Before I dive into this, a little bit about today:

  1. Almost every teacher I’ve come across online has made some comment about how tired they are, what a horrible day today was, or that education isn’t what it used to be. There was a survey put out asking if you’d encourage a HS senior or college freshman into education. 64% voted they would not, but all the comments were “sure I would” because, that makes sense. Me, I voted no. In the current political climate, I could not, in good conscience, encourage anyone into education. Now, my father was in education and discouraged me, so we know how that goes, and my niece is currently entertaining the idea, but has never asked my opinion, so there’s that as well. If they were to say “screw you, I’m going to be a teacher”, I’d encourage them to research the hell out of the state and district they were looking at for a job. The Internet and social media could be your friend there!
  2. I watched a school board meeting where the very pro-Covid (anti-maskers) minority made themselves look so bad about the fact their school was voting (and voted for) a mask mandate. Our Republican dominated legislature and Republican governor jammed through a bill to ban mask mandates because “hard working Iowans will do the right thing”. Well, an injunction was put in place on this law, so districts have started added masks back into their school. We’ll see where this all goes, but my point was that the adult behavior was appalling. We say the kids aren’t the same, then we see parental actions like those at the board meeting and wonder about our own sanity. I just can’t with the pro-Covid crowd anymore. I cannot.

#youandmeboth

Anyway, my slice comes from the @WashedUpWalkons a group that I’ve written about before. I’m driving somewhere, listening to Episode #233, when they ask the question about if you have any regrets about their time at Iowa? Was something that they look back on and think, “Oh damn, I dropped the ball on that one.” The first two responses, sleep and not wanted to look stupid made me smile. I suffer from dontmakeanidiotofyourselfitious, I play it safe way too f’ing much. Way. Too. Much. Between that and sleep (it’s 11:06 CST and I’m still writing), both of those made sense to me. The reponce that got me what this: Don’t think twice about things and just go run with it. Don’t worry about failing, don’t worry about messing up, just compete.

#damn

“That idea of having that self-confidence to just go do it without questioning yourself is foreign to me. Now, this is not to say that I don’t have confidence, I just don’t have that kind of confidence. I don’t have the ‘it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission kind of confidence. He then talked about how he could have done everything a little bit better. Between the athletics, academics, diet, he had some great examples and really no regrets.

So how do you gain that, “Don’t think twice” kind of attitude? I don’t know. I know my wife has this kind of attitude and I’ve told her before that I’m envious of her because of that, to which she just shakes her head. She’s just not afraid to fail. I preach that in class, yet, am frozen in life by certain things.

One of the podcasters talks about being a long snapper, going from the attitude of “don’t make a bad snap” to “how good is this snap going to be”. Again, a great attitude, but at 50, I’m not sure I’ll ever get to that point.

They then talk about the idea of the good habits we have and the friends we keep. I’ve lost 22 pounds since February. I’ve not taken any pills or lost a ton of weight at one time. It’s been a slow go of it. However, the habit we make help us to be successful. The friends we keep are the same way. Keeping good people around us makes us stronger all the way around. They each talked about mentors they knew of in school who showed them how nutrition, good sleep habits, and simply keeping a good schedule helped them become better student-athletes.

This segment starts about 33:00 minutes into the podcast and again, well worth the listen.

I’ll leave you with this: my hope going forward is that we all learn to speak our truth, have the confidence to do that, and learn that asking forgiveness is better than asking permission. If we can do it, think of the create things we’ll create.

Do you have that issue with confidence? How have you solved this problem? I’d love to hear about it in the comments! 🙂