Why We Should Never Take Ourselves (or anyone else) Too Seriously

Once upon a time, I had a pretty good brain.  It learned quickly, understood a lot, and could do pretty much whatever I wanted it to do with minimal effort.  Of course, I didn't appreciate that brain at the time.  Totally took it for granted, and assumed that it would always serve me in just the same way. 

Sure, once I had the twins, I noticed a bit of sluggishness in both of my upper hemispheres.  My friends and I refer often to Mommy Brain, and we mean it.  I wonder if that has ever been studied?  Do our brains really work less efficiently?  Or do we just have a lot more to keep up with?

Still, my brain worked fairly well overall . . . until I got sick.  I went from one month being able to do most anything I wanted (someday . . .) to the next month (and the following two years) being frustrated to no end with my clunky, unreliable blobby mess of tangled neurons.  I can function fine on some levels, but I still have a never-ending fog that I struggle against, as well as random hiccups (to put it delicately) that strike out of nowhere and create havoc when I least expect it.

The advantage of all this?  (Yes, there's an advantage.  You'll learn this about me - there's almost always an advantage.)  Well, I've gotten a lot more up close and personal with just how delicate a balancing act our brains are.  That experience has opened my eyes to the misconceptions I had about my grasp on reality.  When my brain was working comparatively smoothly, I thought that I had things under control, had a good idea of how the world worked, what was going on in my life, and so forth.  I think most of us like to think of ourselves as stable, rational, reasonable beings.  And to a large extent, we are.  But I've seen how the slightest bit of hormone or neurotransmitter glitch can throw things way off track, without us even being consciously aware of it.  Sleep, stress, diet, stress, activity, stress . . . can all throw our supposedly "rational" evaluations way out of kilter.  Not to mention all the ways in which our brains are hardwired to make mistakes right out of the gate.

Think about it - have you ever noticed how sometimes you can tolerate certain things (kids' noise, traffic, etc), and other days almost the same exact stimulus can seem like more than you can bear?

When things are going smoothly, I think our brains sweep all these little glitches under the rug, where they go pretty much unnoticed.  We chalk them up to flukes, but don't recognize them as symptoms of our real limitations.  Once the pile under my rug was as tall as a house, I had no choice but to recognize that everything isn't always what it seems.  That I do not, in fact, have everything figured out.  That I don't come close to understanding everything that is going on.  That I forget more than I remember.  And that I always have, but I just never noticed.

So now I make it a point never to take myself - or anyone else - too seriously.

Here's a link to a cool book that I found that points out just how fallible we can be:
Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure That We Are Way Above Average.

We can't all be above average.  I mean average is average.  Most of us are, in fact, average (or close to it), by definition.  Some of us are actually below average, whether we like to admit it or not.  (And not just politicians, either.)  So why do we all think we are above average?  That's a fascinating question that this book addresses, along with many other quirks of our oh-so-important, but oh-so-human brains.

A Sunset Home Run: The Power of Analogies

Do you ever wonder how much of what your children learn will be forgotten in a year? what about (gulp) two years? I often question the effectiveness of my methods - when we go to the trouble of learning something, I like it when we actually remember it later.

Somehow, some of the things we learn do stick, and I'm always so curious to see which things stick, and why. I love to look for clues that point out the best ways for each member of our family to learn AND REMEMBER.

(and, if we're lucky, even USE - oh, happy day!)

Recently, we were driving home from a short beach trip, and we were treated to one of the most breathtaking sunsets I've ever seen. It wasn't particularly colorful, although there were some of the swirling oranges and reds we are used to seeing.  There was this one pale cloud, though, that was entirely rimmed with white light, and several times we even saw it form a little cap or "halo", a neon rainbow circle that crowned the cloud's highest peak.  And behind us, the full moon was brilliantly lit with reflected light.

Which led us to discussing how the moon and the clouds don't actually generate light of their own.  We'd covered this a couple of years ago, but I had no clue if the kids would remember much from the lesson.  Madeline piped right up though, and said, "Sure, it's just like a baseball game, remember?"  And then I remembered that when we talked about how the sun's light reflected off the moon back toward earth, Madeline had come up with that baseball analogy.

The sun is the pitcher.  He throws the ball (light) towards the batter (the moon, or other object), and the ball is hit back towards the fielders (us).

This visual had stuck with her all that time, and, from what Claire said when it came up, it had stuck with her sister, too.  I've found that analogies to familiar concepts really help me understand and remember new concepts and relationships.  Apparently they help the girls as well.

So, now I'm curious how we can come up with more analogies.  If a textbook doesn't point one out (which they often don't) then it means we have to do a little thinking about what we are learning, asking ourselves what this information reminds us of.  ("This is just like . . . ")  I'm guessing this is where a fertile imagination comes into play!  So, maybe searching for analogies helps in more than one way.

• #1) it helps cement understanding and retention
• #2) It helps exercise and develop the imagination.  

Analogies are also indispensable in writing.  They help communicate information to an audience in a clear and colorful way.  Just like a picture, sometimes one apt analogy can be worth a thousand words.  (see the analogy I used, there?!)  I suppose that makes three ways that working to think in terms of analogies can help:

• #3) improves writing and communication

Looks like devoting a little extra brainwidth to focus on analogies is a solid investment.  What would that look like in your family?

Planning and Pondering - What is Success?

As many of us (homeschoolers or not) get ready to plunge into a new school year, it's a great time to make the effort to ponder that Big Picture. What do we really consider success to look like? What are we really, ultimately, trying to do in raising our children to be (hopefully)successful adults?

Here are a couple of quotes I've run across that help me think about my real goals. I now have them posted front and center on my kitchen whiteboard (using black construction paper decorated with glittery gel pens). They are helping keep me on track in this season of planning our curricula, projects, and activities:

"All success consists of this: You are doing something for somebody - benefiting humanity - and the feeling of success comes from the consciousness of this." - Elbert Hubbard, 1923

"Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value." - Albert Einstein (1955)

Those are great thoughts to ponder. To me, the trick, (and the fun!), is figuring out what to do with them.

I find that our path twists and loops - a sort of 3-D cursive that looks different every day. Once our feet hit the ground each morning, we are off on another adventure. The way our madcap wanderings unfold makes planning a challenge, at best! Even with all the bumps and ruts, challenges, and choices, though, it is still enchanting to anticipate what could lie around the next bend. . .

I Thought of It So Now I Have to Do It . . .

A few days ago, I asked on this blog how big a commitment to discipline needs to be in order to yield significant improvement. I've been guilty more than once of trying different systems and methods in an attempt to introduce a smidge of discipline into my life . . . Only to fail miserably at actually changing anything long term.  

The Power of One Minute

Thus was born a system of my very own - the ITOISNIHTDI technique. (Oh, yeah, I was coming up with crazy, unpronounceable acronyms LONG before "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" thought of it.) This mouthful stands for a pretty simple idea: I thought of it, so now I have to do it.

Sounds pretty revolutionary, right? (insert gentle sarcasm) I mean, nobody ever thought of something like that before! Frankly, if it were just as simple as that, I'd be able to get mountains of work done every day of my life without fail. And some people really DO have that ability down pat - they may not do everything as soon as they think of it, but they don't put off a lot of things that they could just as well go ahead and do.

What I was really trying to get at, though, was WHY some of us (like me) don't always do things that need doing when we think of them.  Procrastinating on the daily things that pop into my head is a habit that I'd finally recognized in myself, and, based on what I've heard, is also a problem for a lot of other people.

"I need to clean the toilet when I get a chance."
"I need to tidy the living room, sometime today."
"Somebody should really change that light bulb."

With the swiss cheese I now have for a brain, unless I get things done right away or at least write them down, I'm going to forget all about it until the next time I trip over a book, or try to turn on the light.

Bearing that in mind, I tried to recognize obstacles to discipline.  Removing those obstacles would create a smooth path to actually completing the things I wanted to do without having to trip over the book 5 times first.

So why don't we do the things we should be doing to keep our lives running smoothly? My own favorite excuses include, "It's too hard, I'm too tired, I don't have time, if I do one thing, I'll have to do these 200 other things, too/first", and so on.

To demolish these excuses would be no small feat. . .

Or, wait a minute, maybe a small feat was exactly what was needed!

 In fact only the very smallest chores would be a part of this "system". Only chores that took one minute or less need apply! Surely I couldn't tell myself it was too hard to do something for one minute! I quickly compiled a manageable list of four or five items that took less than a minute each to execute, and prepared to put ITOISNIHTDI into practice.

I have to admit, after all those ambitious projects had all failed, I initially found it hard to get very excited about making smaller changes. Because, really, if a big change doesn't make much difference, how much difference can a small change possibly make?!

Well - out of boredom, or, possibly, desperation to prove that I could in fact discipline myself for at the very least ONE minute of my life, I decided to go ahead and make this smallest practical change that I could.

After all, if I really couldn't take control of myself for one stinkin' minute, then a disorganized home life was going to be the least of my worries!

But, I soon realized that if I really wanted to get rid of the whole litany of excuses, I needed one more simple rule. That's because, as soon as my brain heard "one minute", Worry started up - "What if I think of 50 one minute chores, one right after the other? You're not going to trick me into working for an hour that easily!"

That was when I made the rule that I didn't have to make myself do more than 3 one-minute-chores (OMC's to the initiated) in a row. I could do a few more if I wanted to, but if I did three of them, I didn't have to worry or feel pressured to do more of them for at least TWO HOURS. I mean, I was really setting a pretty low bar, here.

Other than that, though, as soon as one of my selected chores popped into my head, I required myself to do it right then.  Even if I was on my way out the door, or needed to do something else more "important".  These few simple chores were sacrosanct, my own personal dare to myself.  A dare so easy, that I couldn't help but honor it.

The Results?

I was pretty surprised at how much difference even a small (practically miniscule!) amount of discipline helps, especially if, like me, you haven't ever considered yourself to be particularly well-disciplined. If I was tempted to skip something, or to put it off for later, I would ask myself if I really couldn't spare ONE minute to do something and have it out of the way.  That self-reminder generally shamed me into action, which, of course, was the point!

Since then, I am happy and encouraged to say that I have very successfully adopted these little habits into my routines, and they have made a huge difference in my entire process of keeping house. While I required myself to complete the chores whenever I thought of them, in practice, I eventually settled into a routine where I thought of them at the same times every day, often when getting ready in the morning. Eventually, many of them became automatic, which meant i did them without even thinking about it, often while thinking of other things. It was like I developed muscle memory for these chores, a new reflex, something that requires very little conscious discipline to keep up.  Which is kind of awesome, when you think about it! Habits are powerful.

When you see my list of simple chores, you won't think that they could possibly make much difference.  I was amazed, however at how much easier it was to lock into the whole mindset of bringing order to my home once I committed to those chores. They are (cue drumroll, please):

• Make my bed.
• Swish my toilet
• Wipe off my bathroom countertops.
• Take the trash bag out of the kitchen can as soon as it gets full. (No more Mt. Trashmore!)
• Unload the dishwasher. (This one sometimes takes as much as two minutes - I added it as a "challenge" after a couple of months of doing the other OMC's)

That's it. 

 Really! 

 Now, I don't want you to get the wrong idea - I am still by no means a model housekeeper, and with all the health problems and family crises we've been dealing with over the past couple of years, more times than not our house is an absolute wreck. The whole house is almost never entirely clean at once.  And, my husband pitches in with laundry and dishes since I've gotten sick, which helps immensely.  

But, I still stick with my commitment to do those same quick, easy chores, regardless of how silly they may seem, regardless of how many other, potentially more "important", tasks there may be, and somehow I almost always feel like I am no more than an hour or so away from being able to tidy things into some semblance of order again. No matter what else is going on, I feel like I am still doing things to maintain our home, to keep it from getting completely out of hand.  My OMC's provide a foundation on which to build, when I'm ready and able to do more.

Very often, one thing leads to another, and I'll find myself doing many other tasks, and gladly too, because of how nice it feels to make the house a bit more orderly, and because I've learned how much I really can get done in a minute or two.  I still haven't gotten our house exactly the way I want it, but at least I can say that I have made actual progress since I started. Somehow, in just minutes a day, I have changed.

Which sounds silly, but honestly, it is more than I can say for any of the more ambitious systems!

I've resisted adding other disciplinary commitments since then, though, wanting to give those first ones the chance to become firmly embedded as habit, especially in the face of all the health turmoil I've experienced in the past few years.  Yesterday I realized that I first came up with this strategy about three years ago!  Do you suppose that counts as a sufficiently ingrained habit, by now?!

Now that I am ready to consider adding more "official" OMC's, I wonder what I should commit to next?

What little things do you do that make things run smoothly and "feel" right?

Discipline ~ A Loaded Word

What do you think of when you hear or see the word "discipline"?

Talk about a word with a variety of connotations and accompanying emotions! Some people cringe when they hear the word - it means someone did something bad and is having to face the consequences! That's what I used to think of right off, whenever I heard the word.

There is, of course, more to the term than that. Discipline can also evoke images of a graceful and controlled martial artist, honing his technique through years of discipline, of devotion to doing what it takes to do a task well.

Think of how this second type of discipline could benefit a person, or a family. Could a firm commitment to doing what it takes to do something well help you? Make you feel good about yourself? Help you get things done? Maybe even lead to other good things?

If you could add more discipline to your life right now, where would you want it? Also, how big of a commitment to discipline do you think is needed in order to see a significant change?

It could be worse . . . And maybe it should be?

No doubt you've noticed that different people can have strikingly different feelings about the same kind of learning experience. I'm sure many of the differences are due to personality and learning style characteristics. These are the factors that are usually pointed out. I think these factors miss something big, however.

As a homeschooler, I can't tell you how many times I've heard parents rave about how their kids finally came to love learning when they left school, while at the very same time I've also heard heaps of other homeschoolers bemoaning their children's lack of enthusiasm toward learning and wondering where they went wrong. Curriculum reviewers talk about how their children are finally loving math, while others lament their children's boredom or frustration with the very same curriculum.

These differences probably go beyond just what could be explained by personality, learning style, or educational merit. When you think about it, doesn't prior experience have as much to do with success as anything else? So much depends on the setup, the context, into which a learning experience is introduced.

A simple example: A student who has struggled through a math program with 50 practice problems a day might think a program with only 25 problems is like a vacation. What about a student who has always just done 25 problems, though? Or a student who is accustomed to doing 15?

I'm guessing they won't be impressed, to put it mildly.

Similarly, a student accustomed to a traditional, regimented, classroom learning environment may revel in the comparative freedom that even a rigorous homeschooling approach allows. A lifelong homeschooled kid may chafe at the very same program.

So the question that my mischievous little brain wants to ask is, is it ever a good idea to purposely choose a program or approach that we know might be unsuccessful, or at least not enjoyable, just to give our children a different frame of reference?

Most of the parents I know (myself included) tend to obsess over finding and using approaches that our children will like, as much as possible. When our children don't do well with the approach, we blame the method, thinking it is a bad fit for our child, and that we need to find something else.

An overwhelmingly common concern among parents is that they not crush their children's love of learning. In the face of this nurturing, and in the right context, many children flourish. But others become coddled, resistant to most effort and blind to the rewards of discipline.

This flies in the face of what most of us would call good educational technique - But maybe what we really need in some of these cases is an opportunity for a change in perspective.

(I guess that's a fancy, positive way to say "attitude adjustment".)

Picasso and the second mouse - "Quartz Quotes" of the week

One of my weird peculiarities is that I love to collect quotes and sayings. They can be fun and inspirational and sometimes just clever. This week, I have a couple of quotes for your consideration.

I love this first one.  When I read it, I realized that  it pretty much sums our entire homeschooling motto up in 17 words.

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

~Pablo Picasso

Spanish Cubist painter (1881 - 1973)

Living life is an art form in itself, so I do agree it is a problem when grown-ups lose so much of that child-like creativity in their approach to daily existence. Drawing and painting are important and meaningful, but Art goes much further than that. I think any time we exercise our creative muscles is time well spent.

Certainly, it's a great reminder for us to give our kids lots of examples and opportunities to make and do beautiful and creative things.  And it reminds us to approach every undertaking with an eye to making that task a little work of art.

The second quote is an insightful little tweak on a completely unrelated common saying. A pretty valid point, if you think about it!

"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."  ~Author Unknown

Just goes to show, some of these traditional words of wisdom are not as cut and dried as they seem!

Image: "Child with a Dove" by Pablo Picasso