Tag Archives: perspective

Antecedent to: Forever or a Failure

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Yesterday I wrote:

It’s Not: Forever or a Failure

Starting something and doing it for a while, then changing your mind is often seen as a failure. When in fact, it’s very possible that continuing on and being unhappy would be far more of a failure. Yet from the outside, sticking with it looks more like success than the person who changes their mind, and is ready to challenge themselves in new, interesting, and exciting ways.

Today I share an antecedent to this:

Stick to it! Don’t quit too early. The forever analogy above, and trying something new instead, relates to things you’ve done for a long time and feel committed to. But new things deserve time, effort, and some fortitude in times of difficulty.

It’s easy to make excuses why the new path you are on, or the new hobby you are trying, is too hard or to decide the learning curve is too big. It’s easy to rationalize giving up too quickly. Any new and worthy task or routine takes some grit to stick with. When you’ve given the new thing a few months, or even a few years, that’s when the idea that it need not be ‘forever or a failure’ comes into play.

Before that, when things are still relatively new, there needs to be a time commitment. After time has permitted a long term cost-benefit analysis, only then is quitting not a failure, and continuing forever could be more detrimental and less rewarding than moving on.

Doing new things can be scary, and it can be easy to justify or rationalize or even irrationally reason that continuing on in an activity is too hard, or not worth the effort. Leave a new habit or practice or hobby too soon and a failure is a failure. Continuing on too long, or not quitting because you are scared to vary from your comfort zone can also be a failure.

It’s a delicate dance of time… don’t be afraid to put the time into something new, and really give it a chance… and don’t spend more time on something than is necessary just because these are the same dance steps you’ve been doing for a long time.

It’s Not: Forever or a Failure

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Starting something and doing it for a while, then changing your mind is often seen as a failure. When in fact, it’s very possible that continuing on and being unhappy would be far more of a failure. Yet from the outside, sticking with it looks more like success than the person who changes their mind, and is ready to challenge themselves in new, interesting, and exciting ways.

Changing Our Opinions…

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I recently wrote Certainty Versus Evidence, and concluded with, “Seek out wise people who are smart enough to be humble, and uncertain, and as curious as you are… And don’t let yourself get stuck in concrete thinking.”

It really comes down to the idea that we need to be willing to change our opinions and our point of view when more information comes our way.

This means:

  • We need to respectfully listen to alternative points of view.
  • We need to ask clarifying questions.
  • We need to challenge our own assumptions.
  • We need to be humble enough to recognize that we don’t know everything.
  • We need to keep learning.

It always surprises me the that changing of one’s opinion is seen as weak. To me it’s a sign of strength. Openly admitting that you’ve changed your mind based on new evidence is a superpower. It means you don’t have a fixed mindset.

The difference between this and being gullible is that you aren’t easily persuaded, but rather data driven. You aren’t blindly believing new information, you are discerning, measuring, calculating, and being inquisitive.

We aren’t having our minds changed, we are changing our minds.

It’s not hard to do this when your new opinion fits with the views of those around you, but if that’s not the case, a simple change of opinion could be very challenging. I think both Copernicus and Galileo would agree with me.

It’s a big step to openly change your mind on a challenging topic. It takes strength of mind and will to do so, and it is a sign that you are willing to learn and grow. Certainty is the enemy of understanding, compassion, and growth. Ultimately if we are willing to change our opinions, we are willing to change and grow.

A Simple Shift in Perspective

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I woke up just after 4am this morning and thought to myself, ‘Nice, almost an hour more to sleep.’ Then I had this little inkling to check my alarm…

What? It’s not on?

Thinking for some reason it was a Tuesday rather than a Saturday, I turned on my 5am alarm and made sure the volume was low before snoozing until it buzzed in about 55 minutes. When it went off I hit the stop button quickly, but my wife still woke up, “Why are you getting up so early on a Saturday?” She asked curiously.

‘It’s Saturday?’

I had no idea. I was going to do my typical weekday morning routine, and head off to work. I wasn’t upset about this, it was just another normal school day in my head. I got up anyway, did my morning meditation and went back to sleep on the couch for a bit before heading to meet my buddy first our Saturday morning walk.

My buddy, also named Dave, inspired this Daily-Ink. He told me he struggled to be motivated to do our walk this morning, and I responded that I was excited to come, having realized that it was Saturday and not Tuesday. I’m not great at rehashing conversations, but this was Dave’s message in a nutshell:

‘Isn’t it interesting how that shifts your perspective. Think of how much better every day would be if you framed it the same way. What if next Tuesday you thought about what a great day it is, and ask yourself, who can I show gratitude to? Or, how can I make someone’s day great today?’

Pick any day in the last week, week day or weekend, and imagine redoing that day, but with a shift in perspective of how rich, engaging, and rewarding that day was going to be… What’s to stop us from doing this daily?

AprilMayJune

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One of the biggest challenges in being a school principal is the month of AprilMayJune. Three months that feel like they are condensed into one single month. From here to the last day of school it’s Go-Go-Go… It doesn’t feel like there is a break or a transition, it’s just non-stop action.

Good things will happen, wonderful events will be a big part of this extended month. So, it’s not just a slog, there will be some special moments to come. It’s just that things go so fast, and the pace feels accelerated, and then at the end of June we will look back and we won’t remember anything that delineates separate months from now until then.

To all the educators out there, have a fantastic AprilMayJune!

Being vs Doing

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I was listening to a guided meditation, and it mentioned that how we live in the world is more focused on doing rather than being.

This made me think about the multitude of tasks we do on autopilot, and how we aren’t always fully present when we do them. It made me think about my work day and how much of it is spent focused on tasks, and not at all on the experience.

Doing is an external experience focused on productivity and achievement. Being is intrinsic, it emphasizes awareness, mindfulness, and the value of life. Doing is all about chasing goals and getting stuff done, it’s what moves us ahead and lets us make things happen. But being… That’s about soaking in the moment, really living it up, and savoring life’s journey as it happens.

This isn’t an either/or thing, but I feel like we, I feel like I, could benefit from being more… More present, more aware, more in the moment. Whole days can go by where I’m task oriented, focused on what needs to be done, and not aware or appreciative of my experience. It’s really about valuing the life we have as it unfolds, rather than just checking off boxes of tasks and achievements mindlessly.

If we are too busy only doing, are we allowing ourselves the opportunity to value and appreciate this wonderful life we are living? Are we living at all, or just moving from task to task, like mindless robots. I laugh a lot more when I’m being and not just doing. I connect with people more meaningfully. I find joy in the tasks that I do. Being is an awareness that sits above the things we do, and it changes a life of activity for the sake of activity, to one where we can find meaning, and joy, throughout our day, and on days yet to come.

Headspace when alone

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My family started watching season 6 of Alone. 10 contestants are left alone in the wild way up north on Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The challenge ends when just one remains. The contestants have to fully fend for themselves, and they battle two significant battles, starvation and boredom.

Watching this reminds me of how important our self talk is to our overall mental health. We don’t have to face the challenges of these contestants. We don’t go days being hungry. We don’t go for endless hours with no entertainment and no one to interact with. But we still spend most of our time in our own heads.

We can be our own biggest cheerleader or our own worst enemy. We have incredible power to influence our own thinking. The most important thing we can do for ourselves is appreciate that we are doing the best we can with the resources we have. We need to be kind with ourselves… especially when we find ourselves alone.

Gone in an instant

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It’s tragic when it happens. Most recently in the news it was a bridge in Baltimore. A barge lost power and hit a bridge and it collapsed, killing several workers on the bridge. One minute they are going about their job, and then their lives are over. No warning, no forethought. Living one moment, gone the next.

I was recently on vacation and watched a few sunrises. That time of day is busy for birds on the hunt for fish. There is no glare from the sun, and many small fish are feeding near the shore. Here is a slow motion video of a bird diving for food.

Imagine the life of a small fish. You are among many other fish, feeding and going about your morning, and suddenly, most abruptly, a foreign beast plunges into your world and snatches you up. Seconds later you slide down inside of a bird’s neck and into its stomach where you suffocate before being digested.

No warning, no hint of pending doom. It’s part of the life cycle of many living things. We are fortunate that it is not frequent for us as apex predators. Still, it happens, and it’s totally unfair, even random. A fall from a ladder, a car accident, an allergic reaction, a plane crash, a freak accident.

We are fortunate not to be small fish, with far greater likeliness to come to a tragic, early, unexpected demise, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be thankful for the time we are given, and appreciate the luck we have to live a good life every day that we are given. It can be seen as scary or it can be seen as cathartic… knowing that we can be gone in an instant.

Missing the big picture

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A couple weeks back I was in a problem solving situation where I was brought in to give some perspective on how one of my programs could assist with a problem at a school. I was an add-on to a conversation that was already happening, and I found it frustrating. I kept having to speak up and give perspective on the big picture and how what seemed like a simple fix was actually something that would have unforeseen consequences. My grandfather used to say, “Don’t put lipstick on a pig,” and that seemed to be the approach. “Let’s make it look like we are addressing the issue, all the while just making an ugly situation seem like it’s not as bad.

Yesterday I was in a meeting and it was completely different. Everyone was thinking big picture. How does this affect students? Staff? Funding? Optics? When a suggestion was brought up, the team of people I was working with took each idea and put it through a big picture lens. When a suggestion was knocked down, there were no egos attached, it was just a change in frame, and the new perspective provided more useful information.

A one hour meeting took over an hour and a half, and afterwards I had another 45 minutes of hammering out one possible solution, which may not be the one we go with. However, even if the idea I suggest isn’t the one we go with, I know the final decision will be one that considers multiple perspectives, and will be a viable solution to the problem we are working on.

What a contrast it is between these two scenarios. In the first case, the focus was on a quick fix, and in the second case the focus was on a sustainable solution. The difference was being with a team of people focused on the big picture rather than just trying to make a problem go away.

It’s a matter of the frame you put around your problem… and when in fix-it mode, the bigger the frame the better.

Do you hear the music?

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“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes we let our perception cloud our perspective. We get caught up in our own world and don’t recognize that we are focused on minutia that clutter our attention, and we lose perspective.

We don’t see the the early season budding flowers, we don’t feel a light breeze, we don’t taste the food we rush to eat. We don’t hear the music. We don’t dance. We don’t perceive the beauty of the world around us.

When you see someone joyful, be perceptive, what is making their heart dance? Listen carefully and you too will hear the music.