Tag Archives: Life Lessons

The opposite of depression

I shared a quote by Derek Sivers yesterday. It came from his podcast, which was actually him being interviewed on another podcast, Cathy Heller – Don’t keep your day Job.

In the podcast with Derek, Cathy says this:

“I feel like the greatest human need is people want to feel seen. But really when it comes down to it, what I’ve also noticed is that the opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s purpose. And so somehow when we help other people feel seen, and we give that to other people, that’s like the greatest feeling and then you do feel seen.”

A lightbulb went off in my head when I heard, “The opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s purpose.”

Happiness is fleeting. It doesn’t sustain itself, not like depression can. Happiness isn’t a formidable foe to depression. But purpose is. Purpose can be maintained, and sustained. Purpose doesn’t dissipate when something goes wrong, like happiness does. Purpose forces you to look forward, to look ahead, to see promise beyond the moment.

The opposite of depression is purpose.

Actions, not words – Derek Sivers

I’m a fan of Derek Sivers. He’s someone who seems to have really figured out how to live life meaningfully and I think he lives a joyful life. Other people I follow live good lives, but I’m not sure they are truly happy. I think Derek is a rare kind of person that finds joy wherever he looks. He does what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, and is brutally honest with himself about what he really wants to do. I don’t think he spends a lot of time thinking, I really want to do ‘this’. He just decides to do it.

I’ve written specifically about him a couple times:

And I’ve mentioned him a few more times.

I listened to him on a podcast and this really hit a chord with me (related to his idea about goals, shared above):

“I have a concept that says that your actions reveal your values better than your words. So no matter what you say you want to do, your actions show what your values really are.”

How often do we have goals or plans that we never get to?

‘I’m going to start this project after…’

And no matter what we say next, something else comes up to delay us.

Or, ‘I really want to do this but…’

And after the ‘but’ comes an excuse about not having time, money, resources.

Do you really want to do it, or is it just wishful thinking?

I wanted to do a daily blog for years. I started this ‘Daily-Ink’ in 2010, but I didn’t really decide to do it until 2019. For 9 years it was wishful thinking. Then I decided: it’s not that I want to be a writer, I am a writer… and the way to be a writer is to write every day. So, it’s not even 6am yet, and I’m done my daily write.

Actions, not words… Or in my case the action of consistently writing words. 😃

No matter where you go…

More than half a life ago I had a girlfriend that was a fair bit older than me. She was very well travelled, including a solo trip to Africa in the early 80’s. While I haven’t seen her in almost 30 years, I still remember one of her favourite sayings, “No matter where you go, there you are.”

That saying is said by a lot of people, but I finally understood it when she said it. There is no escaping yourself. If you are kind in life, you’ll be kind in a sunny destination spot. If you’re a jerk, you’ll be a jerk at a touristy landmark. If you feel lost, you won’t find yourself on the peak of a mountain. You take whomever you are, wherever you go.

So whether you seek adventure, excitement, relaxation, or rest, it’s your own expectations and hopes that will determine what kind of trip you have. Disappointment because the room wasn’t quite what you expected, or although the room wasn’t what you expected the view was spectacular and made up for it? The food was more expensive than expected, or the food was pricey but you would have paid double for that red snapper last night? Are you looking for disappointment or are you looking for opportunities to see, hear, and feel positive experiences in a foreign land?

No matter where you go, there you are. Sometimes it takes travel experiences to truly understand what that means. As the world opens up, I hope people find exactly what they are looking for when they travel… just make sure you are looking for the right things.

A tribe of #FitLeaders

For the last month I’ve been sharing some workout photos and conversation with other #FitLeaders on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/pam_mahood/status/1518706635832578049?s=21&t=kGq3G-MX5cZrhqzNpeCdzw

I didn’t follow the schedule.

I’m not sure if anybody did, and that didn’t matter to any of us. What mattered is that we shared; We worked out; We knew we had each other to look to for support.

I’m not aware of anyone training for something specific, we are just looking to stay fit. Like I said in a tweet:

Fitness is a lifelong journey and the destination is a more healthy tomorrow.

Find your fitness tribe, and get active. Future you will thank you. As Kelly says:

Take care of body, mind, sprit, and connection.

Negative conjecture

Part 1: The world is out to get me

I was fairly new to administration and I was dealing with a student who had parents who seemed to believe the entire world was out to get them. Everything that happened to them and their child was not by mistake or circumstance, or by choices made by their kid or themselves, these things were planned and designed to make their life difficult. In my dealings with them I too was part of the problem, I was an extension to the system trying to knock them down. So were the teachers and youth worker. We were all, in their eyes, conspiring to make their lives miserable.

Imagine living your life thinking and believing that you were a victim of the world. How would that impact your daily life? What would your thought process be when something, or in your eyes everything, doesn’t go your way? Imagine believing that everything that happens today is simply evidence of the continuation of everything bad that has happened before.

Part 2: The things we didn’t do

I spent a lot of (younger) years wishing I had taken up karate. My uncles and an aunt trained and I watched them. Now decades later they are instructors and leaders in their club back in Barbados. I was a tiny 7-year old kid when they started, and my mom didn’t want me getting hurt. Later, in high school, I took up water polo and that led me to some amazing experience that I wouldn’t trade for the world. Coaching water polo is what inspired me to become a teacher. I’m not sure I would have followed either path had karate been my thing as a kid. I no longer look at this as a regret.

How many people do you know that define the world by what they didn’t do, on what they missed out on… on what could have been. How many people imagine the life choices they didn’t take, and see that life as so much better than their own?

I remember an English teacher in Grade 10 who told us how he was good friends with Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, and how Jim asked him to join along on this new venture. This teacher told us he didn’t regret his choice, but it was late enough in the year and we knew him well enough when he told us this, that we could hear the regret and disappointment in his voice. Strange that this is just about the only thing that I remember from this class.

Regret, disappointment. These thoughts define some people. People who live in a world that could have been, and never will be.

Part 3: The things that never happened

How many scenarios have gone through your head after you dealt with a scenario poorly? There was the thing you did and said, and there were so many other things that you could have done, could have said. ‘I wish, oh how I wish I could have handled that differently’. But your imagination doesn’t stop there. No, you go over the scenario again and again. Each time something different, something better happens in your mind. Your mind is filled with events that never happened; un-lived experiences; fictitious, more successful experiences.

Epilogue

Today is a new day, with new choices and new opportunities. We are shaped by our past, but our past is not our present. We learn, we grow, we make new choices. The world does not conspire against us. New opportunities will present themselves. Our choices we make can be different and better than the choices we made in the past. We are better off living our lives with positive conjecture… The world will conspire with us, not against us.

All the world is an improv stage

Think of the roles you play in life: A child, son or daughter to parents… Sibling. Student. Friend. Employee/Boss. Boyfriend/Girlfriend. Husband/Wife. Parent. Caregiver….

We take on so many roles in our lives. And when we take them on, we do so without an instruction manual. We play the role, not knowing how to really do it. You can be trained for a job, but not for every scenario you face. You can model yourself as a parent based on what you’ve seen other parents do, but your child will challenge your skills in unexpected ways.

Every role you take on will put you into situations where you are going off script, you are improvising to the best of your abilities. Sometimes nailing the role and making great choices. Sometimes bombing and making decisions that make the role harder.

All the world is a stage, and we are all actors, playing parts we learn as we play them. Some people play certain parts really well, while they flop in different roles. Not too many people, if any, are able to play each of their roles without struggling somewhere. We admire those that put on a show and do things really well. We complain about those that can’t or don’t play their role well. We often lack confidence that we can do our role well enough.

We are far more critical of how we play our roles compared to others. We often feel like we are the only ones acting… everyone else has a script. But there is no script. There is no one path, improv doesn’t work if everything is set up. It has rules to keep going well. It’s better to support the actors around you than it is to cut them off. It’s better to understand that you share the stage than trying to go solo.

It’s not about getting everything right. It’s about helping others when they are lost for their lines, their roles. It’s about sharing and laughing. It’s about enjoying the performance, even when it’s challenging. It’s about taking on new roles, and trying new things.

The world is your stage. The play is your playground. Improvise your roles as best as you can. And remember that others are improvising theirs roles too. Work with your fellow actors to create the best performance you can. But remember it’s all an act, and if you aren’t playing a role that works, change the role or change the way you act in it. All the world is an improv stage, and so you get to write the script as you go. Enjoy the performance, you only get one.

Time dilation

Yesterday I experienced a bit of a time warp. My morning went a bit slow, both in my productivity and in how long it felt. After lunch it felt like everything was thrown my way, and I was constantly on my ‘to do’ list, which seemed to be filled with things that took longer than they should.

At one point a package arrived, and I thought I’d take a break and take it to the teacher who ordered it. When I passed my grade 9 classroom it was empty, and I wondered where they were? As I learned, they had left for home. I thought it was about 2:30 in the afternoon and it was actually 3:50. It was almost an hour and a half later than I thought!

I’m always amazed by experiences like this. How can one hour of busy work or fun disappear, and another hour of slow work or boredom feel like an eternity? Just like actual time dilation is about time being different based on relative velocity, it seems as though we can experience this based on the velocity of our thoughts relative to actual time.

I also wonder about how relative time is based on our age. Five years is half of a lifetime to a 10 year old, but just 1/11th of a lifetime for me. Does my perception of time change with age? Does the importance of events alter because of the relative time of the experience compared to how many more experiences the event is compared to?

And what makes a single day feel both short and long at the same time? It’s early April, and I already know that the school year will be ending before I realize it. I’ll be swept up in all the things that are coming up, like report cards and grad prep, and suddenly I’ll be saying goodbye to a whole group of students. On that journey I’ll have long and short days, but looking back at the end of June, I’ll think the days from now until then just breezed by.

It’s not just a day in time that dilates, but weeks, months, and years too. It just seems strange… We want to fill our time with activities and events that are enjoyable and thus tend to go by faster. So, we are literally speeding up our lives. But the alternative is to spend a perceptually longer life that is less busy and enjoyable. Is one of the goals of life to have it feel like it’s going too fast? Or is this just an outcome of a good life?

One cation I think this brings attention to is that if time is going to race by, we should at least do our best to make it joyful and not just busy. Because time can also race by when we are just busy, but to what end?

The Bruce Lee themed leadership event

Back when I was a middle school teacher, I ran a student leadership program and we did a yearly Leadership Retreat. One year I did a retreat where I weaved a Bruce Lee theme throughout the 3-day event. The first time we got together I started my talk by showing the opening scene of Enter The Dragon:

After that I started every gathering with a Bruce Lee story, including his one-inch punch,

Empty your cup, and other stories to pump him up as a really incredible man and martial artist. I painted a picture of a brilliant, super athlete that had everything going his way.

On the last day, I shared the following information about Bruce Lee:

  • His parents moved him from Hong Kong to LA because he was in a gang and they were frightened that he’d get in a fight that would cost him his life.
  • He had horrible vision and learned to fight close because he couldn’t see what an opponent was doing at a distance. And he wore contacts for all of his adult life.
  • One leg was an inch and a half shorter than his other leg, and that’s why he had such a deep stance.
  • He lost out on the role in the TV series Kung Fu, that he helped to create, because he was ‘too Chinese’ for an American audience. And this is why he moved back to Hong Kong to create the movies that made him famous.

None of these could be seen as things that worked in his favour, but in each case he took what were disadvantages and made them into advantages. So often we are defined by what we perceive are our limitations, Bruce Lee took what others would use as excuses and made them into things that defined what he was capable of. He didn’t accept road blocks, he used them as launching points.

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I often wonder how much more we could have learned from this man if he hadn’t died so soon.

Question my answers

Here is a wonderful quote from Derek Sivers, in a podcast interview on ‘Far Out‘.

“I like to ask myself questions, and then most importantly I like to question my answers. I like to doubt myself, and I assume that I am accidentally lying to myself. I assume that the person speaking is a liar, meaning me. So I like to dissect my beliefs and habits and actions, and see if they might be hollow.”

Later he talks about wanting to do something for a really long time and says that if that’s the situation you are in, then you really don’t want to do it. That is to say, if you really wanted to do something, then you’d do it. If you keep saying you want to do it but you don’t, you aren’t being truthful to yourself.

What do you really want to do? Whatever your answer… question it!

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I’m a huge fan of Derek, you can find his books, blog, and podcast all here: https://sive.rs.

3 parts to an apology

I’ve used this with grade 2 students, and I’ve used it all the way up to grade 12. I’ve been using it as a teacher and principal for close to 20 years now and find it very effective. When a student needs to do an apology, I prep both students first.

The apology receiver:

This prep involves two parts, first, being clear about what they are upset about. This is something that can be explicit like ‘he hit me’ but sometimes the victim is hurt about something very specific and if it isn’t clear, then the apology might not actual satisfy the receiver of the apology.

Also important is prepping their response. “You don’t have to say anything, it’s their choice to apologize. If you do feel like saying something, please don’t say, ‘That’s OK’ or anything like that. What they did wasn’t ok, that’s why they are apologizing. If you choose to say something, you can thank them for saying what they said, you can share why you felt hurt, but it’s not your job to tell them what they did was ok.”

I sometimes also tell them about the 3 parts of the apology, but I don’t share this with both people at the same time.

The apology giver:

In advance I share the 3 parts of an apology, and they share what they plan to say. Rehearsal in advance helps a lot! Here are the 3 parts of an apology:

1. Saying “I’m sorry”.

2. Saying what you are specifically sorry for.

3. In the future…

For part 1, I make sure the apologizer is ready to truly apologize… it needs to be authentic.

For part 2, I explain, “I’ve heard an apology before where the person just said sorry sarcastically, and it sounded like the only thing they were sorry about was getting caught. If you are going to truly apologize, you need the person to know what you are sorry for.”

For part 3, I have them think in advance about what they would do if the same situation were to arise in the future (this is called future pacing and it provides alternative possibilities if a similar situation arises again). Example, “If I get upset at you again I’ll use my words or talk to a teacher instead of hitting.”

After the apology is done, I’ll make sure the receiver is satisfied, then I’ll share that I’m satisfied too but if it happens again, then I’m not going to be convinced the apology was authentic.

The best part of this 3-step apology process is that when it’s specific and authentic like this, I find repeat offences rarely occur. And, the receiver of the apology will often share more than they need to. Sometimes this evokes empathy. Sometimes the receiver will admit they had a part to play in the incident too, and might even apologize as well. This is really powerful because then I can use it as a bit of leverage saying something like, ‘We didn’t come together for you to apologize, it wasn’t necessary as part of this process, and so I really want to thank you for seeing how you can help make things better in the future too.’

Sometimes an apology isn’t enough and there needs to be further consequences. When that’s the case, I always make sure the consequences are shared before an apology. If an apology happens then the person apologizing receives a consequence after the apology, they might feel the apology was a waste of time. They might blame the victim for the consequences because they thought the apology was authentic (they honestly tried) then still got punished. So, any consequences beyond the apology need to be clearly dealt with before the apology.

In the end this isn’t about punishment and consequences. A good apology is about letting go of the past and ‘making things right’ in the future.