Set Yourself Free

by Mary Ann on May 17, 2010

I have a mentor that is guiding me through the process of learning to meditate. I have felt for some years that I really needed to learn this skill because my mind is never quiet. A quiet mind is more apt to receive inspiration, sparks of creative genius and moments of quiet revelation. I really wanted more of that in my life. So I found a mentor who led me to a book, Eight Minute Mediation by Victor Davich.

It isn’t the book or the meditation that I want to talk about here, although I highly recommend both to you. What I want to talk about is a quote that I read in the book. A famous meditation master said, “Everything’s perfect! And there’s always room for improvement.”  Don’t you just love that!!! When I read it I just wanted to embrace that concept. Can you imagine the souls that this one idea could bring to rest or the flagging spirits it could raise?

Really, what is that man saying to you and to me?  If I interpret correctly I believe it is this…We can be very grateful for what we have now and what we have accomplished and realize at the same time that there is so much more we can and will do, given time and knowledge.

Do you know why I like this idea so much? Well, as you know I counsel, teach and coach families how to feel and be more successful. One of the things that is most paralyzing for some parents is the thought that they aren’t enough, what they have done isn’t enough and that they will never be enough; when a person believes that, they are really, really stuck. No matter what they learn and implement it won’t be enough.

I worked with a really super mom. She was basically in charge of their home school. The dad was supportive but not really involved. At the point that I met her she was beyond discouraged and in fact, was ready to send her kids back to public school. That would have been sad because it wasn’t what she wanted to do. She would have done it because she felt she was failing and that her children were suffering.

I spent some time with both her, her husband and their kids. I saw the family in action. I sat in on a whole day. It was really pleasant, peaceful, interesting and cozy! They needed some help learning to set up and use the Closet. They needed some suggestions about classics, learning materials, books to read, etc. But I have to say that things weren’t as bleak as this mom led me to believe. Her children were bright and very sociable. They could read and two of them LOVED math. Gosh there are a lot of mom’s out there right now asking in their minds how she managed that!

But despite the success that they were having they were doomed to failure because it was never enough, so this mom always felt like a failure. After working with the family for a few months things were better. She began to feel a bit more confident in what they were doing. She felt a bit more confident in the process she had entered into. Her children began to feel more confident because their mom was more confident.

The fact is that no matter where we are in our progression as families it is enough, while we learn to understand and do more. We need to revel in our successes no matter how small. When we can do that we will have given ourselves the key out of our pit of despair.

There is a reason that this is really important, a reason beyond feeling successful and not feeling like we are somehow failing. The reason is that when we can and will look at every good thing in ourselves, our children and the process we are in, then we can have joy. We can truly enjoy one another, our family association and our need to learn together. Acceptance of and recognizing our successes is like turning on a light in a dim room, it enables us to see more and move about freely so that we can do more. It sets us free.

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There Isn’t Anything In This World Quite As Exhausting As Relaxing.

by Mary Ann on May 17, 2010

Do you see that title up there. That is a quote from Rabbit Takes a Vacation. I caught the tail end of the story my grandchildren were watching on DVD. Rabbit was just coming home and he made that pithy statement. (In case that is a new word for you it means having substance and point: tersely cogent) It was so tersely cogent that it wrapped my whole life into those 11 small words. I know that it will hit many of you right between the eyes also.

Why does showing up and staying present wear out so many mom’s and dad’s. Why does watching our children play, answering their questions or listening to them as they verbalize their thoughts sometimes seem like such a poor use of our finite time. Don’t we love our children? Don’t we have a vision of the warm and gentle family atmosphere we want  to create? Don’t we want to inspire our children to greatness? Of course we do but we are sooooooo busy. (One of the reasons we are so busy is that we consistently ignore rule four of the Five Rules of Engagement – Keep it simple!)

So let’s take a look at Rabbit’s comment again. He was chattering on about how on his vacation people wanted to know what they could do for him, could they get him tea, or draw his bath or turn down his bed, and on and on. He missed work! He missed having something important and valuable to do! After all, seeing old friends and relatives, reminiscing about the past, contemplating and discussing the future and just plain having a good time were a waste of time. Have you ever found yourself in this frame of mind?

Well, I have. It happened to me at little league games, dance classes, Beans and Book night at the local elementary school, sitting on a child’s bed and listening to all the details of their day, or listening to a six year old read Run Jane Run. Now lest you think that I was a terrible mother let me assure you that I did plenty of those activities and did them often. That didn’t stop the occasional feeling that I ought to be doing something else, something of greater import. I had work to do. The laundry was 3 feet high (literally), the kitchen floor had taken a hit of orange juice and I had a lesson to prepare for Sunday. Just sitting and listening or observing another person grow and learn was not enjoyable because I had so much work to do and all I could think about was my stuff. Just like rabbit I found it exhausting to sit and enjoy. My mind wouldn’t let me.

I mentioned once that Steven Covey said we often get stuck in the thick of thin things. I was stuck their on a regular basis. If we look at the important things in our lives they usually involve putting our own stuff on the shelf and letting someone else’s stuff take center stage. So when we think about this in terms of The Spark Station or our family what does that mean?

We are supposed to have a structured family time that we hold fairly sacred. We are supposed to be consistent in honoringthisparticular commitment to our children, their inspiration and learning and to our vision of raising leaders and statesmen.  We should show up every day of the week. We need to smile and the curtain should come down on our “work” and the curtain should rise on the stage of their “work”. We need to sit and watch the play of their lives as it unfolds on the stage of learning, inspiration and enjoyment. We should clap in appreciation at their efforts to expand and grow. We need to feel delight in their joy which then becomes our joy.

We need to rest from our own mind chatter and engage in theirs. We relax and enjoy; and when our time with them in this structured place ends we will walk away refreshed in mind, even if tired in body (working with kids can wear you out) because we realize that we have been taking part in the “real” work of our lives – the creation of our family and serving in the world.

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Are You Scared Witless

by Mary Ann on May 17, 2010

“YOU have to decide what to do. One of the hardest things about getting off the conveyor belt is becoming your own expert on matters of family concern. One of the basic assumptions of Leadership Education is that you are the expert on your own home and the education of your children.”

“Being a leader means being able to ignore all the concerned voices and “good” choices, and to commit to and follow through on the right one. Getting off the conveyor belt means that you study the guidelines of Leadership Education and then personalize them for yourself and your children.”

Do the above quotes scare you witless? I will admit that when I was a young mother they would have scared me. I want to share two things that set me up for disaster as a young parent.

First, I learned to play the conveyor belt game very well. I did well through most of the years I was in public school and higher education. I was a good test taker, I could make a dynamite poster and I was good at presentation. This meant that I was well liked by teachers and students alike and I got good grades.

Second, I was good at palaver (that is an old fashioned word meaning idle chatter). In other words, I was good with words. I remember a literature class in my senior year of high school. By the second half of the year I was done. I wanted out of school. I was involved in many activities which let me “sluff” classes legally. I did what work I had to, to get the grade. So I didn’t read many of the books we were assigned. Yet I could sit in class for 5 to10 minutes and get the gist of the story. Then I could discuss as if I had read the book.

So I learned to think that I was really intelligent. In fact, my ability to talk in class, in college, almost lost me my husband. He said, after we were married, that he thought I was just too smart to marry someone like him and so he wasn’t going to ask me. Does this sound like I was set up for a big fall when I became a parent!

You bet and the fall was great and I didn’t recover for many years. That exacted a toll on our family. In school I had learned to follow directions, to feed back what was required, to palaver. What I didn’t learn was how to think, how to problem solve and how to make a decision. Can you imagine managing a house hold of 6 to 9 people without those skills?

I bring this up because if you reference the quotes I began with, in order to get off the conveyor belt you need the very skills I lacked. In fact, the assumption of Leadership education is that you are an expert on your own home and the education of your children. It assumes that you are a leader, that you can ignore concerned voices. It assumes that you trust yourself, that you believe you are competent.

What I learned right away as a married person was just how incompetent I was. I lost faith in myself. I needed experts to tell me what to do and I read many books by them. I am going to share a funny experience with you. It is funny only in the fact that I did it. The ramifications weren’t funny at all.

As a family we used to watch the Cosby show religiously. We loved it. I was astounded by those parents. They were in control. They trusted their own judgment. They didn’t second guess themselves all the time. The parents were experts on their own family. Add that to that the fact that they were fun under pressure! I wanted so much to be like that.

In one episode they wouldn’t let their daughter get her ears pierced or wear make up until she was 12 years old. Because I admired these fictional parents so much I decided to establish that same rule. It seemed reasonable and what a good parent would do. Now up to that time no daughter had even wanted her ears pierced or to wear makeup.

Sometime later my second daughter wanted to wear lip gloss to school. She was 11. I told her no that she had to wait until she was 12. I didn’t have a good reason for it; it was just an arbitrary age I picked because I had seen it on TV. She wanted her ears pierced. I said no for the same reason.

That began a slow downward spiral in our relationship. I couldn’t see it at the time but I can see it now. Hind sight is always 20/20. You know, I think a bit of lip gloss and small pierced earrings at 11 were preferable to the following 7 years of struggle.

I share this because in my last blog I ended with the quotes that I started this one with. I realize that I am not the only parent who has felt inadequate, who has desperately wanted someone to take over their stewardship and tell them what to do. I am certain that I am not the only parent who has been in this place because I work with parents every day who are looking for just that.

So if you are a parent who feels incapable of managing your child’s education what can you do to gain confidence and ability? How do you learn to think and reason and make decisions and then not second guess every one?

I believe that you do it the way I did it. You become a leadership student. You start reading the classics. You start attending book groups with like minded people. You write some papers and have someone review them for you. You find a mentor. You start to practice leadership and you will get better at it.

When I was 46 my oldest daughter was studying at George Wythe University. I envied her the great people she was working with. I was amazed at her growing wisdom and ability to speak and influence. At that same time I felt very motivated to finish my education. I had stopped just 2 credit hours and my student teaching short of graduation. Pregnancy can do that.

So I applied to the school, was accepted and began. Finishing my BA was not hard. I loved doing my Masters program. Most of my papers were of the research variety because I was a distance student. Of course from my description of my public school years I’m sure you gather that I was really good at research. My thesis paper was in conjunction with a small private school I was running and so I didn’t have to do anything special for it. Just keep teaching and documenting. At graduation Dr. DeMille said that I was an amazing researcher and to look for me to be published. I really felt smart!!

I stayed in touch with Dr. DeMille and told him that I still didn’t feel educated, competent. In our hearts we always know what is true! So he asked me to write a couple of papers on some books. The topics were challenging. I read the books and dashed something off. He was kind, but pointed, in his response. He asked me to redo them, they were poor work! Now if you are familiar with the Leadership Model or Thomas Jefferson Education then you know that a parent’s job is to read, have the student read, discuss and then have them write. Then you hold the student to a high standard and have them rewrite until it is met. That is what Dr. DeMille was doing for me.

That was a bitter pill to swallow. I knew that I had finally come to the place where I couldn’t pretend any more. I had to become educated. I had to learn to think, to problem solve, to make decisions, to be a leader in my family. That is where some of you are. It is time to stop pretending about our own education. It is time to stop looking for someone to tell us what, when and where and become the leaders in our families; to make our own decisions based on the best information we can find and then gear it to what we know we and our children need. It’s time to model what you want your children to do.

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The Leadership Conveyor Belt

by Mary Ann on May 16, 2010

The Booths

When I work with a family in a coaching setting I look at their physical surroundings and help them find what will work for them as a Closet. Then I teach them how to use their loves, their children’s loves, sparks, and their Master Inspire Plan to fill The Spark Station. I teach them to manage it and keep it functioning long term. Most importantly, I teach them the Five Rules of Engagement. It is how we view our family and education that in the end makes all the difference.

The Felts

On occasion I have to back track because families get stuck. They take everything literally. They get confused and think that The Spark Station is school; that their family learning time is in one room of their home always, that only certain activities constitute school or family learning time. At times I have someone at a workshop or seminar say that they heard so and so say that this toy or that book or a kit or this activity wasn’t good to use with their kids for whatever reason. These parents are experiencing the difficulty of getting off the conveyor belt. They are so used to it that they are still looking for an expert to tell them what, when and where, and that family learning time or school is the same for every family.

They have attended workshops, seminars, read books and talked with other parents and the idea of getting off the conveyor belt really appeals to them. They want off and they want their kids off. But frequently they find themselves creating their own leadership conveyor belt. It is difficult to get off and stay off but it is really important.

The Spark Station and other educational tools won’t bring the kind of result we are seeking if we try to use them in the only way we know how, on a conveyor belt. Every parent has to be an expert on their family. They have to take what they hear and weigh it against the family and then they need to decide what parts to implement and how to do that that, what is right for their family.

The Fackrel’s

Let’s take the topic of kits for example. I have written a whole article about kits. I talk about the pros and cons of them. I show how you can use them to see if a “spark” can become a fire. I show how a kit can be a jumping off  place for parents who need an inspirational nudge. Another teacher may say no to kits, none at all.  How can you square  two differing opinions.

Let’s consider how the conveyor belt model would work in this situation as compared with the leadership model. In the conveyor belt model there would be two ways of thinking about the problem, you either use kits or you don’t. However, in a leadership model you decide what is best for your child. There might be a time when a kit is perfect for the situation. You might have a child that you would never give a kit to. Using kits might work really well as a starting point for one parent and not work at all for another. That is your stewardship and you are well equipped to take it on. That is the inspiration behind the leadership model, each child is unique and their education should be personalized.

As we learn about and come to understand the leadership model of education parents will need to read good books, have enlightened teachers and mentors, attend seminars and workshops. But parents have to be careful to not abdicate their role to mentors and teachers. You are the decision maker for your family. Your work is to take information in, digest it, understand it, and then apply it as it best suits your children and family. You are the ultimate creator of your own family culture. This is also good council when considering the guidelines of creating and using The Spark Station. What is perfect for one family can be “not quite right” for another. So don’t create a conveyor belt in your home based on blindly following what someone else says is right for your family.

The Shumways

Let me end with two wonderful quotes from Leadership Education: The Phases of Learning both found on p. 263.

“YOU have to decide what to do. One of the hardest things about getting off the conveyor belt is becoming your own expert on matters of family concern. One of the basic assumptions of Leadership Education is that you are the expert on your own home and the education of your children.”

“Being a leader means being able to ignore all the concerned voices and “good” choices, and to commit to and follow through on the right one. Getting off the conveyor belt means, that you study the guidelines of Leadership Education and then personalize them to you and your children.”

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