Closing: Poems as Teachers (ft. Kai Cheng Thom) | Ep 7

There are two kinds of problems organizations face today:

1. Those with known solutions that only require the application of existing knowledge and workflows to solve.
2. Those with unknown solutions that require innovation, experimentation, and adaptation to survive.

In The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, leadership experts Ronald A. Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky teach you how to deal with the second kind of problem. You’ll learn how to diagnose these challenges, create effective interventions, and push your organization—and yourself—further than you ever thought possible.

In How Not to Be Wrong, one of the UK’s leading radio personalities—known for his ability to argue his guests into submission and prove his own rightness—changes course, compelled by a personal crisis to examine his “wrong” beliefs and misguided ways of relating to others.

James O’Brien argues in this part memoir, part self-help book that learning to change your mind when you’re wrong is a valuable tool for combating prejudice. Coming from a man who was taught never to show vulnerability, his method for changing his own mind is unexpected: starting therapy and exploring his childhood trauma. O’Brien claims that only by getting to the root of our pain can we learn to have empathy for others.

In this guide, we place O’Brien’s ideas in context by analyzing psychological and sociological research on childhood trauma, masculinity, and prejudice. We also compare O’Brien’s perspectives to those found in books such as What Happened to You? and The Body Keeps the Score, which take a more clinical approach to similar issues.

Older than any deity, the Tao is the natural order of the universe. It’s the guiding energy that lives within us and connects us to everything around us. Also known as the “Great Mother,” it creates nothing but offers energy to all beings, nurturing and caring for them.

The Tao Te Ching, one of the foundational texts of Taoism, breaks down the nature of the Tao, the power of non-action, and the interconnection between the energies of the universe. The Tao encourages harmonious living through objectivity, observation, and balance.

A Promised Land is Barack Obama’s memoir of his early political career and the first two years of his presidency. Obama takes us on his journey from relative obscurity as a biracial kid from Hawaii to becoming a transformative figure as the nation’s first African-American president. At every step of his career, Obama was guided by a deep faith in the fundamental unity of Americans; the potential and promise of America; the necessity of compromise and seeking common ground; and above all, the power of the democratic system to heal our divisions and effect real change for ordinary people.

Rupi Kaur experienced oppression and abuse throughout her life. From an uncle who raped her as a child to a father who demanded she stay silent, she grew up in an environment that taught her she was worthless. However, as she grew up, her experiences with love and heartbreak taught her how to find the beauty in herself and how to heal in the face of painful experiences.

milk and honey is an award-winning collection of poems that dive into the themes of sexual assault, the complexity of relationships, and the healing power of self-love. Through her use of beautiful language, Kaur takes you on her emotional journey to love herself in the face of painful and oppressive experiences.

In What Happened to You?, Oprah Winfrey and renowned psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry discuss how childhood trauma can have a severe and lasting impact on the brain—and thus our worldview, health, and behavior—sometimes without us even realizing it. They discuss why the developing brain is so susceptible to trauma, why trauma survivors often experience flashbacks, and why it’s so important to address your trauma to live a healthy and happy life. They also describe how to begin the healing process with compassion for yourself and others.

Throughout our guide, we’ll connect Perry and Winfrey’s ideas to those in other popular books on trauma, such as Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score. We’ll also elaborate on the authors’ main themes, such as trauma’s impact and the healing process. Finally, we’ll provide information and resources to help those struggling with trauma find high-quality care.

Trauma can stem from abuse to a severe car accident to wartime combat—and cause a lifetime of flashbacks, nightmares, isolation, insomnia, hypervigilance, and rage. In The Body Keeps the Score, the author explores how diagnosing and treating trauma has evolved as new technologies, research, and fields of science emerged.

Trauma’s impact is not only mental, emotional, and neurological, but also physiological: Trauma rewires the brain to put people in a constant state of stress or numbness, leading to a host of physical problems.

In this summary, you’ll learn:

• Why trauma survivors feel like their trauma is never-ending
• How flashbacks make parts of the brain shut down and others to go into overdrive
• Why some trauma survivors can’t recognize themselves in the mirror
• How activities like choral singing, yoga, and theater can be therapeutic