Sunday, August 18, 2013

In pursuit of happiness, one day at a time

Over the last couple of weeks, I have spent a lot of time thinking about happiness and optimism in life.  In the wake of a tragedy I am always amazed by the resiliency demonstrated by those even in the throes of deep tragedy. 

I believe it was Mark Twain who stated that "most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."  How is it that some people are always able to exude positive spirits while others seems to struggle to even find even one happiness in daily events?  Life often seems to be a study or test of how each of us live our lives, face adversities, and move on.  We could most likely deem this study a happiness project. 

Thursday was our first day back with our teaching staff and I always LOVE the positive vibe of the day.  Our district hosts a Convocation and for two consecutive years now it has been in our building.  After the summer break it is always a joy to not only be with our staff again! Convocation brings all staffs, certified and classified, from all 20 buildings together, filling first our cafeteria for camaraderie and then moving into the gym for the welcome back program.

Our gym is transformed from an athletic venue to a full house of excited and happy educators, from secretaries and custodians to teachers, administrators, and central office administrators.  A video showing children and educators from each building loops behind the stage and noisy chatter fills the gym.  There is nothing like the start of the school year!

One of the speakers was the leader of the Dublin Education Association and he read aloud a writing of his entitled "And on the 9th Day, God made a teacher."  It was a tribute to Paul Harvey's The Rest of the Story and was remarkable.  We all encouraged him to publish this poignant celebration online.

Our new superintendent kicked off the year so positively by recognizing individual teachers himself by reading positive notes and letters further stressing his tenets of appreciation, collaboration and trust.  As it ended I became to get so nervous about my upcoming staff presentation to our staff.

I have to admit that I completely obsess about it for days, spending hours synthesizing areas of celebration, future PD focus areas, inspirational readings and videos and recognizing staff.  This year I became particularly interested in positive energy and happiness and how we can continue to better understand how we can encourage staff members to embrace changes and challenges positively.

One gift that my daughter gave me this summer for my birthday was the impetus to my summer's pursuit of happiness focus. It is a book entitled The Happiness Project: One-Sentence Journal, a Five-Year Record .  In short, each page of the journal is each day of the year by date, with a place to write one sentence about that day for each of the next five years.  What an amazing concept! Each page has a motivational quote at the top and my daughter personalized some of the pages with quotes of her own, especially on family birthdays and anniversaries.

In short, at the end of five years I will be able to look back at the last five years and see that for five years I experienced something"happy" on every day of the year for five years.  So far, I have not missed a day and it has been easy to remember something good about every day.  It has been an uplifting experience.

Even on the worst of days, such as Stephen's death, I was able to come home after the candlelight vigil and write about the outpouring of love on that baseball field that night.

Since there is only room for one-sentence, the journal allows the writer to focus on just one good aspect of every day.

Does every day have at least one good aspect for you? Even those bad days where it seems nothing is going right?  My bet is that for most days for us, we can all take time and write down one good thing about the day, thank God, for except in extreme circumstances, our days are good ones.

I have to admit that doing this has been both comforting and inspirational to me and I look forward each day to reflecting on what "appreciation" to chronicle.  Most days I find I write one big run-on sentence listing many positive experiences and other days it is just one favorite.

One reason is that I consider myself a genuinely happy person.  I am blessed with good health and so is my family and I have the very best job in the world as a high school principal at Jerome.  I wake up every day at 4:45 am, work out, and am eager to get to work.  I have such a great admin team and staff and they make me laugh every day. My mind races with thoughts of how to make the day better for our students, staff and parents, and I enjoy collaboration and problem-solving when things do not always go well.  I love my daughter, son-in-law and husband dearly.  I love life and I love being happy, and I love spending time with our students during the school day and in after-school activities. 

This summer I read The Energy Bus and really do feel that its 10 rules for positive energy in life, work and team are truly viable.  We sent virtual "Energy Bus" tickets to every staff member and introduced a few of the principles to our staff, including inviting Positive Passengers and all staff to join us in the ride.

One of the essential principles of The Energy Bus is No Energy Vampires, which addresses how exhausting and detrimental negative attitudes and negative energy can be to a team or organization.  I really enjoyed this visual and my fervent hope is that we can all move forward positively together this year, even with the massive changes facing educators, including OTES and growth measures.  Being an educator has never been easy and it certainly seems like it is getting harder, particularly for those people who have a harder time staying positive in tough times.

In the end, it seems there are thousands of quotes, books, journals and articles that offer advice on how to motivate others and ourselves to be happy and positive in organizations and life.  As a high school principal I have read and studied many of these and certainly have shared their main precepts professionally with colleagues.

But perhaps the best way is for every person to take time every day to write one sentence about what is good about the day, listing the date and year. At the end of our lives, wouldn't it be remarkable to read about all the memories of the goodness in our lives, one day at a time?

14 comments:

  1. I'm so glad you love the journal, Mom! You picked out the two moments from Convocation that were my favorites from the past week, too! (I'm glad people were encouraging Kevin to publish that piece -- it was so sweet!) Hope you have a great first day with students tomorrow!

    P.S. Great job with those hyperlinks! :-)

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    1. Thanks so much, honey. It was great to see your room on Friday. It will hold so much love and compassion starting tomorrow. Have a terrific first day! Love, Mom

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  2. One day, one sentence. I think I can do that. A nice idea from a very genuine gift of love. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Margaret,
      Thanks for taking the time to reply. I appreciate you sharing.
      Cathy

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  3. Powerful words to live by! I will have to check out the energy bus!

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    1. Beth,
      I think you will really like the Energy Bus. I bought it for my admin team. The website also has many resources, including tickets and posters. Thanks for taking the time to write.
      Cathy

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  4. The idea of capturing the optimism has been one I have been working on for a solid six months. The Energy Bus with No Energy Vampires was my favorite part of your post. I find it so easy to jump on the complaining bandwagon in education. Last week, in her speech to teachers at the Reading Workshop at Teachers College, Lucy Calkins talked about developing a counter narrative to the negative press education is getting. She talked about hope, resilience, sticking to telling the brave stories about teaching kids. That courage and attitude is going to be my montra this year!

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    1. Dear Sarah,

      Sorry it took me so long to get back with you. I also like the No Energy Vampires image the best from The Energy Bus. In addition, I love that you brought up Lucy Calkins. She and Linda Atwood were my heroes when I taught Language Arts. I loved both the Writing and Reading Workshop concept and how it allowed teachers and students to have life connections to reading and writing. Thanks so much for taking the time to share.
      Cathy

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  5. It's no wonder Jennifer is such an upbeat person, she has a wonderful role model. When you look for the good, you will find it. Have a great day with kids tomorrow!

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    1. Thanks, Elsie! It is great to hear from you. Tomorrow is my favorite day. There is nothing like the hope and optimism of a fresh start on the first day of school! Take care.
      Cathy

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  6. Nice to have Jen's mom slicing along with us. We've heard great things about you. Nice to have you along on this writing journey!

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    1. Thanks, Stacey. I really appreciate you taking the time to write. I love being "Jen's Mom" more than anything else.
      Cathy

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  7. I like the routine of writing every day and the challenge of putting it into just one sentence. I think I need to try this! Thank you for sharing and for joining our community!

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    1. Dear Anita,

      Thank you for sharing that you also like the routine of daily writing. The one-sentence is a challenge but it is so gratifying for me to end my day with writing something positive every day. I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

      Cathy

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I would appreciate hearing your ideas and learning from you. Please share.