Tag Archives: advice

Giving myself a break

Yesterday after school I had a long conversation with a friend, and he shared some feedback I really needed to hear. I’ve been on a healthy living journey for a couple years now, and things have been going well. But as we opened up to each other about how things are going, I mentioned to him that there is a goal that I’m just not moving forward with. I told him that despite 2 years of things being positive, I can’t seem to make a shift with this goal.

That’s when he told me to give myself a break.

He reminded me that although I’ve been improving my health, I have not been on a fully positive journey for two years. He remained me that it wasn’t until February, just under a year ago, that I was running 3 schools, working ridiculous hours, and feeling overwhelmed. He reminded me that only a few weeks after that we were on lockdown for a global pandemic we are still dealing with.

He acknowledged that I’m in a good place, meeting many of my goals and that even now work is extremely busy. And he told me that he has mentioned me to his partner, telling her that I’m someone that is really doing well right now. And he told me that he knows many others not doing nearly as well right now.

I needed to hear this.

I can’t beat myself up for not doing more right now. I need to give myself a break.

Stop pig wrestling

Like my Papa used to say, “Never wrestle a pig, you both get dirty but the big likes it.”

I’ve shared that quote before and also said, ‘Bad ideas get unwarranted publicity when the battles get messy… and the weak-minded get fuel to oppose good ideas when those with the good ideas act in bad faith. You do not have to ‘turn the other cheek’ but you do have to act in a way that is decent and good, if you want to fight for things that are decent and good.‘

Recently, across many social media platforms, I’ve seen people using the strategy of sharing hurtful, mean, and ignorant comments from internet trolls, and doing one of two things: 1. Calling out the person for being mean (or essentially saying ‘ouch’ or ‘look at this idiot’). Or, 2. Sharing it to launch an attack.

While I get why, and understand that sharing like this can garner sympathy, or feel like a way to vindicate yourself, or attack the attacker… this is a bad idea! It’s pig wrestling.

These people aren’t worth your time. They don’t deserve you, or those who follow you on these platforms, as an audience. Don’t surrender your time and energy to them. They. Aren’t. Worth. It!

Delete the comment, block the idiot.

Let me say that again: You get a rude/mean/nasty comment on a social media post, so what do you do?

1. DELETE 2. BLOCK.

… and move on. They don’t deserve your time; they don’t deserve your attention; they don’t deserve your mental energy. So why give it to them? Why allow them more time in your thoughts than they deserve?

They are pigs. Don’t let them get you dirty just because they like to get dirty. And hey, I get that it’s hard to turn the other cheek sometimes, and if they threaten you in some way, then sure, take it seriously. But most internet trolls are playing a game, they are purposefully trying to engage and enrage you. To steal your time and attention, and to hurt your feelings. The act of mud wrestling with these losers helps them win.

You want to strike back at these mean people making mean comments? Diffuse their energy by not giving them any of yours: Delete. Block. And move on to spend time and energy on people that are better than them.

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Addendum: I’m not suggesting you delete and block people just because they disagree with you, this is only about comments with malice intent. We don’t learn from them but we can learn from people who disagree with us.

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I wrote this a decade ago:

I remember watching The Razor’s Edge years ago. Bill Murray plays Larry Darrell a taxi driver ‘in search of himself’ who at one point serves as an ambulance driver in World War II. His partner/co-attendant Piedmont is a sour man that is bitter and unpleasant.

If memory serves me correctly there are also two wonderfully optimistic, volunteer, British ambulance drivers that work with Larry and Piedmont. In a scene, these two happy-go-lucky ambulance attendants have engine trouble as they attempt to bring injured soldiers to safety while under fire. Stalled, the Brits attempt to repair their ambulance while enemy fire pinpoints their stationary location. Bombs get closer and closer until they blow up the ambulance, killing these two men. Larry is distraught and the bitter Piedmont says a few kind words about how nice these two were and then says, to Larry’s disgust, “They will be forgotten.”

Later, Piedmont is killed (I don’t remember how), and in a monologue Larry talks of this unruly, unkind and cantankerous man and then says, “He will be remembered.”

I was still a teenager when I saw this movie but it has a powerful lasting affect on me. I realized then and there that we tend to pay far more attention to people and things that are negative and annoy us than on the things we should be happy and appreciative about. I’d like to think that this is learned and not human nature. We don’t have to focus on the negative, and we are better people when we don’t.

My Monkey Brain

I understand that meditation isn’t about emptying my mind, that it’s about bringing my attention back to the present and what I’m doing, such as focus on my breathing. But sometimes my monkey brain just can’t stop. It’s like I’m chasing my own tail, going in circles and wondering why it’s always out of reach?

I go through a few minutes at a time where I can’t focus on my breath for two breaths without my mind bouncing around and being distracted.

Not. Even. Two. Breaths.

It’s like a bad dream where my goal is always just beyond my reach. I know where I want to go, I just can’t get there.

I think I need some tips. I’m open to suggestions.

Dave and Dave podcast 28

7 Parenting Tips During Covid-19 – Video Version

I recently revived my podcast. I’ve had conversations with Kelly Christopherson, Jonathan Sclater, Joe Truss, and Dave Sands. Because of COVID-19, I can’t sit next to people to interview them for my podcast. I couldn’t do that for Kelly in Saskatchewan or Joe in California anyway, but for sure that would have been the preferred approach to interview Jonathan and Dave. For all 4 of these interviews I used Zoom, and Dave and I were talking last week about the idea of also putting the podcast out on video. So, here it is, my podcast with Dave Sands in video form.

Description: This is the video version of Podcasting Pair-a-Dimes #28 with David Truss. My guest is Principal Dave Sands. We discuss 7 tips to help parents, who are supporting their kids learning at home (as a result of remote learning due to COVID-19). The 7 tips are:

    1. Manage Expectations
    2. Make a Schedule
    3. Minimize Distractions
    4. Learning occurs everywhere
    5. Set daily and weekly goals
    6. All screen time is not created equal
    7. Model learning.

I think this topic is relevant almost everywhere in the world right now, and I believe that we discussed some great tips for parent, not only when dealing with their kids learning at home, but also in general to support their kids success at school.

Advice to a younger me

My youngest daughter turns 18 today. She graduates high school in June.

I’m writing this in the same living room my wife and I sat in before taking her to the hospital for my daughters delivery. The same living where that happened for my older daughter who is now 20. The furniture has changed, our cars have changed, my hairline has changed. Our kids have grown up. I feel relatively the same.

Sure my aches and pains take longer to heal. I have memories that have faded. I see lines in my face that were not there before. I seem to have lost certain memories. But I feel the same. I feel like less time has passed. I feel like two decades have raced by.

Have you ever wondered, if you could go back in time and tell yourself something, what would you say? What would you say to the younger version of you?

I’d say, “Commit both time and attention to things at the same time.”

That’s all. I wouldn’t want to say anything else other than ‘be more present’. Of course this is advice I could and should take now. After all, if the last two decades blinked by, that’s a pretty strong suggestion that the next two might go just as quick, or faster.

Dear me, take my advice, it’s free!

I’ve been writing my daily posts for over 6 months now and some of them come off as if I’m writing some sort of advice column… like yesterday’s post on Undermining Self-Sabotage.

I say things like,

It’s the small thing that you can do today that move you to a bigger goal. Small, repeatable things that become habits. These small things undermine self-sabotage. When you surround yourself with small positive, incremental changes, your trajectory changes, and the people around you notice.

But despite addressing the writing to you, admittedly, I’m talking to myself. The book I shared in yesterday’s post, Atomic Habits by James Clear, was very influential to me. I read it at a time when I was making some really positive changes in some areas of my life, but not in others. I still have more work to do.

If I come off as preachy, or like I’m sharing some sagely advice, please know that I’m doing it from a position where I’m trying to take my own advice too. Atomic Habits is one of many great books I listened to last year. If I don’t actively reflect and write about what I’m learning, I won’t really have learned anything. And if I change the pronouns in the quote above to I/me/myself then to me my writing sounds self-centered, and even pretentious.

By the very nature of writing a public journal, I find myself talking to you, the reader, and you get to share my journey. So, when I give it, please feel free to take my advice, or to take my advice with a grain of salt. In reality, I’m talking to myself, and sharing it in the open. Free advice from me, to me, and as it turns out, for you too… if you find it useful.

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Oh, and by the way, if you think some of the things I say are full of crap, please let me know! It’s bound to happen. When I’m trying to pump out a different idea every day, at some point(s) I’ll be deluding myself in some way, but I’m probably too close to the idea to see the error in my thinking. That’s when I would most appreciate a comment or a question to help me learn and grow.

I’ll leave you with one last quote from James Clear,

“I didn’t start out as a writer. I became one through my habits“

Thank you for joining me in the practice of this daily habit.

Free advice

I just read some advice for CEO’s, and this is what the 3 tips boiled down to:

1. Don’t risk bankrupting the company.

2. Don’t do something you’ll regret.

3. Make choices that will better society.

I usually site my sources, but there is absolutely nothing here to give credit for.

Let me give the same advice to anyone, making any decision, in any situation, but I’ll do so in two bullets:

1. Don’t be an idiot.

2. Make good choices.

Feel free to not give me credit for this ‘profound’ advice.

We are constantly exposed to tips and tricks given in list formats:

• 3 things to remember when…

• 5 ways to get…

• 6 reasons not to have a list with 6 points. (Ever notice lists never seem to total 6, 8 or 11?)

• 7 tips to help you…

• 10 videos that will change the way you think about…

• 12 lists that help you make better lists. 😜

To see some of these lists, shared online, you need to click ‘next’ to get to the next tip, so that the website can maximize the advertising revenue after the list’s click-bait title draws you in.

So, let me give you some free advice on taking advice. But first, I encourage you to ask yourself what you are hoping to gain when you click on advice lists. (Yes, the irony of that statement is not lost on me.)

1. If advice is worth taking… take it. (Channeling Yogi Berra)

2. If advice is worth taking, read it out loud. Hearing yourself say the advice is better than being told the advice by others.

3. If advice is worth taking, ask yourself how to make it actionable? Thinking, ‘That’s good advice’ is not as effective as asking yourself, ‘How can I implement that into my life?’ – or asking yourself a similar question.

4. If advice isn’t perfect, change it. Tailoring advice to fit you is a possible way to make it easier advice to follow. (Note the addendum below.)

5. When taking advice, be brutally honest with yourself. For example, watch out for tip 4 above. Are you changing the advice to make it easier to avoid taking good advice, or are you changing it to make the advice more meaningfully relevant or actionable? It’s easy to disregard good advice if it is good, but isn’t easy to do.

6. If advice is stupid, make fun of it. Being critical gives you perspective, and you might be able to learn something from inserting humour.

There you have it, free advice from me. Take it, leave it, add to it, make fun of it. I don’t take my-advice-giving-self too seriously, you probably shouldn’t either. 😃

Please help me with my “Parenting in the digital age” presentation!

This is a humble request for help!

In early June of last year I created this presentation and wiki (details below). The sessions went well and now I’ve been asked to present again. This time the audience is Chinese parents and I have a translator. My slide show is heavily text based because I tried to make it work as a ‘stand-alone’ presentation to support the wiki without me presenting,
(I even added presentation notes to the slideshare if you view it on their site).

…As a result, I am feeling like I almost have to start over before getting this translated.
…Furthermore, I feel like there are definite Western biases to the things I say.
…And finally, there are things that I wanted to add to improve this anyway such as:
• More multi-cultural examples
• Links to creative work done by students (outside of school)
• Include a video of a kid while he is in the role of a World of Warcraft guild master
• More advice and strategies for dealing with kids that are addicted to (or at least highly consumed by) video games – (What strategies work to deal with this?)
Any suggestions or examples would be greatly appreciated!

Be honest, be critical, be brutal if you need to be… just please offer suggestions to help me strip this down to the essentials before I get it translated.
(I’m presenting next week Tuesday:-)
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For this presentation I created a wiki: http://raisingdigitalkids.wikispaces.com/

These were the learning intentions:
  • Examine children’s use of technology
  • Increase awareness of the potential challenges around technology use
  • Learn practical, proactive parenting strategies to maintain connections with children using the media they are using.
  • Learn how to guide children in appropriate and safe interactions on the Internet.
  • Find support and resources to better understand these issues

A key part of the presentation is the handout called ‘Engaging with kids‘.  It is made up of a series of questions based on the presentation, but not necessarily in the presentation. The point is asking questions and finding the right balance or ‘fit’ for each family rather than offering any kind of prescribed answers.

via pairadimes.davidtruss.com

Thanks in advance for your feedback and help!

Twitter EDU

UPDATE: This post has been vastly improved on, and made into an ebook.

Click here to access a free copy of Twitter EDU.

Below, you’ll find the material that just one chapter of this ebook is based on. The ebook is much more comprehensive, just as easy to read, and engages you with Twitter while you read.

Pick up your copy here. 

Update: January 8, 2017

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Some simple advice to set yourself up for success on Twitter– BEFORE you start following people:

1. Add a (tasteful) image.
2. Put something in your bio that says you are an educator.
3. Add a link. Don’t have a blog, use your district/school website, (this is the most optional of these 5 points).
4. Actually tweet a few times. Find a resource or two and share them.
5. Before following other people, add a tweet saying, “I’m an educator from (Country/City/State/University/Course/choose 1) trying to get started on Twitter.”

 

Do that and you’ll get WAY more follow-backs than if you follow someone with no details and a rookie egg image that Twitter gives you.

 

Follow me: @datruss (Do the 5 things above and you have a guaranteed follow-back from me!)

 

And follow some of these great people… I do!

 

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Related: The complete guide to building a digital footprint.