Jay Cross

AsAs   the good folks at HeartMath have been screaming from the rooftops, The heart and the head are directly connected via the vagus nerve. "Work in social genomics reveals that our personal histories of social connection or loneliness, for instance, alter how our genes are expressed within the cells of our immune system. New parents may need to worry less about genetic testing and more about how their own actions — like texting while breast-feeding or otherwise paying more attention to their phone than their child — leave life-limiting fingerprints on their and their children’s gene expression.'

 "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing," Frankl wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, "the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," the authors write.

How do the happy life and the meaningful life differ? Happiness, they found, is about feeling good. Specifically, the researchers found that people who are happy tend to think that life is easy, they are in good physical health, and they are able to buy the things that they need and want. While not having enough money decreases how happy and meaningful you consider your life to be, it has a much greater impact on happiness. The happy life is also defined by a lack of stress or worry.

Summary advice from Greater Good Science Center

A great 12-step program. Viva the positive!

Customers on top in 2013. A story. 

MOOCs, virtual conferences, flipped, neuro... A great list of disrupters.

My next column for CLO is due today. Maybe I'll tackle the theme of sitting. Classrooms force people to sit. This shortens the life span. Let's clear out all that dangerous furniture. Lean practitioners have standing meetings -- and reportedly waste less time. CLOs should be encouraging people to get off their butts.

What does this have to do with L? Everything. For every one of us, the over-arching goal must be to make the world a better place. Let's start here.

Recommended by Bill Daul

Have you ever had an experience with someone who you suspect may be miserable at work? -- You kidding me?

Use the profit motive to return college to the real world.

Feed the beast what it likes. 

"Changing the social contract so fundamentally — treating people like family and not discardable — is a completely radical move. I am sure that we we’ll see more of this idea as more companies begin to realize the value of standing for something more that increasing profits for the shareholders."

If we are permanent stakeholders, we are owners. It does make a difference. Certainty in an uncertain world. 

I imagine a lot of people would go for that.

Read this one. 

The Stoos Movement, by which I mean the zeitgeist of 21st century management, is one factor pushing for change. 

Steve Denning has his fingers on the pulse. For a lucid view of what we need, Steve's got my vote. 

Unfortunately, we need a Winston Churchill to rally the support for risking what works for what's more likely to work in the future. 

I'm going to blog on this because it's not taught in school. It amazes me how many common sense deniers are out there.

Living in earthquake country, my mind accepts the fact that all of us are surfing on tectonic plates.

Hell of a wild surf ride from L.A. to the Point Reyes Peninsula an hour north of Berkeley. Forget Endless Summer; this was a 4 million year ride 500 miles, two plates scraping together, boom, boom, shake, shake, grinding out Route 1, Big Sur, and the entire Western Seashore. 

Most of the time, nothing happens beyond being startled and a the pictures on the walls in jaunty l the canned goods falling on the floor. 

Trying to straddle the 20th century and 21st century worldviews can rip you a new one. 

Great list of where training has gone wrong.

Great list for everyone, not just leaders.