Piggybacking on last week’s post about knowing your strengths—if you don’t know what skills you have that other people don’t, you typically can’t help them or teach them very well. For example: I’m not good at starting conversations with people I don’t know without context. Not one of my strengths. In a variety of contexts … Read more
We were driving back to Phoenix from LA last week and stopped at a rest stop for gas, food, and stretching legs. It was late afternoon; the moon was rising in the still-sunlit sky over shadow-covered desert mountains. The phase of the moon and its proximity to the mountains caught my attention—it looked like the … Read more
We tend not to see our own strengths because those skills come to us easily, whether developing the skill was easy or not. Sometimes, we don’t see our strengths because they’ve been downplayed by others over time and we’ve taken to believing the naysayers. This leads to us downplaying our skills while overemphasizing/coveting others’ skills … Read more
Sometimes, the people who encourage others to “turn your lemons into lemonade!” already have a pitcher and sugar and water and ice and a knife and maybe even a juicer and can’t see that it’s not that simple for someone without those things.
Rocket Kid’s school invited parents to observe their child’s classroom for half an hour prior to upcoming parent conferences. No interaction with the students, except to accept a glass of water from the gracious class host, and a quick hi/bye with my boy. I saw so many amazing things—kids helping each other, kids on task … Read more
In my book club, we were talking about people not being aware of their own strengths, or downplaying them. I mentioned that this was the theme of a blog post that I’ve been trying to write, but it’s resisting being written, so it’s not publishable yet. One of the ladies requested I write about the … Read more
“Talent is a snare and a delusion. In the end, the practical questions about talent come down to these: Who cares? Who would know? and What difference would it make? And the practical answers are: Nobody, Nobody, and None.” Art & Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland Talent gets you nowhere if you don’t … Read more
If I’m giving focus to something, maybe I just want to get it done, and maybe it’s something enjoyable that I want to give my time and energy to. Either way, I want to stay focused. The pinging of the phone is as disruptive to my focus as the alarm clock is to my sleep. … Read more
I am a runner. I don’t love running, but I don’t hate it, either, and it does many good things for my body and my mental health. I love how I feel after running and I hate how I feel if I go too many days without running. I’m slow, and I don’t run long … Read more
I was taking a self-paced course. It was good. Not amazing but solid. There were errors. Significant errors, not typo-type errors. Errors that were changing the quality of my learning from the course. I let the creator know there were a few problems. They were angry and defensive and called my character into question … … Read more