It’s an irony of life that the more desperate you are for a thing that you want, the more elusive that thing is.
And when you already have plenty, it’s easy to come by.
How do you get from one state to the other? I believe that such a shift is related to a shift in our habits. And while changing our habits is difficult, it’s a worthy effort that can allow us to transform aspects of our very identity that we thought were immutable.
Read MoreAfter spending most of the last quarter of last year making a dining-room table-full of holiday gifts, I decided that I wanted to knit some things for myself.
I made a shawl and a hat and some fingerless mitts; a cape and a couple pairs of leg-warmers. But what I really wanted to make was a sweater.
And then I spent hours combing Ravelry (a website for knitters and crocheters) for juuuust the right one. I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, so I considered designing my own.
Read MoreWhether we’re talking about a business venture, an ambitious piece of art, raising children, or getting through seventh grade, some projects are so long-term that the completion date is “someday,” which feels like effectively never.
In such a situation, at mile 16 of the marathon when the finish line is a distant dream and the starting line only a bitter memory (How young we were then! How foolish!), we may find ourselves losing steam.
Read MoreThere are a couple of key beliefs that get in our way when we’re trying to learn something.
The first is the belief that we’re not capable. The second is the belief that it’s going to be unpleasant and time-consuming.
Even when the first is tackled, the second can cause a lot of problems. Students who are trained to be dutiful won’t question whether there’s a better way to go about the task at hand. They assume that no matter what they do, they’ll be loaded down with a bunch of boring homework to slog through, year after year.
Read MoreIt’s a major stressor for lots of inexperienced teachers:
“How do I get kids to calm down in order to start the day’s lesson?”
A pattern of ignoring chaos leads to more of it. In this spirit, experienced teachers will suggest that the teacher not do anything until order is established. They should wait for appropriate behavior if it takes the whole class period.
Read MoreIt takes about 40 weeks for a baby to grow from a single cell, roughly six weeks for a shorn sheep to grow back a wool coat sufficient to keep itself warm, and a little more than 27 days for the moon to complete its orbit around the earth.
These things can’t be rushed — we wouldn’t even try. However, there are other timelines we take for granted that are not as firm as we think.
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