By: Jennifer Vernam on April 17, 2023
“Remember me” On several occasions, I have had the privilege of working in Guatemala in villages of people who have been historically marginalized. Due to generations of political manipulations and societal injustice these groups of indigenous people have been relegated to the most barren and remote parts of the mountainous regions and are living without…
By: Travis Vaughn on April 17, 2023
As soon as I started reading Julian Treasure’s How to be Heard, a bit of low-grade anxiety snuck in. At some point, I knew I was going to come across the portions about speaking. See, the speaking parts of my job have always been a hurdle. I’ve spoken or presented in front of groups of…
By: Todd E Henley on April 16, 2023
I used to believe that I only used about 10% of my brain. I believed this because about 4 decades ago I read this and was told this was a fact for about 95% of the people in the world. I remember hearing the same statistic in college and even at leadership conferences. It seemed…
By: Mathieu Yuill on April 16, 2023
I tell people often “I can only do one thing at a time,” especially when I’m in the middle of something and they ask me an important question. Early in my marriage my wife and I would be discussing something, I’d begin thinking about it and I’d be snapped back to reality by another question…
By: Dinka Utomo on April 14, 2023
“Mindfulness isn’t difficult: the hard part is remembering to do it.” -David Rock- Many people say that 24 hours a day is not enough. Time seems to pass quickly without waiting or giving a chance. Our tasks and responsibilities await even while we are asleep. From personal activities in the morning to preparing for…
By: Jana Dluehosh on April 10, 2023
This week is an amazing in having all the most frustrating parts of myself exposed on the page. Except, it wasn’t exposed on a page for me…it was burrowed into my ear. Let me explain. I have been managing the books for this class as I go, and my “procrastination” had always worked out. Either…
By: Jenny Dooley on April 7, 2023
This book is genius. Your Brain at Work, by Dr. David Rock helped my brain make many connections. I’m not sure I can adequately explain just how many connections I experienced while completing the reading this week. After all, it is not good for a brain try to focus on too many things at once!…
By: Pam Lau on April 6, 2023
In 2020, researchers at Queen’s University in Canada used brain imaging to detect how many thoughts people have in one day. By comparing study participants’ brain patterns while watching a movie to those at other times of day, they were able to identify what they called “thought worms,” which were trains of thought that transitioned…
By: Adam Harris on April 6, 2023
My parents got divorced when I was young, so I never really knew my Father. That is until he came to stay with us for about a month when I was eleven. I was so happy to see him arrive and even happier to see him leave. He was not what I was expecting. He…
By: Esther Edwards on April 6, 2023
“Your Brain at Work” has been extremely beneficial and thought-provoking (no pun intended).[1] Dr. David Rock was able to make a complex topic more understandable for the average person through his well-written use of the stage metaphor. It meets a chronic need for me personally and most people I know who are living their lives…
By: Russell Chun on April 6, 2023
Bondye se plas dous mwen (Creole) or Dieu est mon “sweet spot”(French), God is my “sweet spot” My thoughts on God as my sweet spot. God in my audience and on stage – my director. My prayer. This week, two Haitian women appeared in both my weekly job training class AND my Intermediate Grammar class. …
By: Cathy Glei on April 5, 2023
Something to try (from Scene 3). . . Catch yourself trying to do two things at once and slow down instead. [1] Caught! Earlier today, I was in a ZOOM Session, doing a load of laundry, writing out a “to-do” list with my right hand while turning pages in a book with my left. Absolutely…
By: Scott Dickie on April 4, 2023
That title is a bit of an overstatement, but I’m definitely not at my best. This has been a growing realization for me over the past year or so. I’m not as articulate as I would like to be, my thinking is a bit muddled (or more muddled than usual!) and my motivation is lacking.…
By: Jonita Fair-Payton on April 4, 2023
There are times when my brain is not working at all or in “time-out”. My recall is just not what it used to be. I am easily distracted, and I am forgetful. The embarrassing truth is that I probably spend more time looking for my cell phone than I do actually using it. I am…
By: Kim Sanford on April 3, 2023
David Rock wins the prize for “Most Immediately Applicable Book We’ve Read.” I read Your Brain at Work [1] last week and sat with it before tackling this blog post (thank you, spring break, for that extra time!). In those few days, I found myself applying Rock’s reflections in a surprising number of ways. 1. When…
By: Travis Vaughn on April 3, 2023
“Your capacity to change yourself, change others, and even change the world, may boil down to how well you know your brain, and your capacity to consciously intervene in otherwise automatic processes.”[1] If having an accurate self-assessment is important for productivity, then David Rock’s Your Brain at Work is an important contribution to the “self-care”…
By: Tim Clark on April 3, 2023
“Be still and know that I am God” Psalm 46:10 It’s an open secret among our church staff that if you’re in the car when I’m driving, you are taking your life into your own hands. My wife tells me it’s not because I’m a bad driver, but because I am a fast driver. My…
By: Jennifer Vernam on April 3, 2023
In week 11 of our blog posts, Kim shared with us a thought “God made the brain so we shouldn’t be surprised that neuroscience and theology can overlap.”[1] The reading from this week in Your Brain at Work[2] offered me another chapter in this area of discovery. David Rock develops an analogy of our minds…
By: John Fehlen on April 3, 2023
This is a recent day in the life of MY Brain… 0615 hours (that’s 6:15 am in military time, which makes this whole post sound way more legit): I woke up, without my alarm, having sensed the Lord’s voice to my heart saying, “Come and be with me.” So I got up, grabbed my Bible…
By: Kally Elliott on April 3, 2023
It’s after 2pm and I’m just sitting down to write this blog post. I know better than to try to write cohesively after 2pm. The afternoon is not a good time for me to try to think creatively or even to try to organize my simple thoughts into a readable blog post. By 2pm I’ve…