Bruce Stanley

The practice begins with the sentence we use to describe it. Before you go outside, how do you prepare your mind? Whatever we’re about to do, we set expectations, consciously or habitually, that either open up or close down what we might experience. The way we frame – the way we describe to ourselves – a nature-based spiritual practice can shape our attention and experience before we’ve even stepped outside. The instruction for the practice is already part of the practice, because it tells us...

You are the world’s leading expert on being you – but only partially. Unfortunately, you are also standing in the worst possible place from which to see yourself entirely clearly. Self-understanding, to know yourself, is an inward focused activity. Maybe you reflect, journal, take personality tests and do the work of inward processing. Most of this is genuinely effective, but (aside from our internal biases, positive and negative) there is a problem. In her book Insight, organisational...

A practical, research-grounded alternative to personality typing If you work one-to-one with others sooner or later you might reach for a map. Spiritual directors, counsellors, and coaches often find themselves wondering – who is this person? What is shaping their choices? What are they avoiding? What gives them life? What might help them grow? For years, personality typing systems such as MBTI, the Enneagram and similar tools have been used to open up those questions. MBTI was a core element...