“Christmas, Easter, Halloween… what are the other holidays?”
Almost every night you will hear a conversation like this between my two middle daughters and me. We read a story, say our prayers, and then I ask them what their favorites are.
I ask silly questions, they give me silly answers. They will ask me to ask certain favorite questions, especially if they did something cool at school or daycare. Sometimes the questions lead us on tangent discussions. But no matter what, we end the day with laughter.
It is not the questions, or the answers, that are important. It is the few uninterrupted minutes we share to end the day. No TV, or mobile device, or even other brothers and sisters. Just us.
I don’t know if they will remember our nightly ritual when they are 30 years old, but I know that it is important to them now. It is important to me. I am coming to the understanding of how important the small everyday moments are to the foundation of relationships. The small shared giggles, the sharing of stories, or sharing that all candy is your favorite.
At age 43 I am experiencing Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stage 7 – Generativity vs. Stagnation. In this stage adults wrestle with the idea of contributing to the world through family and careers.
But my struggle is not the idea of contributing to the world, but how well I am making a difference. It has fostered a question that I have considered for a while: is it better to be good at a lot of different things or great at one or two things?
I am not a great father.
I am not a great husband.
I am not a great teacher.
I am not a great writer.
I am not great at anything.
I am good at a lot of things. I have done some cool things in my lifetime: from hosting creative workshops to coaching a 400-meter runner at Hastings College that ran with the great Michael Johnson at the Drake Relays. But that is the center of the issue, I have become good at a lot of different things but have not mastered any of them.
My struggle is that being good has not allowed me to make an impact in this world. I see so many of my friends and colleagues doing great things. Everyday they are making an impact that builds positive results in their world, and the difference I see is their focus is on one or two things. They are known as the expert, or the go-to person for their field. They are #rockstars. I would love to make such a difference in this world, but I am not a go-to person. I don’t have a focus on one thing that people know me for. I am good at a lot of things, but great at nothing.
Now, let’s back away from my struggle to connect to the idea of school and education.
The traditional school system is designed for our students to be good at a lot of different subjects. Understand, I strongly agree that we need a foundation in our education. But when a student graduates from high school are they great at something? Have they had the chance to start down the path of greatness?
Here is a stat for you: Almost 80 percent of students change their major at least once, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In reality, about half of the students will change their major two or three times. So, they are not on the path of greatness until, maybe, their sophomore year in college. Throw in the idea of 10,000 hours to achieve mastery, and it is clear that school is not setting our students on a path of greatness.
So how can we design an environment to foster an opportunity for students to not only find their passion, but the chance to become great at it? First, get rid of the bells. The hardest part of being back in the classroom is the bells. Especially with 46 minute classes. There is no way for students or teachers to become engulfed in anything. To lose themselves in learning. To develop the intrinsic drive to become great.
Another area is standards. I know standards are a part of the educational landscape and will continue to be for a long time. Again, there needs to be guidelines that help schools build meaningful curriculum. But standards should be guidelines, not stone written rules that govern every single lesson we plan.
I know of teachers that will only do things that connect back to a standard. I remember going through the S.T.A.R.S. training and the moment when the person leading the training explained that dinosaur lessons in elementary school would have to be eliminated from the curriculum because dinosaurs were not a part of the standards. Kids love dinosaurs. Even my four year-old daughter will choose a book on dinosaurs for bedtime. How are we to help kids find what they love when we won’t even let them learn about things they like?
Why is greatness important? Our society is at a point that being good at something will not guarantee anything. To be honest, even being great at something is not a guarantee for success, but it improves the chances. I’m not talking about money, but about living a life that is filled with a sense of accomplishment. A life, as Erik Erikson theorized, a life where you feel that you have made a contribution to your family and the world.
To start out I want to give you a few dots that I will connect in a minute.
Dot 1: This quote, “All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Dot 2: The metaphor “Life is a highway.”
Dot 3: My students’ view of life.
Dot 4: The windows in my car.
First, let’s expand Dot 2. If life is a highway than we must drive to get through life. Each one of us has our own “car.” We view life through our car windows. Which brings us to Dot 4, the windows in my car.
My driver side window fell into the door so I used packing tape to fill in for the window until I can get it fixed. The front window has a huge rock chip that sits just at the bottom of my line of vision. I can see out of both windows well enough to drive, but the view is skewed.
Dot 3. Everyday I hear, in some form, how much students dislike school, or that they don’t like to write, or they don’t like to read. I teach English. But also, everyday I learn more about the students’ fears and hurts of life. Reread Dot 1. But it is not just parents that create issues for students (or anyone). Just living life creates its fair share of damage to their windows, or view of life.
Let’s connect the dots. Everyone is on this highway, each driving their own car. A car with different degrees of damage to the windows. These damaged windows affect our view of life. This damage creates a challenge for us to overcome as we drive, so we cannot see that every driver is dealing with his or her own damaged windows as we go through each day.
At times the highway seems so dangerous, but it is not because we are bad drivers. If you really think about it, with all the different ways the windows become damaged, and how we make it through everyday, we are pretty skilled drivers. The way to make the highway safer is to focus on fixing the windows people view life through.
I thought it would fun to go back in time for my 100th post.
Yes, in high school I was a gymnast and then a diver in my junior and senior year. One thing I learned from the two sports was to “Sell Out.”
Senior Year
Whether it was doing a tumbling run that ended in a forward flip or working on my reverse one and half in a pike position, I had to sell out.
Selling out meant trusting your foundation and going for it.
Selling out was important when learning a new routine or dive. If I didn’t sell out to the dive I wouldn’t learn it, and most of the time I would hurt myself with a wicked belly flop. But think of a twisting rotating belly flop. And if you are wondering, yes you can belly flop on the floor mats when doing a tumble run for the floor exercise in gymnastics.
This blog isn’t about all the hard work that goes into the fundamentals, the small steps, but long hours one takes to build strength. It is about those moments before you are about to do a routine on the high bar or attempting, for the first time, a forward 2 and a half forward dive.
Selling out doesn’t eliminate fear, but the mind set allows you to attack the fear. Focusing on selling out pushes the fear to the back of your mind. A moment of honesty here, to calm my nerves I use to sing “You’ve Got It (The Right Stuff)” by New Kids on the Block. I even had a judge ask me what I was singing before I attempted my dives. We all have unique ways to get our mind focused.
Selling out doesn’t even guarantee success, however, it does allow us to recover from failure or a rough spot to be able to succeed. In the 1988 Olympics everyone remembers this dive from Greg Louganis…
But most people forgot he actually came back from that moment to win the gold and he won the 10-meter platform gold, too.
Selling out isn’t just for athletics, though. Life presents us with moments to sell out. To stand moments away from testing our foundations, to see if we can move to the next level. Maybe it is changing jobs. Maybe it is connecting with your family. Maybe it is just going after a goal you keep putting off. But too many people walk away from the diving board.
It is safe that way.
Selling out will not eliminate fear; it is no promise of success. So why sell out? Because, to be honest, it is the only way to find your greatest moments.
As life would have it, an idea has been reinforced through what I have been reading, watching, and trying to do in my life. The idea can be expressed best this way:
How you lead people is what you lead people to.
This idea is not about getting results. It is not about how to get people to buy in to an idea. It is about the foundation of leadership. In our life, our jobs, we find ourselves in leadership roles. As a teacher and coach, but also as a husband and father, this idea has gotten my mind thinking about how I am doing things. So, what does the idea mean?
HOW we lead is the foundation we build FOR the ones who are following us. The foundation for our family, our students, or teams.
If we use fear, or negativity to lead, the foundation we build for others will be passivity, resentment, and at times rebellion.
If we are unorganized or disengaged, people will feel lost and isolated. They will not connect to the vision you have, no matter how grand it is.
If we lead with love, clear guidelines, and respect… we lead people to that. They will feel connected, feel they matter, and will have the strength to handle the rough times.
Yes, a part of leadership is results. I know that. Having an 0-8 football season last year has created a challenge for me. And results are one of the ways we measure how well we are doing. But results will vary in life. Foundations are how we handle those variations.
My routine this morning was normal. The alarm went off at 4:50. My wife gave us four more minutes by hitting the snooze button. I got my coffee and cereal, sat down to watch Sports Center. After 20 minutes it is my turn for the shower. My wife and I were ready for the day by 5:50. We moved into the next phase of our family routine, getting the kids ready. Today, that was a little different.
“Happy crazy socks day, Mom,” said my four-year-old.
Today at daycare it’s Crazy Socks and Hat day. So the girls got up with more excitement and energy. We picked out hats, a pink cowboy hat and a sea themed visor, made mismatching socks and we were ready to go a few minutes earlier.
Their energy to start the day and the excitement to wear a hat and crazy socks got me thinking about how an adult’s world can get so routine. How we can have a good day, but the routine brings us down. The girls’ routine would not change much at daycare, but a small thing like crazy socks can make a huge difference in their perception of the day. The socks don’t cost anything. The hat won’t really interfere with the girls’ day. But their day started with a smile and a desire to get to daycare to share in their Crazy Socks and Hat day.
We can make a small change that will make a huge difference in the excitement we have for the day. So for anyone who reads this you can join me tomorrow, April 10th, for the unofficial Crazy Socks day. Share your photo of your socks tomorrow with #crazysocksday.
“And…” I try to drag out the second cereal for the mix.
“Reese’s Puffs and…”
“How about Apple Jacks?”
“Yeah, Apple jacks.” She jumps up from the couch and heads to the kitchen.
This conversation is from a few days ago with my four year-old. Lately, my three older girls have started to eat mixed cereal. Simply put, mixing different kinds of cereals in the morning or at snack time.
My oldest daughter first asked for this about a month ago one morning as I was getting her cereal ready. When she asked, my first response was going to be, “No.” But before I said it, I wondered to myself why I was going to say no.
Time? It would take all of 20 seconds to open another box and pour it into the bowl. But life falls into routines, and a change in that routine makes us think about how it will affect our time. Every morning I say something like, “We got to go.” Trying to get the kids to hurry so that we stay “on time.” But time wasn’t a good enough reason.
It is odd. Who ever heard of mixing cereal… (let alone pop). I really caught myself on this idea. Was I really going to tell her no because it was different? But I started to wonder how many times did I do that. How many times do our kids get a knee jerk “NO” from us simply because it is different? I take certain sense of pride for thinking outside the box, but this moment challenged me. Showed me how fast we can react to an idea that is outside the (cereal) box and shut it down before we even consider it. How many ways to can we actually crush creativity?
Since I couldn’t think of a reason for her not to have mix cereal for breakfast, we started a trend in our home. It is a simple act, but a tasteful one.
There are about 14 steps from my little girls’ room to the living room. Every weekday morning, around 6:00 a.m., I head to their room. Taking turns, I wrap each girl in their blanket and carry them out to the living room. They are heavy with sleep. But in small ways they snuggle into my arms; an arm around my neck, moving their head onto my chest, or curling up into the fetal position to fit in my arms.
The girls are five and four years old. I can shake them awake. They could walk to the living room. They find their way to our room at two in the morning, that’s for sure. But it is 14 steps. It is 14 steps that I will, soon enough, not walk with them in my arms. They will grow and be too heavy with age to carry. It is 14 steps that I can show them that dad loves them.
Some of our greatest moments are the smallest. What can you do today in 14 steps? Find that path and watch how the world looks better in just 14 steps.
So, I remembered I needed to pack two lunches as the family was heading out the door.
My wife couldn’t find her jacket.
I forgot my computer halfway to daycare. Had to turn around and go back to the house.
It was the start of a bad day.
And you know what? I think that it is good to have a bad day… or at least a bad section to the day. Here’s why.
One: It jolts us from our comfort zone. On most mornings our household is routine. A little stressed at times, but in most cases our mornings are uneventful. This morning was a jolt to our routine. It reminded me that I needed to make sure I have my to-do list ready each morning. I should have been ready for the extra time to make my children’s lunches, but I wasn’t.
Two: It allows us to practice mental toughness. I know this is coach speech, but it is important in life, too. In sports an athlete or coach has to let go of a bad play. I instruct my football players that they have about five seconds to be mad (or even happy) after a play. Walk back to the huddle mad but walk to the line focused on the next play. It is the same for life. A day is filled with moments; letting one thing affect everything else is a guarantee to having a bad day. And sometimes we let a bad day turn into a bad week, or even month. Or longer.
Three: A bad day can teach us that something needs to change, if we are willing to be honest with ourselves. When things go wrong for a while, something isn’t working. It might take sometime to figure it out, but it is worth it.
So, if you might be having a bad day… cool. I hope you find the benefit from it to change today to a great day.
“Boys!” I holler, standing at the top of the stairs.
No response. I know that they are probably in their rooms, which are opposite the stairs.
“Boys!” I holler again.
No response.
And then yes, I holler again, “Boys!”
The frustration of not being heard starts to rise…
We have all been in this situation at sometime and in some form. Sometimes we are the ones hollering and other times we are the one being hollered at. It might be from the stairs or two rooms away. And in most cases the whole situation ends up in frustration.
“Why didn’t you answer?”
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“WHAT?!?”
Why do we do this? We all want to be heard. And that just might be the problem. We want to be heard instead of communicating. Many times when I holler down to the boys it is to tell them it is time for dinner, or it is time to leave for school. Even with this simple of a moment, I am concerned with being heard. That mindset causes me to repeat myself until I get frustrated.
When we communicate we have to consider the other person. Who they are. What they might think or feel. Where they are. When I keep a communicating mindset with my boys I might still holler from the top of the stairs but when they don’t answer I walk down the stairs to where they are. Situation is frustration free. Plus, we are all sitting at the table in less time than if I just stood there yelling until I finally go downstairs to find them.
Sadly, I see us yelling from the stairs on Facebook, Twitter, and in the classroom. We are more concerned with being heard than communicating. We don’t even consider the other person’s existence much of the time. We holler, wondering why nobody hears us. We holler and wonder why we feel disconnected and alone. If we would have a mindset to communicate, we automatically start connecting with people because we have to consider them in how we talk. Be it our children, our friends, students, or followers on Twitter.
So, when you find yourself at the top of the stairs, frustrated, stop to consider walking down the stairs to talk with the person. I know it will make the difference in your connection with that person and you will know you were heard.
It is all Connected 