Kategoriarkiv: Personligt

7/24 – Learning is da shit!

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My daughter told me over dinner the other night, that a lot of her friend’s parents are pushing them hard for good grades, using threats of not getting to do or have stuff they want and so on. So when she said ”I am so happy you don’t push me that way. I know you are happy if I do my best, and learn as much as I can, regardless of the grade I get”. standard

So in a sense, I’ve been striving towards this family standard that Seth spoke about, quite a few years by now.

I asked my daughter: If you would get top grades but not learn a lot, or not so good grades but learn a lot, which do you think I’d opt for? She replied immediately, picking the latter choice. And she’s right. Learning is much more important for me than grades. Grades might (and should!) be a reflection of how much and well you learn, but really, I don’t think that’s how they work at all. You can learn an astonishing amount of stuff, and still get a low grade. It all depends upon your starting point, doesn’t it? Unfortunately the effort put into learning isn’t taken into consideration in grades.

Asking for, and praising, top grades, might be a strategy that backfires on you, as a parent. You run the risk of promoting external motivational factors, rather than encourage inner motivation. Instead, ask for, and praise, learning and the work your child (and yourself!) puts into it!

Reflection #7 of 24 from the notes I took and the experience I had at the Seth Godin Q&A-session in London, November 2015. These reflections will constitute my Advent Calendar for 2015, and will be posted daily from December 1st to the 24th.

6/24 – Podcast 49/50 – Taking a risk

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I didn’t want to give up recommending a podcast Sundays in December on account of the Advent Calendar I’m running with quotes from #SethinLondon, so I realized I might as well find some podcasts with Seth that I haven’t recommended before (because I’ve recommended several before: this 4-part blog with Seth at On Being, and this one from GLP.)

Seth Godin London Q&A by Rajesh Taylor

Seth Godin London Q&A by Rajesh Taylor – did we ever have a blast that day!

So I googled. And got lucky. There’s a multitude of podcasts featuring Seth Godin! And I can understand why, since he’s an interesting person to have a conversation with. I started to listen to Smart People Podcast and have to say, even though the episode with Seth is from 2013 I think, it’s definitely a ”conversation that satisfies my curious mind” which is their tag line.

At the end of this podcast, Seth actually talks about what I’ve been starting to do this past year, which is, to not just go for ”the next, the next, the next” all the time. Rather, I rarely listen to a podcast, to give an example, but once anymore. I almost always listen at least two, and often three or four, times. This podcast is no exception. On my second listening, I heard more. Deeper. More profoundly.

If you’re into school and learning, sharpen your ears especially about 19 minutes into this podcast. It’s good. And I mean G O O D what Seth says there!

But. My absolute takeaway from this podcast is a simple mantra. I wanted to find the spot, so I’ve been listening, and re-listening, while packing for a trip, and I simply cannot find it. Makes me wonder if I heard it somewhere else, which is a definite possibly as I’ve been listening to a lot of Seth these past days.

Anyway. I know Seth talked about this (somewhere!), and what I heard was something that goes like this: Every day try to be generous in a risky way.

That really spoke to me. Generous in a risky way. Going out on a limb. Not walking the straight and narrow. Au contraire. Taking a risk, with the definite aim at being of service.

Now.
How do you do generosity in a risky way?

Reflection #6 of 24 is a bit of an odd ball, as it’s not from the notes I took and the experience I had at the Seth Godin Q&A-session in London, November 2015. Rather, this is a reflection on a podcast with Seth Godin. These reflections will constitute my Advent Calendar for 2015, and will be posted daily from December 1st to the 24th.

5/24 – What is school for?

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How do I as a parent prevent my kids from loosing their inspiration?
Should I take my kids out of school?parents at fault

Now, if you’ve followed Seth you know he is a staunch critic of the current school system, but besides the fact that it’s a industrialist system designed (originally) to produce compliant cogs, he actually took me a bit by surprise here. Because he blames parents. (Now I’m not into blame games normally, but he has a point.) Parents should be asking what is school for, of everybody, anyone with a power to make changes, on all levels. And since everybody actually does influence somebody else, this really is something to ask of everybody.

What is school for?

Or, to use the twitterified question of the Swedish movement #skolvåren (translates to school spring): #WhySchool?

But, the real answer to the question affected me even more. Seth said that there is one thing that he loves about public schools and that is the fact that it’s such a mix. Where a kid from the projects can sit next to a kid with a billionaire mother. A kid with five older siblings, who never got a brand new piece of clothing in his life, can sit next to an only and severely spoilt child. (Perhaps a current risk we are facing is that the eclectic mix seems destined to become a thing of the past, the way the school system is run at the moment?)

So rather than think that you have to take your kid out of school, look at what you can do outside of school. In the afternoons. Weekends. Holidays!

Edit Wikipedia articles together, help your kids set up a blog to write in, give them a camera, buy them (or you all) a Raspberry Pi to experiment with, go to museums and art galleries, play together, read books, write books! Join a local toastmasters club, play instruments and sing together, travel the world, or go walk-about on roads in your local area that you’ve never walked along before. Grow vegetables in the garden, or sow a sunflower seed in a small pot of soil, get chickens for your backyard, cook together. Have fun! Live, love, laugh!

So even though, generally speaking, we don’t have a school system designed to create free-range kids, that doesn’t mean your kids can’t become free-range kids anyway. (What a free-range kid is? Check out this post: Part 4, Seth at On Being!)

So just get cooking! Homeschool (or unschool if that is more to your liking) your kids after ordinary school is out for the day, the week, the semester, the year! There is so much more to life than school, and learning for life can take place just about anywhere and anytime. I think the reason this affected me such was that I’d somehow forgotten about this little fact. But now I’ve been reminded.

Reflection #5 of 24 from the notes I took and the experience I had at the Seth Godin Q&A-session in London, November 2015. These reflections will constitute my Advent Calendar for 2015, and will be posted daily from December 1st to the 24th.

4/24 – The urge to hide

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I don’t even remember the question that led up to this:dolphin

”Oh no, not me, what should I say? What should I do? Do I look good? Is my hair ok? Who will see this, and what will they think of me?”

All those can be read into that ”Eh…” in the note I took.

In other words – human beings have a tendency to worry about what others might think, rather than just be in the moment, and go with what wants to happen.

Why is that? Where does it come from? And when does it come? Because surely we are not born with a detrimental and depressingly downputting self-deprecating inner dialogue?  One that we actually don’t have to listen to even, and still, it’s as if we think it’s telling the Truth. Why is that?

Reflection #4 of 24 from the notes I took and the experience I had at the Seth Godin Q&A-session in London, November 2015. These reflections will constitute my Advent Calendar for 2015, and will be posted daily from December 1st to the 24th.

3/24 – How do I do Trust?

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One of the things that have really impressed me with Seth Godin is how he uses one element to navigate his work (and I presume life) by: Trust.

I remember listening to him in a podcast saying he determines what to do or not, by asking a simple question of himself: Does this scale trust? 
If the answer is Yes, he goes ahead. If No, he moves on to the next thing.trustSo when asked something akin to ”What will be the divider between those who make it and those who don’t, in the coming years?” he replied Trust and Attention. That is what will determine what we see, hear, shop, eat, where we work, the clothes we wear and so on in the decades ahead.

Now. I understand what he means with Trust, or so I believe at least. The level of trust I hold for someone, something, depend upon what they do, how they do it, and or me, why they do it in the first place. If there is coherence there, and it fits in with the way I show up in the world, I will trust.

But what does he mean with Attention?

Is it this: Those who works out a way to get attention from the masses, will be makers and shakers ahead regardless of what the product is? Somehow I don’t think so.

Might it be this then: Those who knows how to scale trust, and has a great product (a physical or digital object, a service, whatever your thing is) to put out into the world, will attract the attention of those who vibrate on the same frequency?

Or this: That which I put attention on is what I will see more of in the future?

Or something completely different?
I don’t know. What’s your take on it?

Reflection #3 of 24 from the notes I took and the experience I had at the Seth Godin Q&A-session in London, November 2015. These reflections will constitute my Advent Calendar for 2015, and will be posted daily from December 1st to the 24th.

2/24 – Love those bad ideas!

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Seth Godin was asked how he manages to publish such great content on his blog, daily, without fail. His answer, short and sweet, was to come up with a lot of bad ideas.Note one #sethinlondon

What the world gets to see on his blog, is the result of a ruthless culling. Seth told us he writes ten to fifteen rudimentary blog posts a day, fine tunes three to four, and finally decided which is the best. That’s the one we, as his readers, get to see.

This chocked me. And from what I heard of my fellow participants at #SethinLondon, this was one of the things that really stood out for a lot of us.

I mean. I’ve set my sights on blogging daily, and I do, more or less. Have been doing it for soon to be three years now. But I’m still at that stage where I’m happy that I write one post. I mean, sometimes I do write more than one post, but rather than cull them from possible posts to publish on account of not being good enough, I save them for a day when my inspiration is lacking. Which means, you lot aren’t as lucky as the blog readers of Seth Godin are. His readers know what he publishes has been through a quality check, of sorts. My posts, very little quality control in my blogging process, I have to confess. I write, and then I publish. Seldom do I throw it away, thinking it’s not good enough to publish. But perhaps I should start to question my postings a bit more?

Oh well. I’m not putting myself and my blogging down though. I do learn. A lot. I mean, my writing is improving, based on this aim of mine to blog daily. But since I’m actually starting a new blog, solely in English, come the new year, perhaps I should set a higher standard with a lower frequency for that blog? Blogging three times per week, making sure what get’s published is up to the mark?

Reflection #2 of 24 from the notes I took and the experience I had at the Seth Godin Q&A-session in London, November 2015. These reflections will constitute my Advent Calendar for 2015, and will be posted daily from December 1st to the 24th.

1/24 – Merely begin.

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Where do I start?
How do I know what is the right project, work, next step for me?
How do I know?begin

That was the gist of one of the questions asked of Seth Godin at #SethInLondon. And Seth beautifully answers:

Begin. 
Merely begin. 

It doesn’t matter what you pick, as long as you pick. That is the clinch, you see! Picking. Not what you pick. But the act of picking and then taking step one, step two, step three, and so on, putting your effort into whatever it is you picked.

I think as you get used to picking, you also get better at it, learning from previous picks that might have totally bombed, or just didn’t really feel right after a while. As long as you keep on picking and continue to move, to act, to do work that matters, stuff may or may not be smashing successes or total disasters. Keep on picking. And then. Most importantly: You begin.

Reflection #1 of 24 from the notes I took and the experience I had at the Seth Godin Q&A-session in London, November 2015. These reflections will constitute my Advent Calendar for 2015, and will be posted daily from December 1st to the 24th.

Tolv år.

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Med fyrtiofem minuter till godo till vårt allra första möte, kommer information att ingen tolk finns att tillgå. Hjälp! Panik! Vill komma igång. Vill träffa hen jag förordnats som God Man åt. Nu! Kastar desperat ut en efterlysning på Facebook. Inom minuter har jag fått hjälp. En fantastisk kvinna drar i en tråd och möjliggör vårt möte, med lite improviserad telefontolkning.

Tolv år.

Tänk. Att landa i ett främmande land, långt borta från välkänd kultur, miljö, natur. Som tolvåring. Att ställas inför en drös människor, där merparten inte talar mitt språk. Slussas än hit, än dit… lite Mormors lilla kråka över det hela. Än slank hen dit, än slank hen hit… Måtte det inte landa i diket. Jag lovar jag ska göra vad jag kan för att möjliggöra den bästa av framtid för dig. Mer kan jag inte göra. Men mindre ska jag inte göra heller.

Elva år.

Så gammal är min yngsta. Du är tolv. Ett år skiljer. Och erfarenheter för en hel livstid. Tror jag. Vet inte. För idag var bara startskottet på vår bekantskap. Jag hoppas få höra hela din story vad det lider. Men till dess ska jag göra vad jag kan för att säkra att dina omedelbara fysiska och psykiska behov tillgodoses. Varma kläder. Skor. Dagersättning.

Tolv år.

Tittar under lugg på mig. Ler lite blygt. Inte en massa frågor. Kanske alltför trött? Kulturchockad? Utmattad av allt hen varit med om innan/efter ankomsten till Sverige? Men när jag berättar kort om mig, min man, våra barn, deras namn och ålder, så upprepar hen med ett svagt leende barnens namn. Tittar mig i ögonen och tar varligt mina barns namn i sin mun. Tydligt att hen har vetskap, tolv år gammal, om kärleken mellan en förälder och dess barn.

Tolv år.

Jag har en sextonåring och en elvaåring. Jag vet vad en tolvåring behöver i generella termer. Det ska jag se till att ordna. Blir mycket att dra i nästa vecka, för att säkra att allt börjar snurra.I väntan på en God Man händer inte så mycket när man är tolv år gammal. Så nu får vi dra igång. Tillsammans. För jag vet samtidigt att alla tolvåringar är sina alldeles egna unika individer. Med egna behov. Önskemål. Favoriträtter och aktiviteter som lockar och drar. Och sin alldeles egna ryggsäck med erfarenheter och minnen, som ibland tynger och ibland gör livet lätt. Jag hoppas vinna din tillit, så att jag kan få en chans att göra mitt allra bästa för dig. Mer kan jag inte göra. Men mindre ska jag inte göra heller. För du är tolv år. Jag fyrtiotre.

Tolv år.

BoldomaticPost_Mer-kan-jag-inte-gora-Men-mindDags för mig att lyfta vuxenansvaret från dina axlar. Successivt kommer du få tillbaka det, i takt med att du växer, mognar, kommer in i den nya kultur, miljö och natur du nu befinner dig i. Du flög innan dina vingar var helt utvecklade. Du klarade det. Men det kostar på. Nu är det dags att låta vingarna sakteliga återhämta sig och växa klart. När det är dags för dig att flyga själv, så hoppas och ber jag att det är för att du är redo. Att det inte blir något du nödgas till, av en eller annan anledning, utan att det faktiskt är för att du är flygfärdig.

Tolv år.

Jag ska göra allt i min makt för att möjliggöra att dina vingar får utvecklas i lugn och ro. För det är vad mitt uppdrag som God Man handlar om. Som jag uppfattat det. Ett ärofyllt uppdrag, som jag inte tar lätt på. Det förpliktigar, på det allra bästa av sätt. Ett ansvar jag tagit på mig. Nu tänker jag svara an, om och om igen, för att göra det som krävs. Mer kan jag inte göra. Men mindre ska jag inte göra heller.

 

Här och nu

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Att vara runt människor som inte är uppmärksamma, inte är här. Och nu. Någon annanstans. Jag blir sårad. Men varför? Vad är det egentligen jag upplever? Varför bryr jag mig?

Känslan jag får, av en förströdd kommentar som – för mig – uppvisar den totala ignoransen, hur uppmärksamheten inte varit i de samtal vi fört, är en av ensamhet. Uppgivenhet. Ledsen.ensamEnsam. Men fylls också av en del jävlaranamma. Det var väl fan också.

Men så sväljer jag. Döljer – kanske inte så väl – det jag känner, åtminstone detaljerna. Att det syns på mig, något, det tror jag. Åtminstone ofta. Men detaljerna behåller jag inom mig. Och så gråter jag. Inombords. Känner mig ensam. Fast jag vet att jag inte är det egentligen – för vi hör alla ihop. Insikten från New York samhörigheten är grundinställningen, den finns kvar, men fasiken alltså, ibland är den svår att tro på, svår att känna, kanske tom svår att erkänna.

Och så var det det där med att följa känslan. Just nu följer jag ju en känsla som definitivt inte gagnar varken mig eller min omgivning. Svårt skaka av mig. Så jag tänker skriva ner det i hopp om att jag därigenom kanske kan få lite distans. Kanske blir det lättare att släppa, låta gå, ta mig genom.

Men kanske väljer jag fel uttryckssätt. Skriver, istället för att lyfta mina känslor med dem det berör. Varför inte ta det med dem direkt, så kanske vårt samspel blir mer i synk? Vad hindrar mig? Vad är det jag är rädd för att de ska tro om mig?

I give thanks…

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… to myself. Since learning to be gentle with myself, life is just a wonderful adventure, in all it’s glory, through up’s as well as down’s.

… to those close to me, my family and friends. You make me a better person, and I love the way you enrich my life. Being in communion with like minded souls!

… to those who are aware. Aware of themselves, as well as their surroundings. Aware, and acting out that sense of awareness. You all help make the world a better place for us all.

… to those who struggle. With disease or mental anguish, with terror or impoverished circumstances, with relationships or loneliness, with life or death. I give thanks to you, because I learn from you and your struggles, in the same way I might have helped someone through my own struggles. At the same time, I wish your struggles would not be. My heart goes out to you all.

… to all those who knows and acts from the understanding that one person cannot do it all, but every person can do something. We all have the possibility to make a difference, and together, we can move mountains.

… to all those who stick to their worldview, even when times are tough. Who see the need to act according to ones values, treating a fellow human being as a fellow human being, whether or not she’s the first or hundredth who comes knocking, desperate, in need of a hand’s up.

… to life, to love, to laughter. I give thanks that I get to live a life and do work that matters, in these exciting and challenging times where the possibilities as well as the difficulties are endless. Together we determine the future of humankind, through our beings and actions. Imagine what might happen if we all started to act more like a kind human, living, loving, laughing? What if, we would shower ourselves, our fellow human beings and the world we live on with kindness?live love laugh