Monthly Archives: February 2020

Adding a little extra

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a recipe where the amount of garlic ‘recommended’ wasn’t less than I wanted to (and probably did) put in. My whole family loves garlic and despite adding more garlic than suggested, in our house a meal has never been ruined by too much garlic. You can’t say the same for salt, or dill, or oregano.

Some things you can add a little extra, some things you can’t:

You can add some genuine compliments, be careful how much criticism you add.

You can add generosity generously, but just a pinch of selfishness.

You can add copious amounts of love, but only a sprinkling of animosity.

There isn’t any one recipe for living a good life, and so the ingredients we choose to put in can be played with… if we are thoughtful and liberally creative with the right ingredients, we can end up with delicious results!

Share your work in the open

I already shared this quote that helped me decide to blog daily:

“For years, I’ve been explaining to people that daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating and (eventually) fun.“ ~Seth Godin

As a result of blogging daily, and having it also post on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, I now transmit a lot of posts about my own work, and I’m sure that for some, that can feel like too much.

Last night I was chatting with Jonathan Sclater and, like me, he has some healthy living goals he is working on. One of the things he now does is share his morning runs on social media. Here is his Tweet from Monday,

My #health #oneword2020 keeps me moving forward. 5 hours of sleep last night, so I felt like sleeping in instead or saying “maybe tomorrow”. But I got up anyways and put in the work. Won’t stop pursuing my goals. Don’t let anything get in the way of yours today!

#runlap

#health

I love to see sharing like this. Jonathan questioned if some people thinks he is over-sharing regarding his runs, and I responded that I think it’s great! We don’t have to worry about that. If someone doesn’t like it, they are free to unfollow, but sharing your passion and commitment are inspiring.

Similarly, Kelly Christopherson has been sharing Exploring Personal/Professional Learning One Day At a Time. Here is an example from Twitter:

Every day is a new opportunity to try something new. Each one of us is capable of doing great things if we only give ourselves permission to try without limiting ourselves to what we know we can do. Every day is a PD day. #myPDtoday @DomenicScuglia @dteneycke1 @LoriMeyerMseJaw

Sometimes he tags me in the Tweet and I appreciate it, and actually asked for it. Kelly’s regular reflections on living a life of continual thinking and learning ‘out loud’ is inspiring.

It’s not for everyone watching and reading, and that’s ok. It doesn’t have to be daily, but share your work. Share the things you value, or simply share your love for writing, or taking photos. Have fun, enjoy the process, and know that others can be inspired by what you share.

Slowly by slowly

In an email correspondence, my cousin, Lee, reminded me of a post I wrote in China, Slowly by Slowly. In the post, I quoted Rob Giebitz who “first heard this phrase from our Chinese production manager“. Rob went on to say:

“Those odd sounding phrases that often amuse the native English speaker, those Chinglish phrases, may offer a key to understanding our host culture. “Slowly by slowly” may carry some meaning absent from the more familiar “little by little” or “step by step” that a native English speaker would use. “Little” indicates size or quantity, “step” implies distance; “slowly” brings our attention to the element of time.”

As I mentioned Tuesday, I broke my patella. I got in to see an orthopaedic surgeon and he gave me good news. Luckily, the break was the ‘right way’ (vertically on the bone) and I can start putting weight on my leg right away. It’s still very swollen, sore, and stiff, but it could have been a lot worse.

So now comes a 4-6 week recovery. It will go slowly by slowly. This will be tough. I’ve been doing 5 or more cardio workouts a week since the start of the year, but now I can’t run or ride for a while. I’m also still doing Physio exercises to strengthen an injured shoulder that’s recovering well. So, I have to be careful with upper body workouts too.

What will my fitness regimen look like? I’m not sure? I was too achy this morning and still want to get into work today, so icing and elevating is my workout after an unsettled sleep. But I’ll be up early tomorrow, I’ll hobble down the stairs and figure it out. Sometimes we have to accept that slowly by slowly is the best approach, and save the sprints for another time.

Fear can paralyze

Imagine being legally blind, able only to see shadows in your peripheral vision. Now imagine needing to endure 10 rounds of fighting a new fresh black belt fighter, for consecutive 3 minutes rounds, to earn your black belt… Richard Turner did this. However I didn’t learn about Richard through his martial arts skills, but rather from his skills as a card mechanic… a close up card magician.

Here is where I first saw him, on Penn & Teller’s show ‘Fool Us’, where top notch magicians try to earn a performance spot in Penn & Teller’s live Vegas show. How do they earn this spot? They must do a trick that confounds Penn & Teller, and they are hard to fool!

Richard fooled them faster than anyone, and Teller was motioning to give him the trophy before he finished his trick.

I recently listened to Richard Turner — The Magical Phenom Who Will Blow Your Mind (#411) on the Tim Ferriss Podcast

Here is what Richard said at about the 1hr, 13min mark of the podcast (including opening commercials). I’m not adding anything beyond this quote, it’s brilliant and stands on its own!

“Fear can paralyze. We can be so worried about doing the wrong thing, that we do nothing.
There’s actually an English proverb that says, ‘A man who is afraid to make a mistake is unlikely to make anything… Fear of failure, when left unchecked, can actually lead to the failure we fear.” ~ Richard Turner

I didn’t ‘kneed’ this!

I wasn’t paying attention. I was at a friend’s house and took a shortcut off the front door path and across the driveway to my car, which was eye-level, 30 feet away from me. But it was dark and my friend’s driveway leads to a basement garage. What I thought was a 6 inch step to the driveway was actually a 4 foot drop. I don’t know if my right foot or my left knee hit the driveway first, but the pain was instant. I broke my patella (my left kneecap).

Careless? Yes. Unlucky? That depends, because it could have been my face. I literally took a step onto nothing and dropped 4 feet onto an asphalt driveway.

It’s almost 1am as I write this, in the emergency room, awaiting a tetanus shot. Tylenol 3’s tonight, and probably back to work on Wednesday… on crutches. I didn’t need this, but I’ll just thank my lucky stars it’s not worse.
https://youtu.be/byQrdnq7_H0

Starting with yourself

“To you love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” Oscar Wilde

This quote was said in my daily meditation today on the Calm App. It struck me as something that is so easy to forget. We strive to be better. We are never satisfied with where and who we are. We want to be better, fitter, thinner, wiser, more in control, less wasteful, happier, kinder, more than we are.

This striving to be more than we are is good… as long as we are also happy with who we are right now. Without acceptance of ourselves we can’t be our best selves. Say that out loud and let it sink in:

“Without acceptance of ourselves we can’t be our best selves.”

Who admires you most? See yourself through their eyes for just a moment… Now let that moment linger for a while. Celebrate who you are. You don’t have to share that you are doing this with anyone, but if you honestly do this, you will be putting your best self forward into the world.

Breaking the streak… and starting a new one.

I’ve been meditating daily since January 5th, 2019, but yesterday I broke the streak. I’m aware from my use of an app that there might have been a few times I missed my meditation, but I count a meditation after midnight as being on the day before, because it’s still part of my day, and I’ve done that a few times in the past year. Yesterday was an unusually low day for me, and I completely forgot to meditate.

I woke up tired and went to join a friend for breakfast rather than starting my day with my regular routine. After a wonderful breakfast I came home and did nothing other than talk to my dad, eat lunch with my family, and sleep until dinner. I changed to go work out, but never made it. I wrote my Daily-Ink just before dinner sitting on the couch, and after dinner I flaked out on the same couch.

It’s the first Saturday (or any day) in a while that I’ve done so little. I give myself permission to have a low energy day. But I also need to get back to my routines. Yesterday was the first time ever that I didn’t earn a single sticker on my healthy living motivation chart. But as I shared in my year-end reflection of my healthy living goals:

The best time to start a new streak is RIGHT NOW.

Yesterday, I missed my meditation. I skipped my workout for the second day in a row (for the first time this year). And although I did my writing, I didn’t do my reading (audiobook), and this was missed for the first time this year. I also missed my time restricted eating window with my breakfast meeting, but I don’t usually try to do this on weekends anyway.

Today, after hitting publish on this post, I’m headed to meditate and work out, while listening to an audiobook. I might get a second workout and meditation in today as well. I’m not going to overdo it, but I might start my new streak with a bit of an exclamation point.

Permitting myself to have a day like yesterday doesn’t mean I have a new low point to measure myself against. It doesn’t have to give me permission to fall to this kind of low again anytime soon. It was simply a low day, and the inspiration to start a new, long streak. And that streak begins right now!

Live performances

Last night we went to see a play called ‘Noises Off’ at the Stanley Theatre in Vancouver. It was a clever, funny play, but I didn’t enjoy it very much. Still, I was amazed by some of the performances. It was a play filled with physical comedy and I could see the commitment to character by the actors.

I do not enjoy singing or acting, but I’m in awe of those that love it and are good at it. I love to see performers thrive in front of an audience, to watch them feed off of the energy a good audience. When I watch my daughter act or sing I see her in her element. I see a performer.

The applause wouldn’t be enough for me to do the same performance night after night. I don’t understand the appeal. I don’t even like watching my favourite movies over again without a long gap measured in years. Live performances are things I will attend, but not anything I’d ever want to do.

I tip my hat to talented artists that feed off of a live audience. I think that our desire to entertain and be entertained is part of what makes us a unique and self aware animal. The fact that I don’t want to be an entertainer does not take away from my admiration of those that do.

Hurt people hurt people

I have a sticky note on my computer monitor at school that says,

“Hurt people hurt people.

Healed people heal people.”

As a principal, I think it’s important to remember that those who harm others have themselves often been harmed. This helps me focus on resolution and restoration rather than retribution.

It’s harder to remember this with adults who harm, adults who have been hurt, and leave a path of hurt in their trail. I remember years ago, when I was a middle school teacher, dealing with a hurt parent. In a meeting, this parent used language in front of their kid like, ‘he’s useless’, and ‘I’ve given up trying’. The student sat motionless, staring blindly ahead, trying to keep the tears away. Nothing I said about his endearing qualities changed his empty look any more than his parent’s insults.

Hurt people hurt people.

It has been my observation that hurt people seek out other hurt people. They do so to continue the hurt, or to try to heal the the hurt they see. However those who are hurt and want to help lack the resilience to cope, and they lack the strategies to heal. Good intentions are devoured by ineffective strategies.

Healed people heal people.

I think people need to heal themselves before they try to heal others. This is easy to see in situations such as alcoholism. We know a recovering alcoholic can do far more to help an alcoholic quit than another alcoholic can. It’s much harder to see with someone who feels like a victim trying to help someone else who was victimized, or with someone who is dealing with mental health issues trying to help someone else struggling with mental health.

The people who are struggling and seeking to help are not healed themselves, but believe they can help others when they should be helping themselves first. Their intentions are good. They want to help, but when they can’t cope with their own hurt, it’s hard to honestly help with others.

“Hurt people hurt people.

Healed people heal people.”

In some ways we are all on journeys of healing. And many of us want to help others heal too. It’s just important for us to work on our own healing before trying to heal others.

______________________

Related: Hidden Pain on my Pair-a-Dimes blog.

Rinse and repeat

It was bound to happen. In fact, it might have happened before this and I simply didn’t notice. Writing a daily blog since mid July, I just caught myself sharing the same idea twice. It wasn’t until I published the idea that I caught myself rinsing and repeating the same idea.

Yesterday was the second time that I wrote about asking ‘What’s the third option?‘ when looking to make a tough decision. The first time I wrote about this was back at the start of November, three and a half months ago. The post, ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place (and…)‘, was the original post, and it is an identical idea, except with greater detail than yesterday’s post.

I had no memory of sharing the idea before. In fact I would not have known that I did this had I not reread the post after publishing it. As I reached the end, I noticed the original title in the ‘Related’ posts section. Clicking on it, I realized very quickly what I had done.

What prompted the rewrite was a conversation with someone who refused to allow any suggestion of a third option. Why I started this post saying, ‘it was bound to happen’ is because part of writing is helping to formulate and express ideas in a concrete way. The process helps me put ideas together in a way that defines my thoughts on an idea more clearly.

However, over three months later, I’m not remembering whether I shared the idea through my writing, I’m just thinking about an idea that is in my head. At first, it was interesting to me that the second post was less detailed than the original. Then, I realized that the first post was written on a Saturday, and it made sense because I give myself more time to write on weekends.

I’m sure this will happen again. I will have moments when my creative juices are flowing and I’ll share fresh ideas… or at least fresh ideas to me. And I’ll have moments when I end up recycling or repeating older ideas. The process of writing every day will lead to some repetition, hopefully though, the ideas I choose to repeat are worth reading and thinking about again. I probably won’t re-share this idea of sharing my repeats again even if I catch myself, but if you catch me doing this, please feel free to let me know.