Personal+Growth

"Success does not recognize a mediocre approach." "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." Mahatma Gandhi Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Garr Reynolds (1) Never apologize for your enthusiasm, passion, or vision. (2) Never apologize for being inspired by another human being. (3) Seek out inspiration (don't wait for it). (4) Inspire others by sharing your talents and time. (5) And no matter what: Don't let the bozos grind you down, ever. The world needs more inspiration, not less. Speaking is not the only way to inspire—actions inspire too, often more—but leaders know how to inspire with both words and action. "...you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will." — Stephen King know better than to let this happen, I guess that is part of my frustration. It’s so easy to blame the folks that seem so dysfunctional, because in some cases, they ARE. It’s easy to blame the bureaucracy of schools because they ARE bureaucratic and slow to change. It’s easy to blame the administrators who manage rather than lead, because there are so many of them. All these problems and issues are very real. They exist on their own; but how I choose to deal with them is MY choice. I can be critical, angry, negative and discouraged; which creates conflict and closes doors; or I can choose to deal with these issues with an open heart, with understanding, self-confidence, and gratitude… which opens doors. Fortunately, I can choose to take a different path at any time. Yesterday, I began my leadership practices again. I believe it was the return to those practices that opened the way for me to write this reflection. Each new day, each moment, is an opportunity to make a different choice for myself. I think that that is extremely empowering and filled with hope. It’s very easy to get lost on our journey. Sometimes all we need to do is look in the mirror, the mirror that Deepak Chopra talked about… the mirror that is our life, for clues to locate ourselves in our travels. "Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.” We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them. - Alain de Botton  What have you had to unlearn?

E.M.Forster wrote: "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become. -Jung I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. Vincent Van Gogh When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines. -Walt Whitman

If you find out the truth about yourself and discover your own source, this is all that is required. -Ramana Maharshi [|Deep learning]

Am I a deep learner? or do I just dance on the surface? After thinking and reflecting on my personal learning styles, I think I am a deep learner. I am always seeking some connection between the present and past learning. Sometimes my connections are MY connections, and they don't make much or little sense to others. But, that's alright with me. Learning is personal. What I learn is as much affected by HOW I learn and WHY I choose to learn. As a deep learner, I am expanding my concept map - more connections, better meaning and understanding. I am a constructivist in that I construct knowledge. I learn from others, I learn in the company of others, I learn. Deep learning is networked learning. Deep learning is learning in a social context. Deep learning is collaborative. Deep learning seeks to integrate all into one common experience.

“All human actions have 1 or more of 7 causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire.”Aristotle what drivingutoday? There is a huge gorilla in the room. Thankfully, the chorus of those who see it is getting louder. Now we need the courage to do something about it. Knowledge makes me more aware, it makes me more conscious. "Knowing is painful because after 'it' happens I can't stay in the same place and be comfortable.

Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen. --Robert Bresson In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. --Albert Camus Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement.

We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things…(but) there are times when we stop. We sit still, We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper. James Carroll Beyond myself Somewhere I wait for my arrival. Octavia Paz Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. Rumi

Getting lost…she found herself. Looking out, she saw inside. Jeanine Payer I owe you a thin straight line of road. Jeanine Payer The idea being to accept fully what you are. Watching the moon at midnight, solitary mid-sky, I know myself completely, no part left out. Izumi Shikibu Keep knocking and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there. Rumi We see things as we are Not as they are. Jennifer Stone

The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it. The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Eckhart Tolle This human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. --Rumi

When your eyes are tired The world is tired also. When your vision has gone No part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure You are not beyond love… Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet Confinement of your aloneness To learn Anything or anyone That does not bring you alive Is too small for you. David Whyte, from “Sweet Darkness” The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life you could save. ~ Mary Oliver ~ When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you awhile to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered a few feet off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know which direction the sun rises anymore. The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That’s where you need to go. Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing—right in the hub of the wheel—not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness—that’s your heart. That’s where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you’ll always find peace. To stop talking for awhile, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras. All from “Eat. Pray. Love.”

Four keys to creating a meaningful existence… vision, passion, purpose, and creativity. Dewitt Jones How does one capture an extraordinary vision?
 * 1) Train your technique
 * 2) Put yourself in the place of most potential.
 * 3) Be open to possibilities.
 * 4) Focus the vision by celebrating what’s right with the situation.

Motivation is what happens when you take hold of an idea; inspiration is what happens when an idea takes hold of you. ~Wayne Dyer

Motivation: the impetus to do more. Inspiration: the impetus to know you are more. ~Unknown

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the lights get in. Leonard Cohen

Just another person moving across the earth that you happen to be in the same space with at the moment. Michael Stipes Rick Wormeli One of the signs of a highly intellectual mind is the wilingness to revise once's thinking in light of new evidence.

"Why are trying so hard to fit in, when you're born to stand out" ~Oliver James

"Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress." Gandhi "We all have the extraordinary coded within us, waiting to be released." Jean Houston

What you love, is what you are gifted at. Barbara Sher “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.” —[|Daniel Burnham], Chicago architect. (1846-1912) Pasted from <[]> "We all have the extraordinary coded within us, waiting to be released." Jean Houston "Most people plot and plan themselves into mediocrity, while now and again sombody forgets himself into greatness." E.Stanley Jones. The only thing more powerful than walking your talk is walking your walk without having to talk the talk. -- Alan Cohen []

An idea, once released ceases to be owned. If our actions stem from honesty, kindness, caring, and vision, then no matter what the result of our efforts, we have added something of value to our souls and to the world. I have a formula for knowing if a next step is the right one for you: If you feel both excited and scared, that is it. If you're just excited and not afraid, there is no challenge, no stretching, no initiation; you are still in your safe zone, and growth is unavailable. If you're just afraid, there is no positive motivation. Why walk through a fear unless there is something you are walking toward? But if you are simultaneously turned on and frightened, do it and watch your growth skyrocket. [8:47:38 PM] Cary Harrod: Alan Cohen "Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are." ~Proverb Don't dim your light. The problem with any philosophy considerations is that once you open a door in your mind, you can never close it. Once you learn something, you can never convince your mind that you didn't learn it. If you learn the world is round, you can never fit in with a world that thinks it's flat. Ted Dekker from The Priest's Graveyard

a school’s primary responsibility is to evoke a deep passion for learning; the kind of learning that feeds and nourishes us and draws out our authentic self and gives us a purpose for being here.

Lesson learned: Mediocre people will try to bring your average down. Don’t let them. If you allow yourself to get sucked into their vortex of normalcy, you lose. Instead, let your amazingness bring their average up. They’ll thank you. Are you resisting the pervasive pressure to be normal? Pasted from <[]> Mediocrity isn’t an accident. “The only way to get mediocre is one step at a time,” says Seth Godin, “But you don’t have to settle. It’s a choice you get to make every day.” My question is: Are you still waiting for permission to be remarkable? Or have you made the conscious choice to become a living brochure of your own awesomeness? That’s the mistake too many people make: Assuming their averageness is an unchangeable default setting. It’s not. You have the choice make the mundane memorable at least fifty times a day. Will you make it? Pasted from <[]> Create a reason for people to remember you. Differentiate even minimally. You’ll find that making the mundane memorable goes a surprisingly long way. Whether it’s the way you answer the phone, the answers your offer to generic questions, or the style of signage outside your office, remarkability isn’t hard – it just requires risk. Which is exactly why most people shrink at the mere thought of it. The cool part is, it doesn’t matter how remarkable you are – only that you’re remarkable in the first place. And the best part is, those who leave evidence everywhere they go, leave an impression on the world. What kind of breadcrumbs do you leave behind? Pasted from <[]> Mediocre people burn their days agonizing over the urgent and irrelevant. Remarkable leaders invest their days cleaving to the vital and important. Can you guess which of those two people makes real meaning in the universe? Which one are you? If you’re not happy your response, try this: End your pursuit of the trivial. Keep yourself on task to change the world by setting an alarm on your computer that goes off every hour with this message: Pasted from <[]> Refuse to occupy the middle. There’s a great book by Jim Hightower called There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. That title is so good; you don’t even have to read the book. Instead, try asking the following question I ask myself at least ten times daily: “What could I do – in this moment – that would be the exact opposite of everyone else?” Soon, you’ll be so far away from the middle that when you look back, it’ll look like a speck of dust. Are you willing to take a side and stand out loudly? Pasted from <[]> Not newness. Not novelty. And not clever marketing that camouflages lack of substance. Originality. That means being The One. The Answer. The origin, not echo. Otherwise, if you’re a copy of a copy of a copy, you lose. And you become just another non-entity in the infinite grey mass of blah-blah-blah. Have you decided to make originality habitual? Pasted from <[]> “It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear. . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.” Pasted from <[]> “Stories move in circles. They don’t move in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories, and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is getting lost. And when you’re lost, you start to look around and listen.” —Corey Fischer, Albert Greenberg, and Naomi Newman A Travelling Jewish Theatre from Coming from a Great Distance Excerpted from Writing for Your Life by Deena Metzger The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than growing with them. -- Bernard M. Baruch The game of life is the same way. It is not supposed to be action packed and exciting every minute. The lulls and quiet spaces enhance the peaks and crescendos. Alan Cohen I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. --Diane Ackerman

Learning experiences are a way to think about what a learning intervention might be (i.e. – its design) in the context of desired end goals and outcomes. This can then inform our choices about how communication channels and modes, learning activities, and resources come together to best support the end goals and outcomes, and also how these channels and activities may evolve over time. Certainly in this context, a learning intervention is something that is much more than what has traditionally been thought of as “content.” In thinking about what is currently thought of as learning content, I think of something akin to a page from a textbook (that has its doppelganger in web-based training) with which one “reads” and then “interacts” with in some way. That definition of learning content and learner interaction represents a very narrow and limited view of what a learning experience can be and usually limits the type of learning to that of recognizing or memorizing specific facts, procedures, and concepts exemplified in the deployment of web-based, self-directed individual learning experiences commonly called e-learning.

Focus=Power Find one thing you desire and concentrate all your focus on the mastery of it & success will be inevitable. Sun Oct 31 17 Tony Robbins Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved. Helen Keller

It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books— Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life. Jane Hirshfield, “Tree” from Given Sugar, Given Salt.