Coaching Archives - Page 2 of 3

Supporting creativity Pt. 8

This is the end. Beautiful friend. This is the end. My only friend, the end.

This evening finding myself writing the last of my posts in this series.
Finding myself.
Finding myself writing.
Finding myself.

My relationship with dance has been pervasive and thorough. Filling. Fulfilling.
Every aspect of it soup to nuts. I love sitting in a rehearsal, listening to a proposal, setting up the technology, raising funds, meeting audience and supporters, writing letters, and talking about this amazing cadre of performers who are Miller Rothlein. I think you would too.

Expressive movement is transformational. Seeing it will change you. Doing it changes everything.

Generate Degenerate Excerpt from MILLER ROTHLEIN (MIRO) on Vimeo.

This evening I ask that you find what moves you and support it.

Become a microphilanthropist.

Set aside ten or twenty dollars a month and give it to a dance company.

Personally, I would like it to be Miller Rothlein.
Honestly, I only care that you give. We learn, we challenge, we teach, we give to one another.

The PLAN–Personal Learning Arts Network.

What would you pay? What is it worth?

What would it be worth if you knew that without you, it would disappear? That is always a possibility.

The visual silence would be deafening.

Could you, would you, give the price of your lunch or dinner today?
Match the cost of your coffee this week? Donate the cost of a ticket to a fundraiser?

Click here to give something that I promise will be appreciated

Three Uses of the Knife

Education is a blade.

Nourish. Clean. Protect.

“The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama the Truth…”

–David Mamet

All that learning
used under creative commons license photo by Wim de Jong

Education nourishes. Tell me how knowledge cannot be the cure for your hunger. You can learn to plant, reap, and prepare. One can learn to do the same and then learn the virtue of caring for others. One can use their learned skills to earn money and buy food or they could give that money to another. It is the conservation of energy, the conservation of matter.

You matter.

We matter. Conserve. Us.

Education cleans. Heals. We remember what we were like. Experimenting with our prejudices. Loves and hates. We learn. Change. We are cleansed of our experiences that can perpetuate hatred, harm, and discord. Education is the space where we can be. It is our darkroom. We dodge or we burn. We develop and we change. Emerge new and then repeat the process. After a few years we begin to get good at it, even. We are new. We are healed. We are clean.

Education protects. Every act of learning is a victory against ignorance. Minimum. I do not say this lightly. The decisions that a child/adolescent/young adult faces in this age are no more life-threatening as they may have been decades ago. Save for the fact that actual life/death decisions are being made. Education isolates us from the ignorance and pain of the world. Lonely? Safe. Move on.

Becoming Nobody

Online chess. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It is a stretch to say that I like losing but I consider myself game. Gamey? Gamer. Willing. Much more willing to lose than not to play. Grow or at least have the experience. That will pave the way one pebble at a time.

So often you will hear in a conversation or read in a blog or social media outlet that someone considers themselves a “lifelong learner.” I wonder what they are learning? In my informal survey of these statements, it is typically a statement about one’s willingness to improve or change their current skills. Is that not what everyone does or is expected to do? Formally, I would enjoy gaining more information about genuine levels of objective growth and change rather than anecdotes about life-changing events and decisions that “really moved (institution X) forward.

As one who enjoys martial arts, I look at all areas of my life to reveal my training partner. It changes by day and by context but the function is the same. By working together, each one has the goal of improving their skill and they cannot do it alone. Regardless of your training partner, you can only have one competitor. Self. Choose how much practice takes place, quality of food, level of hydration, and intensity of work. Make the decision to be present. Aware.

Before I step onto the mats I determine my attitude and I am sure that it influences who obliges when I offer to pair up for a session of training. So many would love to say that “any given Sunday” I may win a match or lose a match; have an up day or a down day. That is not the case. My training session begins the night before when I decide to get a decent night’s sleep and moves forward with decisions throughout the day. There are not many decisions to be made. There is one. Then another one.

Me and Relson — Mugging for the camera with Relson Gracie

Watching the documentary “Bobby Fischer Against the World,” I heard David Shenk saying that there were 40,000 moves on a chess board after the first move. If you know anything about chess, you know that this is inaccurate. From both a mathematical standpoint as we as a meaningful standpoint, it is inaccurate. The only one with thousands of moves before them in a chess match is a fool.

Every decision made through the day determines an analog success or failure on the mat that evening. However you may score it. We all score it somehow. That is how we measure growth. I will not pretend to be one of the “all for fun” types. I will not claim to be a technician or analyst of the game but I know this–there are necessary and sufficient conditions in order to achieve growth and most of them depend on me.

Become nobody. Be humble. Serve. Give. Leave your ego at the door. I will take it one step further…maybe several steps. Those decisions that you make all week determine the type of training partner you will be for someone and reciprocally, they will then be for you. Rather than simply preparing yourself to respond and react, prepare yourself to be your best for someone else.

I’m a Loser, Baby (Soy un perdedor)

Watching the Metamoris Brazilian Jiu Jitsu submission-only challenge had me thinking about the acquisition of skill–okay, I think daily about the acquisition of skill–but also about how you carry, characterize, and implement skills that you have. Also, I have been revisiting some of my early research about the perception of Expertise in the eyes of those to whom it actually matters. You know, where the rubber meets the road.

Experts meet every day in battle on the chessboard, the mats, all over. There will be a loser–or at least a perceived loser–in each match. A game played to stalemate may be entered into the books as a draw but the players know who was controlling the pace, who was attacking and who was defending, and who was dominant throughout. What do you call an Expert who loses?

I remember when Mike Tyson lost.

You have to ask yourself: Who is a Black Belt in my field? Who checks all the boxes?
Does the loss matter and how pervasive and deceptive is your perception?

And my time is a piece of wax, fallin’ on a termite
That’s chokin’ on the splinters

Beck, Loser