Trust

 

In the last couple of weeks, people have asked me how do you find your critical friends.  Who do you know to trust?  When I worked in the business world our company slogan was. “It is the 1,000 little things that make us great” I think it is the same thing about trust, it is the little things that earn trust.

My first day at my present school I was walking down the hall going to my class.  A teacher stopped me and said, “You are going to have a great experience here, let me know what I can do to help you”.  That opening comment started a friendship that to this day is built on trust and mutual respect.

John Gottman (gottman), a psychologist who studies relationships, call these small moments’ sliding door moments.  They are these everyday opportunities in which you can build or lose trust.  I remember when I first heard about sliding door moments I realized how many times things slip away not from being malicious but from being mindless.

I remember one day I started reviews with students at 7:00 AM.  During my off period and lunch, students were in my room for help, and making up some work.  When I was done helping the last student I realized that I had about five minutes to relax before my next class and a review session after school.  As I sat down to relax a student came up to me and asked, “Can you grade my free response now?”

My first response was no.  When I saw the look on her face when the no came out of my mouth I realized I had made a big mistake.  I quickly said, “come back I will grade the free response with you” I will never forget the look on her face as she came back to my desk.  Her face showed me that I made a remarkable recovery and saved this sliding door moment.

Now could I have rationalized that I had been teaching all day?  Of course, nobody would have argued that I did not deserve that five minute break to myself.  However it is these micro moments in which I truly believe that trust is built or broken.  I had built a better relationship with a student and that was certainly worth the five minutes of my free time.

Trust is also never built upon gossip.  While most people love to pass along gossip to each other, friendships that are built upon gossip are very rarely ones of trust.  You cannot help but wonder what do these people say about me when I am not around?  How can I trust someone who reveals others secrets so freely?

Do the big things matter, yes they do.  I have some friends who I will say, this stays in the vault.  Which means what we just discussed stays between us.  Those friends have had many sliding door moments in which they have earned my trust so it is easy for me to become vulnerable with them.

I will close with a quote from Henry Stimson, Secretary of War under FDR, Trust takes years to build, seconds to lose and forever to repair” Make the most of those sliding door moments.

 

As always your comments and thoughts are appreciated.

Stress

In talking with my students, I realized how stressful their senior year can be.  They start their year crafting their college essays, then begin the application process, then the waiting game of do I get in or not, then some rejections, and then where do I go?  During this time, they also are thinking about their grades, what do I wear to prom?  Whom am I going with?  And of course, how am I going to ask them?  With all that in mind I thought I would just put together some thoughts on stress.

They did a study of 30,000 adults across the United States.  They asked them two questions.

1.      How would you rate the amount of stress you have in your life?

2.      Do you think stress is good or bad for you?

The bad news is that 43% of these adults died within the eight-year period that this group was followed.  What they found out however, is that everyone who died thought that stress was bad for them.  That people with high stress were healthy if they thought stress was good for them.  So, the fact is, that it is not stress that kills you, but the fact that you think that stress is bad for you that kills you.

Now think for a second what stresses you out?  I would say my family (worried about them) my job, my friends and my students (also worried about them).  Think for a second if you wiped out all the things that stress you out you would have a pretty empty life.  So, to have a fulfilling life we need stress in it.  Why not make it our friend.

Now often when you are about to take an exam, teachers will tell you to relax and not to worry.  Our intentions are good since we want all our students to be successful.  In another research project they took college students and split them into two groups.  The control group was told to relax before the test and take deep breathes.  The experimental group was told

               That stress is just showing you that you are excited

               That stress is allowing more oxygen to go to your brain to help you during the test

               That stress is an energizer to help you

               Lastly that research shows that students who feel stress will perform well.

When the results came back the students in the experimental group outperformed the students who were told to relax.  That feeling stress before the test was used by the experimental group to enhance performance.  The same way athletes use the excitement of a big game to enhance their performance.  This positive mindset about stress probably will carry over into other stressful events such as job interviews, speeches etc.

How do you change your mind set about stress?  First thing is to acknowledge the event that might be causing you stress.  Then I try to think about how the stress is just preparing me for the event that is occurring.  That my mind and body are just getting ready so that I can handle the event.  Secondly, try to help someone else during these times.  While this is often difficult to do when you feel overwhelmed, I have found being compassionate during these times energizes my body.  Lastly, just continue to talk and think that stress is good for you.

Hope this helps.  As always truly appreciate your thoughts and your feedback

Step into the arena

Below is a quote from Teddy Roosevelt.    

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

What prevents many people from stepping into the arena is fear and self-doubt.  How many great ideas, how many great questions go unheard because people are scared?   While it would be great to promise you that nobody is going to judge you, the truth is that there will always be the critics.  What we need to do is tune out the people who criticize us but are too scared to get into the arena themselves.

The second critic we would need to shut out is ourselves.  Many of us are our own worst critics which often prevents us from the triumphs of high achievement.  What we must realize is that most often what we are trying to accomplish is bigger than us.  That we will make errors along the way but if we continue to follow our passion we will love the journey.

This is not to say that we do not need constructive criticism. I send these essays to two people each week before I publish because I trust that their feedback will make the essay better.  We all need those critical friends who will tell us when we are going down the wrong path, who will pick us up when we fall (we all fall).  What I have found is those who are successful fall at a six and bounce back like a ten.  What we do not need is those people who crush dreams or ideas because they themselves are too scared to enter the arena.

I once worked with a boss who told me “if I am not thinking about firing you every 90 days I am going to fire you” At first this seems like a crazy statement which would increase fear.  However, what my boss wanted was for me to push the envelope so far that it made him uncomfortable.  To take risks because he realized that you could not have a great company if you were doing the norm.

What made my boss special is that he celebrated failures and those who took risks. As you might suspect many successes came out of those failures.  It developed a thought process of if it is not broken break it.  That change is difficult but almost always needed.

So, I will leave you with some questions you can ask yourself as you try to change your mindset to be more comfortable entering the arena.  What did you disagree with today?  What did you learn from somebody who disagreed with you?  What have you failed at recently?  Is there another way to solve that problem?

Look forward to seeing you in the arena.

As usual your feedback and comments are always wanted.

Student walkout

                                                            Student Walkout

I wanted to wait a couple of weeks before I addressed this topic.  Time allows me to gain some perspective over the event.  In our school a group of students decided to organize and lead the student walkout.  They met once a week in person while communicating electronically throughout the week.  They met with the principal to keep him informed and everything seemed to be going smoothly.

The Friday before the walkout, administrators and our SRO (school police officer) started pulling students out of class to talk with them.  For some of the student leaders, this was 90 minutes of interrogation which none of them were used to.  At the end of the day they were told that they could not communicate with students through our traditional school platforms of announcements and homerooms. 

When I heard this at first, I was extremely upset.  Why was the administration not more supportive?  How can anyone not be supportive of non-violence in schools?  Why is not every teachers, administrator and student walking out together in protest of school violence?

Now with some perspective, I am glad that every student did not walk out of the building.  There were adult cynics who were claiming that students were just walking out to get out of class.  The fact that many students stayed in the building showed that the students who left were just leaving to support a cause they believed passionately about.  So, by everyone not leaving the students proved the adult cynics wrong.  That students are not about missing class but standing up for what they believe in.

Secondly, it was very impressive to see that the students who left, did not put any pressure on the students who stayed. The students who stayed did not pressure those who were leaving to stay in school.  While there were opposing arguments, both sides showed great respect for each other something our adult politicians could learn from.  In one of my classes we discussed the walkout and again both sides argued passionately to support their side of the argument but listen intently to the opposing viewpoints.

  If the school stood behind the student leaders, if everyone walked out together, it would have seemed way too easy.  The truth is that making real change in the world is difficult and that the student leaders were forced to face obstacles thrown at them from different directions was good.  It forced them to think, was this a cool thing to do or is this really something I am passionate about doing.  It made them realize that making change in the world is a difficult thing to do and no matter how right you think you are there are always going to be those who pushback.

At the end of the day I realize that you need to give things time before you make judgements.  That things worked out for the best because there was opposition which allowed all of us an opportunity to learn.  I now feel more optimistic about our country than ever before since I know that our students will play an active role in the process

Freedom

                                               

  I am an economics teacher so I thought I might discuss some real-world implications tied to salary.  When I was working with a corporation, one of my rules was to live two levels below my salary.  What I mean by that is when I was a supervisor of multiple stores I lived off the salary of being a manager of one store. 

Why would I do that?  My thought was that if I was fired I could always go work for another company and get a job two levels below the position I had.  That it allowed me to walk away from the job if I was asked to do something that I did not think was ethical.  It also was a way to make sure that I was doing the job because I loved it not because I was making so much money.

I remember when our owner came back to run the day to day business.  He came back with a strong theory that he was going to cultivate a family atmosphere inside the company and wanted to also make our 15” pizza into a 16” family pizza.  He thought the bigger pizza would feed the family better and work well with his family theme.

My first thought was that no customer was going to be able to tell the difference between the two different pizza sizes.  So that the customer was not going to think they were going to get more pizza and it was only going to cost us more money as we would put more sauce, cheese and items on the pizza.  Each week our owner would call me to ask how the rollout of the family pizza was doing in my region of the country.  This went on for about three weeks with me making up reasons why we did not roll it out, yet. 

Finally, one week the owner lost his patience with me and asked why I had not rolled out the bigger sized pizza.  When I explained my reasoning that I did not think the customer would notice and it would just cost us money, the owner hung up on me.  Never a good sign.  I had to make a business decision and the fact that I was not tied to my salary gave me the freedom to do that.

When the profit statements came in however, my region earned more money than the rest of the company.  My risk paid off.  When I reflect on that decision would of it been different if I needed this high paying job to pay off my bills?  Was it easier to be bold when you knew you could get a job at a lower salary?

To get outlier results you must do things differently than the norm.  I thought living below my means allowed me to make decisions with much less fear and freedom than my colleagues.  That the fact that I did neither worry about job security or wages freed up my mind to focus on solving the problems of the company.

One day I woke up and realized that I did not want to travel around the country anymore being a corporate executive.  I had lost the passion for the job.  So, because I was living below my means it was easy to walk away from this job and find my true passion which is teaching.  Never once as a teacher have I looked back and thought I wish I was still living that corporate life. The students I teach have filled my heart with joy, gratitude and passion to make the world a better place, which more than compensates for the difference in pay.

Love to hear your thoughts.

Empathy

                                                            Empathy

In our school we are trying to change the climate of our school so that every child feels that they have at least one adult in the building who cares about them.  As we push to be a more caring faculty we realize that we not only have to show empathy to the students but to each other. (empathy quick two minute video)

Empathy can be hard to do.  When people come to us with problems we tend to try to diminish the problem which does not truly help.  Sometimes nothing can make it better except for a person listening, taking your perspective, not judging you and connecting with you.  There are a couple of examples that happened  this week that really showcase empathy in action and how it can make a difference.

On a personal note I was having a couple of bad days.  As happens with me at times, I take this out on people who had no impact on why I was feeling down.  I have some people in my life which I call my critical friends.  They are the people who in my life will point out when I am not living my values.   When my friend pointed this out to me, I totally agreed and apologized for my actions.  They made sure that I knew that they were not judging me but instead trying to help me.

The no judgement part was great to hear.  I tend to beat myself up about these types of things.   The next day as I was getting more back to myself, my friend made sure to see me during my off period.  Just checking in on me to see how my day was going and what they could do to make it better.  Again, there was no focus on my poor behavior but the focus was on, I am here if you need me, which brought a smile to my face.

Many times, we get so caught up in the behavior that we do not step back and think what causes this person to act this way?  Recently a student acted out of character.  Instead of talking to the student about the behavior and how unacceptable it was (which she already knew) we talked about what caused her to act that way.  As we continued to talk about what caused the behavior I could feel our bond getting stronger which is what she needed.  Someone to listen to her and understand what was really troubling her.  At the end she said, ‘I just needed to talk to someone”

 I truly recommend a critical friend, a person who you trust is going to have the strength to tell you when you are off track and who you know is only doing it for your benefit.  Changing habits is hard to do and what I have found is that the critical friend provides feedback which allows you to grow.  It is also sometimes easier to change when you are working together with someone else.

A national survey of students reported that 8-10 students said that they would be kinder if they knew just one adult in the building cared about them.  My guess is that is probably true of all of us, if we know someone cares about us it gets us to act with kindness and gratitude. 

I will leave you with this quote, “Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about” Be kind, to yourself and others, it really makes a difference.  Forgive yourself at night, and recommit to your goals in the morning.

Please feel free to comment below as I would love to have a conversation.  Here is a link to another video about empathy that you might enjoy.  health care

How my son taught me to be gritty

                                            

Angela Duckworth, the co-founder of the Character Lab, sends out a weekly message to all the people who work with her.  This weekly practice has inspired me to try to send out a weekly commentary to all my students.  Since Angela, is the leading psychologist on GRIT, I thought in her honor my first message would be about GRIT.

My youngest son has taught me so much about being gritty.  I remember when he played organized baseball for the first time.  It was the first time that you had a chance to compare him to other kids his own age.  He had a very weak arm, did not field well and really struggled at the plate.  As often happens at that age he was put in the outfield, where balls a rarely hit, and batted last.  Despite probably being the weakest player on the team he fell in love with the sport.

That summer we often went outside to play catch and when I was inside the house I would often hear the ball being thrown against the wall of our house.  He was determined to get better.  As the summer progressed we continued to move from simple catches, to pop flies, to catching fly balls over his shoulder.  By the end of the summer he progressed to being an average fielder.

As the years went on he loved both watching and playing the game of baseball.  He continued to improve athletically.   Watching so much baseball gave him the knowledge of the game which allowed him to make some plays that other kids could not.

This year as a freshman in high school he tried out for the ninth grade baseball team.  The school he attends is one of the baseball powers of the area and I truly wondered could he make the team.  He told me, “Dad you cannot make the team unless you try out for the team” The other day after practice he told me, “I made it”.

It would have been easy for him to give up and stop playing.  There were a lot of bumps along the way.  Times where he did not want to go to bat for fear of letting the team down.  Coaches who lost confidence in him.  Despite it all, he was not going to allow anyone to take away his love for the game.

There is a lot to learn from my son.  I think many of us underestimate how much we can improve if we really focus on improving.  How that if you continue to practice, listen to the feedback you get, use your strengths (in his case his mental knowledge of the game) to help improve your weaknesses (athletic ability) learn from your mistakes, you can really overcome a lack of talent.

That learning is not always easy or fun.  That many times learning is frustrating (try missing pitch after pitch).  It is often boring (try chasing 1,000 pop flies one summer) but that is how we get better.  It does not happen overnight and improvement is not linear.  It is working hard each day so that you level off at a higher spot.

So my challenge to you is pick something difficult for you and develop a plan to get better.  It does not have to be a school thing it can be anything.  I am working on generous assumptions.  Generous assumptions is just giving people the benefit of the doubt, not assuming the worst but the best.

I want these to be meaningful to you, so please give me feedback on how to make them better.  Have an awesome week.