A BOOK THAT MIGHT GIVE YOU A MUCH-NEEDED BOOST

Frustration knows no boundaries.  Social class?  Ethnicity?  Education?  Profession? Politics?  Every participant in all of these divisions tend to suffer immensely from discouragement.  Particular groups are not the cause of it.  The fallen life is.

The only reason I would think to address this topic is because my life has been plagued by the nagging struggles of trying to be on top, or in control, or having a grip on this element called a 24-hour day.  I love life while it chews me up and wears me down here and there along the way.

Jesus is the answer.  Of course he is.  But how?  The how is found in his thinking approach.  Men and women will discover the wonder of God (I Cor. 2:9) when we can dethrone our human perspective (I Cor. 2:14) and then take on the mind of Jesus (I Cor. 2:16).  What makes Jesus the successful answer compared to our failing exasperation is found in one place; his mind.

We are exhorted to begin to think like he thinks.

So stroll through the gospels.  Watch him.  Listen to him.  Note encounters with the helpless as well as with the critics.  Note adapting flexibility of his mind.  That's to be our procedure.  Think.

So much of the time we just want.  We want things to improve; to go better.  Want can be good; but to think launches us into a new world.  It is a new hope.  Thinking discovers potential, probability, and possibility that wanters don't realize just might be a-prowl.

Therefore, I recommend a book.  While it isn't a religious one, it is certainly about faith.  In walking through some treacherous and deflating times lately, it seems coincidentally weird that I'm reading concepts that are surely found in the mind of Christ.

A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger, for me, is a perfect seminar in book form.  Sample comments:

• The comfortable expert must go back to being a restless learner.
• The glut of knowledge has another interesting effect, as noted by author Stuart Firestein: It makes us more ignorant.
• If you don't have that disposition to question, says John Seely Brown, you're going to fear change.  But if you're comfortable questioning, experimenting, connecting things--then change is something that becomes adventure.  And if you can see it as adventure, then you're off and running.
• It is not easy for a company to move away from what it has done in the past.  The consultant Jack Bergstrand of Brand Velocity thinks  one of the most important questions  companies should ask regularly is "What should we stop doing?"  Company leaders naturally tend to focus on what they should "start" doing.  Bergstrand notes that coming to terms with what you're willing to eliminate is always harder.  Yet if you can't answer that question, he maintains, "it lessens our chances of being successful at what you want to do next--because you'll be sucking up resources doing what's no longer needed and taking those resources away from what should be top priority.

Maybe this book would give you a boost where you lead.  It seems to be God-timed for me.