27 Take-Aways
from
It’s Not About the Grades: Landscapes for Learning Beyond Schooling
Since everyone seems to be publishing books with rules for life and lists for “best” something or other, I thought I would make a list of possible take-aways from It’s Not About the Grades: Landscapes for Learning Beyond Schooling, my newest memoir of a life in school currently in progress. Truth be told, I am revising the manuscript and wondering what the heck it is I am trying to convey to readers, so I wrote a list for myself and so why not share it with you?
Here goes…
- The landscapes of our lives are for learning. Experiences are opportunities for change and growth.
- Schooling: content knowledge, prestige, and degrees aren’t the key to happy life. Keep the value of schooling in proper perspective, especially if you consider the potential demands of the future.
- A “successful” or meaning-filled, healthy life of wellbeing isn’t pain-free and it isn’t about the grades.
- Know thyself. This will be the way to self-realize, self-actualize, leverage schooling AND meaning for wholeness and continual growth throughout your entire life.
- Connecting with your inner landscape requires more time alone and more attention for introspection and less time traveling the external landscape of social media, screens, distraction, noise of society and culture.
- The values of culture in the extreme (competition, comparison, consumerism) will fuck you up if you stay asleep/ignorant to the influences upon you and don’t know who you really are.
- Passion happens for you; you need to practice listening and pay regular attention to your inner guide.
- Disconnect and reconnect to one’s truth: more mirrors (through writing or yoga) and fewer screens (see #5 and #6)
- FOMI instead of FOMO will better serve us for the unknown future.
- PAUSE: Pursue An Understanding of Self by detaching from Externals.(see # 5)
- Yoga is union and self-realization. Connection to one’s inner truth and divinity can get lost or watered down substantially, but can be recovered with attention, compassion, and hard work over time. If I can do it, anyone can.
- The answer to “who am I?” is right under your nose (your breath).
- Life is suffering. Don’t run away. Pick the better poison, instead.
- Pain and fear are your best teachers. Face them with an attitude of interest and as lessons for learning. (A crack or a canyon is also an opening– peer into it and see what you can find.)
- Put your oxygen mask on first. The world needs more heroes and fewer martyrs.
- Good teachers aren’t models to copy but witnesses who walk alongside you on your journey. They have no real authority over you. You can learn from them but you aren’t them and never will be.
- Humanity, shared humanity, and one’s own humanity should be the center of every curriculum.
- Education for the future should be more about soft skills than hard skills and take place in person with moral and ethical teachers who know their own truth. (see #17)
- A lack of integrity causes illness of all forms within individuals and institutions.
- Be authentic from inside out. Be loyal to truth, not merely social roles and identities. Avoid labels.
- Travel all the landscapes beyond schooling.
- Wake up. Express your truth with your unique voice, without shame. Be vulnerable to learn. Tell yourself the truth. DO YOU.
- Love yourself unconditionally so you can do the same for others. That’s foundational to social justice.
- Learn about the nature of limits. Test all limits (internally and externally). See forks in the road and obstacles as endless possibilities for change and growth.
- Teaching discipline is the most important part of parenting.
- Live with the desire for balance. Keep trying to achieve it. Avoid extremes.
- It’s amazing how much we don’t know. Reason to keep learning…forever and to be humble.
27 is my favorite number, so I will stop there.
