From my book

I'm writing a learning program that incorporates my teaching, brain-based learning experience, and other skills. I have a section giving permission to be average and get a "C." Some high achievers need that. Some low achievers need to know they don't have to be perfect in everything. Some parents need to know that, too.

When you can’t stand the subject or your teacher

Let’s face it. Sometimes you’re going to get a class that’s a dud. Maybe it’s the subject matter. Perhaps it’s the teacher. Or maybe it’s both. I won’t say which college, but the subject was economics. I am still baffled as to why I was required to take that class. And the teacher was horrible. He shuffled into class wearing leather bedroom slippers and polyester leisure suits from the 70’s, reeking of cigarette smoke. He also spat when he talked and I was stuck in the front row. Beyond the poor fashion sense, he was hostile to students and picked a few to yell at. You know those teachers who want you to succeed and do well? He was not one of them. I kept my mouth shut and did the bare minimum to get through. I have successfully failed to remember any content from that class. However, I am a firm believer that there are lessons everywhere, if you’re open to finding them. Often, it’s not the content of the class, but the presentation of it. In the case of this particular class, this is what I learned:

Sometimes you just have to survive.

That’s it. Put in the required time and effort, and when it’s done, it’s done. Kind of like eating a food you didn’t like when you were a kid. Hold your nose, chew & swallow.

Sometimes you do what you have to do, in order to do the things you want to do. ~Denzel Washington

Often times you'll have a great experience, or at the very least, a good story. Many things in life are pass/fail. Sometimes "good enough," really is.

Pattern Interrupts

Dave Dobson used to say that everything is patterns. We have productive ones & less-than-productive ones. Useful & non-useful. Bruce Lipton says that for the first 2 years of life, our brain waves are predominantly delta waves--that v. deep, unconscious state. It's a time when we soak up learning--and patterns, at a rapid rate. Eric Jensen says in Brain-based Learning that the brain needs to feel safe before it can really learn. Credit that to the only part of our brain that is fully formed at birth: the amygdala [uh-MIG-duh-la] It records everything.

Which brings us back to Dave: the primary concern of the unconscious mind (Other-Than-Conscious, as he called it) is to keep us safe. Patterns develop as a safety mechanism. And then we run them like a computer runs a program. OR:

They run us.

What do you do when you become aware of a pattern that you find less than elegant? Dave said there are no good or bad patterns. They all had a purpose at one point in time. All you need to do is to update the pattern. John Morgan says that awareness is the first step in creating a wedge between stimulus & response (pattern). And then you do something to interrupt the pattern. When I was training with Doug O'Brien in Ericksonian hypnosis, he used a v. simple pattern interrupt. He would say, Do you golf?

I have been looking at the pattern of how I make decisions. Or, to be more accurate, how I don't make decisions. I have created a sense of urgency where there needn't be one. It's something that I'm becoming aware of. It's something I need to update.

Perhaps I should take up golf.