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Learning About Creativity & It's Importance In Life

10/30/2019

For this week's Positivity Project term about Creativity, I had to admit to myself and my students that this is (at first) was a rough one for me. You see, I don't really consider myself as a creative person. I do see, like most people, that I am a bigger critic with myself than any other person could ever be. So as I read and listened to the author that wrote "Creative Solutions To Life's Challenges" I got both views - one from the essay he wrote and then the other from the audio of him reading what he wrote. Frank Walker did a great job with this piece.

This helped me right away to see that I am more creative than I think I am. It got me thinking about my parents when I was growing up and how creative they were along with my family members at the time - grandparents, aunts & uncles, friends of my parents, etc. They all gave me lessons in creativity every day of my life it seems. Now that I am in my 50's I can say I'm more creative in things in my life, but not to the extent that they all were (from what I remembered) every day in their lives. Great lessons none-the less.

I also connected with the fact that I can't let labels that some may put on my on what I do for a living, limit me and my confidence. Like many things, I have a choice as to what I do and not do with taking in other people's opinions about just because I'm a teacher, that I do or don't have a lot of Creativity. All that I know is that the world needs the different amounts of creativity that everyone brings to the world from all different areas and we certainly can't go after things in our lives based upon other people's opinions.

This is a good piece of reading for you to check out - or listen to. It got me thinking out of my comfort zone, hope it does for you too.

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Perspective - 3 Short Stories To Help

10/29/2019

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Found 3 very short stories to help us see and think about having a little more Perspective in our lives. The 3 stories are HERE.

The first of these 3 stories is about "The Muddy Road" - 2 monks are walking and one stops to help a lady out of the mud. So he carries her to safety and puts her down and continues on his way. The other monk is worked up that he did that since they are not supposed to be around females, let alone touch one. The one who helped the lady mentions that he left her back there, why is he still worried about her? Carrying on a worry, burden, etc., does not good for our future. That enables us to keep having that one event cause us more problems than it originally did back when it happened. I know we need to learn from this mistake, maybe even remember some moments of it so we can learn and get better. I also try to let it go. I'm not always successful with that, but I know I need to.

The second story is titled "The Two Wolves" where a grandfather is telling the story to his grandson on how we all have 2 Wolves inside of us.. the good one and the bad one. The one that wins is the one we feed the most! The negative or positive voices we have... that's the key. We all battle with trying to do the right things in our life and we can be our own worst critic for sure. But it is shown over and over again which ever "voice" we let drive us, the one we "feed" the most is the one that will control our thoughts, etc. The key is WE have choice.

The final of the 3 stories is "The Farmer's Fortune" - so many things happen to this farmer and his son, and every time a neighbor says to him "that's too bad that happened..." or "isn't it fortunate that that happened...". The farmer responds the same each time... "perhaps" is all he says. He doesn't pile on in misery & complaining when things are not going well, nor does he get all fired up when things are great. He stays even keeled... no emotional swings or reactions... that's a great message for all of us. It's far more important as to what our reaction is compared to what actually happened to us. We never know the next door to open tomorrow no matter what we went through today.

This was a good and quick exercise to try. Click on the file link above and see what you can get out of these stories as far as perspective goes. Then let me know your thoughts. :-)

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Building Integrity - It's Worth The Effort!

10/24/2019

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This was a powerful assignment for my students and I to work on (even though mine is a little late in getting done). This article that I found "9 Tips To Help You Strengthen Your Integrity" - really gave some good things to digest and reflect on.

Here are a few that I connected with out of the 9 points:

#1 - Keep Your Promises: This is one that when I first read it, I knew right away it was one for me to work on. I work hard to keep my promises to others - I am not always successful, but I sure do try. The one I usually let down is ME! Wow do I have to work on this!! I'm actually used to disappointing myself. I set out to do things and I choose to do other things. Then later, I'll do more damage by beating myself up about it. That's a double whammy so to speak from one failure.

#5 - Examine how you react in knee-jerk situations: This again - powerful reflections here for me - I need to watch and catch earlier how I react to things as they occur. Especially with my wife and kids. When things first happen - good or bad, I tend to have my emotional reaction and then reflecting on it later. I need to catch it in the moment and watch the way react... heck, I need to change my reaction to that of being a more positive one. When it's my negative reaction added to the negative or bad event, you can see how that does not make anything better. It usually only makes things worse. :-(

#6 Polish your communication skills - This one is reminding us that it never stops! We never become perfect at communicating. Wait - What??? Even with all this great technology that so many people think does everything for us?? Yeppers! It is being found now in so many of these "soft skills" are not soft at all. They are becoming more valuable then ever before. So this is one of the main ones (heck, all of them really) that really pays to work on. All. The. Time!

#8 Avoid people who lack integrity - This is a biggie! We are who we hang out with. Those people that we hang out with - we let them affect us, mainly our thinking! Those people that lack integrity affect those around them with the choices / decisions they make. Their actions affect us. Then we have to work twice as hard to overcome their poor decisions and the poor decisions we make too. That is not worth it at all.

The other points are important too - I could have plenty to say (or write) about them too. Check out the article for yourself, and like I said, this is all worth putting in the extra effort in improving in all of these areas.

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Being Present - A Story From A Plane Crash

10/10/2019

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What a story - one that most people have heard about the incident itself, but not the first hand account that Ric Elias shares. It was a perfect fit with our Positivity Project thought for the week - "Being Present & Giving Others My Attention."

His story was all about being on the flight that crashed in the Hudson River in New York City on January 15, 2009. He brings up some very emotional and valuable lessons here about life and what is really important. It reminds us that things can change in the blink of an eye and then depending on the circumstances, we can either do something about what's going on or like in his story, he couldn't.

He reminds us that EGO is a problem and it's one that we have to get over in our lives and the sooner the better. More things matter than ourselves, that's for sure. The fact that he quickly thought of all the things he didn't get a chance to do = a lesson for us not to put things off. I personally loved the wine example that he is not going to save another bottle for sometime later, if there are good people around today to share it with.

We learn so many lessons from tragedies that we would hope they stick with us, but usually those lessons blow by in the wind. A key is the lessons we can learn from HIS story without us having to go through it ourselves. Again, the power of a story is huge. Lessons we can learn at someone else's expense.

I plan on always looking to do things that mean more to me rather than tasks that I "have to do" or am "expected to do" from society, etc. Truthfully, I have put off so many things in my life and at my age, things I have been through personally in my life and stories like this and countless others that I've seen others go through - it's more than time to keep making changes in order to do those things that I need and want to make. ]

Check out the video HERE. Then think about some of the things he says. Role play and empathize if that was you in his seat and how would this experience change you and the rest of your life??

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EQ - It's A Difference Maker

10/1/2019

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Found a great article that I had to share with my students on the importance on having Emotional Intelligence in our lives in order to succeed. Check out the article HERE. It got me thinking about a book that I read years ago called.."The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book" by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves. It's one that I had to pull out of one of my bags as I put it in there with great intent to read it this past summer... needless to say I did not but I still need to read this again.

EQ is something that all of us can work on to get better at. It has so much to do with all the important areas of life - check out this picture that is a great indicator:

Looking at these "leaves", I can see so many of them that (at least to me - my opinion) that they simply blow having a large IQ, out of the water!! Now again, don't get me wrong as I know having a great IQ is not horrible. But the way I see it, the things on this "tree" are just a lot more meaningful in & throughout life that I'd take these things first. It's a good thing too, since I know my IQ is not off the charts anywhere.

Emotional Intelligence predicts performance, so it certainly seems like a good thing to work on and try to improve throughout our lifetime. As I sit here and think about my students (some, maybe not all of them) and the opportunity they have for their lives to improve them, now, at their age... wow I am just blown away comparing it to my timeline of knowing about this after the age of 35 (at least!)

This brings a HUGE connection to our term this week from our Positivity Project - Open Mindedness. It's so powerful to be able to take some new ideas and come up with ways of improving ourselves. So the backend of this idea of my students getting exposed to these skills now at their young ages compared to me where it was later in life, and think of all the people who never take a venture out to learn about EQ or even improving their own EQ. WOW! I think we all know plenty of people who need to work on improving this in their lives, but choose to ignore it or even let their negative thinking get in the way of ever even trying. I know that I do not want to be one of those people who won't ever look at this "tree" above and not want to try and get better in all of those "leaves".

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Learning About Creativity & It's Importance In Life

Perspective - 3 Short Stories To Help

Building Integrity - It's Worth The Effort!

Being Present - A Story From A Plane Crash

EQ - It's A Difference Maker

Coach John Daly

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