My Self Awareness

Recently I got an email from Angela Maiers who encouraged her readers to do this exercise,

“One of my absolute favorite exercises to help bring the awareness of our talents to the forefront and to set us free of their self-imposed limitations is called “Give Me 10”

1. We are going to share how you feel, how you see others and ourselves is in the form of a poem.

a. Write these two words on your paper: I AM…
b. There are no rules except that each stanza and statement will begin with “I am…”
c. Write ten "I am" statements on your paper
d. Statements can be positive, negative, or neutral, but they should be true.

2. Hold a mirror and say those ten statements to yourself. Give me ten qualities of YOU and what makes you unique!”

Angela is such an inspiration to so many people that I had to share this exercise with you. I am going to give it a try and I hope that you do too.

I AM a good teacher.

I AM happy when I can help others.

I AM a person who loves learning.

I AM able to do many things that I want to do.

I AM happy with my life.

I AM lucky to have people who love me.

I AM a spinner of yarn and I use it to knit things.

I AM a person who loves nature.

I AM a shy person when I’m in a group.

I AM a person who enjoys being around other people.

This was a fun activity and it really had me thinking about what I am. I wrote some statements and then realized that they weren’t really what I wanted to say about myself. I don’t think we stop to reflect on this enough and we should encourage our students to do this. It might be a fun lesson to do at the beginning and the end of the year to see if our views of ourselves have changed.

Give this a try and see how you do. Share your results on Twitter with @angelamaiers.

Photo by Andre Mouton on Unsplash

Tell Me A Story

In The repetition of stories from Seth Godin's Blog , Seth Godin shares,

“And the same approach works for a feeling of optimism and possibility. Repeating stories (to ourselves and others) about good fortune and generosity makes those stories more powerful.”

I’ve said this opinion many times but I think it bears repeating. We focus too much on negativism in society and not enough time sharing the positive stories. Negative stories seem to promote depression, intolerance, and sometimes even violence. The media tends to promote this especially because negativism sells.

I’m not saying that we should paint the world as a nice pretty place all the time, but we should be realistic. There is probably a positive story for every negative story told.

I think so many of my students struggle because they have told themselves a negative story to themselves so many times that they start believing it. It starts with peers ridiculing them when they struggle. Maybe an adult has suggested that they were lazy or not putting enough effort in to explain why the student is struggling. Parents might complain and reinforce the teacher’s opinion.  When this story is constantly repeated to the student, they start believing it when they may actually have a legitimate reason for their struggle.

I feel it is my job to give my students a new story. I want them to hear a story about success and happiness. I want them to see that it is possible for them to overcome the obstacles in their life and that they are not lazy or incompetent. I want them to see that there are many different ways to conquer the “monsters” that seem to keep them from reaching their goals and that I am here to help them. I will walk beside them in their struggles and be there to support them when they need it.

At first, they are reluctant to believe this story because they have been tricked too many times by the hope for success. I have to show them that I mean what I say and I convince them to take the risk in trusting me. Little by little, I show them that they can be successful and with each positive step, they are rewriting the stories in their minds. I remind them of their success stories when they get discouraged. Eventually, they will have more recent success stories than past failure stories and can progress more easily.

This may be a slow process but I think it is possible to rewrite the stories we tell ourselves. We owe it to ourselves to write a story of success for ourselves and to make it happen. We owe it to our students to help them make their stories happen and learn how to make new stories for themselves.

Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash

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Selfish Acts Bug Me

Definition of Selfish: according to Merriam-Webster -  “: concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others”

I’m surprised how many people I come across every day that seems to be so selfish and self-centered! This makes me tend to work hard at trying hard to be the opposite. I think by being aware of actions that bug me, I can try not to do the same things. Here are some examples that really bug me.

1.     People who walk in the middle of an aisle in a parking lot and block the car trying to drive through.

2.     People who walk through a door and don’t hold it for the person behind them. 

3.     People who start entering an elevator before letting people get out.

4.     Groups that will block an entire sidewalk and walk slowly so no one else can pass.

5.     People that purposely take up 2 parking places with their car.

6.     People who use their phones for long conversations in restaurants.

7.     These same people who speak very loudly during these long conversations.

8.     People who block traffic waiting for that “perfect” parking place up close to the store’s door when there is an empty space just 2 cars past it.

9.     People at a buffet who block the food while they stand there and try to make a decision what to eat.

10.  People at a buffet who can’t seem to put enough on their plate and stack it a mile high! (Do they not realize that they can always come back for more?)

11.  People who don’t want to stand in line and cut in front of other people. (I’m always amazed at how many people do this!)

12.  People who see a sign that a lane is closed but insist on driving in that lane until the last minute. Then they cut in the line of traffic because they didn’t want to get in the back of the line.

13.  People who cut you off on the interstate because they are in a hurry and want to get in the fastest lane. They risk everyone’s lives just to get a couple of cars ahead of where they were.

14.  People who text and drive. (This is just stupid as well as selfish!)

I think this would be a great discussion with my students. Maybe no one is making them aware that these actions are selfish or bad manners. The more people are made aware of how people perceive their actions, they might change.

What selfish actions bug you? Please share.

3 Aspirational Words

In Three Words to Have More Success in The Classroom and in Life from Success In the Classroom, Sam asks,

“What are your three aspirational words?”

I really had to think about this and it was harder than I thought it would be. I finally came up with my 3 words: Positive, Happy, Inspirational.

Positive:

I want to start out each day being positive and optimistic. I think I can control how I see my life around me and if I see it as negative, it will be negative. If I am positive and look for the good things around me, my life will go smoother and I will be able to handle any obstacles that come my way. I will have a better frame of mind to problem solve and problems if I’m looking at the positives than the negatives.

Happy:

I want others to see me as a happy person. I like to smile and laugh. I see too many people with frowns on their face and they look so unhappy. I don’t want to be around unhappy people and I would not want people to avoid me. I think people like to be around me because I’m a relatively happy person.

Inspiration:

I hope by writing this blog about my classroom experiences, travel experiences, and opinions, that I can be an inspiration to others. I hope that I make people think about how they feel about different topics. When I write and opinion, I don’t want people to just agree with me but would rather open up a dialogue for why they would disagree with me. When they read about my travels, I hope it makes others want to visit the same places I’ve been and that it helps them with their planning. When I write about my classroom experiences, I hope that it helps teachers not make the same mistakes that I have in the classroom and that their experiences can be successful. 

Now, I have to ask you, what are three aspirational words that describe yourself?