“Finally, there is a fourth common category of self-justification. It came up in our discussion about Mordechai when one of you mentioned that Yusuf might have become depressed by the thought that he was actually a bad person. This style is illustrated by the worse-than box.”

“When I choose to act contrary to my own sense of what is appropriate,” Yusuf said, “I commit what we at Camp Moriah call an act of self-betrayal. It is a betrayal of my own sense of the right way to act in a given moment in time—not someone else’s sense or standard, but what I myself feel is right in the moment. “Acts of self-betrayal such as thos

What’s more, this kind of listening will most often lead to a sense of something we can do to help things go right.

Do I see the people with whom I have not invested time to build a relationship as people—really?

We give ourselves the best opportunity to make clear-minded decisions only to the extent that our hearts are at peace.”

“Pondering the situation anew simply means that once you find an out-of-the-box vantage point, you are now in a position to think new thoughts about situations that have troubled you. Because you will be thinking about them from a new perspective, you’ll be able to access thoughts and ideas that may have eluded you while you were trying to think ab

“I become an agent of change,” Yusuf continued, “only to the degree that I begin to live to help things go right rather than simply to correct things that are going wrong. Rather than simply correcting, for example, I need to reenergize my teaching, my helping, my listening, my learning. I need to put time and effort into building relationships. In

Getting out of the Box: 1. Look for the signs of the box (blame, justification, horribilization, common box style, etc.). 2. Find an out-of-the-box place (out-of-the-box relationships, memories, activities, places, etc.). 3. Ponder the situation anew (i.e., from this out-of-the-box perspective). • What are this person’s or group’s challenges, trial

“Then when I feel stuck in the box and desire to get out, I can find an out-of-the-box place—