“You just start thinking about other things that you can do. You think about your dreams and your goals. You see it and it gives you hope. And energy. You feel energized,” said Vicci Recckio, member of the Benson Babes. The group, all participants in the Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, was featured on an NPR piece entitled, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Coat. Their catalyst? A coat purchased from a thrift shop for $10 and shared among participants who were undergoing cancer treatments. A coat? Could a coat really provide hope, energy? Continue reading…
A forest not trees….
More than 20 years ago I staged a personal albeit modest ‘conscientious objector‘ moment. I was a first year graduate student at the Harvard Business School facing a two-week break at the Christmas holidays. Since Labor Day we’d been assigned about 100 pages of reading per night. Our holiday assignment was to read a roughly 300 page book. So goes the concept of a break…. Knowing full well the risk of being asked to summarize the book publicly upon my return I ignored the assignment. Much to the horror of my classmates I might add. Continue reading…
Conversations: A critical transition tool
I was reading the New Yorker this week and was struck by an article by Jonah Lehrer called, Groupthink: the brainstorming myth (The New Yorker, January 30, 2012 pg 22+). The article was interesting in that it completely upended the notion of brainstorming as a productive tool for creative problem solving. Brainstorming? My kids, 1st and 2nd graders, even know the approach. Continue reading…