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Live and Learn

If experience is the best teacher we have to be willing and able to be students. What I’ve learned about learning is that you have to be willing and able to do so. More than anything else your willingness to take the valleys you’ve been in and turn them to peaks depends on your openness to being taught by the teacher of experience.

If we go through a very difficult Transition in life and experience the tough times shouldn’t we take everything we can from this and live it forward? If we’re going to keep moving can’t we try to see something in ourselves that we didn’t see before as a result of being able to go through a difficult time? What does it mean to be a student? There are times we are just simply unable or unwilling to learn something. We don’t pick up the book. We don’t ask questions to explore. We don’t want to understand why something happens. We don’t want to think about it.

When it comes to ourselves I think we should try to become familiar. I believe there’s a great opportunity to expand and grow from what we have witnessed, lived, conquered, endured and survived. The next question is how can we take it, turn it and give back? I think it starts as a simple concept, a willingness to be a student of ourselves to the teacher of life experience

Sucess and Money

How do you measure success? Money is just sitting there, or gaining or losing ground. Money exists but to what degree do we place a value on money? There are times people define success as obtainment of money. But isn’t it true that we all need money, we all use money and we all spend money? Isn’t it possible that success has little to do with money?

Isn’t success the progression towards a worthy goal? A school age student trying to earn good grades so they can get rewarded or praised, are they chasing success? Are they living success? What about the young child who’s learning responsibility and understands that all the work they are putting into taking care of an animal, isn’t this a success? What about the young adult entering college who knows exactly what they want to do. They work hard every day towards the long-term goal, even though they don’t know if they will achieve the goal in the end, isn’t this person living in success?

What about the single parent who managed to start up their own business from home, giving up a high paying position that would have taken away time. Living in priority by valuing time with their children over money, aren’t they a success? You see I think we arrive at a truthful definition of success when we push money out of the picture

People can obtain money in many ways, random chance, or on a whim. Working long hours, working “hard”, or being handed the biggest check they ever saw. At times with little or no road through success. What about the person that has inherited millions of dollars? Are they a success? How many times do we hear of people of financial abundance that are still searching for something on the inside to garner purpose? Empty pockets and capital still have to look for success.

I have arrived at the conclusion that success is a movement inside. Success is taking the movement in the form of a goal, desire, vision, thought, plan, and moving it to action. Pursuing something bigger than the self. Pursuing as a journey. On the road. The accomplishment part of the aim or purpose set aside. Having direction followed by pursuit gives purpose. Success isn’t static and from what I can tell can be independent of cash, credit, savings, stocks and assets

Choice Words

You may have heard that our words contain a lot of potential. In my reading I landed on a chapter that really opened my eyes to this fact that it’s so important that we understand the opportunity we have with our words. The directional change, the compass, the potential that they bring. In this human experience where we can react, respond and relate to others around us I feel it’s so important that we take note of the “what” that is coming out of our mouth. If not for ourselves then absolutely for others.

This is a very important part of our ability to relate to others in this life. When talking to someone think about what an opportunity we have! Something uplifting or something destructive? Influential either way! There seems to opportunity to improve on this for us all.

It’s always exciting to me to discover something new or be reminded of something in a new way. It’s even more exciting when I realize that I have the opportunity to share this information to others. I have read about words in Proverbs and also read it in the Gospels. I found this reminder in James Chapter 3. Words have a great potential that shouldn’t be underestimated.

The High Road

It’s not always easy and it’s rarely automatic, but when the storm settles and perspective can be found .it’s a feeling of relief. Not only does it feel good, but it also speaks loudly on its own. The high road does not always mean you’re gonna get the last word. In fact it usually means you won’t. The high road is not always about respecting someone else as it is much about respecting yourself. Your peace over the need to be heard or in the middle of conflict. When you take the high road as you look around, you’ll notice it is not too crowded. But it is more peaceful, more evidenced by self control and always taking applications. There is no weakness in a genuine strength.

The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out. (Proverbs 17:14, ESV)

Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. (Proverbs 17:27, ESV)

Intelligence

When the subject of intelligence is in question the first thing people may think about is a combination of academic evaluators or maybe some brainy achievement. What if we looked closely at what makes anyone intelligent? What is the commonality among all people that are intelligent? Do these common traits exist at all? Webster says to be intelligent is to have or indicating a high or satisfactory degree of intelligence or mental capacity. Anyone else feel like there has to be more? Should we rely on grades? GPA? What about IQ tests or a high vocabulary? Webster has the additional definition of intelligence as revealing or reflecting good judgement and sound thought.

If we look for a commonality among people that appear intelligent what can we find? I think self-awareness, discipline and expression working together might give us a great start. Good grades.. at times, are the indication and extension of discipline aren’t they? Isn’t it true that you have intelligent people who don’t have good grades? How many disciplined people have bad grades? What are grades? Aren’t they someone else’s ratio of how many you got “right” divided by how many are possible? What does it take? Maybe effort, discipline and organization to name a few things. So it would seem to me that discipline and organization are factors to achieve good grades.

You may be sitting in the presence of intelligence and unique talents, but no one sees it or knows it. However, give them an outlet, a voice or platform and suddenly you discovered it through expression. Expression as an outlet. The great gifts, abilities no one knew you had.

Doesn’t it seem like the people we think are intelligent seem to have high levels of self-awareness? They know who they are, where they have been and most of all where they want to go. These people can tell you how they feel. The elements of self-awareness seem to foster more intelligence with thoughts and actions that lead to even more discovery of who they are.

We may ever arrive at an agreed upon definition of intelligence. I feel that we are off the mark when we only look at grades or even look at achievements to guide us in determining intelligence. I think that everyone is capable of intelligence or more intelligence and learning more. Some of the qualities that enable more intelligence could be self-awareness, discipline and expression. I have heard that reading and writing are indicators of intelligence, don’t they both seem to improve on the three skills I mention above? Maybe Webster was on to something with that printed dictionary.

Productivity with our time

I want to focus on increasing my productivity. I look for ways to set goals and work towards completing them. Daily goals to keep me accountable, and longer goals to keep me striving. I have gotten so used to chasing goals for years I seem to get bored when I don’t have any. However, even with goals I can easily fall into a drift mode where I begin to get busy with things that aren’t productive. I think it’s an important distinction to make between movement and achievement. Don’t mistake movement for achievement and give careful consideration to your time.

I am not suggesting that we should always be productive and not have any down time or leisure time. I am looking at those times when we intend to be productive but can’t get going, or fall off after a while. Being busy doesn’t always mean being productive. I think I first heard about this when someone said to be cautious of “majoring in minor things” with our time. This had me thinking about the difference between occupying our time and maximizing our time. You can wake up one day and realize that the same goals are still sitting there for a long time because you just got too busy or have been majoring in those minor things!

It’s easy to assume that because we’re busy we are accomplishing much. I recently discovered the concept of seeking momentum. We can lay out short term goals, long term goals and even have “SMART” goals. However, we need to start somewhere and those first steps are crucial in establishing direction and starting that momentum. When you don’t know where to start pick something and get that momentum going. When goals feel too big just get started with something related to your goals. Break them down into smaller steps so you can lean into the momentum. Here is to majoring in more major things while moving to maximize time and productivity!

Hello! Thanks for checking out my blog.

A little about myself- I consider writing a necessary outlet. I am a Christian. I am a teacher, a coach and a guidance counselor/school counselor. I have been blessed with different careers over the years including working in Healthcare as a nutrition educator, working in wellness coaching and football coaching, and I have been in Education for the past 12 years. I love the outdoors and sunshine.

I really enjoy working with the youth and am motivated to help them avoid some of the mistakes I have made. I am dedicated to the purpose of using my life experiences( good and bad), mistakes, talents and gifts that God has given me to try to help others. I love life skills and all things related to trying to become better! My writing is often geared towards observations or inspirations that help me. I hope they help others too! Be well