What Schools Don't Teach But We Desperately Need

Our honest emotions and good intentions are sometimes misdirected.

When we had our first kid, my wife and I had to decide ahead of time how we would engage with our kids when they got hurt. (One of our boys used to get hurt a lot!)

If he fell over while running, would we run to him, pick him up, and project our own fears and worries onto his young and impressionable mind?

Would we train him to think that the world is dangerous and he always needs to be careful?

Would we teach him that pain is something that can be avoided, and we should always be on the lookout to minimize pain?

Or would we empower him to get back up when he fell?

Would we encourage him to reflect on his experience so that he could learn the most effective lessons from it?

Would we let him know that we’re there for him if he needs us, and that he’s a resilient, healable human - a creative problem-solver that can overcome any challenge of the mind, emotions, or body?

These questions - whether to coddle from our own desire or to more effectively support from his actual needs - can either empower or cheapen his spirit. Educators have the responsibility to consider this in every interaction with our students.

A major problem in current education is that while we’re focused primarily on knowledge and understanding of the outside world, we’re neglecting a thorough, accurate, and empowering understanding of our inner world.

You and I, adults who have come through traditional educational systems, are also pretty deficient in our understanding of our inner world. This lack of understanding on our part is what perpetuates the lack of an impactful transformational education in our K-12 schools.

As a 40-something year old client said to me last week: “A thought I have after every single one of our calls is, ‘Why didn’t I learn this sooner?!’”

A transformational education is not very complicated. It is, however, radical.

• It requires that we cultivate compassion, but we don’t let it get in our way of being honest.

• It means that we welcome empathy, but we don’t mistake that for effective support.

• It invites us to empower individuals, but we don’t neglect the other humans on ALL sides of EVERY issue.

The truth is, the vast majority of educators have no clue how to be compassionate with students while also honoring students' inner spiritual resilience. Most educators don’t know how to hold space for students’ minds, hearts, bodies, and spirits in the classroom, and certainly not with large class sizes. It's because we've never learned this ourselves.

So instead, we go with our gut feelings of being overly empathetic or overly academic or overly analytical.

It’s all coming from good intentions, but good intentions often cheapen the spirit.

Our kids, our society, and we ourselves deserve better. We deserve a transformational education that puts us into the driver’s seat of our own experience - regardless of the circumstances.

This is the most direct way to honor all levels of a person’s experience of life - the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social. It's how I've aimed to show up as a teacher for the last 17 years. It's what I do daily with clients one-on-one. And it's what we all desire for ourselves and others.

Let’s stop treating symptoms. We've found the illness, and there is a cure.

Thanks so much for reading. 🙏❤️

P.S. As a transformational coach, I help people move beyond their self-imposed limitations to be their best and feel amazing. If you’re interested in finding out how I can support you, reach out and let’s talk. 💌

An End to Frustration

Emotional Maturity: an end to frustration, anger, and blame - and access to compassion, ease, and effectiveness - no matter the circumstances.

My wife was running late, which meant I would be late to an appointment.

I oh-so-wanted to:

1. indulge in judgments and make her wrong

2. indulge in frustration

3. indulge in blaming her

But I didn't go there. I relaxed through my judgmental thinking, I relaxed through those feelings, and I explored the yard while I waited.

Those emotions - frustration, anger, and blame - wouldn't benefit my relationship. They also wouldn't help me get to my appointment on time.

How those emotions would help me: they'd help me cover up my shame and embarrassment for being late to my appointment. They wouldn’t help me be on time, but frustration and blame are much easier to feel than shame and embarrassment.

Those negative emotions are a choice. Even though they don't seem like it! Even though they don't feel like it!

Those emotions help me avoid responsibility for creating a life and a relationship that I love in the face of all circumstances.

When she was running about 15 minutes late, I started to worry. My mind began creating some pretty vivid imaginings about what could be going wrong.

Again, I didn't indulge. I let the mind do its thing, and I let my heart (my feelings) relax and feel compassion and love for her, for me, and for this life.

When she was 30 minutes late, I realized that I had the time wrong and she still had another 30 minutes to get to me. 🤦‍♂️

Wow, if I had let myself indulge in that default frustration, anger, or blame, I would feel so embarrassed and ashamed of myself! Instead, I could just smile at the sometimes absurd torrents of our emotions, reactions, and judgments.

Steps to end frustration

There are four steps that I use to diffuse frustration and blame when they arise - the steps are simple, but full awareness and mastery takes something.

1. Remind myself that I am the one generating the negative emotion. I am reacting to my thoughts and judgments about my wife - she is NOT the source of my emotions, I am.

2. Relax my body and relax my mind. Negative emotions and the thinking that goes along with them can rev us up! Relaxation is the most effective and direct action we can take when we're feeling fiery emotions.

3. Remind myself what really matters to me. Unconditional love, grace, and generosity are much more important to me in my relationship than frustration, anger, and blame.

4. Explore what the negative emotion is covering up. In my case, it was covering up shame and embarrassment that I would be late for an appointment. If there's an action we can take to deal with the underlying emotion with integrity, take that action. In this example, I reached out to people to notify colleagues that I'd be late and to get proper coverage.

Why haven't we learned this sooner?

At the end of a coaching call last week, my client said to me, “After every one of our meetings I have the thought ‘Why didn’t I learn this sooner?!’”

Emotional maturity - where our emotions really come from and how to be responsible for them - is something most of us never learn.

Let's change that.

Thanks so much for reading. 🙏❤️

P.S. As a transformational coach, I help people move beyond their self-imposed limitations to be their best and feel amazing. If you’re interested in finding out how I can support you, reach out and let’s talk. 💌

There's No "Becoming" Our Best

My dog usually lays against me and rests while I meditate. Sometimes he works his head under my arms for snuggles.

Every single time it's a gift. He's not interrupting my meditation - he's the reason for my meditation. A clear, inspired, and loving experience of life is why I do any of my inner work.

Because our inner work is not about Becoming our Best.

Our inner work is about Being our Best.

🔥 When the storms of overwhelm sweep in...

🔥 When the quivers of anxiety vibrate our nerves...

🔥 When the fires of frustration fog our vision...

🔥 When the burn of shame heats our chest...

🔥 When the magma of anger begins to erupt...

There's nothing - no circumstance, no emotion, and no thought - that can forcefully keep us from moving in the right direction. ALL of it is happening for us, not to us.

What if there were nothing to fix, change, or improve about ourselves, others, or the world? What if there was only awakening to our full capacity to thrive in any moment?

It's a single-item to-do list:

✅ Access our inherent capacity to thrive no matter the circumstances.

When we learn to access our inherent capacity to thrive no matter the circumstances, we can then do meaningful work that inspires us in all areas of our life. This applies in our marriage, in our parenting, in our friendships, in our work, in our alone-time, and everywhere else.

This is what it means to Be our Best.

Here's the catch, though: most of us have never learned to access our inherent capacity to thrive.

Most of us have spent or will have spent at least a decade and a half of our lives in school to learn. But we've never learned this. What if we had learned it? What might have been different? What if the adults in our lives modeled for us and others what it is to leave life free from the seeming constraints of our circumstances?

Life coaching is one powerful access to moving beyond our self-imposed limitations. It gets us in touch with what we really want. It gives us access to 100% responsibility and freedom to live our best life. It compassionately shows us our blindspots. It guides us to experience our own insights. It gives us customized practices.

If you'd like another set of eyes, another mind, and another heart there to support you in being your best no matter the circumstances, consider working with me or another life coach you trust.

Thanks so much for reading. 🙏❤️

P.S. As a transformational coach, I help people move beyond their self-imposed limitations to be their best and feel amazing. If you’re interested in finding out how I can support you, reach out and let’s talk. 💌