For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.” – Norton Juster, The Phantom TollboothĪs educators, we are in the spotlight to help guide students through these difficult times of COVID-19. “You must never feel badly about making mistakes … as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. And we must encourage our students to adopt the mindset of celebrating how to fail forward. In doing so, we will strengthen our sense of self-belief and self-confidence, and own the notion of being a lifelong learner. We all need to reach beyond our own horizons, challenge our confirmation bias, and problem-solve through different lenses. Life takes grit and hard work, and mistakes are the hallmark of trying and learning. I still get the chills watching Robin Williams wax poetic about pushing up daisies in Dead Poets Society’s famous carpe diem scene:īottom line: We can’t wallow in the land of regrets – it’s too often synonymous with the past. You just want to be well-poised to take advantage of an opportunity when it arises. It doesn’t depend on a mood or particular circumstances. There is no “right time” to move forward. We can’t let indecision or fear paralyze us. I’ve always believed that you can’t have the highs without the lows. Life is designed with dynamic twists and turns. And you know what you know.Īnd YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go … “ – Dr. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. For students, it can be as small as picking up that next-level reading book or as big as changing schools. For us, it can be as small as ordering a different dish off a new menu or as large as picking up and moving to a new city. But as we continue to develop our own sense of self-awareness and self-regulation, we can begin to push ourselves and our students in a healthy way to try the new, embrace the different, and take a calculated risk. Author Daniel Pink speaks of it as a place of “ productive discomfort,” and he gives the analogy of Goldilocks: too little challenge is too comforting while too much challenge can backfire and cause a negative result, often that of disengagement. Optimal anxiety actually leads to more productivity and better performance. Feelings of “optimal anxiety” and “productive discomfort” Yet, just outside one’s comfort zone is the area of “optimal anxiety ” or relative anxiety, which is the state that poses some challenges. ![]() And mediocracy can suit us all from time to time. ![]() It is our own definition of that natural intersection – that sweet spot – of security, plus low anxiety, plus happiness. Regardless of age, one’s comfort zone is neither a good thing nor a bad thing – it’s a neutral space. “I always get to where I am going by walking away from where I have been.“ – Winne the Pooh
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