It is in the air, opportunity to grow, expand my viewpoint, and learn. Mental fitness complements my physical and spiritual fitness by opening the doors to curiosity. I first have to read about a topic before I try it out. This month, I am working on organizational dynamics and considering how they apply to my field of instructional design.
Books come to me through my smart colleagues who recommend them, and through my smart phone that is tracking everything I am investigating. For now, I believe there is a semi-benign cookie monster gathering all my search data and curating things of interest, and encouraging me to purchase them. For now, that cookie monster is my friend, but I am keeping an eye on him for sure. I read, think about and carefully consider the jewels that come out of reading.
Jewels are the bright flashes of truth that stick with you when you are learning; they are the aha moments of learning. In my adulthood, before graduate school, I discovered the gold nugget moment in professional development events. I was giving a workshop on tracking student performance with an electronic gradebook (this was way back in the 90’s) and participants would tell me about the one thing they learned that they didn’t know before the workshop. These development events were mandatory and most teachers dreaded them, but at the end when we did the wrap up, they all noticed something new that they learned.
I started using that approach to my own learning when I had to sit through my own mandatory training. It was almost like a game, to find the thing I didn’t know. What I know now, was that I was tightly knitting previous knowledge to new knowledge with an internal generative learning activity that worked for me. I would evaluate each thing that I was presented, search through my previous knowledge to see how much of the presented information I really did not know. It forced me to pay attention instead of tuning out. It made the time fly and it made me a little smarter. Now, I have this golden treasure trove of jewels and nuggets that every teacher I had, good and not so good, gave to me.
Here is my wisdom for the day related to mental fitness: Mindfulness in meetings will always yield a nugget for me. In these days of endless online meetings, I take notes even though part of me believes I have heard all this before. Even so, there is always one little nugget I can take away from the experience. Sometimes, I feel like I am panning for gold to get a tiny little flake in my sifter, but gold flakes are often indicators that bigger pieces are nearby. As soon as I find a nugget, I am eager to share it with others.
For me, knowledge is not a zero sum game, it is always a win/win proposition. If you are smarter and stronger, then your life will be better. If your life is better, those around you may benefit. If someone in an organization uses knowledge in a negative way, I will spend a little more time than others holding the light in hopes that either I see the good in what that person is doing, or that person sees the potential for higher productivity in the good. I believe I am given infinite grace by my creator and I work to extend that grace as best I can in my limited human capacity. It is a good thing that I have this infinite grace because I am far, far from perfect and every time I try my best, it still needs a little cushion of grace to round it out. I am grateful for the opportunities around me to learn and grow.
A Million Small Steps 