LEADING IN TIMES OF TRANSITION

Last summer, British Prime Minister...

INTERACTIVE TEXTBOOKS

Big changes are here if you are a student who reads textbooks, a professor who assigns them, or an author who writes (or wants to write)...

MAKING HARD CHANGES

About three years ago, brothers Chip and Dan Heath published Made to Stick, a NY Times best seller that described "why some ideas survive...

THE PORN EXPLOSION

"Pornography is moving from an individual and couples' problem to a public health problem, capable of deeply harming the...

STEVE JOBS' COMMUNICATION STYLE

With enthusiasm and media hype, Apple Computer's Steve Jobs recently introduced the company's new iPad. A few days later The Economist magazine (January 30 issue) featured a cover with Jobs dressed like Moses and a feature article titled "The Book of Jobs."  Same week I started reading Carmine Gallo's...

MODERN MENTORING

This week I stumbled on a blog posting at www.GiftedForLeadership.com where I was caught by words from an article titled "Modern Mentorship." The 32 year-old writer, Nicole Unice, argues that "perhaps mentorship has to move beyond structured systems and canned questions." Mentoring involves at least two people, one of...

ABU GHRAIB AND YELLOW RIBBONS

Two recent books have made a big influence on me. Both deal with U.S military personnel and their families but they have broader relevance to caregivers. Frequently I tell students that within a few years their present training is likely to seem antiquated and their work may be very different because so...

JOURNAL WRITING

A journal is a notebook where individuals record their experiences, ideas, reflections, and insights about their lives, struggles and spiritual journeys. "Taking time to write (nearly) every day can provide us with a vital documentation of Christ's work in our lives," writes psychologist Donald Lichi. Journaling can...

BECOMING AN INNOVATOR

What traits characterize innovators? How can you or the people you work with become innovators? Why are Apple's Steve Jobs, Amazon's Jeff Bezos or the founders of eBay, Facebook, or Skype all innovative entrepreneurs? An in-depth six-year study reported in Harvard Business Review (December, 2009) shows that...

YOGA - MOVING BEYOND TALK THERAPY?

In November 2009 Monitor on Psychology published an article titled "Yoga as a Practice Tool." The writer suggested that counselors have "painted themselves in the corner by only doing talk therapy. There's much more that can be accomplished if you integrate it with other sorts of modalities, such as...

NEW YEAR GAME PLAN

Seven years ago, Donald Miller published a somewhat unorthodox spiritual autobiography titled Blue Like Jazz. Miller must have been surprised when...

TIGER WOODS AND BABY JESUS

Maybe you have seen the advertisement in a magazine or on an airport billboard. A photo shows Tiger Woods standing on a rock next to a pond. He is looking at his golf ball in a place where a shot would be almost impossible. Across the top of the photo are these words: It's what you do next that counts.

You need...

By definition, newsletters like this one should focus on what's new; a book published in 2008 is no longer news. But Seth Godin's Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us is a timeless gem. Slim and easy to read it is filled with illustrations and practical observations that can apply to leaders, coaches, counselors, students and others. Here are...

This morning I discovered that my newsletters have not been appearing on this site. This is a goof-up someplace and my super-savy techie friends are working to get it fixed. But, in the meantime, I have posted the newsletters that did not get posted and will enter them manually in the future until we get them going automatically again. 

By the...

At least once every year I teach a graduate course on the methods and models of integrating Psychology and Christianity. Most students enroll hoping for "how-to-do-it" techniques to bring Christian spiritual disciplines into counseling with believers. Some have come from undergraduate programs where integration involved evaluating and...

SWEEPING CONCLUSIONS

A few days ago I picked up a copy of Atlantic magazine (December 2009) and read the cover story "Did Christianity Cause the Crash? How Preachers are Spreading a Gospel of Debt." (downloadable at www.theatlantic.com). The title is featured prominently on the cover. I anticipated a well written article, especially in a...

Jess Rice is a worship leader, counselor, captivating story teller, and well informed observer of the Facebook phenomenon. His new book, The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected are Redefining Community pictures a church on the cover but surprisingly it says almost nothing about the church. Despite the misleading title, however, Rice...

REQUIRED TIME OFF

What would happen if you were required to take off one day every week, not allowed to do any work, forbidden to check or respond to messages? For workaholics or people addicted to their technological devices this could lead to significant anxiety. Many of us are caught in a "24/7 on-call culture" according to Harvard...

Amost everybody knows that November 9, 2009 is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. I have been to Europe a number of times - I even lived there for a while on two occasions - but a few days ago I made my first visit to Berlin. My wife and I were hosted by Ingo Tophoven who is one of our PhD students in counseling at Regant...

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. This old psychological mantra used to be true when the world was more stable and change was less pervasive than it is today. In an era of ongoing change and crisis, however, current events have few...

THE HEALTHY AGING BRAIN

I rarely give much thought to my birthday and I debated about writing the next sentence. But I was born on October 22, 1934 so that makes me 75 today. There won't be any celebrations, presents or candles. I won't even be...

HINDU NATION?

"We are all Hindus Now" suggests a thought-provoking article in Newsweek (August 24 and 31 issue). "American is not a Christian nation," the writer begins, even though 76 percent of Americans identify as Christian. ...

Here's an interesting idea from the October 2009 Harvard Business Review. A recent study found that nearly one-third of adults who work at least 30 hours a week have fallen asleep or become extremely drowsy on the job. Whenever we need sleep some basic skills start to slide including visual discrimination, alertness, performance effectiveness...

Consider these facts from a September 2009 Harvard Business Review article titled "Death by Information Overload."

• Interruptions eat up 28% of the workday.
• It takes an average of 24 minutes to get back on task after checking a message.
• Read more...

Can you remember the sermon from last Easter Sunday? This year we attended our daughter's church on Easter where the sermon, at most, was ten minutes long.  The message was concise and to the point: the Resurrection of Jesus is all about changing lives both for now and for eternity.

The message stuck because it was preceded by the words of a...

I expect to spend this month on the road, speaking at conferences in six countries. The audiences will be diverse: coaches, counselors, pastors, emerging leaders, and participants at a weekend retreat, among others. They represent different age...

This month, new cycling machines were brought into the fitness club where I work out.  They record the rider’s heart rate, calories, distance travelled and cycling speeds. But the new machines do more. They give us opportunity to select a...

Every week the Gary R. Collins Newsletter goes to a group of readers around the world. What follows is Gary's latest letter. To receive the letter each week in your email box, please click here. The letter is free and you can unsubscribe at any time. 

NEWSLETTER 350 - SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

NEW CHRISTIAN COACHING BOOK

Long time readers know...