3 X 5's: Index Card Wisdom from Best of Books

DETECTIVE H. L. Goodall, Jr. (1989). Casing a Promised Land:                                                    The Autobiography of an Organizational                                                    Detective as Cultural Ethnographer. Goodall was a professor of communication who believed in getting out of the office and into the field to discover principles of communication and life. This is the first of a triology of books he wrote on cultural ethnography which later became the field of autoethnography championed by Carol Ellis and Art Bochner in the field of Communication. Some of the best parts: Communication researchers need to be like detectives, looking for clues, going und...

SUPERBETTER  Jane McGonigal (2015). Superbetter:                                                    A Revolutionary Approach To Getting                                                           Stronger, Happier, Braver, and  More                                                              Resilient. McGonigal (PhD) spent 5 years researching and writing Superbetter...the gamification of life...grounded in her personal story of overcoming a severe concussion through gaming....

GARDEN Juanita Havill (2008). Grow: A Novel in Verse A delightful novel about a growing a community garden set in a verse and illustrated. Meet Berneetha the adult woman, Darlene the girl narrator and her friend Harlan the boy...together they tend a garden on a city plot with permission of the owner until he dies and his son takes over...the new owner of the plot uses the law to oust the gardeners because he wants to build a parking lot (reminds me of the song by Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ratQlft_G5c...they paved paradise to put up a parking lot...don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you got till it's gone...)...fortunately an amiable firefighter offers them a little plot next to the fire station to use as their newly transplanted garden...there are many "life lessons" throughout the story including:  walking slow in the morning is when i do my best thinking let the doodle grow into a lightbulb idea the land belong...

MILTON Ronald Havens (2005). The Wisdom of Milton H. Erickson . Havens read most of the writings of Milton H. Erickson and then curated and organized what he found into themes supported by ample quotes from Erickson. Some of the themes are: the clinician needs careful, detailed, objective observation of the person they are working with--this is the bedrock for all that follows. the unconscious mind  is always LISTENING and LEARNING  (Erickson views the unconscious as separate from the conscious mind that knows more than we can consciously know, that is a creative force, and that is also fallible). to create change, one needs to be creative about breaking/disrupting rigid habitual patterns of behavior using an individual's language, metaphors, and stories as the medium for the change inducing messages. hypnosis is focusing on internal experience, suggesting simple things a person can easily do, and building on that. we need to learn to put the self into a trance and let the unc...

 MWe Daniel Siegel (2023). IntraConnected:                                             MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of                                             Self, Identity, and Belonging Siegel is a medical doctor and psychiatrist who writes about "interpersonal neurobiology." In this book he narrates his personal story, and provides research evidence for the consilence (identifying similarities among different ways of knowing-specifically, Western Science, Indigenous Wisdom, and Contemplative Traditions) of the MWe idea, namely, that we are individual "Me's" but we are also "We's"--relational beings connected to others, nature, and the universe. In MWe we differentiate among the domains of life and link them in...

HUMAN VOICE Carol Gilligan (2023). In a Human Voice. Professor Gilligan published an essay in 1972 called, "In a Different Voice" which subsequently became a published book in 1982. The thesis (oversimplified) is that boys and girls have different ethics that they live by, boys have the ethic of justice and girls the ethic of care. Over 40 years later Gilligan recognizes that the "ethic of care" belongs not just to girls and the feminine, but to all of humanity...caring is a "human voice" as opposed to the patriarchal voice of gender binaries and hierarchies.  To listen with a human voice Gilligan suggests we listen closer to the language choices of people, especially to phrases like, "really think," "actually feel," and "to be honest"--these are signals for us to pay attention...to listen with respect and curiosity rather than judgment.  

LIVING DEEPLY  Marilyn Sclitz, Cassandra Vieten, and Tina Amorok (2007). Living Deeply:  The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life The book is based on 900 surveys and interviews conducted between 1997 and 2008. The chart on page 7 summarizes 41 religious/spiritual themes from east, west, and indigenous/earth worldviews. There are in-depth ideas for journaling at the end of each chapter. The qualities of transformative life practices include: intention, attention, repetition, and guidance...and the challenge for all of us is to integrate meaningful life practices into everyday life such that ultimately, life becomes the practice. One practice that anyone can do is to make one's home and workplace a holy space...make it beautiful, simple, use images, add music, and include reminders to do your "practices" with objects, posters, jewelry, post it notes...