Discipline, Action, Reflection. Love, Service, Happiness.

I posted for the month of April in May, so this post will officially be for May.

"Discipline is the mark of intelligent living"
I read that quote and wrote it on a sticky-note and have been looking at it frequently. It is so easy to slide into indiscipline with the COVID19 pandemic, with being home, reduced work hours, reduced accountability. But that means it's more important than ever to do the things that keep you .

Some day, relatively soon (even if it's a hundred years from now) we will all die, and our lives will have been a waste, if we did not grow, love, live with purpose. Do you want to die on your deathbed full of regrets?

Imagine the best possible version of yourself, standing before you. What are they like? What does it feel like to be in their presence. Now imagine yourself on your deathbed, having lived a life of mediocrity. Imagine both those selves before you, looking at you. If you start to feel a bit uncomfortable, good. Use that to fuel some action, even if it's just a small action, towards becoming that best version of you. Small, manageable steps are all that is needed, if you make a habit of taking them every day.

Discipline. Anders Ericsson has made it very clear in his scientific work that you have no excuse for not becoming amazing at something you want to become amazing at. It takes hard work and practice in specific ways, but it does not take innate talent. Much more important is focusing on how to create the habits and motivation that get you practicing in the right way, every day.

More than any specific skill is just the quality of how you have lived, how you are living. Are you enjoying life, sharing love, connecting, being of service, being true to yourself, your own internal compass of rightness. Just do that, and you're doing well. And you don't need to do it all at once. Small steps in that direction every day. But staying on that path requires feeding the fire regularly. What inspires you? Feed yourself that.

This pandemic is not really that different from everyday life, in the fundamentals. We eat, breath, sleep, interact with each other. We can choose to cherish what we're grateful for or bemoan what we don't have. Viktor Frankl was in the Nazi concentration camps, so when he says it is your mind that makes of any situation a heaven or hell, it carries more weight that the average person saying that. But regardless, it's true. If you don't know how, then that's the first step. Start researching. Maybe start with a gratitude journal and some TED talks. It's possible, the information is out there, it just requires your persistent practice. Happiness is to a large degree, a choice. But not a choice you make like ordering a burger and fries, it's a choice you make every day, every moment, via the actions you take, where you choose to focus your attention. We don't control the thoughts that come into our head, but we do have a lot of control over where we place our attention. Like someone has thrown a bucket of words on your floor at night, but you have the flashlight, so you get to decide where you point it.

Action is key. I almost always have enough information, it is action where we mostly fall short. Take action, reflect on the results, and integrate that into further action. This is how we grow and evolve very quickly. There's a bit more to it than that. I'm working out the details myself, but someday I'd love to share it, teach it. It's all part of the meta-skill of learning. Learning how to learn. Mastering how to master things.

Mastery. Teacher Training Programs.

I totally missed the month of April. Right now I'm thinking about mastery. I'm thinking about improving one's skill. Anders Ericsson wrote a book called Peak. And many more scientific papers. The book is mindblowing in it's applications. It's about how to get good and better at something, at the fastest rate, continually. Normally we get "good enough" and then stop growing. This is how to keep growing. This is how to become among the best. At anything. But also just how to become good, at anything, most efficiently. What doesn't that apply to? Mundane things, like your job, your hobbies, your relationships. But also sublime things: discipline, focus, equanimity, meditation, mindfulness. A sense of humor, joyfulness. Etc. Etc. Etc. Anything. Anything. I think most people read it and think it's cool, but I read it and it strikes me on the level of a genuine miracle. And yet, his work is not done. He researched what the necessary components are. What needs to happen next, is to weaponize it.

We need masters in creating masters. Masters in the art of mastery. Part of mastery is working really hard for a prolonged time. How do we help set up the situation to get someone to do that? To work really hard, stay out of their comfort zone, for a prolonged time? That itself is a skill, to be mastered. I want to help people become good at things. That's kind of the job of a teacher. I suppose part of it truly is just to pass down knowledge. But as a trainer, it's more than that. I want to sculpt my students into the best versions of themselves. That requires true learning, not just information gathering. And it's a very complex process, that involves their work more than mine. I can't eat for them, I can't practice for them. How do I inspire and support them to develop their own habits of mastery acquisition?

I particularly want to apply this to teaching. Teacher training is really bad. It is ineffective. And it's one of our most important jobs. That's bad. It's also lopsided, only helping with the intellectual, rather than the character growth necessary to become a positively contributing member of society. A really smart person can create an atom bomb. A person of excellent character creates a nonviolent movement for freedom and peace.

A fundamental problem here is the catch 22 that I myself have not learned, ingrained, the skills and habits (and I suspect, identity) necessary for mastery, and I need mastery level skills to do what I want to do: create an exceptional training program for teachers. I'm deeply unqualified. I am not an exceptional teacher myself. But actually I don't know if that is necessary. I need to learn how to create a training program for teachers, if that's what I want. That is different than teaching. But I think knowing what it takes to be an exceptional teacher will provide good guidance in the creation of the program, and to truly know that, is to be it. The field of education is full of administrators who have not done the work in the trenches and thus give ineffective advice and training, or only partial views.

It seems like such a simple and powerful idea, I can't imagine it not moving people: science shows that teaching programs do little to nothing to improve the teaching outcomes of people who go through those schools. Here finally is a program that holds itself accountable. It is hard, it is uncomfortable, but if you go through our program and do all the work, you are extremely likely to be a first class teacher by the time you exit it. you will be achieving results with your students that only the top 1% of teachers are able to get. It's not magic, it's science, it's the same thing we expect of our students: practice, test to see how much you've learned, reflect, practice, improve, test again. The same way the field of athletics or music has honed training techniques to produce incredible results, we have applied these strategies to create a training program for teachers that is truely, provably, measurably, deeply effective.

And I want to go beyond that: we will take ordinary people and bring you to the place where you can become masters, which takes the cultivation of passion, perseverance, and a growth mindset.

And even beyond that, we will teach you how to cultivate your students character, the secret factor for a truly peaceful and happy classroom, and the secret factor for a peaceful and happy world.

How can you say no to that? That's why this passion, this dream, burns so brightly inside me. The world needs it.