Entitlement

Entitlement suggests that some right or privilege or benefit is inherently deserved.  Irrespective of merit.  We see entitlement operationalized in our society on two fronts, generally from diametrically opposed stations.

We frequently see those who have positions of power or prestige expect and receive entitlements of some sort as a fringe benefit of their position.  Those entitlements might be in the form of club memberships, VIP parking spaces, fatter expense accounts, free tickets to events, deferential treatment, etc.  The list gets rather lengthy.  

On the other end of the entitlement spectrum are those who claim or expect entitlement due to some disadvantaged or oppressed status (real or imagined).  This group of entitlees presume that society owes them something simply because of the hardship they have endured, or are enduring (real or imagined).

The first group does not win my respect.  I much prefer folks in positions of power or prestige who are willing to wash the dishes, to help with the babysitting, who prefer to sit with the "common" folks.  You wouldn't know them as possessors of power or position by just looking at them.  Those are the kinds of people I admire.  They seem to understand that they have been richly blessed in life, but are not owed special treatment because of those blessings.  In fact, they often seem quite committed to sharing the largess of their blessings with others, both through acts of generosity, and in displays of authentic humility.

As to the other set of entitlement recipients, I have grown to pity them.  Regardless of the circumstances that have caused their disadvantaged status, the act of being the beneficiary of "required altruism" from others lessens them in the eyes of those others.  Even more, the level of dependence on entitlements from others seems to me to be inversely proportional to the amount of dignity one experiences.  

It is through acts of self-sufficiency and self-actualization that we establish ourselves as persons worthy of respect, regardless of our station in life.  Both forms of entitlement claimers disqualify themselves (in my eyes) from that respect.  

Bottom line:  the word "entitlement" carries pretty negative connotations for me (from either vantage point).  

GrandMentor

I have written about the impact of powerful mentors before. Here, in fact.

One of my dear friends and professional colleagues, Dr. Ann O'Doherty, adds another perspective to the view of mentoring.  Dr. O, who now professes for the University of Washington, believes that the impact of powerful mentorship transcends one generation.

 Here's the effect:  

I was/am mentored by a thoughtful and effective mentor, 

who was greatly influenced by his own thoughtful and effective mentor,

who was greatly influenced by her own thoughtful and effective mentor,

who was...

Thus, retrospectively, that makes me a grandmentee and great-grandmentee and a great-great-grandmentee of some extremely capable, wise, and influential mentors.  Some of whom will never even be known to me.

Conversely, as I mentor those within my sphere of influence, I do so with an awareness that I may beget grandmentees and great-grandmentees and great-great-grandmentees.  

Paying back, paying forward.  The circle of life, the circle of learning.

Thanks for your thinking, Dr. O (from one of your mentees).

GrainBrain

I continue to learn new and powerful things about how to live healthier, longer, and more vibrantly.  I recently finished the book titled Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar – Your Brain’s Silent Killers (Perlmutter, 2013).  Dr. Perlmutter is a neurologist, so it seems safe to say that he probably knows his business when it comes to the human brain.

Like so many other works I have read in the last couple of years, this book challenged my thinking and debunked a whole host of "truths" to which I had subscribed for the last three decades.

Here are some of my biggest takeaways from this book (though not an exhaustive list, by any means):

• Modern grains are silently destroying our brains.
• Our food actually regulates our genetic expression.
• Alzheimers and dementia (as well as other diseases of the brain) are predominantly dietary in genesis.
• High carbohydrate and high gluten diets set our brains "on fire" through inflammation, which causes oxidation (i.e. "rusting").
• Gluten is the equivalent of tobacco for our generation.
• Fat - not carbohydrates - is the preferred and fundamental fuel for the human brain (and always has been).
• Fat is good.  Cholesterol is good. Statins are bad. Sugars are bad. Carbohydrates are bad. Gluten is bad.  For the brain.
• The brain thrives and grows as an effect of physical exercise. 
• The fatter the human, the smaller the brain.
• A tremendous amount of neural activity occurs in our intestines (our "second brain").
• Our brains do, in fact, behave like muscles - they grow, they strengthen, they become more nimble, they have better endurance, when challenged.

There's a ton more I learned from this book, but I'll stop here, in the interest of being relatively succinct.  If you read it, get ready to have many assumptions and myths about health/nutrition challenged and debunked.  

A very good read. 

Connected

The more I learn, the more convinced I am that there are "fibers" of connectedness between us that serve to aid and abet our spiritual, physical, intellectual, and emotional health.  (Yes, I know that sounds a little weird.)

Never in history has it been easier to "connect" with others, via the internet and its subsidiary tools.  And, of course, phone communications are more robust and varied than they have ever been.

As we learn and grow, we continually develop and add to a network of informed and inspiring "others," who contribute to our growth in myriad ways.  They are not always folks who think like us, nor do they always agree with us.  However, their thinking and ways of being "push" our own thinking and ways of being.  

Thus, we grow, we learn, we get better.

Since it is so easy to connect with others in our current world, we have opportunity like no generation before us to activate that learning network, to reach out to those interesting or influential others, to leverage their thinking, to study their habits.  All of which can be used to affect our own growth and development.

And, as is always the case with authentic learning, the impact on the learner and the learnee morphs into a relationship of reciprocal benefit (rather than a one-gives-and-the-other-gets sort of dynamic).

This era of hyper-connectedness and ultra-accessibility affords us the unique opportunity to advance our own learning in ways and at speeds that are simply mind-boggling.

One of my favorite songs (to reinforce this idea):  "Connected," by Eric Bibb.

CircularInfluence

One of my sons-in-law, Jodie, called me on a hot August day six years ago.  He was the principal of a school which had bused it's faculty to an off-site retreat to partake in the exceptional learning program called Capturing Kids' Hearts.  

Jodie called me during the noon hour that day and told me that he simply had to share with me an experience from his morning.  His voice was breaking already as he described the morning's events.  

The retreat facilitators had divided the participants (from many districts) into groups of 15-20.  The charge was to think of an educator who had had a profound impact on their lives and to share with the group the nature of that impact.  Not surprisingly, those testimonials were inspiring and laden with emotion.  

Jodie happened to be in the group with the kindergarten teacher he had hired just weeks earlier (I'll call her Kay).  As each member of the group related how a committed educator had touched their lives deeply, it came time for Kay to share her story.  

Kay related how a primary grade teacher in her life had had such a profound influence on her that she knew she wanted to become a teacher some day, even at that young age.  Jodie began to connect the dots and realized that Kay was talking about Moe (my lovely bride of 37 years).  Jodie began to see that the impact of Moe (now his mother-in-law) had spawned a next generation educator, whom he had deemed remarkable enough to hire for his own campus.

Furthermore, the reality that Kay would be teaching Jodie's own daughter (the granddaughter of Moe) began to sink in for Jodie.  Of course, Moe had no idea when she was teaching Kay some 20 years earlier that she might be laying the foundation for the education of her own grandchildren.  But, she was.  

As Jodie shared this story with me during that mid-day phone call, I broke down crying, right along with him.  The phenomenon of circular influence was being profoundly impressed upon us.  

I have often heard it said that "teachers touch the future" through the children they serve.  Rarely has that lesson been driven home for me in such a profound and emotional way.

I have been blessed to work with a multitude of Moe-like teachers over 35 years.  Indeed, they have, and are, and will continue, to touch the future.  Lucky kids, lucky parents, lucky world.

Discomfort

Growth, personal growth, is a function of learning.  Learning is a layered, interwoven mish-mash of experiences, reflection, acquisition, thought, and experimentation.

We can remain comfortable by doing the following:

• Play the same scales in the same key on the same kind of instrument, over and over again.
• Read the same books, by the same authors, in the same genre, over and over again.
• Interface with the same people, in the same professions, about the same topics, over and over again.
• Go about our work using the same methods, in the same chronology, desiring the same outcomes, over and over again.
• Planting the same seeds, in the same seed bed, using the same nutrients, over and over again.
• Engaging in the same hobby, day after day, over and over again.
• Doing the same exercises, with the same intensity, in the same way, over and over again.

You get the idea.  

Growth, real growth, occurs when we push ourselves beyond the comfort zone.  Almost always, engaging with other people is the catalyst for real growth.

And what causes the discomfort in the growing process?  Fear of failure.  The angst of not already knowing the process or the outcome.  The prospect of looking or feeling foolish.  The likelihood of feeling strain, either cognitively, physically, or emotionally.  The apprehension of an unpredictable schedule.  The unease associated with talking to and learning from strangers (or at least, new acquaintances).  

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?"  

Only when you purposefully plant a little discomfort in the very first row.  

Ready to grow?  Come on in; the water's fine!  (Just not comfortable.) 

OnPurpose

Speaking as one whose life has been disproportionately blessed, one of the richest of those blessings has been to be given the opportunity to serve on the Guthrie Common School District (GCSD) Team.  

Like most schools, we have a wide range of students, from those that struggle mightily to those who breeze through content with nary a hiccup.  Our goal is to optimize the learning for each, while they are in our charge.  

With the blessing of our GCSD school board and the support of our community, we have decided that WE, not the state, not the federal government, are the ones best positioned and best credentialed to decide what our children should learn.  We call those standards the Guthrie Graduate Profile (GGP).  Here are the five dimensions of the GGP:

• Learners/Problem Solvers/Critical Thinkers
• Effective Communicators
• Persons of Strong Character
• Valuable and Productive Team Members
• Compassionate and Responsible Citizens

Our professional educators AND our support staff embark daily on a journey of continuous improvement, of getting better every day, ON PURPOSE, in the interest of creating the very best possible futures for our students.  We use that GGP to guide our work.

Want to see some of what that looks like?  Click here.

Today, we did better than yesterday.  Tomorrow, we intend to get better still.  

On purpose.