Winning at Life

A recent conversation with my dad helped me to start to distill my life philosophy. He'd been talking about a training program for adult men who'd been recently released from prison. Their challenges were many--finding a steady job, transportation, housing and reintegrating into a non-institutional society. What the trainer boiled it down to was three criteria for success. I loved this because the three criteria apply not only to an employment situation but to life in general.

1. SHOW UP. I see non-examples of this every day in the classroom. Students who "don't feel like" coming to school, don't come to school because it's raining/snowing/too hot, etc. I see students before and after my class but not in my class. I see students whose bodies are present, but minds notably absent. Sometimes there is a legitimate reason for not being present in your life, but most often we get distracted by technology, noise, color or what have you. Outside of the classroom, I encountered another non-example of the "show up" principle at a recent interview. It was conducted by the principal of the school and the vice-principal. Both had their laptops open and facing them (de-riguer for today's technologically tied-in executives), but the vice principal also had her cell phone on the desk and a students' tablet computer, both of which she checked several times during the interview. In other words, her body was present, but her mind didn't show up!

2. EVERY DAY. If people manage to succeed at the first principle, they're often stymied by the second. To be fully present, you need to be fully present all the time. Sure, if your workplace participates in the four-day workweek, you won't be there on Friday and more power to you! Every day gets tedious and downright hard. Every day takes a lot of grit (now there's a buzzword!) and perseverance to pull off. However, the difference between every day and just some of the days is the difference between a Steve Jobs and a Steven Jankowitz. Don't know who he is? Right, neither do his co-workers or his boss because he's not there every day.

3. ON TIME. This is one I don't have trouble with. In fact, if anything, I'm one of those annoying people who always arrive 10-15 minutes early to things. (I'm thinking--what if I get lost? What if something happens? I don't want to arrive looking rushed.)  My take-away here is, what's the point of going if you're going to miss the beginning? Why not just have someone tell you what happened? That's what they'll have to do anyway when you arrive, huffing and panting after the whole thing's started. I say, be early, bring a book, take some time to relax and prepare. On time feels good.

So, I'm planning to encourage my students to show up for life, every day and on time. After all, their lives are just starting and they shouldn't want to miss a single minute!