“First, an individual must master her craft in a given domain (art, science, mathematics). Then, this person must offer the creative work to a field of influencers in that domain who are trusted experts. Finally, the gatekeepers decide if the work is worth being accepted as authoritative into the domain. That’s the systems approach to creativity. And as much as I initially winced at the word “gatekeepers” when considering what makes creative work succeed, once I started reading biographies of famous artists, scientists, and musicians, it made a lot of sense. Talent is only part of the equation. The rest is network.”

“In an intelligent analysis of old and new connections between religion and violence, he dissects stories like those of Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Esau and Jacob, and of course, Abraham himself. He tackles this task with the tenderness of a believer and the rigour of a scholar, drawing both on a thorough knowledge of ancient texts and history and on modern insights like those of Sigmund Freud and a French literary critic and authority on sacred violence, René Girard. As Lord Sacks repeatedly shows, stories that superficially describe deadly sibling rivalry also contain counter-narratives which stress the deep, unbreakable bonds which common parenthood implies. Thus Ishmael and Isaac, the sons of Abraham, have sharply differing destinies but come together to bury their father. Elsewhere in the Book of Genesis, Joseph and his brothers deal ruthlessly with one another before the tearful reconciliation upon their father’s death.”

“These findings strongly suggest that self-control and memory encoding share common brain structures and mechanisms, and compete with each other for them, and so support Chiu and Egner’s “inhibition-induced forgetting” hypothesis. These shared neural resources are limited, and so response inhibition quickly saps them, making fewer available for the encoding of memories. We already know that paying close attention to something can make us oblivious to other things that would normally be glaringly obvious, and future research will likely reveal more about how attention, memory, and self-control are linked to each other, and to other components of the brain’s executive function system.”

“As it turns out, there is zero statistically significant gender difference in mental rotation ability after test-takers are asked to imagine themselves as stereotypical men for a few minutes. None. An entire standard deviation of female underperformance is negated on this condition, just as a man’s performance is slightly hindered if he instead imagines himself as a woman. (well then.) Although this study is of course not a logically definitive answer to all things “nature versus nurture,” it does add a tremendous structural asset to the growing mountain of evidence that “natural” ability differences are confounded by identity and subconscious self-stereotyping. Demographic expectations may be subtle or overt, but they are omnipresent, and they are likely much more powerful than most of us have ever considered. “

Courage is borne out of vulnerability, not strength. This finding of Brené Brown’s research on shame and “wholeheartedness” shook the perfectionist ground beneath her own feet. And now it’s inspiring millions to reconsider the way they live, parent, and navigate relations with members of the opposite gender.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/brene-brown-on-vulnerability/4928