Leading Thoughts for July 23, 2026

IDEAS shared have the power to expand perspectives, change thinking, and move lives. Here are two ideas for the curious mind to engage with:

I.

Edward Hess and Katherine Ludwig on managing emotions:

“Stress, anger, and anxiety can cause narrow-mindedness and the fight-flee-or-freeze syndrome. It’s not at all helpful when you need to engage in critical thinkIng, problem solving, innovative thinking outside the box, or designing experiments to learn. Positive emotions, on the other hand, have been scientifically linked not just to higher health and well-being but also to broader attention, open-mindedness, deeper focus, and more flexible thinking, all of which underlie creativity and innovative thinking.”

Source: Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age

II.

Walter Lippmann on getting the questions right:

“The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully. Here lay the political genius of Franklin Roosevelt: that in his own time he knew what were the questions that had to be answered, even though he himself did not always find the full answer. It was to this that our people and the world responded, preferring him instinctively to those who did not know what the real questions were.”

Source: Roosevelt Is Gone, Today and Tomorrow, April 14, 1945

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Look for these ideas every Thursday on the Leading Blog. Find more ideas on the LeadingThoughts index.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:27 AM
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