life on Self-Improvement

Our faith is not a matter of our hearing what Christ said long ago and “trying to carry it out. The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself....

As popularized in Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s fascinating book by the same name, nudges are small changes in the environment around us that make it easier for us to make the choices we want to ...

What do you want to achieve? Greater riches? Cheaper chicken? A happier life, a longer life? Is it power over your neighbors that you are after? Are you only running away from your death? Or are you s...

Carl Jung, one of the early pioneers of modern psychology, wrote this from his years of experience as a therapist: The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of ...

Who, then, are we, we prideful late-twentieth-century creatures? Lord knows, we no longer think of ourselves as belonging to anyone or anything. We do not belong – we own; we possess. And that, to say...

There is a lovely book of advice for writers called Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield, which talks about how much easier it is to pursue a version of something than the real thing. Pressfield say...

We long to see our lives whole, to know that they matter. We wonder whether our many activities might ever come together in a way of life that is good for ourselves and others. Lacking a vision of a l...

The Double Helix, James Watson’s 1968 memoir about discovering the structure of DNA, describes the roller coaster of emotions he and Francis Crick experienced through the progress and setbacks of the ...

Impostors draw their identity not only from achievements but from interpersonal relationships. They want to stand well with people of prominence because that enhances a person’s résumé and sense of se...

It is always easier for us to want to purify other people, and attempt a moral reformation among our neighbors. (Yet) how much have I helped to make her what she is?

Mind-management is a skill that needs to be learned and constantly upgraded as we grow from childhood into adulthood. For every new experience we need a new set of mind-management tools.

Read any study on human satisfaction and you will see the paramount role of relationships with others. And yet, so many of us readily exchange friendship and community for success and achievement, onl...

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather have these because we have acted rightly; these virtues are formed in man by d...

You ought to.” “You need to.” “You’ve got to.” “You’re supposed to.” “You better.” Do these sorts of exhortations sound familiar? Perhaps you have heard admonitions such as these from the pulpit, from...

The same impulse that makes us want our books to have a plot makes us want our lives to have a plot. We need to feel that we are getting somewhere, making progress. There is something in us that is no...

The moral project for a Christian is to die to the old self and rise to new life in Christ. This dying and rising is the rhythm of a life of discipleship, a life devoted to becoming more and more lik...

Living in a society governed by technique conditions us to believe that in every way life is easier than it ever has been. Technique is the use of rational methods to maximize efficiency, and we...

When I teach on the dynamics of real change and maturation, I often describe a “furnace of transformation” each of us must pass through for the sake of growth and refinement. I’ve never seen real grow...

The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior.

In an old joke, people refer to seminary as cemetery. Attending one does feel like that at times, so the last thing I expected to discover in a dingy classroom in the basement of a Pasadena seminary s...

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

One way of redefining success is to redefine “the good life.” We have to unlearn what we’ve been taught because we’ve been sold a lie. I believe you know that as well as I do. Or at least you feel it—...

At every point in the human journey we find that we have to let go in order to move forward; and letting go means dying a little. In the process we are being created anew, awakened afresh to the sourc...

I preached my first sermon at National Community Church on January 14, 1996. The only thing I remember about that message is my opening illustration. I can’t remember the original source, but I think ...

The search for the good life, which so often is defined in terms of “things” and the means to get as many “things” as possible, has turned into a dead end as more and more people have more and more.

Adapted from Ch 4 of On Getting out of Bed. Why is Existence Good? Living for the sake of living—doing things so that you can continue to efficiently do things—begs the question, Why live? To live...

Some years back, on the Today Show, Maya Angelou was asked, with all that she had accomplished, could there be any more objectives, unfulfilled wishes, for her to pursue? Angelou said, “Oh, my, yes. I...

One way of redefining success is to redefine “the good life.” We have to unlearn what we’ve been taught because we’ve been sold a lie. I believe you know that as well as I do. Or at least you feel it—...

But when the cross is working deeply a believer comes to know himself. He realizes how undependable are his ideas, feelings and desires.

For over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living. . . . Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasin...