Reflection

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Reflection

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) wrote accessible poetry that appreciated nature and laid out simple instructions for life. Her poem “Sometimes” is as profound as it is succinct in what makes a successful life:

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This issue is dedicated to the tireless work of women, particularly mothers.

Reflection

After September 11, a quote from Fred Rogers resurfaced that has since become a kind of civic psalm for moments of tragedy:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

The wisdom in that counsel belongs to two people — Rogers, who shared it, and his mother, who gave it to him.

The helpers in our lives are often women. Mothers, sisters, aunts, wives — they provide the nurturing environments where we first learn that the world is not only frightening but full of people moving toward the frightened. They protect us, fight for us, and labor tirelessly on our behalf, whether leading organizations, teaching classrooms, or simply sitting with us at the end of a hard day. Too often, they are overlooked. They shouldn’t be.

On a day set aside to honor mothers, the truest tribute may be the one Rogers modeled: to see the helpers, to name them, and to carry their wisdom forward into the world — as he did, for the rest of his life.

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We depart from our usual cadence here, presenting three images instead of one. George Elgar Hicks’ triptych is worth including on Mother’s Day. Tom Taylor described Woman’s Mission (1862–3) as a picture ‘in three compartments’, while other critics described three ‘tableaux, set in one frame’.1 The three canvases ­­­­­­were given the titles Guide of Childhood (fig.1), Companion of Manhood (fig.2), and Comfort of Old Age (fig.3).

In each painting, Woman’s Mission depicts a young woman — the same woman in all three images — fulfilling her responsibilities as mother, wife and daughter: clearing her child’s path of brambles and guiding his steps, supporting her husband in a moment of overwhelming grief, and ministering to her ailing father in his final years.

While this is merely a vision of three roles, women inhabit a far greater number of roles, acting as true caretakers of humanity. May we always remember that and celebrate them.

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There’s so much to learn,

Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, a look at what or who we should be worshipping.

Reflection

Faith is not a passive thing. It is an act of directed attention — a choice, made consciously or not, about what we deem worthy of our trust, our time, and our admiration. That choice has consequences.

When we invest our faith in things of genuine substance, such as people of demonstrated character, institutions with ethical foundations, ideas that have weathered scrutiny and stand the test of time, we tend to build something durable. When we invest carelessly, drawn by spectacle or by the intoxicating promise of power, we tend to find ourselves holding something that was never as solid as it appeared.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

Today, I’d like to invite you to try to listen more and talk less.

Reflection

When were in a room with other people — particularly someone upon whom we’re trying to make a good impression — we tend to talk too much. It may be from anxiety, insecurity, or some other gnawing emotion, but the result is the same: an unfettered flow of logorrhea.

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Reflection

There is an old military maxim, often attributed to Eisenhower, that no plan survives first contact with the enemy — and it is frequently used to excuse the absence of one. But Eisenhower himself never meant it that way. His point was that the act of planning is what matters. The rigorous thinking-through of contingencies, the alignment of purpose, the shared understanding of what we are trying to accomplish.

The plan is not a script; it is a shared map.

What leaders too often forget is that the map must be shared. A plan locked in one person’s head is not a plan — it is a wish. The communication of a plan is not a courtesy or an administrative burden; it is the completion of the plan itself. When people understand not just what they are to do, but why, and where their piece fits into the whole, they become capable of adapting intelligently when conditions change.

They exercise judgment in your direction rather than waiting for instruction. This is the difference between an organization that moves and one that merely responds.

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On the night of December 25–26, 1776, General George Washington crossed the ice-choked Delaware River with 2,400 men to strike the Hessian garrison at Trenton at dawn. The operation had been planned meticulously and communicated only to those who needed to know. The men pulled on their cloth-wrapped oars in silence and darkness. They succeeded because every man knew his role, trusted his officers, and understood the objective.

Leutze’s painting romanticizes the moment — Washington did not actually stand in the bow — but it captures something true: purposeful, forward motion, into the dark, with a plan.

There’s so much to learn,

P.S. I’m available to speak to your team about the Working Together© practices and principles that helped turn Ford around; they apply to teams of all sizes.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, try asking yourself: Am I truly committed or merely just interested?

Reflection

• When you are committed, you find a way. When you are interested, you find an excuse.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, why we choose good and love over evil and hate.

Reflection

Aristotle argued in the Nicomachean Ethics that humans are, by nature, oriented toward eudaimonia — flourishing, well-being, the good life. Not pleasure alone. Not power. Good.

He didn’t say this naively; he wrote in a world fraught with war, plague, and slavery. He said it because he observed something persistent and stubborn in human behavior: we keep trying to build, to connect, to repair.

Marcus Aurelius, writing in his imperial purple while managing a crumbling empire, returned again and again in his Meditations to a single discipline: assume the best of others, at least as a starting point.

Believing in good is not the same as believing everything is fine. It is a choice about where to place one’s attention — and that choice has consequences. Psychologists call this orientation dispositional optimism, and the research is unambiguous: people who hold it are healthier, more resilient, and more likely to act in ways that make the world incrementally better. The belief is generative. Cynicism is a closed loop; hope is an open one.

Choosing to believe in good is not sentiment. It is strategy. It is leadership.

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Further reading:

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week: a reminder to not let ourselves fall into despair when things seem insurmountable.

Reflection

Every day, it seems like there is something in the news to distract us and throw us into a swirling cauldron of anger or hopelessness — sensational headlines and outrageous behavior designed to hook us emotionally. It’s a lot.

If anything, such Horrible Things ought to remind us what truly matters and what we can focus on instead.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal (a wonderful gift!) I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, as we chart a course for what we’ll accomplish in 2026, we reflect on what success really means.

Reflection

It is all too easy to ascribe success to external measures and data points. But those are just nodes that can be checked off as achievements.

We ought to be measuring our success more deeply — in ways that can be felt as well as seen, based on how we affect hearts and minds rather than balance sheets and asset classes.

In the December 11, 1905 edition of the Emporia Gazette, Bessie Stanley wrote a column titled “Success Is Service,” part of which reads:

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal (a wonderful gift!) I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

In this edition, we pause to reflect on what really matters: how we treat ourselves, which determines how we show up for others.

Reflection

As Christmas looms, we hear about the spirit of the holiday, often made clear through the story of Ebeneezer Scrooge and the lessons of thinking of others. During this season of giving, when we spread joy to others, some simple truths to help keep us focused:

• Happiness is an inside job ― it starts with you.

• Instead of always looking to be blessed, spend some time being a blessing to others.

• Don’t look for your soul in tangible things; look for it in the relationships you nurture.

• The purpose of life is not to be happy — but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

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Two quotes this time — a holiday gift.

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Two illustrations from Clement Moore’s poem “A Visit From Saint Nicholas, by Felix Octavius Carr Darley, published by New York, Hurd & Houghton, 1862 (via Library of Congress).

Clement Clark Moore wrote what are considered the most well-known verses in American poetry in 1823, which his friend submitted to the New York Sentinel anonymously. Moore would claim authorship in 1837.

His interpretation of Saint Nick was borrowed from his friend Washington Irving, whose A History of New York (1809) popularized the pipe‑smoking, sky‑riding gift‑giver Sinterklaas based on Dutch folklore. Instead of arriving on Christmas Day, Moore’s version made his visit on Christmas Eve.

His conception gave rise to many of the attributes we associate with Santa Claus today and was solidified through Darley’s illustrations, as well as those by Thomas Nast and others in the mid- to late-1800s. Later, in the 1930s the Coca-Cola Company used Santa in its Christmas advertising imagery.

There’s so much to learn,

*The Hershey quote was brought to our attention by the excellent publication .

Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, a gentle reminder that your beliefs and values ought to power your decisions.

Reflection

What are you focusing on doing and improving in your life? What are you chasing?

It is all too easy to lose ourselves in the latest trends and get swept up by the things that others place value on.

The question is: who are you and what timeless values do you hold dear? The journey to aligning your actions with your values is a journey of coming home to yourself:

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

Reflection

As Thanksgiving approaches, consider this: gratitude isn’t something we feel once; it’s something we practice over and over.

It’s easy to think of Thanksgiving as a moment of thankfulness. A meal, a toast, maybe a brief reflection on the good things. But gratitude is something bigger and sturdier than that.

Gratitude is a stewardship — a recognition that what we enjoy today exists because countless others came before us and cared enough to build something worth passing on.

These are gifts we didn’t earn but are responsible for preserving. Thankfulness responds to a moment. Gratitude responds to a legacy.

So this year, I’m thinking about gratitude less as a warm feeling and more as a daily discipline. A way of moving through the world with open eyes, an open hand, and an open heart.

A few ideas for this Thanksgiving:

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

This week, a reminder that sometimes it pays to keep it brief.

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

These days, it seems like we need a reminder as to the definition of a gentleman. In this case, we take it not as a gender-specific word, but as a broader term indicating the definition of a decent person.

Because decency is always in season.

Reflection

John Henry Newman (1801-1890), theologian, academic, philosopher (and about a half dozen other descriptives) gave a series of lectures in Dublin in 1854 and then stitched them together in book form as The Idea of a University (1854).

In this work, in a small section of one chapter — almost as an aside — he describes attributes we might all strive for to be considered decent members of society:

Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.

He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself.

His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature; like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them.

The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast — all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at his ease and at home.

He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favors while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring.

He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best.

He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp saying for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out.

From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend.

He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny.

If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it.

He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candor, consideration, indulgence: he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province and its limits…

He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling, which is the attendant on civilization… Such are some of the lineaments of the ethical character, which the cultivated intellect will form, apart from religious principle.

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The well-known parable of the good Samaritan is a lesson in showing care and kindness, regardless of association with another person. It was particularly controversial when originally shared, as there was ethnic hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans.

In this respect, if gave the parable even more depth, as it showed that loving your neighbor isn’t simply about helping people in need; it’s about helping people regardless of their beliefs, background, opinions, or whether they fit our expectations.

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There’s so much to learn,

Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and an image to contemplate.

Sometimes, all it takes for success and ambition to bloom is to witness and understand the magic in the humdrum, daily occurrences, objects, and actions that are largely ignored.

We ignite the extraordinary by making the ordinary come alive.

Reflection

This week’s reflection is the poem “Do Not Ask Your Children to Strive,” and it applies to anyone in our lives for whom we have the responsibility of leading:

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

From The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents by William Martin

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There’s so much to learn,

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and a painting to contemplate.

The reflection in today’s Sunday Journal is one that reminds us of the power of focusing on quietly doing work that we can be truly proud of: living with purpose and creating a life that feels good.

Reflections

You have to disappear. You still go to work. You still show up. But you stop announcing every move and start building something that speaks for itself.

• Disappearing means doing the work. It means doing the work in the dark.

• It means building in private what you don’t need to prove in public. It means doing the work when no one’s watching.

• You stop worrying about what people think and start valuing what you believe.

Because a life that looks good, or sounds good is nothing compared to a life that feels good and is good.

Source: Jay Shetty, Princeton University Commencement

Read the full remarks or watch the speech.

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In the Iliad, the king of Argos, Agamemnon, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis to assure good sailing weather to travel to Troy and fight in the Trojan War. In Agamemnon, the first play of Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy, Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, murder Agamemnon upon his return home as revenge for sacrificing Iphigenia. In The Libation Bearers, the second play of the Orestia, Agamemnon’s son Orestes returns home to take revenge on his mother for murdering his father.

Orestes ultimately does murder his mother and afterward is tormented and chased offstage by The Furies, beings who personify vengeance.1

There’s so much to learn,

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and a painting to contemplate.

In connection with this week’s essay that cautioned us to take care before constantly posting online (“Listen to the Silence”), we may harbor some regret about the way we’ve reacted or treated others, when we would have been better off saying nothing.

This edition of Sunday Journal connects regrets and wrongs with reflection and growth.

Reflection

How often do you look back at your past behavior or words and cringe at how you may have acted or spoke?

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Welcome to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and a painting to contemplate.

Reflections

• We live in a world dominated by words and opinions.

• Dominate the listening rather than the talking.

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Welcome back to Sunday Journal, a chance to start your week out with short, quiet reflections and advice for life.

This effort started with a handwritten journal I keep for each of my children, designed to give them a sense of how to become the best version of themselves. If you find this valuable, please share it with others.

Each edition of Sunday Journal contains three sections: reflections to put into practice, an inspirational quote, and a painting to contemplate.

In a world beset by uncertainty, where data breaches and weather outbreaks — as certain as death and taxes — portend personal and societal-altering paths of destruction, it is heartening to find something we can control.

If we allow ourselves, so much of our time can be spent worrying about that which is beyond our control.

Instead, embrace the power you have.

Reflection

Nine things that hold great power:

1. Rest

2. Kindness

3. Meditation

4. Vulnerability

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