“Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of day saying “I will try again tomorrow.” ”
~ Mary Anne Radmacher
Category: FEATURED REGULARLY
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday features.
What actions have you spend the most TIME developing?
I’ve been reading about expertise lately, and Ericsson (of Florida State University) says that expertise is developed in 10,000 hours of effort at something. I was wondering, what have I spent the most time on training myself to do?
Continue reading “What actions have you spend the most TIME developing?”
Hustle While You Wait
“Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”
~ Thomas A. Edison
This is like the the third little pig! I am a fan of the industrious, diligent, go-get-’em third little pig. Always have been. :)
Wasn’t Your ‘Maybe’ a ‘Yes’?
There was a boy named Meredith and a girl named Hunter. They were best friends and they were eight years old. They were always together. When people met them for the first time, they always asked, “Who’s Meredith? And who’s Hunter?” Meredith really liked being a boy with a unique name: his friends called him Dodo (which supposedly is short for Dith in Meredith). Hunter really liked being a tomboy: she loved it that teachers taking roll-call on the first day of class always expected her to be a boy. Hunter could run faster than most boys and could lift heavier items than most boys. Meredith was an exception.
Continue reading “Wasn’t Your ‘Maybe’ a ‘Yes’?”
Thinking Styles: “You Talkin’ to Me?!”
If you’re at a loud party and someone says your name from across the room, you will usually turn. There are things that your mind pays attention to, and things it doesn’t pay attention to. And this is different for different people. So if you “wanna be talkin’ to me,” for each particular person, it can help to know how that person thinks best.
Lila mentioned in her comments here that different people have different ways of remember things. For example, she said, for best retention, some people need to see a list of items while others need to hear them. True that, double true.
I was thinking, “What are the different dimensions along which people learn and think differently?” When you search for “learning styles,” the two main topics that you’ll find are Visual-Auditory-Kinesthetic and MBTI, but there are so many others. Today, we check out some of the dimensions along which people think differently!
MOST WELL-KNOWN CATEGORIES OF THINKING STYLES
* Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic
You may have heard this when you were in college: some people absorb information best when it is seen (visual), heard (auditory), or touched/sensed/experienced (kinesthetic). The typical examples are the equation that is written on the board, the equation that is repeatedly spoken in the classroom, and the lab experiment that you perform. Here and here are summaries of the three different styles. Here is a quick assessment you can take to determine your style among the three.
* Myers-Briggs dimensions
I was surprised that there is a lot written about teaching to the four different dimensions of the MBTI type. I was introduced to the MBTI in a business context, and so I’ve never thought of it as a thinking styles assessment, but more as an overall personality assessment – especially for the business context. However there are some sites out there that particularly discuss the learning styles of the MBTI: here and here.
Continue reading “Thinking Styles: “You Talkin’ to Me?!””
The Girl Who Became a Flower – Whole Story
Here is the whole story: “The Girl Who Became a Flower!”
Part I – The Girl Goes into the Woods
Part II – Meeting Ms. Peony
Part III – The Tulips and Viola Twins
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Thank you for reading this three-part story!
Story by Senia.
Images by IconBazaar.
The Girl Who Became a Flower (Part III)
The first part of this short story is here and the second part is here.
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“…Worried?” asked the peony. “Well, your mother and father shouldn’t be worried.”
“I wish I could get out of here,” said the sad little girl-flower.
And, SHOO, straight with those words, she was picked up by a wave of wind and dropped into another spot on the ground. What? Where? How had the wind moved her completely? She tried to bend the bright orange part of her flower toward the ground, as if touching her toes – if she had had toes. She could bend towards the ground, and she saw that she was standing in a new spot.
Continue reading “The Girl Who Became a Flower (Part III)”
How Do You Become an Expert?
Hi guys, happy Friday!
Clarification: not “how would you become an expert?” but “how DO YOU become an expert?”
How have you become an expert on any topic?
What did you do? What was the most effective part of what you did?
Here are my items in which I’ve become an expert (I guess answering this question kind of makes you brag):
* How to run a start-up company
* How to do accounting for a company
* How to rock climb
* How to ballroom dance
“Expert” is a person’s own definition, but when you’re commenting here, please just brag! :) Don’t hold back. Let it all out. I’m a fan of bragging among friends! One of the ways that I define expert is that I could teach an intro class in any of those above topics, and that’s my personal indication of expertise.
How do I become an expert?
* Practice something diligently – e.g.: rockclimbing 3x per week
* Do it a long time, for many years – e.g.: running a company and accounting
* Take classes! – I love taking classes and learning from experts – rock climbing, dance, going to hear CEO’s speak
* Form my own opinions on the topic, OWN the topic – be able to teach rockclimbing, implement company decisions, take a position on the correct way to do something in business.
* Read or watch videos or go live to see more of the topic.
Welcome to Friday questions! Look forward to reading your answers. :)
Courage
“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”
~ Marie Curie (She was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, and she recevied TWO of them in her life! There is a book by a Harvard classmate of mine, Sarah Dry, about Marie Curie.)
“Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.”
~ Ruth Gordon
“Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.”
~ Jack Lemmon
“Do not fear mistakes, there are none.”
~ Miles Davis
The Girl Who Became a Flower (Part II)
The first part of this short story is here.
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She heard the wolf’s steps thump-thumping away and again, she thought to herself, “What do I do now?”
Her heart was still running fast inside her, and she felt that she was breathing quickly. But the wind outside her was quite powerful, and calmed her. Soon, she breathed more calmly. The little zinnia girl-flower realized that as a flower, the wind seems very, very strong, and it could blow her side to side. She wanted to see herself. How could she be a flower? What kind of flower? All she saw were the outsides of her petals, bright orange. |
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She looked straight up at the tree branches and the light blue sky beyond the branches. She looked at the trees all around her – there was a squirrel running around the trunk of one tree. She looked at the roots of the trees in the earth, and sawa a frog in the moss at the bottom of one of the trees. And she saw the outside of her bright orange petals. The wind was very loud and strong on a thin flower. She asked aloud, rather matter-of factly, “Who am I?”
“You-ou-ou are a bright beautiful zinnia, my dear,” answered a very soft voice. The little girl-flower thought she was dreaming.
“A zinniomadeer?”
“Oh no, ha ha ha, no, no, no, my dear. You are a zinnia,” answered the voice, and the word zinnia floated on the strong word.
“I am a zinnia?”
“Yes, you are,” the voice laughed comfortably and softly. “You are.”
“Do I like being a zinnia?”
“You tell me,” answered the soft voice.
“And who are you?”
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“Smell me,” said the soft voice. And the girl-flower reached her neck up to the sky and smelled, smelled, smelled, “You are the flower that my mother has in the late spring near the house!” “Who am I?” the soft voice asked. “You are a Penelope?” “Close,” and the soft voice laughed, “I am a peony.” “A peony. Where are you?” asked the zinnia girl-flower. “Look behind you,” answered the voice. And the girl flower started to shake, but she could not turn around, “But how can I look behind me?” “You must bend your stem as if you were bending your little girl knees, and then turn around.” |
And the zinnia-girl flower did, and she saw the most welcoming, the softest, the most comforting peony she had ever seen.
“Ohhhhh,” said the little girl, “You are like home.”
“Maybe,” said the peony humbly. “Many of the flowers know me and ask me about how they should reach for the sunshine and how they should position their roots for the water. Maybe I am like home around here.” She suddenly appeared a little bit shy.
“What should I do, Ms. Peony?” asked the girl-flower.
“What do you mean?”
“How can I go home to my mother and father?”
“Oh, that I don’t know about,” said the peony, “You are a flower.”
“But when it gets dark, my mother will worry, and I will want to sleep in my bed.”
“Ohhh, we have never had that happen before,” said the peony.
“What if you don’t get home by the time it gets dark?”
“Then my mother and father will worry, and they might cry, and they’ll come outside to look for me.”
(to be continued here in the third part…)
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Story by Senia.
Images by IconBazaar.