Introduction Lessons: (rough draft)
So why are we
here?
Why in this
human form?
Why on this
planet?
Those are tough
questions. It’s fun to think about, they’re two of my favorite questions to
ponder, but they’re a bit tough to answer.
Lets make that question
a bit more specific.
Why are we here
in this Integrated Arts School?
Now this is easy
to answer.
I love teaching
and, over the past 10 years, I’ve had the privilege of working with students
from China, to Vietnam, to Arizona and California and, every year, amazing
breakthroughs have taken place. Students grow in ways they’ve never before
grown. And every year, I hear that these teachings need to be spread. So, here
we are, sharing the lessons with students, worldwide.
Intro Lesson #1- Why do you
go to school?
I got a question
for you... why do you go to school?
Why do you spend
about 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, from the age about 5 to 20- and maybe even
until 25 or 30- at this place that we call school.
Why do you spend
so much time, during what are arguably the most important years of your life,
in school. There's has to be a really good reason why... I want you to think
about this, come up with the best answer you can that explains why you spend so
much time, over so many years, at this place that we call school?
EXPLAIN WHAT YOU THINK, THE REALLY GOOD
REASON IS, WHY WE GO TO SCHOOL:
So one of the
first answers students always give, is because we have to. Which, although it
legally is true, it’s a horrible reason to spend so much time doing something.
If you do something just because you have to, its tough to try your hardest, to
do your best, and to truly enjoy yourself. There’s got to be a better reason
behind our schooling than, “because we have to.”
So the other
immediate response I typically get is that we go to school to learn. Which is
true at the surface level but “to learn” is such a vague term. Do we go to
school to learn how to train a dog, or to knit a sweater? For most of us, the
answer to that question is definitely no. So, what do we go to school to learn?
Again, why do we
spend so many hours, during the most critical years of our life, in this place
that we call school? What do you think we go to school to learn?
WRITE A PARAGRAPH EXPLAINING WHAT YOU
THINK WE GO TO SCHOOL TO LEARN:
So most students
usually start off listing the subjects, math, history, science, reading and
writing. Then many move into the extra-curricular activities as they write art,
foreign language, physical education and music. But what else do we learn at
school? Lets take this deeper. Did you write anything about the social skills
you acquire at school? What about motivation or work ethic? Listening and focus...
These are the learning’s that will stay with you for the extent of your lifetime.
There are all
these other elements of life that we’re continually experiencing and learning
at school. It’s pretty incredible to think about how much can be learned in a
single day at school.
But we still
haven’t figured out why? What’s the reason behind it all? Why do you spend so
much time in school? To l learn…yes, but,
it’s more than that.
As I stated
above, you’re learning social skills, motivation, listening skills, work ethic,
and all the life skills that you’re going to need throughout your educational
career.
So, back to the
question at hand, why are we learning these things? I want you take all the
things I’ve mentioned and synthesize them into one, all consuming sentence,
that explains why you go to school...
IN ONE SENTENCE, EXPLAIN WHY YOU GO TO
SCHOOL
So, the best
sentence I’ve been able to come up with is:
You go to school
to prepare yourself to live the greatest life that you can possibly live.
Now what your
greatest possible life is, varies from student to student... yet, no matter
what your greatest possible life is, your going to need a certain set of skills
in order to live that life.
We’ll talk more
about that next week. For now, i challenge you to pay attention during school
this week and keep track of all the times that you did something that helped
prepare you for your future. Try to come up with at least ten different
experiences that helped prepare you, to live the best life that you can
possibly live.
While doing so,
I hope that you begin to see the beauty of school as you enjoy, learn, and grow
to be the best individual that you can be.
I hope that you
enjoyed this lesson as much as I did and can now take pieces of it with you as
you continue your growth.
Intro Lesson #2 – Observations of School
on Your Life
Last week we
talked about why we go to school and, by the end of the lesson, we had come to
the conclusion that the purpose of school is to prepare us to live the best
life that we can possibly live. I then challenged you to observe school through
this lens for the week, noticing the occurrences that helped prepare you to
live your best life.
I’d now like you
to take a few minutes to record the observations you made on school since last
time. Try to list at least 10 different ways that school has helped
you grown towards becoming the best person that you can be, since last time we
talked.
LIST THE WEEKS OCCURENCES THAT HELPED
PREPARE YOU TO LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE:
Although you
probably experienced about a hundred occurrences this week that helped progress
you towards living your perfect life, they may have been hard to notice because
we have yet to define what your best life is.
I’d like to now
work on defining this.
What’s the best
life that you can live?
I want you to
close your eyes and imagine yourself at 30 or 40 years old…
Seriously, close
your eyes and picture yourself as an adult.
Are you happy?
Do you have friends? What about a family?
Do you have a
job that you enjoy?
Are you healthy?
Spend a few
minutes painting this scene in your mind. Paint a picture of your perfect
future self. Then, when you’ve got a beautiful picture of who you want to be,
I’d like you to use your best descriptive writing skills to create a master
painting of words describing your perfect future self.
USING YOUR DESCRIPTIVE WRITING SKILS,
PAINT A PICTURE OF YOUR PERFECT FUTURE SELF.
Now this image
is important, if the vision you created is not one that you’re interested in, I
recommend taking some time to think about your perfect future self. I’ve found
that students who have some ideas, goals, and interests for their future are
more likely to be motivated throughout their teenage years.
It’s also
important because having an idea of who you want to be helps you to understand
the skills that you need to develop in order to become that person.
The neat thing
is, there are certain skills that we all need to acquire, if we wish to
co-exist within the worlds current society. It doesn’t matter if you want
to be a traveler, a mountain man, a businessman, or a surfer, there has to be a
certain set of skills that we all need.
I’d now like you
to think about all the skills that you will need to live your perfect life.
Try to come up with about 20 of the skills that you need to acquire if
you’re going to succeed in living your perfect life.
MAKE A LIST: List the skills you need to
live your perfect life.
So I’ve taken
all the different skills that students list, intelligence, respect, work ethic,
happiness and the list goes on and on, and I’ve broken them down into three
major categories, academic skills, social skills, and emotional skills.
If you can
master these three categories of skills, I can almost guarantee that you will
succeed in creating your perfect life.
This is what we
go to school to learn. This is the key to creating your perfect future self.
Mastering
academic skills, social skills, and emotional skills.
The first of
these big three is academic skills.
Academic skills
Social skills
Emotional skills
If you can
master these three categories of skill sets, your well on your way to living
the greatest life you can possibly live.
Your challenge
for the week is to pay attention to the social and emotional skills sets. We
all know that we learn academic skills in school. Every day you go home and
tell your parents all about what you learned academically. But your learning
just as much socially and emotionally. Pay attention to these two skill sets
this week.
Intro Lesson #3 - Motivation (time line
lesson)
Last time we
were together, we talked about going to school to prepare ourselves to live the
best life that we can possibly live. Now, in order to achieve our best life we
learned that a certain level of academic, social and emotional skills are
necessary. Last time we were here I challenged you to pay attention to the
social and emotional skills you are learning and mastering at school. Before we
start talking about the other major skill necessary to live your best life, I
want you to take a few minutes to write down a few of the social skills and a
few of the emotional skills that you practiced and improved since last time I
saw you.
DESCRIBE YOUR SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL SKILLS
So, there’s one
last major component to living the best life that we can possibly live.
So far we’ve
discussed intelligence, academic skills, family and friends, social skills, and
peace and happiness, emotional skills…
Take quickly
take three guesses to try to come up with the other necessary piece of this
puzzle.
(MAKE 3 GUESSES)
Motivation, work
ethic and perseverance are the 3 we were looking for. This could be considered
the most important of all the skills we’ve discussed. I continually have
students with below average intelligence living remarkable lives because of
their work ethic and motivation. Think of something incredible that’s happened
in the world without effort. A lot of students always want to be professional
athletes, I played some college sports and I fully get the desire, but what
most people don’t think about is the fact that most professional athletes will
work for 15-20 years before they make it to the pro’s. Gandhi fought the
British rule in India for over 50 years and on 4 different occasions he was
placed in jail. Did he quit? No, because doing amazing things takes motivation
and dedication.
There’s going to
be times in school where you’ll get frustrated. There might even be times when
you’ll want to quit. What I’ve found is that students who have something that
motivates them continue to work on through the struggles, growing to be
stronger, more incredible people than they previously were.
The beautiful
thing is, it doesn’t matter what your motivation is. You can be motivated by
most anything, as long as it motivates you.
For me, I wanted
to be a professional baseball player. More specifically, I wanted to play on
the high school baseball and football teams and, in order to be on the teams, I
knew that I had to do well I school. I knew that if I didn’t do well in school
I couldn’t get into a college and, most professional athletes go to college.
Sports were my motivation.
Some students I
have know that they want a good job and, in order to get most “good jobs” you
need to go to college and to get into most colleges, especially “good colleges”
you need to do well in school.
Some students
just want to keep their parents happy and that motivates them, while others are
motivated by their friends and they desire to be accepted.
It doesn’t
matter what your motivation is as long as you are motivated to try and care
about how you do in school.
I’ve never met a
student who doesn’t want to live a great life.
I can’t think of
a better motivation than this.
In order to live
a great life, you need to care and try. It’s that straight forward.
I don’t see how
anyone could have ever lived the best life possible without caring or trying.
With this said,
lets now take a few minutes to explain what it is that motivates you.
WRITE ABOUT THE THINGS THAT MOTIVATE YOU
As the week goes
on, keep this motivation in your thoughts. When things get tough, thinking
about persevering, fighting, and continue to try and to care. It doesn’t mean that
things will always be easy. it just means that you wont give up when they get
tough.
With the vision
on your perfect future self now implanted in your mind, and a newly declared
motivation, I hope that you have a great week of care, and effort, trying your
hardest in everything that you do.
Intro Lesson #4 - Character traits
What traits do
you like in yourself?
What traits do
you like in others?
Up until now,
we’ve been talking about some big picture topics, why we go to school, social,
emotional and academic skills, and motivation. Today we’re going to start
getting a bit more specific.
Today I want to
talk about character traits.
What are
character traits?
The traits that
create the character…
What are the
character traits of Winnie the Pooh?
He’s happy,
curious, loyal, peaceful, simple
Tigger:
Energetic,
playful, friendly
Eeyore:
Negative,
Now these are
all fictional characters who were created with very strong character traits.
Although human beings don’t usually have traits as obvious as the characters of
Winnie the Pooh, our character is still defined by the traits that we
demonstrate.
Think of a few
people who you look up to, people who you’d like to be like. Maybe your mom or
dad, a grandparent, maybe you have an incredible aunt or uncle or family friend
who you admire. Maybe you learned about a historical figure who fascinated you
or have a teacher who inspires you.
After you think
of three of three of these people who you look up to, try to figure out the
traits they possess that make them so likable.
So pick three
people who we look up to or who we’d like to be like and come up with at least
three traits for each of them that you admire and would like to have yourself.
NAME 3 PEOPLE & THE 3 TRAITS YOU
ADMIRE ABOUT THEM
So we usually go
around the room and share all these traits compiling a list of positive
character traits. But, since your over there and I’m over here, I decided to go
ahead and do it for you.
The most popular
answers are
These are the
traits that we like in people. We want to be around people who demonstrate
these traits.
So think about
this list, and think about yourself.
Which of these
traits are you best at?
Which of these
traits are you most lacking?
I want you to
pick three of these traits that are your strongest and write them down, we’ll
call these your strengths.
Then, pick three
of these traits that you’ve not yet obtained, but you’d like to. Traits that
you’d like to have in yourself.
Lets take a
minute and write these down.
WRITE YOUR 3 STRENGTH TRAITS and YOUR 3
WEAKNESS TRAITS
Now that’s the
positive side of things.
But, there’s the
other side as well, the traits that we dislike. Traits that push people away
and create problems.
Lets go ahead
and create a list of 5-10 traits we dislike in people.
WRITE 5-10 TRAITS YOU DISLIKE IN PEOPLE
Again, I’d
typically go around the room creating a class list of traits that we don’t like
others to display but, like I said before, your over there and I’m over here
so, I went ahead and put a list together for us. The neat thing about these
lists is that over the years of teaching these lessons, I’ve learned that the
lists are almost exactly the same for students of all grades, in all states and
areas. There’s certain traits that human beings like and certain traits that we
don’t like. The key is maximizing our positive character traits, and minimizing
our negative character traits.
Lets go ahead
and look at this list.
Again, lets pick
three traits on this list that we see in ourselves. Which of these traits do
you have that you’d like to minimize.
WRITE DOWN 3 TRAITS THAT YOU HAVE AND
WANT TO MINIMIZE
The thing to
understand about character traits is that we all have traits we like, and we
all have traits that we could work on. It’s about letting the positive traits
shine and shutting the negative traits up. Maximize your positive traits and
minimize your negative traits. I want you to spend the week focusing on this.
Work to add
those three positive traits we listed a few minutes ago and work to eliminate
the negative traits that you’re still working on.
Good luck with
this.
Intro Lesson #5 – ENJOYMENT
AND HAPPINESS
So, what is the
meaning of life? Wow, tough one, huh.
Although there
are a few people who claim to know the answer to this question, there are
certain elements of the answer that we can all agree upon.
I want to talk
about one of these answers today. A simple answer to the most difficult
of questions we have. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here?
Well, I think that one of the biggest reasons is to enjoy ourselves while
we are living. We’re here to have fun.
Now don’t get me
wrong, most people I know do have fun. I just don’t think that they often
have as much fun, and enjoy themselves as often as they could.
I want to help
you enjoy yourself to the fullest.
So, lets start
off by defining happiness. What does happiness mean to you? What is
enjoyment? Lets go ahead and write a few sentences defining happiness and
enjoyment.
Hopefully you
were able to acknowledge that happiness and enjoyment are as simple as feeling
good. When we do something that makes us feel good we enjoy doing it and,
when we’re feeling good, we’re happy... we enjoy ourselves. When we enjoy
ourselves life becomes fun.
So how do we
enjoy ourselves? The problem is that this is different for everyone so,
the best we can do is figure out what we enjoy. What makes us happy?
I want you to go ahead now and make a list of 10-20 things that you enjoy
to do.
Now that we’ve
got this list I want you to think about how often you partake in the items that
are on it. How often do you think you should be doing them? Every
month? Every week? What about every day? Why not do them as
often as possible? We should continually be doing the things that we
enjoy doing. As the saying goes, find a job you love and you’ll never
work a day in your life. Why not strive to do nothing but the things that
we enjoy?
Now, there’s
some catches with this. One, there’s a certain amount of things we “need”
to do. Although in the moment we may not want to do our math homework,
its going to make us much happier in the long run. This brings us back to
our timeline lesson where we saw that the more education we receive the more
options we have. Options make us feel good.
But there’s
another side to happiness. I guess we could call it being unhappy.
Even if we do something that we said makes us happy, but have recently
done something wrong, the feeling of negativity will over power the feeling we
enjoy.
So, what is it
that could cause these negative feelings. I’d like you now to think about
this question while making a list of items or occurrences that make us feel
unhappy.
Now look back on
this list. How many of these things do we have control over (probably all
of them)?
Which leads to
the point that I’d like to make.
We are in
complete control of our happiness. We control the things that we do, both
positive and negative and, depending on which choice we make, we will either be
happy, or unhappy.
I want you to
pay attention to the choices you make this week. Try to feel if each
choice was a positive choice or a negative choice. Did it make you feel
good or did it make you feel bad. When we can master this skill and begin
to make nothing but positive choices life continues to grow better and better.
Intro Lesson #6: Friendship
So in our last
few lessons we’ve focused on our character traits and happiness. These
two elements of our self-understanding are critical for the topic I want to
discuss today.
It’s one of the
biggest aspects of the growth and development we experience throughout our
educational careers. And, for many students, it often dominates their
focus, becoming a bigger priority than most anything else in their life... even
school.
The topic I’m
referring to is friendship. So, lets start at the root of friendship, where all
friendships begin...The Self.
Before we can
have a positive, healthy relationship with another, we need to have a positive
healthy relationship with our self. We need to know how we can contribute
to a friendship. We need to know how to be a friend before we can have a
friend.
So to start off,
lets make a list of 5-10 ways that we can contribute to a friendship.
Write about what can you do, to be a good
friend?
That’s a good
start. Now, the biggest point I want to make on friendships is that they
must be positive. Friendships should always add to our quality of life,
never take away from it. In my 10 years of teaching middle school
students I don’t think I’ve ever met a student who’s got into much trouble or
problems on their own. I find that students, and even adults, are not
only naturally “good”, but naturally we want to do good. More so,
individuals don’t want to do bad things on their own, it always happens in a
group. The group gives them a sense of safety. It’s similar to dogs. Individually, they might be the most loyal,
loving creatures on the planet. But in a pack, they become deadly.
I’ve never pedaled my bike as fast as i did when being chased by a dog
pack in New Orleans. Individually, I’m sure they were nice dogs, but once
they created that pack mentality they were no longer being positive... nor
nice, nor intelligent. They lost the ability to make positive decisions
and just started following the group.
I’ve seen this
same thing happen with middle school students.
If you’ve been
getting in trouble, doing bad things, or not feeling too good, take a look at
your friends. What effect are they having on your life? Are they
contributing to it and improving your quality of life or are they hindering
your existence and getting in the way of your natural greatness.
If your friends
are in any way causing you problems, you might want to re-evaluate your
friendships.
Now, on the
other hand, friendships can help us and have a very positive effect on our
life. Human beings are social beings who enjoy, and even thrive on, our
interactions with others. Friendships are definitely good for us, I could
even go as far as to say that they’re a necessity in life. So why is
this? Why are friendships so important for us? I’d like you to now
make a list of reasons why friendships are good for us. How can they help
us? What’s good about them? Try to come up with a list of around 10
reasons why friendships are important.
There’s a long
list of answers to this question but some of the big ones that I hope you hit
are that friendships are fun, they make us feel good, they give us someone to
do things with, they can help push us to be better, they can help us make good
decisions, they help us through tough times, and they help us to understand
ourselves better.
So the first key
to friendship is finding these people. People who are good to us and help
to improve our quality of life. After we find these people we need to be
able to do the same for them. We can’t just find people who are good friends
to us, we need to be a good friend to others. The question is, how do we
do this?
Take a few
minutes and write a little paragraph explaining what you need to do to be a
good friend to another.
Intro Lesson #7: DUALITY - PERSPECTIVE
I hope you’re
all enjoying yourselves and are excited for todays lesson on one of my favorite
earthly concepts. To best introduce this concept I will explain that for up, we
have down, for in there is out, for hot we have cold, for light there is
dark... this list never ends. There are two sides to everything on our
planet. We call this the concept of duality. There are two sides to
everything.
To best explain
this “law” of the universe I’d like to use the story, “the farmers luck” from
one of my favorite books, “Zen Shorts”.
(read the story)
Now before
continuing I’d like you to write what you took away from that story. What
could you learn from it? What do you think about it? Lets write a
paragraph, not explaining what the story was about, but what the story meant to
us... explain how you could relate it to your life.
We work hard to
achieve an education and to get a “good” job and to have a family, and granted,
these things often do contribute to our happiness, but they are typically not
the things that make us feel totally happy.
What do you
enjoy doing? What makes you happy?
Intro Lesson #8: ADVERSITY
There’s going to
be times in school where you’ll get frustrated. You might even want to quit.
Michael Jordan, who’s widely considered the greatest basketball player of all
time, was cut from his varsity basketball team. So did he quit playing
basketball? No way, he practiced more and worked harder and the following year
he made the team. So did he stop working? No, he worked even harder and
received a full scholarship to the University of North Carolina. How did he
become the greatest basketball player and arguably one of the greatest athletes
of all-time. He did it through hard work.
Now, I want you
to think about something that you worked incredibly hard at, something that
forced you to face some adversity. Maybe something that you even wanted to quit
but didn’t. Think about a time when you persevered through something tough. Maybe
it was a school project, a performance, an art piece, a musical instrument,
whatever it may be. After you get one, I want you to think about the feeling
you got the first time you really experienced success with.
Now, take a few
minutes to explain this experience. What was it that your fought your way
through and how did you feel after experiencing success.
WRITE ABOUT ONE OF YOUR GREATEST
SUCCESSES AT SCHOOL
School is going
to get tough. You’re going to have challenges and your going to get nocked
down. But, as the saying goes, its not how many times you get knocked down, its
how many times you get back up.
We all face
tough times. Many of you already have, many of you soon will. What I’ve learned
is that every time we face read adversity, whether it be a really hard class, a
fight with parents or friends, a divorce, the death of a family member, we can
either curl up and hide from it, or face it, head on, and learn from it, and grow
from it, and become an even greater individual than we previously were.
How does it feel
to tie your shoes?
It probably
doesn’t feel like much anymore, but, when you were 4 years old, it was pretty
awesome. That’s because it was still a challenge.
Intro Lesson #9: Choices - Decision
Making skills
So my question
for you today, is what causes you to make the decision that you make? I
want to talk about our decision making today, our choices... because one of the
beauties of our life in human form is the freedom that we have been given over
the choices that we make.
You have a
choice in most all aspects of your life.
You choose how
you treat people, you choose your friends, how hard you try in school, what you
do for fun... you truly choose the majority of your life.
So what is it
that causes you to make the decisions that you make? I want you to think
about the decisions that you’ve made over the past few weeks, then think about
the big decisions that you’ve made over the past year or so, and figure out
what it was that caused you to make the decisions that you made? Once you
create your answer go ahead and write a paragraph explaining why you believe
you make the decisions that you make.
WRITE ABOUT 1 BIG DECISION YOU HAVE MADE
So there’s two
different major categories of decision making- the decisions that we
think about and make consciously, and the unconscious decisions that we make
out of reactions. I’d first like to talk about our reactionary decisions,
the decisions we make without thinking. Younger individuals in their
elementary, middle school, and even up into their high school years often make
a lot of reactionary decisions based on impulse. They get an idea and
they do it, without thinking about the effects their actions could have.
I had a student once get frustrated while trying to hammer in a nail.
His frustration caused him to throw the hammer without thinking.
Luckily the hammer landed about 2 feet to the side of another students
head, otherwise, this could have been a potentially deadly decision. He
reacted without thinking.
This is actually
fairly common in younger individuals. When something looks fun, or
exciting, they often go for it without thinking about it. An example of
this would be a kid climbing up a tree. It’s really fun, and kind of
easy, to climb up. So they climb up as high as they can and then yell
down to their parents to see how high they are. While yelling down to the
parents they realize that their now really high off the ground and its going to
be crazy tough to get back down. If they had thought about it first they
probably wouldn’t have climbed so high, or maybe not even climbed up the tree
at all. But they did, and now they’re stuck, needing help to get down.
When we act out
of impulse, reacting to situations, we often put ourselves in less than
desirable situations.
I’d now like you
to think back on your last few weeks, or depending on how your memory is, think
back on you’re past few months, and create a list of decisions that you made
without fully thinking. Things that you just did out of reaction or
impulse.
Come up with at least 10 of these choices
that you made without fully thinking.
These
reactionary decisions are the ones we want to work on eliminating. When
someone does something that you don’t like, instead of getting upset and maybe
being mean back, ask yourself why you’re upset, and more importantly, what
would be the best way to respond. Instead of reacting, think about the
situation.
Think about the
situation and consciously decide how you want to respond. This is so much
more powerful than reacting.
Things rarely go
wrong when we think before we act. Human beings are incredibly
intelligent. Our skills of intuition, understanding, they blow my mind.
We are so ridiculously smart. We almost always know what’s right.
If we think about it first, we can almost always make the right decision.
We almost always know right from wrong.
Imagine how
incredible life would be if you always made the right decision. If you
decided the right answer on every test you ever took you could probably have
any job you want. If you made the right decision always you’d probably
never get hurt, emotionally or physically. You’d never get yourself into a bad situation
and never get into any kind of trouble.
Life would be
clear sailing, easy, pleasant, enjoyable and with no problems.
The key is
making conscious decisions where we think first. And not doing this
sometimes, but always. Think before you get upset, and even before you
get excited. Think why is it that I’m excited over this? Is it worth
being excited over? If we’re asking this question about being excited the
answer will typically be yes, its good to be excited. But when you ask
yourself, is this worth being upset over, we’ll then the answer will most
likely be no.
With this said,
I want you to now think back over your past decisions again. You could
even refer back to the earlier list that you made. When thinking about
these decisions, come up with at least 5 of them that you made without
thinking, decisions that you could have made differently if you thought first.
Explain what the original decision was, and what a better decision could
have been.
Now, there’s a
little bit more that goes into the decisions we make that I’d like to talk
about next week. For now, I want you to pay attention to how many
decisions you make on a daily basis. You decide how to dress yourself,
how you interact with your parents, who you talk to, what you think about, how
hard you try, what you do, how you feel... the list is never ending.
Start paying attention to these decisions. See how many decisions
you can count in a single day. I read one study that said the average
adult in the USA makes around 35 thousand decisions a day, but then read
another that said the average person makes around 600 decisions a day. So
lets go with the low end and say that you make about 600 decisions a day.
How many of them do you think about? How often do you think before
you act? How many of these decisions are you aware of? Spend the
week paying attention to the decision that you make, then as you begin to
become aware of every time you make a decision, start working on thinking
before the decision is made. If you can learn to make nothing but good
decisions, life will become an incredibly pleasant journey.
As always, I
hope you enjoyed this lesson as much as I did, and can now take pieces of it
with you from the computer, out into your everyday life.
Begin to notice
when your making decisions, and then, start striving to make nothing but
positive ones.
Intro Lesson #10: Priorities
So last week we
talked about the decisions that we make and, at the end of the lesson, I
challenged you to pay attention to the choices that you make on a daily basis.
In doing so I asked you to work on growing conscious of when your making
decisions so that you may begin striving to make nothing but positive ones.
Before we move into today’s lesson I’d like you to write a paragraph
explaining how you did with this challenge. Were you able to begin
noticing when you were making decisions and think before you acted? Did
you improve in your ability to make positive decisions? Or was this a
really tough challenge for you to apply to your life? Was it hard to
notice when you were making decision and difficult to think before you acted.
Write a paragraph explaining your
experience with the decision challenge.
I’m hoping that
you had a positive experience with that challenge and are now beginning to
improve in your ability to think before you act. As you do so, you’ll
begin to notice that another component comes into play when you’re making
decisions.
But, before we get
into this aspect of decision-making I want to ask you a question.
Of all the
different things that are important to you in life, what is it that is most
important to you?
Of all the
things you care about, all the things you like and think about- what is the
most important? As you think about this question do your best to create a
list, of the 10 most important things in your life.
WRITE A LIST OF THE 10 MOST IMPORTANT
THINGS IN YOUR LIFE
So this is an
important list. We have these things in life called morals and values.
Values are the things that are important to us. The things that are
valuable to you are your values. This list that you just created is a
list of your values. Now, there are certain elements of life that most
everyone values and end up on almost every list. The first of these is
family. Right up towards the top of most all lists we typically see family.
Family is important to us and we value family.
The other items
that appear on most all lists are religion and friends, and then just behind
them, is typically education. After these items we’ll see an array of
different answers ranging from hobbies like baseball or guitar all the way up
through emotional answers like being nice or being a good person.
Now a nice thing
about this list is the fact that there are no right or wrong answers.
What you value is based on the personal beliefs that you’ve developed.
Granted, as you mature and develop your values can change but they should
always remain true to yourself.
An element of
these lists that I always enjoy is that very few people say they value material
items. I’ll see “my phone” on the list sometimes, and occasionally a
gaming system or musical instrument, but for the most part, the things that we
care the most about and place the biggest value are not material items. I
think that’s kind of cool.
The other thing
I’d like to point out is that a lot of us truly do value being a good person,
being nice, making good decisions, smiling and enjoying ourselves, these things
are incredibly important to most people yet, these kind of items don’t always
come to our mind when we think about what’s important to us (these items don’t
end up on too many lists).
Then there’s the
other items that we often take for granted until their gone, things like our
health. When we’re healthy its easy to forget how important it is to have
our health, but when we lose our health, we quickly remember how important
health is.
So, now that
we’ve talked a little bit about this list, about some of the most common
answers and some of the more often overlooked answers, i want you to go back to
the original list that you made and see if there are any changes that you’d
like to make. Change it around as much as you’d like until you get a list
you like that accurately demonstrate what the 10 most important things to you
are, the 10 things that you most value, at this point in your life.
MAKE A LIST OF THE 10 MOST VALUED THINGS
IN YOUR LIFE
Now that we got
this list created lets talk about how it ties in with the decision making
concept we discussed last week.
See, when you
have a tough decision to make, as you often do, you naturally refer back to
this list. You constantly place a value upon options deciding which
option is more valuable to you. Lets say that you have important plans
with your family, but your friend really wants you to hang out. You think
about the two options and decide that the plan with your family is more
important than hanging out with your friend. But, if you don’t know what
you value, making these kind of decision can become extremely difficult.
If we forget how much we value our family we might choose to hang out
with the friend in that situation.
Another way to
think about it, is the things that are higher up on your list, the things that
you most value and are most important, should probably get the most of your
time. Let me state that concept again, the things that are highest up on
your list are the things that are most important to you, so, if these are the
most important things in your life you should probably put the most time and
effort into these items. When I mention this concept to students we
always get into a neat conversation about television and video games, because
although not many students put these items up towards the top of their list,
they often dedicate a ton of time to them. After some conversation we
come to the understanding that television, computer and video games often give
us enjoyment and enjoyment is an item that works its way up towards the top of
our lists.
With this said,
I’d now like you to think about how much time you dedicate to the items that
are up towards the top of your list. Do you spend the most time on the
items that are most important to you? At the same time, reflect upon some
of those tough choices you make. When you have to decide between two
different options do you typically choose the one that is most important to
you? Think about these questions then go ahead and write a few sentences,
explaining how much time you spend on the items towards the top of your list in
comparison to the items towards the bottom of your list and which choice you
typically make when forced to decide between different items of importance.
WRITE ABOUT
THE THINGS ON TOP OF YOUR LIST
Hopefully
reflecting upon those questions helped you understand what you most value at
this point in your life. When you have tough decisions to make refer back
to this lesson and think about your values. What is most valuable to you?
Now the last
point I’d like to make is that like always, we need to keep the timeline lesson
in our head, keep a little eye on the future. If you value having a great
life, which I hope every one of you will do, you need to keep that concept in
your mind when you’re making tough decisions. Will doing this help me
become a great person? Will this option help me to live a great life?
Hopefully all the things that you value will help you become a great
person and live a great life.
I hope you
enjoyed this lesson and can now take pieces of it with you to help with your
future decision making skills. I challenge you to refer to this lesson
with every tough decision you have this week. Consciously decide which
option is more valuable instead of just deciding out of instinct.
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