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I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking today. I recalled my sister telling me about a Japanese Scientist who froze either pure or distilled water drops to examine the ice crystals… except that first he treated the water in a special way. He would ‘apply’ thoughts, and words, to the water containers first: things like ‘joy’ and ‘happiness’ or ‘sorry’ and ‘anger’. The results were remarkable! Beautiful patterns with positive thoughts & words, and patternless, blocks or ‘broken’ patterns with negative thoughts & words.
It makes me wonder about all this talk I hear about broken schools and our ‘failure’ to prepare our students for the future? It makes me wonder about all the negative self-talk our media perpetuates… We aren’t pretty enough, we are too fat, we look too old, we aren’t rich enough, we can buy happiness, our future is bleak! How much of this is real, and how much of it is unintentionally willed by our own (weak?) thoughts? If we could accumulate a day’s worth of thoughts and place that on a frozen water sample, what shapes would we get? Beautiful patterns or broken formations? What if we did this for our family, community, city, nation or world? I know what it would look like for every newspaper & news media stream that exists, and find this disturbing… a reason why I avoid the news altogether! There are some amazing things happening in this world. Kindness, generosity and love can be powerful and potent catalysts in changing what our daily thoughts accumulate to. At the end of today, think of what the crystallized accumulation of your daily thoughts would look like. If you see something beautiful, congratulate yourself! If you see something less than beautiful, know that you have the power to change that, and also know that begins with acceptance, not blame… with forgiveness, not anger… with love, not self-loathing. Gandhi was right, we really do need to be the change we want to see in this world. And that starts with our thoughts that drive us. Think good thoughts,Say good words,
Do good deeds.
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Interesting! We can learn a lot from non-examples. Now, the challenge would be to help this person see that things can be better. Is this possible? Do you risk the negative interaction? I’m not sure, but my gut instinct is that a kind word, or wise (under 140 character) quote, might help this person see that being outwardly negative does nothing to bring joy into her life. Thanks for the comment, you’ve reminded me that learning opportunities come in many forms! ~Dave.
In my list of twitter connections I did purposely Not unfollow a certain connection. This twitter connection is always grumpy and negative about the things she does and her colleagues. She must have a horrible life being so negative.Why don’t I unfollow her? I learn a lot of her tweets. A learn to be possitive and not to slander and speak ill. And I learn to be grateful for not suffering so much as she must.
Thanks Kelly, You are one of the first bloggers I followed and I’m thankful that I’ve gotten to know you. Perhaps some day we’ll actually meet face to face, but until then I still want to pause and say thanks for your comments and conversations that have helped to make my digital learning journey so enjoyable and meaningful.Cheers!~Dave.
You are absolutely correct Dave. We tend to spend a great deal of time trying to “fix” students or the system or ourselves or others as if these were “broken” in some way. Instead we should be focusing on building on the positive. One thing we do as a staff is we begin each of our meetings with focusing on positive things – Our BEST Things – making us consciously set our mindset to what is going well. Whenever we have a team meeting or begin any of our PLC work, we do the same, so that it makes us aware of the positive that surrounds us. It has helped many times to listen to the positive things that are happening and reminds us that there is a great deal of good in what we do. As an administrator, it is something that I have done now in 4 of the schools where I have worked and, of all the things that I have introduced, this is one thing that continues after I have left. Great post!