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Receptivity and offering: Reframing regrets

Lynne Baab • Saturday February 19 2022

I wrote last week about a fascinating book about regret by Daniel H. Pink. Here’s a summary of his argument, referencing academic research on regret and a survey of 16,000 people who responded online to his questions about regret:

“The conclusion from both the science and the survey is clear: Regret is not dangerous or abnormal. It is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human. Equally important, regret is valuable. It clarifies. It instructs. Done right, it needn’t drag us down; it can lift us up.” [1] In last week’s post, I gave a longer summary of his main point.

Pink...

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Receptivity and offering: Regret

Lynne Baab • Thursday February 10 2022

“No regrets” is a quintessentially American approach to life, emphasized by famous Americans as diverse as Norman Vincent Peale and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and immortalized in song by musicians like Ella Fitzgerald and Eminem. However, this “no regrets” approach to life is an “unsustainable blueprint for living,” according to Daniel H. Pink, author of The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves us Forward.

An excerpt from Pink’s book was published recently in the Wall Street Journal, and I have pored over that excerpt because it spoke to me so strongly. Pink argues that “no regrets” is particularly inappropriate as we enter...

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Receptivity and offering: Another world walking beside ours

Lynne Baab • Thursday February 3 2022

“I cannot tell you half of what I see. I don’t have the words. There may be no words. For what I see is another world walking beside ours, a world as gossamer as sea spray in the wind. Its presence comes to me out of the corner of my eye, a fleeting glimpse, a moment’s reward for so many hours riding the currents of prayer. I look and I see it, the sacred land just on the other side of where I am standing, the grace of a different sun in a different sky, the evening shadows that will one...

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Receptivity and offering: Reasonable hope

Lynne Baab • Thursday January 27 2022

Back in 2013 I attended a seminar about mind-body connections, and I learned the significance of the words we use out loud or in our thoughts and prayers. According to the leader of the seminar, when I pray, “God help me with my anxiety,” or when I refer to anxiety in a conversation, I reinforce the neural pathways related to anxiety. Talking about my desire as “freedom from anxiety” has the unintended consequence of lighting up neurons related to anxiety. When I pray, “God give me peace,” I reinforce brain pathways related to peace, and these life-giving neural pathways are beneficial...

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