Monday Morning Check In: 3 Ways to Keep Standing

Written by Paula E. Bird, copyright 2014

Good Morning, everyone. Another Monday in the year's march toward December. Today is the 9th Monday in 2014, if that helps anyone to feel that fire lit beneath them.

Today is a stiff day for me for many reasons. Usually my life rolls along with interesting things happening nearly every day. I enjoy my students and my life. On occasion, however, there are times when unpleasant things or people appear in my path, and I am forced to reckon with the problems that they represent. I find these times and situations to be extremely stressful. I am sure that others have similar difficult moments. How do we handle these situations and moments and the pressures that come along? How do we get through these sticky wickets and move on? Here are three things that I find helpful and remind myself about during these difficult times.

Keep focused on the big picture. Remind yourself what your purpose is. Stay focused on the big picture and not the muddy potholes by the side of the road. Do not let someone else steer you down a road that you do not wish to travel. Resist the temptation to wallow and complain. Get up, get motivated, look where you want to go, and get moving again. I have a fearful little boy who wrestles with perfectionist issues on a frequent basis. I played the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers number about picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and starting all over again. He loves it and sings it regularly back to me whenever he makes a mistake. We adults need to do the same thing. If you want to see Fred and Ginger, click here).

Watch your thoughts. When we wallow about hurts and disappointments, we dwell on negative ideas. This negativity takes a toll on us emotionally, mentally, and physically. Stop those dangerous negative thoughts in their tracks and immediately refocus your thinking on something positive. Look for something that you can do that will make a positive difference.

What are your strengths? Foster those. Find a person that you can uplift and help in some way. Take your head out of your own head and put it in a different place that will lead you to the sunshine, not the darkness. This step is probably the hardest step for most people. Despite efforts to stay in the positive, the negative thoughts creep back in relentlessly. Be disciplined about cutting off and veering off those thoughts. Write them down if you must think about them at some point (I use the 750words.com site for this purpose), but be sure to get these thoughts out of your head. Replace them with more positive ideas.

Be sure to surround yourself with good things and good people. Find your peeps and stay with them, not for purposes of complaining or whining, but to absorb their happy energy. You need injections of positiveness and enthusiasm, not dumping grounds for your negativity.

Stay healthy. Get plenty of rest, eat good food, and move yourself with an exercise program of some sort. Do not succumb to any desires to do something otherwise. Losing sleep will stress your system and leave you prone to infection and illness. Bad food, even if labeled "comfort" food, is bad for you. Food is fuel and you need good fuel in moments like this. Do not give up on your exercise program. Moving yourself with exercise will help to eliminate the effects of stress and release endorphins that may help you to feel better. No matter how busy you are, make the time to stay healthy so that you can fight this battle from your strongest vantage point.

Times of disappointment are tough to handle and difficult to experience, however, they are a part of life and will rear their unpleasant little heads often enough that it behooves us to get a good grip on how to handle these issues when they arise. These three tips above are my top three ways to get myself through these moments and come through the other side with my goals intact, my attitude upbeat and useful to uplift others, and my health strong and supportive of my life.

Have a good week. That is my plan.

Monday Morning Check In: Disappointments and Life Lessons

Written at the end of 2011, this article has been updated December 21, 2016.

Last week I focused on Jinny Ditzler's "Best Year Yet!" question number 1 concerning this past year: "what did I accomplish?" This week I want to consider Jinny's second and third questions:

• What were my biggest disappointments?
• What did I learn?

What were my biggest disappointments?

Disappointment to a noble soul is what cold water is to burning metal;

it strengthens, tempers, intensifies, but never destroys it. -- Eliza Tabor (author)

One of the reasons I like Jinny's program is the way she frames her questions. Jinny asks us to list our biggest disappointments. Notice that she did not ask us to list our failures. The word failure drips negativity and finality, whereas disappointment sounds, well, disappointing and transient. I would have trouble facing a failure. I would have to wade through a lot of psychological swamps in order to make sense of a failure, if I could even get myself to the point where I could consider the failure. So much negative stuff accompanies a failure: the impact on one's self esteem, the sense of rejection, and our perceived self worth or value. To me the word failure looks remarkably like a closed door that says, "Stop! Don't go in here! Your worst self is in here, and it isn't pretty!" I do not want to deal with failure. I cannot take a failure in stride.

I can, however, face a disappointment. I can consider all sides of a disappointment. I can learn from a disappointment. To me the word disappointment resembles a door left ajar. I can close it, walk through it, or even poke my head around the open edge without ever taking a step beyond the door sill.

Sometimes what holds us back from achieving our full potential is our refusal or inability to let go of our disappointments and open the door all the way. By asking us to examine our disappointments in the full light of day, Ms. Ditzler asks us to "[s]top trying to drive with your hands on the rear-view mirror!" We cannot change the past. The past is done, finished, unchanged. If we look back at it and refuse to let go of it, we will keep ourselves tied to the past. We cannot live in the present or look to the future when we spend our time looking backwards.

Rather than look in the rear view mirror, Jinny asks us to consider our disappointments in order to change the effect our disappointments have on us. Jinny's question two is the next step to deal with the negative aspects of our past and to refocus on living in the present. Jinny gives us three possibilities to deal positively with negatives from our past:

• Forgive
• Forget
• Learn

To forgive is a difficult task for many people, whether it is to forgive others or to forgive oneself. To forget may be difficult too, although the act of acknowledging or naming a particular disappointment may be enough to release the disappointment's hold over us. Jinny suggests that the best way to deal with disappointments of the past is to learn from them, and this is Jinny's third question.

What did I learn?

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the oracle process all begins. 

 -- Jim Rohn (entrepreneur, author, motivational speaker)

Now the fun begins. Look over your list of accomplishments and disappointments and reframe them as lessons you have learned or a lesson you could learn. In order to keep my focus on this task, I maintain a "Life Lesson" journal. My journal is merely a simple composition book with the title "Life Lessons." I see it every day but I do not always write in the book on a daily basis. Still, because I see the book every day, I am reminded to think about my life and my activities with this perception: what life lessons can I learn from my daily life experiences?

I actually enjoy sitting down for a minute while I wait for my morning coffee to finish brewing or dripping. I cast my mind over the previous day and look for a nugget to transform into a life lesson. Some people advocate writing a life lesson or a list of things to be grateful for at the end of the day when the activities are freshest in our minds. I have trouble remembering to do that at the end of the day when my energy level seems to be at its lowest. Instead, I enjoy contemplating a new day with the activity of transforming the previous day into a life lesson sound bite. The positive aspect of this activity sets the tone for the beginning of my day.

As we think about our accomplishments and the lessons we learned, we can be objective about the skills, attitudes, and behaviors we already have and what we might lack to achieve or improve ourselves in more ways. Jinny then provides us with some steps to help us turn our life lessons into personal guidelines and ultimately into instructions to follow in the coming year.

If you are interested in exploring more of Jinny Ditzler's program for the best year yet, click on the book link below (affiliate link):

Happy Practicing!

----- Paula -----

© 2016 by Paula E. Bird

Monday Morning Check In: Keep Your Eye on the Prize

Life is a series of ups and downs. We cannot avoid trouble or problems, nor can we ignore them. We may prefer to experience joy and celebration in every moment of our lives, but pinning all our hopes and expectations on this wishful thinking is unrealistic. We will be riding life's roller coaster of ups and downs, so we had better find a way to survive the ride until the end.

I do not think we have any trouble finding ways to enjoy our life's up swings, however, learning how to successfully hang on during the down swings may be another story. I would like to share one technique that can help you stay focused and moving forward in the face of adversity: "Keep your eye on the prize."

I had a fruitful discussion with a close friend and colleague this week about creating a different sort of goal statement than the types of goal setting I have previously espoused in this blog. Rather than a specific set of goals to accomplish, my friend and I talked about a goal that was more global. We were in effect discussing the creation of a mission statement or purpose for my work. I have discussed Stephen R. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in earlier blog posts. Creating a mission statement can span two of the seven habits:

• habit #2: begin with the end in mind

• habit #3: put first things first

Habit #2, begin with the end in mind, involves developing a principle-centered personal mission statement that includes long term goals based on personal principles. Habit #3, put first things first, involves spending time doing those things that fit within my personal mission and finding balance between all the various roles of my life.

My friend and I spent some time discussing my personal mission statement as it related to my work at the university. After discussing the various roles I played and the university's expectations of its faculty, my friend and I developed a three-point mission statement that covered the various aspects of my university teaching work. It covered my personal development and the performance of my teaching duties, my work as it related to my colleagues and working conditions, and my role in the larger university collegiate arena.

After developing this mission statement of purpose, I wrote it on a small card of bookmark size. For several days I referred to the bookmark often and read the statements that we had written on the card. I spent several days reflecting in my morning pages on the areas of my work that would fall under each of the three points. And finally, I used the card and my reflection time to develop specific items or goal areas that I wanted to effect improvement in myself and in my working relationship with my colleagues and work partners.

When those times of adversity arrive, and arrive they surely will, you will have a prize to fix your eyes upon. You can use the bookmark or card to remind yourself frequently what your purpose and mission statement is. When you are in the midst of a necessary confrontation, you will have something to remind you of your purpose and personal mission. If you keep your eyes fixed on the prize that you have set before you on a card or bookmark, you will have something to direct your steps during those times when you are being buffeted by unimportant distractions.

To try this idea, write a basic three-point mission statement of purpose for yourself. As with the Covey habit program, develop a statement that addresses and moves you through each of these three areas: dependence, independence, and interdependence. Make your own series of cards or bookmarks with your basic three-point mission statement, and place the cards or bookmarks in various places in your environment so that you are frequently reminded of your identified purpose and mission in life.

"Remember that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize. You also must run in such a way that you will win." - 1 Corinthians 9:24.

"And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us." Hebrews 12:1b

For a good summary of Stephen R. Covey's 7 Habits, visit: http://www.quickmba.com/mgmt/7hab/.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Never is there a good time for a teacher-student relationship to end, but right now there is a new school year beginning for many of the Western world, and folks may be contemplating a change in teachers. Now might be a good time to discuss this important issue and ways to minimize the emotional damage for the parent, the student, and especially the teacher. I may focus on the parent's perspective more than the teacher's here because in my experience the parent is usually the quickest to end the teaching-learning relationship. Sometimes a parent is unaware of the teacher's emotional connection; teachers often hang onto a teaching relationship longer than they should because of the tremendous amount of emotional investment the teacher has made.

Teachers will share with you that the relationship with a student is a very personal one. In order to be an effective and influential teacher, the teacher must give something of him- or herself. A good teacher does not just give instructions, advice, and directions. A good teacher addresses the whole personality of the student and mentally prepares a program that will encourage, strengthen, and nurture the student to reach his or her greatest potential. There may be some teachers who fall short of that mark or who may not be the best fit in a particular student situation, but I believe that most teachers would agree with me about our purpose as good teachers.

How does one break up this teacher-student relationship and in many cases the teacher-parent relationship? There are several perspectives to consider since there are three persons involved in the relationship (sometimes more than three if other family members are involved). The typical teaching-learning relationship will include the teacher, the student, and the parent. In the Suzuki world this is referred to as the Suzuki Triangle. Each point of the triangle is important to the growth and potential of the learning situation. If one person along the point of the triangle is not doing his or her "job," the shape of the triangle will be "altered" in a way that is detrimental to the student's continued learning success. The most optimum teaching-learning environment is one in which each point of the triangle is at its strongest.

Each part of the triangle is important:

• The teacher's responsibility is to teach the parent how to be an effective teacher or coach on the home front during the student's home practices. The teacher also teaches the student all the technical aspects of making a good sound on the instrument and of effectively expressing a musical idea or emotion. The teacher has typically attended many institutions of higher learning and taken many different levels of teacher training in order to be effective in this aspect of teaching.

• The parent's job is to teach the child at home in the teacher's stead. The parent is responsible for playing the listening assignments and for practicing the assigned homework material. In addition, the parent assists the child in learning a new piece (fingerings and bowing) and in practicing effectively.

• The child's job is to simply be a child. We allow the child to attend to his or her learning through the child's senses, at the child's optimum pace, within the framework of the child's ability to concentrate, and helping the child achieve skill development through effective review and repetition as the child focuses on one thing at a time. [Thank you, Jeanne Luedke for your excellent teaching on this subject!]

At some point in the process, the distinctions between the various triangle roles disappear and the parties take on added or different roles. The teacher strives to guide the student to be his or her teacher in many respects as the student reaches the advanced stages of musical development. The parent fulfills the role of a coach and fan and functions more in the realm of waving flags and shouting hoorays from the balcony. And the student assumes more and more responsibility for making and implementing his or her own decisions about expressing musical ideas and what technical means to use to accomplish the best expression of those musical ideas.

All of my discussion to this point is to help others understand how involved everyone becomes in the process. The longer the relationship has gone on, the deeper the relationships and emotional connections. When a parent, teacher, or student makes the decision to break the connection, there will be emotional upheaval and hurt, and sometimes anger as a way to express the hurt. In many situations, the teacher will emotionally grieve the loss of the relationship, and the student will feel abandoned, even if the teacher is not the reason for the breakup. The student will be watching the adults and how they handle the situation, so be aware of the role you choose to play in the scenario. Remember, as teachers and parents, we are always role modeling for the child how the child should behave as an adult. Please be responsible in your behavior and show the child what is the mature way to handle this type of situation.

Here are some of my suggestions for ending the relationship in a positive way:

Acknowledge the past history in a positive way.  Avoid complaining. Avoid blaming. Avoid any negativity. Recount the history of your relationship together with gratitude and joy. There is no benefit to  giving criticism and making judgments other than to puff yourself up, even if you are correct in your assessment. Your child is watching to see how you handle this situation, so please consider the kind of behavior and message that you wish to reveal and have your child learn from observing you.

Avoid pointing fingers of blame for your decision. If the parent is ending the relationship, please avoid accusing the teacher of falling short in some way. Just stay focused and positive. Nothing good gets accomplished by being negative or even making nasty remarks. Remember, most new teachers will call the former teacher to get the "whole story." I never enjoyed being put on the spot in that way. I understand that for many people, if there is a nasty breakup, the former teacher may find it difficult to cast the historical information in a positive light. So, take personal responsibility for your choice and state your reasons in a positive, logical (unemotional), and nonaccusatory way. As a teacher, I spend several months and several conversations or emails trying to fortify the relationship and bring everyone back to the same positive teaching-learning environment. When I finally give up, it is because I have finally concluded that I am the only one left in the relationship who cares how it turns out.

Avoid complaining. Stay upbeat. Do not use the breakup as an opportunity to air your stored grievances. Expressing your complaints now will not change anything or improve the situation for any of the parties in the future. Remember your child is watching to see how you handle this situation, so act well. Pulling out all the kitchen-sink grievances is not an effective demonstration to your child or student of how to handle conflict.

Allow the other person to "save face." The other person may become upset, but nothing useful will come from an argument. Since it takes two people to make an argument successful, take the higher road and refuse to argue. Just accept the other person's anger and agree with them. The argument will eventually fizzle.

Apologies are worth extra points. If you can find it in your heart to do this, you can walk away from the situation with a well deserved pat on the back. Accept responsibility for the problem and sprinkle your apologies liberally throughout the conversation. In the words of the famous cinema star Clark Gable, apologize for your shortcomings.

Thank the teacher for the experience that you had with them. Whether you deem the relationship with the teacher to be worthy of continuing or not, the fact of the matter is that the teacher did invest his or time in the teaching-learning relationship and deserves to be thanked for the time and effort that he or she put forth.

Next time, do your homework. Choosing a teacher should not be a quick decision. Speak to the teacher, ask the teaching community for recommendations about the teacher, observe the teacher in the teaching-learning environment, and provide your child with an opportunity to interact with the teacher before entering into the new relationship. Many new parents call me and expect me to provide little more than glorified babysitting services. That is not what I do and it certainly is not my purpose in life. I spend a great deal of time honing my teaching skills so that I can provide the greatest service to my students and their parents and families. I expect that my parents and students will enter into the true spirit of the teaching-learning relationship and will not accept them into the studio if I think that I cannot help them to progress along the learning road. Some parents may contact me without doing their homework first, but I make sure that they do it before they embark in a relationship with me and my studio.

Whatever you do, do it with class. I got this advice when I was a youngster about to quit my first major job in a fit of anger. I heard this advice two hours before I was about to stage a royal blowup. I considered the wisdom of the advice and instead completely reconstructed my resignation plan. I followed all the steps I outlined above. I acknowledged all the persons in the organization by name and listed their contributions to my personal growth in the workplace. I thanked everyone for all that they did to help me on the job or in my growth. I stayed positive and avoided complaining. I did not work up a frothy blame game but instead focused on what I had learned and what value I would take from my work experience and put into my future endeavors. I chose my positive and grateful attitude and expressed it liberally and in a public manner via a memo addressed to all the partner-directors of the organization.

Let me tell you the benefits I received from taking this "high road" of ending the relationship. My employers and fellow workers made their good-byes with big smiles on their faces (and tears in their eyes in a few cases). I got big bear hugs from some of the top dogs. I got acknowledgment in return for all that I had contributed to the firm. The firm actually sent me a sizable amount of outsource work in the month that followed, which really helped me out financially. And because I showed that I had class, I was included in their recommendations to others.

Most of all, I felt good about what I had done and the way I had handled it. I felt like a grownup.

Please show consideration and thoughtful reflection in your relationships, whether it is with your students, your children, the studio parents, or the teacher. Please show some class and professionalism in the manner in which you end a teaching-learning relationship.

Monday Morning: Your Best Year Yet!

I spend a lot of time thinking about goal setting and achieving. In the past I identified Mondays as the time when I would focus on goals in particular for the week. I have experimented with many goal setting programs over the years, and there are a few that I return to year after year. In particular, I would like to discuss one of my favorite books over the years and recommend this book as a very useful tool for structuring your best year yet: Your Best Year Yet! by Jinny S. Ditzler (click here for the book).

The book was an outgrowth of an annual workshop of the same name. The book's basic premise is that we should spend about three hours each year answering 10 questions, the answers to which will provide us with the necessary framework to have our best year yet. I recommend reading this book, because it contains a lot of material to flesh out each question and answer any ancillary questions that might arise during the exercise, and the book provides additional goal setting techniques that I will not address in this article. What I write here is a small portion of a much bigger whole, and you will find this book quite useful.

Question 1 asks us to remember what we achieved last year. At the time I first wrote this article (1/3/2011) I had just completed my 2010 annual report for the university, I therefore knew exactly how to answer question one with what I achieved that year in terms of recitals, classes, creative works, and travel. I was pleased with my lengthy list, and I understood better why I felt so "busy" all that year.

Questions 2 and 3 ask us to look back at our disappointments and learn from them. We should think back to what our disappointments and frustrations were and see if we can glean a lesson from them that can be set up as a principle for 2011.

Question 4 asks us to examine our limiting beliefs and create ways to turn them around into statements that empower us. If we examine the excuses or justifications we make, we may discover that we set ourselves up for failure before we have even begun. One way to uncover these limiting beliefs is to examine closely those areas of our lives in which we do not do or get what we want and look closely at how we explain that failure to ourselves. Once we discover what limiting statements we cling to, we can then re-write that script into more positive statements that will empower us to achieve.

Question 5 asks us to examine what is most important to us in our lives. This question asks us to focus on the personal values that we think are the most central to our being and the way we live.

Questions 6, 7, and 8 ask us to focus on the various roles we play in our different life areas. My list looks something like: teacher, musician, writer, blogger, podcaster, speaker, violinist, pianist, faculty member, wife, step mom, dog owner, alpaca owner, donkey owner, daughter, sister, aunt, friend. As you can see, the list can be lengthy, but that is important to consider in our busy lives. Perhaps there is a role I need to let go, a new one I should add, or one where I should focus more of my time. After I factor in my personal values, I examine how my current life reflects my values in my various roles. Finally, I consider what goals I want to set for each of my roles.

Question 9 asks what my top ten goals are for the next year. The author sets out a method to prioritize this list and set up a Best Year Yet Plan to include all the material developed by the questions.

Question 10 asks us to examine how we can ensure that we achieve our top ten goals. The author suggests several useful tools to develop a system that will lead us forward toward progress and success.

The book and the 10 questions are set forth in a way that will help you answer the 10 questions and develop your list of goals and priorities. Even though I read this book every year, I find the book new and refreshing each time, and I never tire of the discoveries I make as I work through the question and answer process.

Happy Practicing!

----- Paula -----

© 2016 by Paula E. Bird