Tag Archives: Life Lessons

It’s not cold, it’s honest

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I have a strong childhood memory of my Grandfather – Papa B. – Leon Bernstein. I’ve previously shared how to me and many others he was a ‘giant’! He quietly helped hundreds of people, he was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known, and he was a people’s person… It didn’t matter if they were a gardener or a doctor, a grocery store clerk or a Prime Minister, Papa B. was someone who treated everyone with honour and respect, and everyone saw this in him.

One day a person in the community died and I was there when Granny B. told Papa about the person dying. My grandfather’s response surprised us both. Imagine a grey haired Polish Jew speaking with a West Indian accent saying, “Oh shite, bu(t) he was a real jack-ass!”

Granny retorted, “Leon, you can’t talk about a dead man like that, it’s rude.”

My grandfather responded, “What? If he was a jackass in life, you think he gonna be any different in death?”

At the time, this totally stunned me. I had always seen my grandfather as a person who only saw the good in people, I don’t think I ever heard him speak ill of anyone before this, it just wasn’t his nature. Now, older and maybe wiser, I understand this a little better.

When you spend your life seeking the good in people and doing good for them, you learn that not all people are the same way. You see the self-centred, the selfish, the assholes, and the jackasses, and you realize they don’t deserve the kindness you give others.

It’s not rude, it’s good calibration. I didn’t know the person who died, but if my grandfather called him a jackass, I’m glad I never met the man. The reality is that such a statement isn’t cold or rude, it’s just honest.

Some people carry with them anger, hate, selfishness, and/or a mean streak that creates more distress than calm, more hurt than joy. And quite frankly in death they deserve to be identified for the character they were in life.

No need to spend time harbouring their ill intent, just acknowledge that they are gone, and continue on as you were before you heard the news. There are so many good people in the world that deserve attention while they are still alive, spend time appreciating and respecting them. Leave the dead jackasses behind and move on.

Final Advice

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I have a friend about to be promoted from teacher to vice principal, and I offered some final advice yesterday. I shared that often people will come to you with a challenge or crisis and to them it will demand an instant response… but seldom does it require an instant response, and the response will often be better with a bit more thinking time.

Of course, emergency situations are different, and responses need to be instant in an emergency. But often the emergency being brought to your attention only requires an immediate response according to the person bringing it to you. Taking time, discovering nuances, and seeking more information will actually provide you with far more data to make your response appropriate.

So how do you slow things down?

First, acknowledge the concern. Then ask questions. And sometimes, take the time to repeat the concerns to confirm you heard them properly, and also demonstrate that you understand the issue. Then provide the person with a timeline that you’ll get back to them.

An example my friend shared was a concern of an angry parent expecting an immediate response. I suggested in this case to do what I suggested above but to take specific notes. This lets the parent know that you are taking it seriously and also allows you to feed back exact quotes at the end of the conversation to reiterate that you fully understand the complaint. Hearing the complaint read back in the exact words that it was stated in is a very reassuring way to end a meeting and let the parent know you understand why they are upset.

Once that’s done you can provide a guaranteed response that sounds something like this: “So do I have that right? Good. Obviously this is a delicate situation and I’ve got some follow up to do. I can’t promise you that I’ll have it resolved by the end of the day tomorrow (or another specific day), but can I give you a call then just to update you on my progress?”

Now you’ve got time to bounce it off of your admin team, and/or Human Resources, and/or to follow up with a teacher, and/or other students. Or at the very least you have a moment to think about the situation without it being delivered in ‘emergency mode’ when it’s not actually an emergency.

Essentially, think of it this way:

‘Your immediate urgency does not dictate the pace of my response.’

I didn’t share any of the following when giving advice but I’ll share this reflection here: Looking back at my career, I think this has been one of my superpowers. But like every comic book super hero power, there also comes a weakness. The metaphorical Kryptonite that comes with this superpower is that sometimes my reaction was too aloof. I did not address the issue with nearly enough urgency in the eyes of the person bringing it to me.

Here is a perfect example I learned from. I was a few months into running an alternative school and two boys got into a physical fight. When the teacher came downstairs to where my office was to tell me about it I asked, ‘Where are the boys now?’ One was in the downstairs lobby with the counsellor, the other was upstairs in the kitchen with the youth worker.

When I heard this, I said, ‘Ok, I’ll be there in a minute’, and quickly finished an email that I was sending to a parent. I literally took under a minute to do this, but that was taken as me not dealing with a crisis seriously. In my head, the situation was handled to a point of everyone being safe, but to my staff, who were all heightened by the very real crisis of a fight, I wasn’t prioritizing them… And upon reflection they were right.

In this case it was not just an urgency, it was indeed a crisis, and I should have responded immediately. Lesson learned. That don’t stop me from using this strategy many times later with the staff, but it reframed what they felt was a crisis rather than something they perceived as urgent but could wait. And by dealing with ‘crisis situations’ faster in the future, I was able to leverage those fast responses to delay and find out more, and respond more effectively, when I could and should give myself more time.

The real challenge is understanding not just my own sense of urgency versus crisis, but also that of the people I worked with. I’m not saying I always got it right after that, but I know that I was a much better leader when I remembered:

‘Your immediate urgency does not dictate the pace of my response.’

Pay Attention – Grad Speech

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I didn’t read it all word for word, and I ad libbed an ending to coincide with a couple references by student speeches and a video shared before I got up to speak… but here is my last grad speech, titled ‘Pay Attention’ as it was written.

___

Yesterday was Father’s Day… and yes, I’m keenly aware that starting my speech with that suggests I wrote this speech as last minute as many of our grads completed their assignments over the last 4 years… but I digress. 

Yesterday was Father’s Day and I was out for lunch with my family. Two tables next to us showed me a stark contrast in how families connect or disconnect. Both of these tables had someone my age at them. One of them, a woman, was alone with her elderly father, the other, a man, was with both of his senior parents. 

The woman was leaning forward and listening intently to her dad. Juxtaposed to this, the man had his phone in his left hand for the entire meal, and barely ever looked away from it. 

He scrolled, and typed, scrolled and typed, and even when his parents spoke to him, he didn’t look up when he responded. His parents had to wait for him to finish his meal to order dessert, but he didn’t speed up his eating, he focussed far more on his phone. Two tables, two totally different dynamics. 

We live in an era of distractions. When our attention is elsewhere, it’s not where it should be. 

And with that I’ll address our grads directly: Pay attention to what matters.

You’ve had a rich high school experience with teachers who didn’t just teach you the curriculum, they taught you how to think, how to formulate your ideas, and how to come to your own conclusions about the things that matter in this world.

Don’t pay attention to people who talk about their own truths. Don’t pay attention to AI slop designed to steal your time and attention. Don’t pay attention to extreme political views that are more interested in exciting anger than encouraging understanding. And don’t pay attention to those who profit from division, outrage, or fear.

Instead, pay attention to evidence. Pay attention to people who ask good questions. Pay attention to those who listen before they speak. Pay attention to the people in your life who challenge you to become wiser, kinder, and more courageous.

You’ve had a head start. You’ve been going to school in a community that fosters your individuality; a community that is accepting of different opinions, different perspectives, and let’s face it, different levels of quirkiness. All the while, allowing you to express your true self within a kind and accepting community. Take this with you wherever you go. Be the one who others appreciate, who others admire, and who understands when to speak up and to speak out. 

The reality is that no other school makes you present and voice your views and opinions with authentic discourse more than iHub. And so, you are uniquely skilled to filter the BS that comes your way, to see through insincerity, and to be the one who speaks up and speaks out when no one else will. 

However, it all starts with your attention. 

A few of our former grads came back to talk to you a couple months ago. One of them who is on a sports team training for 20 hours a week and working part time on top of a full-time university course load said that Inquiry Hub prepared her to use her time well, and she’s shocked at how students feel overwhelmed with just their course loads. Another student said her professor complimented her on how good her essay was and she replied, “Really, I think my high school Humanities teacher would have given this a high ‘B’.”

I bring this up because you are headed into new learning opportunities where you can choose to be like other students, or you can design your learning journey like you did here at iHub. And the experience you have can be one driven by your attention, or by distractions. 

Your attention is one of the most valuable things you possess. Where you choose to invest it will, in many ways, determine the person you become when you get to my or your parent’s age… You’ve already gotten off to a good start. 

Now I’d like to address the family and friends of our graduates.  The Inquiry Hub staff: our teachers, secretaries, and custodians, have watched these young folks blossom over the past four years. They came to us with unique talents and gifts, and while some of them needed a lot of help to figure out how to thrive at school, some needed no help at all. But no matter their starting point, they have all grown tremendously in ways that are hard to measure. 

You have a lot to be proud of in this group. They have not only thrived at school, they have also thrived in their activities in the community and thrived at work. They have made us so proud of them, and you should be proud too. Think back to what they were like four years ago. 

Pay attention to the things they value and share with you. Watch the way they interact and engage with the world around them. They are wonderful human beings, and while parents can take pride and pat themselves on the back, remember that these young grads are also young adults who deserve to be appreciated for the fine people that they have become. 

Stop and pay attention, and we can see what a community can build when people choose to invest their time, their energy, and their care in one another.

Graduates, in a world where everyone and every deviceis competing for your attention, remember that your attention is your life. Every hour you give away is an hour you never get back. Spend it on people. Spend it on ideas worth wrestling with. Spend it building things that matter.

And to your families: Thank you for giving these graduates your attention long before they ever earned a diploma. They are sitting here today because of countless rides, conversations, encouragements, reminders, sacrifices, and moments that probably seemed ordinary at the time. They weren’t ordinary. They mattered.

So today, celebrate this milestone. Put the phones away and look around this room. Pay attention to these graduates, to your families, and to this moment.

Because years from now, you won’t remember what was on your screen. You’ll remember who was sitting with you, who leant you an ear when you needed someone to listen to you, and who disagreed with you in class, but did so in a way that was respectful. And even if you never do another fishbowl discussion, you’ll remember that Inquiry Hub was the school you chose, you attended, and you gave your full attention to. 

Congratulations, Class of 2026.

Closure rather than ending

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Maybe it’s just semantics but I think the word choices we make are important. Our words frame our understanding of the world.

I’ve been having a lot of ‘lasts’ recently as I head into retirement. My last interview for a hire, my last field trip, my last principal’s breakfast meeting, etc. For a while I was seeing these as endings, kind of a shutting of a door never to be opened again, with a sense of finality. But I’ve had a shift recently.

Now I think of these endings more like closure. It’s not about an ending as much as a sense of completion. Like putting the last piece of a puzzle in. When a performance ends, the show is over, it’s time to go home. When a puzzle is completed there isn’t an instant finality to it. Closure in this sense invites time to admire what was accomplished.

It’s a small shift in language, but a large shift in perspective. It’s not an ending, it’s closure.

The grief metaphor

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This morning at the gym my buddy shared a metaphor about grief that I hadn’t heard before. He said that grief is like a heavy rock that you carry around with you in your pocket. Over time it doesn’t get any lighter but you grow stronger carrying it, and so it doesn’t feel as heavy over time… but you don’t let go of the rock.

This reminded me of hearing Scott Galloway on the Diary of a CEO podcast. Steven Bartlett said to Scott, “You said that you are a middle-aged man who hasn’t gotten over the loss of his mother. Is there a way to?”

Scott replied, “I don’t want to. I think the receipts for love is grief. I hope my boys feel the same way about me. It hasn’t gotten in the way of my life. Makes me be more bold with my emotions.”

Rocks. Receipts for love. Heavy stuff… but important to hold, as long as they don’t get in the way of living. And perhaps we can be stronger in many ways because we choose to hold them.

Own it

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We all make mistakes. Sometimes we say or do things that we might believe is true or that we think is right, and instead we were wrong. No one is immune. Everyone errs at some point.

But not everyone understands an apology:

“I’m sorry that you didn’t understand me.”

“I made a mistake but…”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“I was just joking.”

“You’re overreacting.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Ok, ok, I’m sorry, are you happy now? “

None of these are an apology. None of these accept real responsibility. If you really want to apologize, own it, don’t justify or belittle it. Own it. Or be a jerk and don’t apologize, because apologies that are excuses or explanations make you a bigger jerk.

Own it. Own your mistakes. And while you are at it, you’ll probably earn some respect.

_____

Related: ‘3 parts to an apology’

Appreciate the tiny wins

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Tiny wins are often hard to see. They don’t seem significant, but they accumulate.

James Clear explains in Atomic Habits that 1% better daily will compound into becoming 37 times better in a year.

You don’t go heavier on a lift in the gym, but you eke out a couple extra reps.

You walk into a coffee shop and get right to the counter before a rush of people that have to line up behind you.

You hit almost every green light on your way home from work.

You actually enjoy a meal that sounds too healthy to be tasty.

You write a single sentence and suddenly your muse has arrived.

We don’t always see them, we rarely celebrate them, but the tiny little things that we can choose to pay attention to and appreciate can be the highlight of the day… or the precursor to more wins, big and small, in the future.

Live a Lifetime in a Day

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I love this metaphor for how to live a meaningful life, “Live a lifetime in a day,” shared by Harvard physician Dr Aditi Nerurkar on The Diary of a CEO podcast. I took the liberty of emphasizing each of the 5 stages for easy reference:

“[w]hat creates a meaningful life… is to live a lifetime in a day.

And so that sounds like this big thing, but all it is, is that when you start your day, think about five things,

five things that you can do in your day to create an arc of a long and meaningful life in one day.

So what does that mean?

Spend a little bit of time in childhood.

So in wonder and play, even if it’s for a few minutes, do something that brings you joy for joy’s sake.

Spend a little bit of time in work.

We all know what that is, and for most of us, it’s a lot of time, but for, you know, it doesn’t have to be paid work, but just something that helps you feel a sense of productivity agency that I can do difficult things and I can overcome.

Spend a few minutes in solitude,

very important for all of the reasons that we’ve talked about today.

Spend some time in community,

so engaging with others, and then

spend some time in retirement or in reflection,

really taking stock of your day. So at the end of the day, when you’re going to bed and you’re putting your head on your pillow, you can say, okay, yes, I lived a meaningful life. I did all of those things.”

~ Dr Aditi Nerurkar on ‘The Diary of a CEO’ with Steven Bartlett: Brain Rot Emergency: These Internal Documents Prove They’re Controlling You!, Feb 15, 2026.

What a beautiful frame to start your day with. Usually I’ve got more reflection to contribute after I share something like this, but I really don’t this morning.

We’d all be a bit more happy, more appreciative of the life we live, if this was our daily goal.

Path to Nowhere

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We all do it.

We choose a path that doesn’t take us where we want to go… a path to nowhere.

Endless scrolling on social media. Binge-watching shows instead of pursuing hobbies. Saying yes to everything and stretching ourselves too thin. Procrastinating on big goals by tackling tiny, irrelevant tasks. Staying in our comfort zones, avoiding new skills that scare us. Skipping exercise or eating junk for quick fixes. Remaining friends with negative people who drain our energy. Buying stuff to feel better, but still feeling empty after our purchases, or buying on impulse because it’s easy, and the items aren’t too expensive.

But the costs are real. The path isn’t forward. These are all paths to nowhere.

Accept and place

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I heard this phrase and it really struck a chord with me:

“Accept people as they are, but place them where they belong.”

There are 2 really big ideas here.

First, we are often quick to want people to change, and the disparity between who people are and who we want people to become is often too large of a gap. Step one is accepting people for who they are.

The next step is a bit more challenging. We often spend way too much time on people that are not worth our time. We don’t ‘put people where they belong’. We take amazing people for granted and we focus too much attention on people who aren’t worth our time.

The task sounds simple: accept people for who they are, then place them in your life accordingly.

There are people who would do anything in the world for you. And people who you in turn would do anything for. When that’s the same person, well then you need to prioritize your connection to that person. They deserve a special place in your heart and in your life. They deserve your attention and time. Not the person that cut you off in traffic, not the annoying co-worker, not the friend in need that is never there when you are in need.

“Accept people as they are, but place them where they belong.”

Wise words to live by.