"We’re really interested in the plot of our lives, but we’re not as interested in the way the plot unfolds — the meaning underneath the plot. And if we were to get more interested collectively in not just what’s happening to me but making sense of what’s happening to me, that is a question that can keep you engaged forever. That question never gets old. You can ask it about anybody else in your life and it brings you closer."
— Jennifer Garvey Berger
Psychologists long assumed that our minds stopped growing after post-adolescence. Over the past four decades the field of adult developmental psychology has shifted this paradigm by mapping out how our minds continue to develop in complexity over the course of our entire lives. This is a conversation with leading theorist and practitioner Jennifer Garvey Berger about what we can do to meet the challenges of an increasingly complex world by actively developing sufficiently complex habits of mind.
Jennifer's books:
Changing on the Job: https://amzn.to/2C5FLxn
Simple Habits for Complex Times: https://amzn.to/2wu8iqW
If you love this conversation, you will find episode 46 with Bob Anderson fascinating.
“How do we change our economic thinking so that we start to become people who are living in a way that’s compatible with a sustainable planet?”
— Gray Cox
To look at the world and everywhere see strife and material consumption that our planet is unable to sustain can be demoralizing. But particularly as we stare at the prospect of likely peril, College of the Atlantic professor Gray Cox asks us to take heart and consider the simple habits of mind that are drawing us toward the brink of ecological collapse. How can we make subtle shifts in our very rationality — one person at a time — and thereby transform, and increase the odds of, continued life on earth?