Ambition

There is nothing inherently wrong with ambition.

But there needs to be balance.

Ambition can lead to an imbalance in priorities.

Epictetus said that everything in life has two handles, one where it can be lifted easily and one where it can’t. How we view an event determines which handle we pick up.

One handle of ambition can drive us to meet or exceed our potential.

The other handle of ambition can drive us to make work our only priority and neglect everything else.

Which handle we choose is based on how we view ambition.

“Work is what horses die of. Everybody should know that.” -Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Drive to accomplish professional goals is important.

But they have to be the right goals for you at the right time.

Sometimes the quest for a title leads you to take a job that doesn’t fit your skills.

Once you have the job and all the benefits that come with it you have a hard time realizing you are unhappy or in over our head.

Life is about balance.

Work-life balance is not a static prospect. It doesn’t always come in equal parts work and equal parts life.

In different seasons of life one may need to outweigh the other.

So which handle to grab will change from one season to the next.

We have to make sure we are grabbing life by the proper handle at the proper time.

Faith

Faith is knowing that you will get to your destination even if you don’t know how you will get there.

Faith is believing in yourself even when no one else does.

Faith is fighting every day even when it is dark and scary.

It is not easy.

You will want to give up.

You may have a hard time getting out of bed.

All you can do is take it one moment at a time.

Put one foot in front of the other.

And keep going.

Drawing

When I was a kid I loved to draw and paint. I took art lessons for several years.

I’m no Picasso, but I enjoyed it.

I eventually stopped. I guess I got involved in other things that in my mind became more important.

Recently my parents sent me a sketchbook and a drawing kit.

When I sat down to draw I fell in love all over again.

When I draw, I lose myself in it. Whatever may be troubling me fades into the background, and my mind becomes more peaceful.

The same thing happens when I write.

All my troubles fade from my consciousness.

It is about being present. It easier to be present when you are doing something you love.

We all must learn to be present in everything we do.

Drawing and writing are my training grounds for presence.

I’m no expert in presence. I can find a million reasons not to draw and write or to be distracted from the task at hand.

I’m getting better. I’m a work in progress.

I would recommend you find something you can lose yourself in to train your mind to be present.

Your whole life will benefit.

Moving Forward

Moving forward requires a solid taste of reality.

You will never move forward if you still think that what is gone will come back.

You have to let go of the past.

“When you let go of what you are, you become what you might be.” – The Daily Coach, Notes from an Elder newsletter

You have to be present.

You have to set new goals for the future.

You have to put one foot in front of the other and make the life that you want.

You can’t listen to the naysayers and those that don’t want you to succeed.

You have to listen to that little voice inside you that says to keep going. You have to believe.

You have to remember you are 100% getting through bad days.

It may not be the life you thought you would have but it can be the life that you never imagined.

It will not be easy. It may be scary. But it can be possible if you really believe.

Put your head down and get to work.

Happy Father’s Day

Being a father is the most important job I have.

It is not always the easy.

It is hard to lead by example.

The thing you have to remember is that you don’t have to be perfect.

Your children learn just as much from your mistakes as they do from your victories.

From your mistakes, they need to learn to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and keep trying.

From your victories they need to learn how to win with humility and not let it go to their heads.

Whether they learn either lesson is up to you and how you handle yourself.

My favorite title in the world is Dad. Love you, Anna and Brendon.

One Day At A Time

That is all we have.

Honestly, we only have this moment.

As each moment ends it becomes our past. There is nothing we can do to change it.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan for the future. We should.

We just need to understand that those plans may not turn out how we hoped.

When life throws you a curve, you have to adjust and make the best of the situation.

You do that one moment at a time. One day at a time.

Hope v. Hopelessness

I have been a Christian all of my life. I began to study Stoicism 3 years ago. In the last two months I have begun study Buddhism.

Three traditions founded on different ideals but all following similar universal truths.

Hope – a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. Oxford Languages

Hopelessness – a feeling or state of despair. Oxford Languages

It would seem obvious that no one would want hopelessness and everyone would want hope.

But is it so obvious?

Christians define hope as the belief that God will deliver what he has promised, everlasting life.

“We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s live has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:3-5

As seen in the above Scripture hope is not easy. It is built on suffering and endurance.

Hope is not focused on worldly issues. We must turn over whatever happens to us to God in the hope of everlasting life

Buddhists define hopelessness as wanting nothing other than what is happening in the present moment.

“But if we totally experience hopelessness, giving up all hope of alternatives to the present moment, we can have a joyful relationship with our lives, an honest, direct relationship, one that no longer ignores the reality of impermanence and death.” – Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart

Hopelessness is not about despair. It is about being present and not wishing that things turned out differently.

It is about focusing on what is in front of you with an openness to the possibilities.

Stoicism tells us to focus on what we can control.

We control our emotions and our reactions. We don’t control what happens to us.

When looking at these three ideals, I feel the key is to have hope that tomorrow will be better than today. To live with hopelessness that this moment is what your life was meant to be no matter what is happening. To do this, we need to focus on what we can control and not get caught up in what has happened to us.

Anger is a Gift

“Anger is a gift.” – Rage Against the Machine, Bombtrack, rage against the machine

As a Stoic you are not supposed to feel anger. That is the biggest misconception about Stoicism, with a big S, compared to stoic, with a little s.

stoic – not affected by or showing passion or feeling – Miriam-Webster definition

Stoic philosophers did not believe that you should not feel emotions. They believed that you should be in control of your emotions at all times.

You can feel anger, love, and sadness. Every emotion you have, at any time.

But then what?

“That it’s not what they do that bothers us: that’s a problem for their minds, not ours. It’s our misperceptions. Discard them. Be willing to give up thinking of this as a catastrophe…and your anger is gone.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 11.18.vii

You have to domesticate those emotions. You can not let other’s actions rule your response. You have to use your emotions to your advantage.

Use any emotion, especially anger, to get better, to work harder, to learn more about yourself.

Rage is the dangerous emotion. Rage is out of control. Rage will make the situation worse.

Anger can be used to your advantage if you separate it from the situation.

Sometimes people need to know you are angry. It gets their attention, but it must be used in a measured way.

Anger can get your point across. It can drive you to improve.

Anger is a gift.

Most important Job

“If the essence of the good lies within us, then there is no place for jealousy or envy, and you will not care about being a general, a senator or a consul – only about being free. And the way to be free is to look down on externals.” – Epictetus, Enchidrion, Chapter 19

The most important job is the one you have right now.

That means doing the best job you can every day.

“I am part of a world controlled by nature…So by keeping in mind the whole I form a part of, I’ll accept whatever happens.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.6

Remember, you are just a spoke in the wheel, a bit player in the drama.

Your job is to play that part to the best of your ability.

Not worrying about when, where, or how the next opportunity will come along.

“‘Well what will my profession in the community be?’ Whatever position you are equipped to fill, so long as you preserve the man of trust and integrity.” – Epictetus, Enchidrion, Book 24.4

You will find your profession.

It is important to have ambition, to want more for yourself.

But to get there, you have to be good here.

If you do your best work now, that next opportunity will come.

Anger

I’m no raving lunatic. Don’t get me wrong. Especially in a professional setting I can hold it together. At some point though I can feel IT overtaking me. Once that happens I find it difficult to dial it back.

I don’t know when IT is going to happen. IT just happens. I wouldn’t say there is some special trigger. It can be anything. It can be an innocent comment that just hits me the wrong way.

Unfortunately at that moment I am prone to saying things that I regret. Then, after it’s all over, the guilt washes over me.

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within your control. And some things are not.” – Epictetus

How do I do better in the moment between stimulus and response? How do I stop anger from taking over me? Or how do I get better at controlling my anger and using it to my advantage?

Anger is an emotion like any other emotion. It is neither good nor bad. It can be unhealthy. It can also be unhealthy to hold it back and not express it. Anger has its place just like every other emotion.

“If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.” – Epictetus

On The Daily Stoic podcast, Ryan Holliday interviewed the author Robert Greene. One of the topics they discussed was harnessing your anger.

Ryan Holliday used the example of coaches who get angry to invigorate their team through a difficult time in a game or season. As a former coach I have seen this done very well, and I have seen it done very poorly.

Robert Greene discussed how whether it goes well or poorly depends on if the coach has self-control and self-awareness. Can they step back and analyze their anger? Can they use it strategically to get the results they are after?

He goes on to say that only those people, that can pause in the moment between stimulus and response to analyze their emotions, are able to get the results they want. Only those that can channel their anger productively after analyzing why they’re angry will get the results they are after.

I am by no means there yet. However this is one of the things that I am really working on. I am sure if you ask my family, friends, and colleagues they may say it is not going so well, but I am a work in progress.

I must be more cognizant of the space between stimulus and response. Not everything needs an immediate reaction. I need to take the time to analyze my anger to see if it is justified and then if it is use it productively.

You can’t force children to learn.

“[Y]ou can’t force kids to learn. You can only inspire them to do so.” – David Perrell, Monday Musings, 8/17/20

Why do we continue to try to force children to learn?

We can blame state testing, but that is a cop out. It’s been going on since I was in HS. I grew up in an era where the only high stakes testing was the SAT.

I grew up hating English class. I disliked reading and writing. I came to realize that I hated reading and writing what the teacher wanted me to read and write.

I remember only one project in HS English. We had to do a poetry study. We could choose anyone we wanted. I chose Jim Morrison, partly out of being a smart ass. “I’m going to show her. No stuffy poets for me.” But also because I love music. There is not a day in my life that I don’t listen to music for at least 1 to 2 hours.

The book I used was Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison. What I realized during the project was that I really didn’t hate poetry. I hated the poets that we were required to read.

It was English for me, but it is another subject for someone else. The point is that unless we try to get students personally involved in the content they will shut us out in subjects that they don’t like.

Personalizing your course content is not easy. It requires much more planning, and is much more difficult to execute. But isn’t the payoff worth it?

We all feel our content is important, and it is. We all get upset when students blow off our work. If we want students to work within our content areas we have to help them see the usefulness of what we teach.

It is important that students learn how to think differently. Tackling a problem scientifically is different that tackling it mathematically or historically. The problems aren’t getting easier so being able to approach them from many different angles will be important to solving them.

So if students blow off your class because they are not interested then how are you helping them develop their problem solving skills?

Empowerment

All three of the ideas I have spoken about in my last three blog posts, passion, inquiry, and understanding, have brought me to this final idea of empowerment. Wouldn’t now be the right time to empower teachers and students to remake education into what it could and should be?

You might say: Now? The right time? With all the uncertainty? Well there never is a right time. We always wait until the right time, but it never comes. We push things off because it’s not the right time, and then guess what nothing ever happens. But isn’t now as good a time as any?

Uncertainty is the rule, not the exception. It’s how we respond to the uncertainty that matters. That is a major tenet of Stoicism. We need to make teachers and students feel safe in taking risks in adjusting their teaching and learning in response to this uncertainty.

Whether we are in schools or in remote learning, the only people who really know what is going on in any classroom are the teacher and the students. Shouldn’t we empower them to make the decisions that are best for them?

We must allow them to use their passions to make classrooms and learning relevant. Empower them to look at curriculum through their lens and make adjustments that personalize the learning to them.

“Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress; working hard for something we love is called passion.” – Simon Sinek via The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros

We also must encourage our teachers and students to question everything. Powerful questions are what drives innovation in any industry. Teachers and students should be asking questions that further their own teaching and learning. They are at the ground level of what can be done to make our classrooms, either virtual or in person, better.

“You don’t have to hold a position of authority to ask a powerful question.” – Polly Le Barre via A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger

If teachers and students are encouraged to us their passions and ask their own questions, they will develop a deeper understanding of whatever they are studying. They can use that understanding to push education forward toward what we envision: equity in opportunities for all children. They will also be happier in the process. What will you do this year to empower teachers and students to make education better?

“I encourage you to commit to empowering the people you serve to be part of the process of finding and solving problems.” – George Couros, The Innovator’s Mindset

Passion

I have a son, Brendon. Brendon is a curious kid and has been passionate about various things in his life. First it was the planets, then the Presidents, now it is football, specifically the NFL. He is also your typical iGen kid who only watches the occasional TV show but can’t get enough of YouTube.

Recently he has started to combine these two interests. He has created a YouTube channel where he looks at football from his own unique perspective. Below is a link to his video looking at the epic game between Miami and San Diego in 1982:

I realize that he is my son, but I was extremely impressed by the professional appearance of this video, and his knowledge of the historical significance of this game or the fact this game even existed, since it was before he was born. I think that the most impressive thing is that he did it all on his own. He didn’t learn it at school, and he certainly didn’t learn it from me.

What I am getting at is the power of passion to motivate people to learn. He spent his own time to find the programs and then to learn how to use them. He then markets himself on various social media, all on his own.

What could we get out of our students in school if we tapped into their passions? I am certain we wouldn’t hear, “Why do we have to learn this?” When we are self-motivated learning isn’t a chore. As a matter of fact we don’t even think about the fact that we are learning.

As the Director of Science and Engineering Technology, I helped create the STEM Academy. This Academy allows student who are passionate about STEM to follow those passions. Students can pick between science, engineering, mathematics, and computer science.

In their freshman and sophomore years, our teachers provide them a broad experience in STEM to refine their passions. In their junior year they refine these passions into a two-year research project. In their senior year, we will help them find an internship with a local business or research facility that will help them use their skills and passions in real world scenarios.

The STEM Academy is not for everyone. It is for those who have a passion for STEM. We do not have minimum grade requirements to enter. The only thing a student needs is to show us their passion for STEM in an essay that is included in their application. Students can come in and out of the program as their passions change. We want students who want to be there.

It is my hope that now that I have moved into a district office position that I can help create more of these academies using our STEM Academy template. I would love to see students who are passionate about the Humanities, the Arts, Business, Physical Education, etc. be able to follow those passions as well. What a glorious day it will be when students walk into school excited about learning because they care about the curriculum because the curriculum cares about them.