Tag Archives: mindset

Mindset Not Wet

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I spent last night camping with a few teachers and students. A larger group of us spent a beautiful sunny day at the lake, and then a smaller group spent the night in a campground, a 5km hike from the lake. (Camping gear was delivered by car to make the trek easier after a full day at the beach.)

After bedtime it started to rain. At 3am the rain was so hard everyone woke up. I didn’t realize that a couple tents got flooded and the students moved under the shelter that was at the camp site. This morning the rain continued and really didn’t stop all day. We had planned a 9km hike, but shortened it because of the weather.

We played up the change a little because we knew some students didn’t want to hike at all in the rain. That mindset can be ‘adjusted’ a bit by making the task shorter. My PE teacher wanted to be ‘bad cop’ telling everyone that we were going on the long hike, and I could be the ‘good cop’ that shortened it, although I originally suggested the other way around.

It’s amazing noting how the difference in attitudes and mindsets framed the overall enjoyment of students on this very wet hike. We had a student leading the way and pushing the pace, despite not being someone that hikes much, and we had the ‘Eeyore’ student who continually wanted to know how much longer, and decided it would be a bad trip before the hike started.

Our mindset matters so much. We enjoy or suffer the day we have partially by the circumstances of the day, but mostly from the mindset that we set for the day. So no matter the weather, do your best to ensure your mindset isn’t wet.

Surrounded by Fixed Mindsets

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One of the most powerful things we can do is to steadfastly hold an opinion, receive new information… and change our minds. This is what school board member Courtney Gore did:

A GOP Texas school board member campaigned against schools indoctrinating kids. Then she read the curriculum.

“Gore, the co-host of a far-right online talk show, had promised that she would be a strong Republican voice on the nonpartisan school board. Citing “small town, conservative Christian values,” she pledged to inspect educational materials for inappropriate messages about sexuality and race and remove them from every campus in the 7,700-student Granbury Independent School District, an hour southwest of Fort Worth. “Over the years our American Education System has been hijacked by Leftists looking to indoctrinate our kids into the ‘progressive’ way of thinking, and yes, they’ve tried to do this in Granbury ISD,” she wrote in a September 2021 Facebook post, two months before the election. “I cannot sit by and watch their twisted worldview infiltrate Granbury ISD.”

But after taking office and examining hundreds of pages of curriculum, Gore was shocked by what she found — and didn’t find.

The pervasive indoctrination she had railed against simply did not exist. Children were not being sexualized, and she could find no examples of critical race theory, an advanced academic concept that examines systemic racism. She’d examined curriculum related to social-emotional learning, which has come under attack by Christian conservatives who say it encourages children to question gender roles and prioritizes feelings over biblical teachings. Instead, Gore found the materials taught children “how to be a good friend, a good human.”

Gore rushed to share the news with the hard-liners who had encouraged her to run for the seat. She expected them to be as relieved and excited as she had been. But she said they were indifferent, even dismissive, because “it didn’t fit the narrative that they were trying to push.”

To learn new information that ‘doesn’t fit your narrative’, and then to change your mind and take a new stance… this is learning. This is a growth mindset. This is what we need in the world.

But if you read or listen to the full article, you’d learn that Courtney Gore’s new outlook led to threats against her and her family’s lives. It’s hard to change your mind, even harder to change the minds of people with fixed mindsets.

Fixed mindset thinking is why I spoke out before our last School Trustee election. It’s why our votes matter in every election. It’s why we need to pay attention to civic positions of power and not just provincial or federal elections. Fixed mindsets threaten learning and common sense… and can ultimately limit our rights and freedoms. At least here in Canada it’s less likely for guns and threats of violence to be the part of the consequence of fighting a fixed mindset. So we really don’t have an excuse.

Luxury, therapy, and a good day

Today I splurged and had a relaxing massage that was purely for enjoyment. It was a deep tissue massage and I needed to ask the masseuse to go a little deeper at the start, but then I just sat back and let her do her work. Normally I spend an entire hour with my therapist’s elbows in my back. Today’s massage included arms, hands, legs, and feet. There was time before hand to sit in a hot tub and do a couple cold pool dips (not something I plan to repeat soon, but glad I tried).

Then the massage room had quiet music playing and between camomile and lavender scent, I chose the lavender. It was so nice to sit back and relax, being pampered without thinking about therapy and having to breathe through intense pressure on my back. It took a mindset shift to just enjoy and lap in luxury.

I read a great quote in James Clear’s weekly email newsletter yesterday:

“The question is not: will today be a good day? 

Every day is a good day. 

The question is: how much good will you get out of today?”

I enjoy my therapeutic massages because I suffer with regular back aches and pains, and I could easily have gone into today expecting a similar experience… and I would have been disappointed. Instead I just appreciated what I had. Admittedly this is a lot easier to do, choosing luxury as a mindset, but it’s a good reminder that how we frame things matter.

Today has a lot of good to be found. Tomorrow will be good despite hours of travel time. Regardless of the day, regardless of the challenges, regardless of the unexpected circumstances, we have opportunities to find good in every day.

‘Making it work’ mindset

This was in James Clear’s weekly 3-2-1 email newsletter:

“One type of person approaches a situation with the mindset of, “How can I make this work?” 
Another type seems to approach each circumstance with the mindset of, “What are all the reasons this wouldn’t work?” 
Both people will be forced to deal with reality, but the first person will only have to solve problems that actually occur while the second person will often avoid taking action entirely because of the potential problems they have dreamt up before starting. 
There will always be reasons to not do something. Be a problem solver, not a problem adder.” – James Clear

It’s not just enough to have the right mindset when you have to work with someone who has the wrong mindset. You lift an idea up, and it gets knocked down. You make a suggestion and three counter examples are brought up. I believe there are times and places that this counter argument can be healthy and even promote better solutions, but when you are still looking for solutions and you have someone knocking the ideas down over and over, well then the problem or problems become unsurmountable. It’s not just your own mindset that matters, it’s the whole team’s.

I remember working on a team where this one person seemed to undermine almost everything I suggested. Even when I went to her in advance to see what the roadblocks were, she’d still undermine my meeting with new problems after I thought we’d exhausted reasons it wouldn’t work. What I didn’t understand was that this wasn’t just about being stubborn and not wanting to change, it seemed more just a mindset of “This isn’t working, and that won’t work either.”

I left that job before ever solving the mystery of how to work with this person effectively, but that experience taught me that it’s not just important to have a solution-focused mindset, it’s important that the people you work with do as well… or that you plan meetings such that ideas are allowed to be developed before there are opportunities to knock them down. Because it’s easier to knock ideas down than it is to build them up.

Half empty

I remember this really funny card my aunt once gave her son, my cousin. He had a spell of bad luck that included being robbed at gun point at work, his parked car being hit and run, and then after being repaired the car was vandalized a day later. The card was a picture of a giraffe’s head looking up. It said something like, ‘When life gets you down, remember to look up…’ and inside the card it said, ‘It will probably rain down your nostrils’.

Things got better for my cousin. He really just had a string of bad luck all at once, and it didn’t take long for him to turn things around. He isn’t someone who acts like a victim, he doesn’t expect bad things to happen to him. But we all know people who do expect things to go wrong, who believe the world conspires against them. It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Imagine how hard it is to live a life where your glass is always half empty. The system is out to get you. You feel picked on, and you ‘know’ that you are always being treated unfairly. How hard would life be? How bitter would you get?

It reminds me of Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh, except that he is passively expecting the worse. When people live glass half empty lives, the glass gets emptier, and the responses to anything bad get more and more bitter. It becomes easy to see and believe conspiracy theories because everything conspires against you.

“The system is corrupt, it is designed to keep me down. We are all victims of the system.”

What a hard life to live. I wonder what it would take to change a person like this so that they don’t see the world as undermining and targeting them? What kind of event or experience would change this person? What would it take to help fill their glass a little? Or would they just empty it to where they expect it to be?

Master the art of showing up

The biggest change I’ve made to taking care of myself in the past few years is this:

“When determining the size or complexity of a new habit ask yourself, “What can I stick to—even on my worst day?”

Start there. Master the art of showing up. Then advance.” ~ James Clear

I’m not in the mood to work out today, but I’ll go get on my row machine for 10 minutes. That would be it, but I’m also going to run the weight club this morning and I’ll do a bit of weights. Then one of our students ends the session leading us through 15 minutes of yoga.

I could skip the row machine, I’ve got an excuse, I’m doing weight club. But how hard is it to do 10 minutes on the row machine listening to my audiobook? It’s faster than 20 minutes on the bicycle or treadmill. These are the minimums I allow myself. I know I can do these things even when I don’t want to. I know that I don’t have to go all out, I just have to put in the time. That’s what I can do on my worst day… I can go through the motions for 10 or 20 minutes.

Sometimes that’s all I really do… go through the motions. But more often than not, after planning to do just the minimum, I end up pushing myself just a little harder than expected. The plan is to show up, but I do more. That’s what happens when you master the art of showing up.

So just show up, and maybe you’ll do more. You just need to commit to showing up and doing the minimum, and being ok with when that’s all you do. Be happy with this low bar on your low days… and you’ll be amazed how often you achieve more.

Just do it… just show up!

A Simple Reset

It took a whiny rant yesterday to help me reset my frame of mind.

I rethought the rut I was in last night, after I had a massage. Usually my massages are painful ordeals, working out deep muscle knots, but most of my discomfort was from muscle soreness from working out. This is really unusual because I generally deal with a lot of back discomfort, verging in pain. So, my workouts haven’t been as lazy as I thought. Then I looked at some not too old archery scores and I truly am happy about where I am right now in my progress.

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to set my brain on a bit of a tailspin, but overall I see myself as a positive and happy person. I work in a school with some truly amazing students and teachers. I have a wonderful office staff. And I come home to an awesome family.

I’m blessed, and when I get into a rut like I did yesterday, I need to get over myself and appreciate how truly lucky I am.

The weather is wonderful all this week, and it’s going to be a great day today!

Stretching my back and my mind

Stretching my body has always been a chore. I find the discomfort of stretching tight muscles painful rather than uncomfortable. But I need to do it. I was 4’11 at the end of Grade 9, and grew to 5’6½” at the end of Grade 10. That growth spurt included a torque in my back that left me with mild scoliosis and back issues that persist to this day. Add hamstrings that are tighter than a piano wire and I’m a walking corpse with rigor mortis set in, when I don’t take the time to stretch.

But I hate the feeling of stretching.

My challenge now is to stretch my mind before my body. I need to re-evaluate how I think about stretching. I need it to be part of my routine, rather than feeling like an add-on that I don’t want to do.

Both stretching my mind and my body in this area feels unnatural. Just saying that tells you I’m failing at stretching my mind. I realize there is a knowing and doing gap here, but telling myself this doesn’t seem to help.

I wonder what mental roadblocks other people have that are similar? Is there something you do that you know is bad for you, or don’t do and know that you should? Where do you need to stretch?

And if you made that stretch… what’s your secret?