A Case for Living From the Inside-Out

From learning new technology to additional work responsibilities and more, the pandemic has been challenging for most of us in multiple ways. What’s compounded our problems, however, is that most of us are very well conditioned to live at the effect of our circumstances. So when our circumstances began to go haywire in March 2020, so did our already-tenuous sense of clarity and well-being.

Living at the effect of our circumstances allows blame, burnout, dissatisfaction, and worry to so easily take over. When living at the effect of our circumstances, we await permission from leaders and colleagues to be well and enjoy ourselves again. When living at the effect of our circumstances, we are living life from the outside-in.

None of us have ever been through a pandemic like this before. Our students and their families haven’t, our colleagues haven’t, and our leaders haven’t. Despite understanding that the pandemic has universally challenging aspects, it remains so temptingly simple to blame someone else for our experience, as if this would all be going so much better if our leaders were more competent, caring, and compassionate.

Except it’s not school leaders who are making this a tough time to be in education. It’s not our fault either. We simply haven’t yet learned how to thrive in the midst of a storm, to either dig firm and grounded roots or to lift off and soar.

Most of us adults tend to lack the foundational insight, grounding, and resilience to thrive in life no matter the circumstances, so it’s not hard to see why the last 18 months have been so challenging for some of us.

Burn out, frustration, and unhappiness happens at work when we allow our job to dictate our quality of life and sense of well-being. What if instead we elevate our quality of life and sense of well-being and then have that dictate our experience of our job?

It’s not a complicated process to live this way, but the first step is often quite daunting: be willing to take radical responsibility for your well-being and quality of life. Doing this gives us reliable access to living life from the inside-out and thriving no matter the circumstances.

We work too hard and we care too much to let circumstances continue to distract us from what really matters: our families, our friends, our students, our colleagues, and our own well-being. The people in our life deserve so much more than that, and so do we.

We don’t need anyone’s permission to transform our experience of life in this moment. We only need to be willing to try on radical responsibility to live from the inside-out right now. Trust me, once you’ve tasted it, I don’t think you’ll ever want to go back to an outside-in way of life.

I’m so grateful for you, my audience. Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a great Thanksgiving week. ❤️

Insight Comes to Us

I was talking with a friend last night, and he had an insight that I want to share with you.

After sharing everything that was on his mind, we did a brief meditation/grounding exercise. (This is such a simple yet powerful way to get us present to so much more than our own thinking.) Then we jumped into a conversation about his relationship with a colleague. The relationship has been good and professionally productive, but he’s been noticing that it’s not as personal, supportive, or connected as he would like, and he feels like there’s a missed opportunity here.

His insight during the conversation was that bringing curiosity to his relationship with this colleague could be an access to a more meaningful connection. It seemed obvious once he said it and then saw it. “Right, why haven’t I asked that question yet?!”

Insight can’t be forced. In fact, insight nearly never comes from our trying to figure something out, which is our analytical or focused thinking mind. Insight arises when we settle ourselves more fully into complete awareness of the present moment and allow our focused thinking to settle. Insight is the type of thinking that comes to us, not the kind of thinking we “do.”

In our conversation, I then offered an observation - that thing he said about his relationship with his wife earlier, would curiosity make a difference there too?

Life seems really complex, yet our approach and our being can simplify it in a beautiful and effective way. For instance, grounding ourselves in a single intention or two each day can simplify our attention and allow us to focus in a meaningful way.

From my perspective, curiosity itself is always a powerful intention. Curiosity is an openness and willingness to explore despite how much we think we know. Curiosity allows us to see the people in our life newly, with fresh eyes, and seeing people newly allows us to connect with the person who’s actually there instead of just the stories about these people in our minds.

We teachers want all our students to be curious in the classroom - it’s a powerful access to learning. What most of us fail to recognize, though, is that we should also want curiosity for ourselves. There’s so much more hope for ourselves, our students, and others in our lives when we engage with them from curiosity instead of from already knowing. That's the difference between insight that arises and thinking we "do" - there's not room for insight when our mind is full of what we already know.

At the very least, as teachers and parents it models curiosity for our students and children. At the very best, it gives us access to unconditional love, understanding, and engagement in the present moment.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

The Fertile Soil of Sadness

I had a couple big cries that first day of my retreat.

I cried from regret for who I am as a dad sometimes. I cried from fear for my family and from fear for myself. I cried for my parents, I cried for my friends, and I cried for my students and their families. I was present to all the places I'm falling short...all the missed opportunities to connect and to love and to give...all the moments of selfishness...all the moments of insecurity...all the moments of ineffectiveness...and all the moments of inadequacy.

My sobs shook me from the core of my being, and I let them. With courage and trust, I travelled down as deeply as I could go within the sadness, fear, and regret within myself, and I cried from the absolute bottom of my emotional well.

And way down at the bottom of that well, I found that it wasn't a dark and dank place as I expected. It was a warm and glowing aliveness, a core of compassion, love, and joy. And I cried some more from that compassion and care and from that love.

At the bottom of all my fears and sadness of those moments, I saw more clearly than ever before that all I want is for others to relax and be well. I want that for myself of course, and I want it for the people closest to me. I want it for my students and their families, and I want it for our society and world.

Wow. It really is a gift to feel anything at all, and when we welcome the insight of more negative emotions of sadness and fear, we give them an opportunity to reconnect us with what matters most. Sadness and fear can be gateways to joy and love.

It could be that sadness and fear are always pointing towards joy, love, and other positive emotions, but we get stuck looking at the pointing hand of the emotion instead of where that hand is pointing.

We can handle all emotions - it's how we're built - and we needn't be afraid of any of them. Emotions don't last forever and there's likely some wisdom hiding in there for us to find. Perhaps that's why we feel them at all.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️