A man writing to women, with humility: your “no” is a complete sentence. Drawing on the Enneagram, emotional intelligence, and the desert mother Amma Syncletica, this is about why saying no can be so hard — and why it never required anyone else’s approval or understanding to count.
Man to man, plainly: when a woman says no, what you do next reveals more about your character than almost anything else. On the Enneagram patterns that tempt men to push past a no, an honest personal reckoning, and the one thing emotional and spiritual maturity actually ask — to stop, and to leave the other person free.
The numbers were right; the leader was wrong. Jim on a costly Varment Guard failure, the desert fathers’ practice of watchfulness, and why intelligence races toward answers while wisdom questions the frame itself — and how EQ and SQ together move us from merely knowing to actually discerning.
If you’ve never experienced spiritual direction, it’s hard to picture — because it’s quiet in an unusual way. An honest, unhurried walk-through of what actually happens before, during, and after a session, and why you might leave without a single answer and still find that something has shifted.
Therapy and companionship are now the #1 use of generative AI — a voice that listens at 3 a.m. and always says a version of the right thing. But loneliness researchers are finding it doesn’t actually heal us, because a chatbot can’t do the one thing that makes us matter: freely choose to need us back. Jim and Lynette on what AI can imitate, what only a person can give, and why spiritual direction is the opposite of a chatbot.
“Am I ready for something like that?” There’s no ideal moment — but there are seasons that open people to it: a transition beginning or ending, a discernment you can’t resolve, a stretch of spiritual dryness, an experience you have no words for, or something you’ve carried alone too long. Recognizing yours may be the most useful place to begin.
What Fortune got right about emotional intelligence — and the layer it still missed In May of this year, Fortune published a piece that stopped a lot of leadership development professionals in their tracks. Written by David Rock, neuroscientist and co-founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, the headline made the argument plainly: EQ training is failing […]
What artificial intelligence can’t do, and why that matters more than what it can There is a question the ancient world already knew how to ask, and we keep pretending is new: who is actually making this decision? The Socratic tradition called it the examined life. The desert fathers called it watchfulness. The Enneagram calls […]
Why Canceling Plans Might Be the Healthiest Thing You Do On self-awareness, honest limits, and why pushing through isn’t always the right answer There is a particular kind of guilt that arrives about forty-five minutes before you’re supposed to be somewhere you no longer have the capacity to go. You made the commitment in good […]
The Fish Don’t Talk About the Water In 2005, David Foster Wallace stood in front of a graduating class at Kenyon College and told a small parable. Two young fish are swimming along, and an older fish passes the other way and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on for […]
