To write a good reference letter, you need three ingredients:

1. Metal
2. A Word Processor I recommend Libre Office.
3. The Gift of Gab As to the third, here is the generic reference letter that is guaranteed to get anybody into whatever they want to do. They probably won't need a resume:

   To Whom It May Concern,

   This person is better than your other candidates's. Don’t even think about hiring/accepting/considering them.

   My student/colleague/employee has every trait necessary to succeed. Not only so, but they certainly exceed your competence. Trust me, this person is the best. I once saw him/her create tremendous synergy in an output flow organizational paradigm.

Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.

Proverbs 29:18 KJV

Having a vision for who we want to be is crucial for all personal growth.

As a consequence, such a vision is important for spiritual growth.

The Christian vision for human excellence and happiness revealed throught Scripture, but most intensely in Jesus Christ.

Spiritual growth happens in the body.

For many of us, the idea that the brain is the locus of the mind seems obvious. But less obvious is the notion that the body is the locus of the brain. But perhaps even less obvious is that the whole body, including the brain, is the mind. Scott Adams writes:

I am sure you have noticed that your mental state is deeply influenced by diet, exercise, sleep, sex, stress, and lots more. And I’m sure you make some effort to do those things the right way when you can. But if you think those actions are influencing only how you feel, and not your actual thoughts, you don’t understand the basic nature of human beings. And this is the key takeaway:

The source of your thoughts is your body, not your brain. When I am not feeling good, I don’t ask my brain to fix things on its own. I manipulate my environment until my thoughts change. That’s because I see my body as the user interface to my brain. I don’t let my brain think whatever it randomly wants to think. I constrain it to productive thoughts by manipulating my environment.

Pro 4:23 Guard your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.

In your Bible, ‘heart’ tends to mean the seat of reason or the human will.[1] In our world we’re so influenced by the romantic nature poetry of the 1800s, it’s easy for us to assume that the Biblical authors are speaking about our authentic feelings when they use the word heart. But in general, they mean the will and/or the reason. That being said, what does ‘guard your heart’ mean? The first guide should be the meaning of heart and the meaning of guard. Here are some suggestions just from those word meanings:

In ye olde current year, many people think that being a Christian is a matter of irrationality, bigotry, or political conservatism. While all of those things bear some weight upon whether one is likely to be a Christian or upon the sort of Christian they are, I think there are other reasons entirely. In the following posts, despite my not being some philosopher, historian, or theologian, I’ll give my reasons for being a Christian with respect to the three phases of persuasion in Aristotle’s rhetoric: ethos (appeal to personal credibility via knowledge, expertise, and moral connection to the audience), pathos (appeal to emotions), and logos (appeal to logic and facts).

Let us walk becomingly, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in strife and jealously, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the passions of the flesh. (Romans 13:13-14)^[1]

Here’s the answer I gave her in the moment:

Virtuous Minds: Intellectual Character Development by Philip E. Dow

I don’t know much about the author of this book except that he is a Cambridge Ph.D. and a school superintendent. But if the content of this book is any indication, I can make three probably inferences: he is a man of deep reflection, a man who loves to teach, and a man who loves his students. In these senses, he is a true philosopher.

A lot of people want to be in leadership roles just like a lot of people want to be a body builder.

But the problem is that very few people want to put in the work necessary to be a good leader, nor the work necessary to be a big bodybuilder.

To be a good leader one needs to:

When I was in high school, I found a little red book on hypnosis in my school library. I flipped through the pages, saw a section on inducing sleep states, and read it. When I was a kid I always struggled to sleep. The method in the book, though it was meant for trained psychiatrists to utilize on patients worked swimmingly. I used to have very few good nights of sleep. After reading those few short paragraphs, I found myself having very few nights of bad sleep. The change was remarkable.