more direct prophetic revelations. 7 Rabbi Yohannan ben Zakkai had heard such a bat qol confirming his own mission on the occasion when the Holy Spirit had descended upon him and his disciples in the form of fire. Jesus himself used to call himself “the Son of Man.” There has been much controversy about this title, but it seems that the original Aramaic phrase (bar nasha) simply stressed the weakness and mortality of the human condition.

• From A History of God (1993)

  In his biography, however, Athanasius presents him in an entirely different light. He is, for example, transformed into an ardent opponent of Arianism; he had already begun to enjoy a foretaste of his future apotheosis, since he shares the divine apatheia to a remarkable degree. When, for example, he emerged from the tombs where he had spent twenty years wrestling with demons, Athanasius says that Antony’s body showed no signs of ageing. He was a perfect Christian, whose serenity and impassibility set him apart from other men: “his soul was unperturbed, and so his outward appearance was calm.” 13 He had perfectly imitated Christ: just as the Logos had taken flesh, descended into the corrupt world and fought the powers of evil, so Antony had descended into the abode of demons. Athanasius never mentions contemplation, which according to such Christian platonists as Clement or Origen had been the means of deification and salvation. It was no longer considered possible for mere mortals to ascend to God in this way by their own natural powers. Instead, Christians must imitate the descent of the Word made flesh into the corruptible, material world. But Christians were still confused: if there was only one God, how could the Logos also be divine? Eventually three outstanding theologians of Cappadocia in eastern Turkey came up with a solution that satisfied the Eastern Orthodox Church. They were Basil, Bishop of Caesarea (ca. 329–79), his younger brother Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (335–95) and his friend Gregory of Nazianzus (329–91). The Cappadocians, as they are called, were all deeply spiritual men. They thoroughly enjoyed speculation and philosophy but were convinced that religious experience alone could provide the key to the problem of God. Trained in Greek philosophy, they were all aware of a crucial distinction between the factual content of truth and its more elusive aspects. The early Greek rationalists had drawn attention to this: Plato had contrasted philosophy (which was expressed in terms of reason and was thus capable of proof) with the equally important teaching handed down by means of mythology, which eluded scientific demonstration. We have seen that Aristotle had made a similar distinction when he had noted that people attended the mystery religions not to learn (mathein) anything but to experience (pathein) something. Basil expressed the same insight in a Christian sense when he distinguished between dogma and kerygma. Both kinds of Christian teaching were essential to religion. Kerygma was the public teaching of the Church, based on the scriptures.