Expectations

Riding A Bike (No analogy, just a lesson)

Garth Beyer

I cried a lot as a kid so it’s rare that I can remember a specific cry. The one I can recall is my first cry while trying to ride a bike for the first time. I remember my dad running behind me, keeping me steady. I yelled at him to NOT let go. He did. It ended up with me crying.

I’ve read a lot of analogies and quotes about life in relation to riding a bike. There’s something universal about teaching a kid to ride a bike; it’s not just a lesson about riding a bike, it’s a life lesson.

Step one: Make sure the kid knows that he is going to fall off the bike and if the kid is anything like any other kid, will cry and be afraid to ride again. Prepare the kid for it. Tell him what will happen. Do this at first.

Step two: then switch your words of honesty with words of encouragement immediately upon the first fall. Tell the kid that he is going to ride smoothly, keep the handlebars steady, pedal slow and thoroughly and will succeed.

Step three: Pat on the back. He’s done it.

The strongest feelings in this world are the ones that surprise you. This means that they can be any type of feeling: sad, lonely, happy, guilty, scared, proud, etc,.  There is less of a feeling if you expect it, or in this case, if a kid expects to fall off the bike and hurt himself it won’t hurt nearly as bad if he didn’t expect it.

As we likely know, but often forget, once we fail, we are that much closer to success. We hold this expectation of falling off the bike again and hurting ourselves. But when we don’t fall, when the kid finally rides the bike without it resulting in tears, it’s the strongest feeling in the world; much stronger than getting it right the first time.

Success doesn’t move us, the feelings of it do.

 

Stay Positive & Feel More

Garth E. Beyer

Start Schooling Dreams (Speech)

Garth Beyer

A few weeks ago, with my upcoming (now partially released) eBook, Start Schooling Dreams, I presented a speech to my Toastmasters club on three chapters of SSD.

Responses: “Fantastic & engaging. Excellent job w/ including the entire audience.” I even curved some mindsets of people who regard themselves as true “schoolies.” Above all, every single person couldn’t help but note my passion for it. I truly am passionate about improving school/education/learning, whatever you want to title it. Without further ado, here is my speech. (I’ll start videotaping them from now on.)

 

*Welcoming Applaus*

Alright, I’m going to ask you just a couple questions and I reallllly want you to raise your hand to answer.

How many of you have a passion for something?

How many of you found this passion, whether it is just a hobby or an actual job, from school?

It’ll be easier for you all to see if I asked it this way, how many of you developed your passion outside of school?

Yes this speech is partially about where you find your passion, but more about where you don’t find it; school.

One more question, let’s imagine this room being occupied by a real teacher and packed with real students. And the teacher asks a question, how many of you are passionate about this class? *No hands go up… people laugh at the realization*

Education is racing … to the bottom.  And I want to cover three points out of my 35,000 word manifesto I’ve written called Start Schooling Dreams. Since the Pygmalion affect, impatience, and accidents are three separate chapters in my book, I’m going to make it easy for you to catch my transitions.

Whenever I ask you a new question, I’m going to lead into the next topic and I’ll expect you to acknowledge by raising your hands or nodding your head. Does that sound fair enough? [Yes… that was a question]

Pygmalion Effect

I took a sociology class a couple of years ago and I loved it. Particularly, I loved asking questions in the class. Not just any questions, specific types of questions. Questions that couldn’t be answered, questions that made you think. But one day, I asked a question thinking I was being sly again, but I got an answer back. And that answer still scares me to this day.

We were learning about the Pygmalion effect, also known as the Rosenthal effect. It refers to the observable fact that the greater the expectation of a student, the better they perform.

I raised my hand during one sociology lesson and asked my question …

“Are teachers taught about the Pygmalion effect?”

I wasn’t the only one shocked at the answer, all the students and even the teacher were taken aback.

Am I wrong to think that a single teacher can’t have a powerful and positive expectation of only 30 students?

I have seen teachers tell other teachers how a student is a bad student, how they don’t listen, or that they aren’t very smart. I have also seen the teacher whom that was told to, change their behavior toward that student when she entered their class. As a result? The student became worse, listened less and became – dare I say it – even dumber.

All the while, the few “bright” students got brighter because the teachers challenged them and expected them to be “perfect” students.

Want to create passionate learners in school? Expect passionate learners.

Want to expect passionate learners? Hire teachers who understand the Pygmalion effect.

Impatience

Who here is impatient?

Wonderful, I admire that. Impatience is a valuable talent to have and it’s a hard talent to acquire when going to school because school initiates patience. You have to be patient and wait to get to the next lesson and you have to wait until the class you really love that starts at 2:00pm. Worst of all, you have to wait until the class you despise is over. Day after day.

The most successful people on the planet can’t handle being patient. Younger versions of the most successful people in the world will, instead of memorizing facts in the class, exchange it with practicing their passion, planning to ship their product their letter, their art, and so on.

Teachers are meant to spark impatience but so few do. Out of the 30 plus teachers I’ve had, only one has wanted all the students to learn, to dream, to find and go after their passion. Only one out of 14+ years of school.

The need of the student isn’t to learn information; it’s to be motivated to learn it and the best way to motivate that is to spark impatience.

Accidents And Questions

Which came first, the dumb caveman or the fire?

Either way, the discovery of fire was an accident but that accident made a dumb caveman look smart – of course, after it made him seem dumb for touching it and burning himself.

What matters is that breakthroughs used to happen very often. It has died down, not because of everything that can be discovered has, but because we reprimand those who make accidents or constantly ask questions.  Without the curiosity and the mistakes of the caveman, we may never have evolved into who we are today.

The biggest successes in history were accidents or resulted from consistent questioning.

I found two great examples to share with you.

Will Keith Kellogg had accidentally left some boiled wheat sitting out and it went stale. Instead of throwing it away, Will and his brother Dr. John Harvey Kellogg put it through the rollers to make long sheets of dough. Once it went through, they realized the dough had turned into flakes which they decided to toast. Soon after, they chose to run the same experiment with corn and in 1906 the Kellogg’s company was created, along with the internationally known Corn Flakes.

Richard James, a naval engineer attempted to invent a spring that would stabilize the sensitivity of ships equipment. When a spring he had worked on fell off a shelf and continued moving away, the idea was sparked. With help from his wife, they decided to name the invention Slinky and have sold over 270 million globally.

Scientists, engineers, philosophers and alike, all became famous due to the questions they posed and accidents made. They would ask why until they either found an answer or created one.

Setting things on fire and seeing what happens is helpful too. If you think about it, you can’t be smart until you are dumb.

Now that we know what it means to be smart, what is success?

School is all about success but it’s taught us to love success instead of teaching us of what we are doing. School has said, “Here is success, follow this curriculum to get it.” When school really needs to be saying, “Where is success? How will you get there? How can I help?”

In school, the result holds significance. At the end of life though, is it the results we have attained that makes it a life worth lived, a significant life, one that was lived to the fullest?

Or at the end of life, is it the journey, the actions we took, the decisions we made, the experience we accumulated, the adventure we enjoyed and the understanding of it all that makes life, well, … Life.

The definition school has for “success” is all too wrong. And I knowing the Pygmalion effect, sparking impatience, and creating an environment open for accidents and failure are just three ways education can begin to change for the better. Let’s race to the top.

 

Stay Positive & If You Haven’t Already …Here Are The First 14 Chapters!

Garth E. Beyer

Why We Read: A Pyramid of Life (Information)

Garth Beyer

One reads to argue; grammatically, mechanically, ideologically. If we can’t argue in one or more of these ways, we pick one piece of a whole that we deem incomplete.

The description and detail does not fulfill our expectations. Not that we had them to begin with, but since we can’t argue one of the three ways posed above, we must find some flaw. Thus, we raise our expectations for information until we can deliver that flaw ourselves.

In other words, in order to argue one thing, we must collect one or more others writings that connect with our own thoughts of why the original piece of work is inadequate.

Simplified: We dig in our minds, as well as research, until we can one-up the concept we are arguing.

I read an article on Brain Pickings today that shared parts of Vannevar Bush’s essay’s. Maria Popova, whom I adore but must argue with, stated the following in response to one of the essay’s excerpts. In addition, she had provided this visual.

“To that end, I often think about the architecture of knowledge as a pyramid of sorts — at the base of it, there is all the information available to us; from it, we can generate some form of insight, which we then consolidate into knowledge; at our most optimal, at the top of the pyramid, we’re then able to glean from that knowledge some sort of wisdom about the world, and our place in it, and what matters in it and why.”

I love pyramids, more specifically though, I love BIG pyramids. Pyramids that contain everything available, everything manageable, everything attainable to make it as large and strong as Goliath. Of course, without the idea that a small pebble or a tap of the foot on it would knock it down.

If you haven’t gathered what I’m pointing out here, it is that this pyramid is incomplete. It’s missing a vital piece of human development and understanding. It’s missing, action. See for yourself.

By action, I clearly mean experience.  You can gather all the information possible, develop as much insight as you can, acquire any related knowledge on that subject from others, but you still won’t have wisdom. Simply because wisdom can only be shared through remarkable stories, and remarkable stories only come from experience.

I have added to this pyramid, I have argued against Bush and Popova, and I have strengthened an understanding of such a broad concept. Why we read, then, comes down to the need for progression, the creation of informational dynamics, and the simple fact that there is always room for improvement.

 

Stay Positive & What Do You Have Too Add

Garth E. Beyer

What You Deserve

Garth Beyer

Life is not centered at giving you what you need, you’re on your own with that.

It is however, very much focused on giving you what you deserve. And so am I.

Sure it’s smart to separate your wants and needs, but for this particular case, let’s put them all in one and just call them needs. After all, everyone gets them confused anyway.

Is it safe for me to say that you have never received anything you needed for no reason? As much as we, as humans, fight the assumption, every choice we make is made on the justification that it somehow benefits us. While some people lean towards selflessness like Mother Teresa and others are predominately selfish like Hitler, it is never one or the other, both made the choices they made because it benefited them.

If prodded long enough as to why someone did what they did, it is inevitable to get a response which states that.

Typically unbeknownst, when you receive something you need, you receive it because you have worked for it – except, that you actually never worked for it, you worked for the person to give you it. Again, you are usually unaware that you have worked or will work in a way that will benefit the person who is giving you what you need. Obviously then, the bigger the need, want, desire, hope, and so on that you have, the harder you have to work.

Want to be on the ballot for the next presidential election? You have to work hard for an extremely long time and the hard work you do has to benefit as many people as possible in the largest of ways. The same goes if you want to be a successful businessperson. The same goes if you want to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Anything major in life requires major work. None of it will be given to you unless you provide the gift bearer ways that it would benefit them.

Then, while you are working hard, working smart, working more efficiently through the good and bad times in order to get what you need, life – and all it’s magic – steps in and gives you exactly what you deserve.

However, what most people fail to understand is that you can go through life working hard and never get what you deserve because to get what you deserve, you have to work on your character. What builds character? I think you can figure that one out by yourself.

In my opinion, and I am curious if you agree, I would rather go through life getting what I deserve than what I need/want/desire.

 

Stay Positive & Work On Yourself And Everything Else Will Come To You

Garth E. Beyer

Pushing It & Laziness

Garth Beyer

There is an action in the middle of the word “pushing” and there is a lot to be taken from it.

Laziness needs to be calculated by the amount of work expected to be done. One can easily be lazy at home by just sitting on the couch with a bag of trail mix while watching a movie. On the other hand, no one calls it lazy when a person does exactly what they are told at their job. They don’t call it lazy because they don’t have high expectations of the person other than to do a mediocre job at what they are told to do. This is a false pretense. Believe it or not – and trust me, it’s a lot harder to believe it, but the benefits outweigh the ones of denying it – you are lazy if you only do what is told of you. Both because what you are told to do is factory work and that the economy has yet to figure out a way to replace you with a machine. But don’t worry, they will be able to soon.

Of course, it doesn’t matter whether a machine is invented to take your place or someone offers to do it at a cheaper price as long as you quit being lazy. To quit being lazy means that you have to start pushing it. Lazy people at work don’t go the extra mile, they don’t ship the product before the deadline (and sometimes not even by the deadline). Nor do they do more than is asked or even ask for more. No. That is what pushers do, productive people, successful people, people who are making the robots to do your job. The pushers are the ones who didn’t just take a stand against laziness, they pushed it away.

There’s a special quality about people who push things forward, push things through and push things up. It has to do with the action inside of the word “pushing”. The pushers became successful because they understood that while they push to be better, their actions tell others to “Sh”. They create different ways to accomplish tasks in such a brilliant way that it mesmerizes others into silence.

Remember those people who said you couldn’t? The truth about pushing it is that you do it to shut them up. You do it to prove yourself right. You do it because you can’t move forward unless you push what’s in front of you.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Tell Me To “Sh”, Make Me

Garth E. Beyer

Thinking Body, Dancing Mind

Garth Beyer
The Lessons You Need To Celebrate Being Alive

Thinking Body, Dancing Mind

TaoSports for Extraordinary Performance in Athletics, Business, and Life is the one sport that if you were to become a professional in, you should pick. Although, I would add or change the word extraordinary because the lessons taught and experiences shared in this book are the ordinary techniques that are used by the extraordinary. The way I am going to regurgitate this book to you is by first sharing everything that I actually wrote down while I was reading it. These items are the most important parts of the book that sparked the brightest ideas and concepts in my brain. Then I am going to list the chapters in the book to let you know of all the different lessons that you can learn and improve on. The reason for this process is that the book can be picked up and started from anywhere you choose: the beginning, the end, or a random page. My advice for you is not to go and purchase the book, but to go and flip it open to a chapter that you think you want to improve in your life, read it and see if you want to read the other chapters. Lastly, I will share some of my favorite affirmations that were shared in the book that hopefully you can use.

Garth’s Dancing Mind

Why fight your way to the top, when you can rise to it?  There is no such thing as a victory in an uphill battle; there is only a plateau and it’s never at the top.

Having a winning attitude is a defiance to the expectation of feeling the thrill of victory and agony of defeat.  Both of which are detrimental to any possibility of being successful in the future. To have a winning attitude is to break down the process to moments.  Thinking and feeling that you have won each moment. Success is relative to the quality of the process. There is more than one finish line in a 5k race, there are actually 6,200 finish lines. Every step is a victory and should be viewed as one.

What Not To Be –

  • Struggling for external recognition
  • Measuring self-worth on outcomes
  • Focusing on perfection
  • Establishing unrealistic expectations
  • Blaming others
  • Condemning yourself for mistakes and failure

“You don’t dance to get to the other side of the floor” – Alan Watts

There are three visualization processes that I have taken from the book (which probably has 30+ in it). The first is a visualization of your sanctuary that you can retreat to based off a trigger (mines putting my index finger and thumb together to create a circle). You get to create your own place of ritual and relaxation. My place was based off a picture of a monk sweeping in front of his hut that was cuddling the base of a mountain, the monk is my guide, as you will read more about when you open the book. The second visualization process was to imagine a steady beam of sunlight coming down on top of you, entering your head and circulating it’s power throughout your body, delivering energy, healing powers and enlightenment.

The third visualization example was actually the first in the book which goes like this:

“For example, close your eyes right now and imagine a juicy, sour lemon. In your mind, cut a big wedge from the lemon and place it in your mouth. Bite down, and let the sour juices permeate your entire mouth. Did you find yourself puckering or salivating?”

It simply goes to show how powerful visualization can be. With consistent practice, you can have the same trigger affect to visualizing winning a race, visualizing closing a deal or whatever will help you succeed.

While visualizations are confirmations for your mind, affirmations are confirmations to your heart. “Affirmations are not self deception, they’re self direction.” At the bottom of this post, I will list my absolute favorite affirmations from the book. It is loaded with them! You can also create a list of perfect affirmations for yourself by turning your favorite quotes into affirmations.

  • At every moment remember: Be positive, Be present, Be concise, Be rhythmic.
  • Adaptation is the hallmark of champions.
  • Remember to pace yourself. Progress is two steps forward, one step backward.
  • To trump fatigue, you can either focus on one aspect of the process or at the end result, ignore all else and let the fatigue bypass you.
  • Concentrate on what you have control over.
  • What you believe you become.
  • Handling a negative event in  a positive way is an experience that can become a touchstone for future encounters.
  • Fear: is a natural part of life. It can either paralyze you or give you an opportunity to assess the risk your facing and prepare for it properly. Fear can also make you respect your comfort zone.
  • When in a slump, go with the flow because you will slingshot back.

5 Stages of Injury:  – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. (When you read this section under the chapter titled Injuries, you will agree at first, but then you will disagree because when you finally realize the process you take, you are able to shorten and change it.)

Challenge: Find the book at the bookstore and read the beginning of the chapter on page 76. (Half a page) By far the most “Woa” moment in the entire book.

One of the most important excerpts I took from the book is that you, me, we – are never as great as our greatest victory or as bad as our worst defeat. We are above it all, we are apart from it because we have a winning attitude.

Reevaluate life while in downtime. Just because your body may be down, does not mean you can allow your mind to go down with it. You need to focus on what made you lose balance, what you are going to do to achieve balance again and what you will do to prevent from ever entering downtime again. Oh, and remember, laughter is by far the best medicine to get out of downtime, I suggest George Carlin.

Committed to truth no consistency – Buddha

“According to Mark, when you become totally engrossed in your sport, you over-analyze everything.” Contributing to the saying that analysis is paralysis. Ironically, I had just written a blog post about this called The One Quality You Need To Be A Successful Expert

I will top of my Dancing Mind with something I loved most about TBDM. At the beginning of each section, and sometimes within, a chapter of the Tao Te Ching is shared. The characters associated with it were so aesthetic that it made me want to study them. The reason being that the greatness of them is that they are meant to make you visualize and feel their meaning when you meditate on them. The Tao Te Ching inserts reminded me of a post I wrote a long time ago on a particular chapter:An Accord With Greatness

Tao Te Ching no.1

Thus, without expectation,

One will always perceive the subtlety.

And, with expectation,

One will always perceive the boundary.

TMDB Chapters – If you think a topic is appealing, pick up the book and just read the chapter

Visualizations, Affirmations, Beliefs, Positive Thinking, Relaxation, Vision, Focusing, Centering, Intuition, Reflection, Fear, Fear of Failure, Fear of Success, Slumps, Fatigue, Injuries, Expectations, Self-Criticism, Perfectionism, Confidence, Assertiveness, Courageousness, Detachment, Egolessness, Selflessness, Conscientiousness, Competition, Winning, Psychological Tactics, Motivation, Goal Setting, Self-Improvement, Synergy, Leadership, Integrity, Adaptation, Persistence, Balance, Simplicity.

Affirmations

Fixed minds detract from potential. Flexible minds are the essential.

My performance is a perfect mirror of my image of self.

To be in sync, use instinct.

The voice of fear is healthy to hear.

There is plenty of success for all of us.

What I resist will persist.

I don’t dominate – I demonstrate.

I risk temporary loss for the chance for permanent improvement.

When I’m detached, my play can’t be matched.

Helping others find their way gives me the chance for better play.

There is no home court advantage unless I give it to them.

If I persist each day, I’ll eventually get my way.

Stay Positive & One With The Tao

Garth E. Beyer

Preparation & Expectation Reversed

Garth Beyer

Whoever said “Prepare for the worst but expect the best” was wrong, very wrong indeed.

However, something I agree with – that surely you do to – is that “Actions speak louder than words”. Wouldn’t preparing for the best, be best? Putting forth the effort and action required to prepare for something that will be in the top 10% of greatest accomplishments is what is important. You don’t want to prepare for the worst as discussed in an earlier post (Safety First: The Art Of Preparation) So why not prepare for the best but expect the worst? After all, our greatest moments of happiness arrive when something that was positively unexpected occurs. This means that when whatever you prepared for was a success, you will feel a billion times greater because you thought it wouldn’t turn out that great.

After this, it might be better to start saying that actions speak louder than thoughts too.

 

Stay Positive and Keep Doing Better Than Expected

Garth E. Beyer