The Game of it All

The seminar that I'm currently participating in, the Living Passionately seminar, is about bringing purpose, grace, and ease to all areas of my life.

While on a leadership call last night, I was able to take away a lot of insights and I'd like to share them below.

The homework for this week is to make a game out of that which I take too seriously! What I was reminded of at the seminar is that anything that is in my life, I have brought into existence and if I'm getting stressed about it, then I'm clearly not playing life like a game.

On Saturday, I was having one of those days where it seemed that everything was going wrong. For example I had a plan to walk to the post office and I realized, 3/4 of the way there, that I didn't have my wallet with me to purchase packaging or stamps. My whole day felt like this, always reaching out to do more, but having something get in the way. What a blah way to be!

One thing that had really bothered me all day was that I am teaching an American History class in the fall and I didn't feel like I would be getting any help at all through this process. As usual, I would be doing everything by myself and I had lots of evidence to suggest that this would be true. So on Saturday, I got worked up about it and had a short cry about how overwhelmed I was feeling...this was certainly having an effect on all of my other tasks for the day.

As usual, my boyfriend was very supportive and started to offer suggestions on what I could do with the class. This communication opened the door for me that this might be an area where I could look to "play the game."

While I was on my leadership call yesterday, as I'm a group leader for my team, I realized something else. That the class is all mine...it exists because of me. In fact, the class would not be there without me, because the parents from last year's class rallied to have me teach the same students as a group again this year (normally they would be broken up).

When I had this eureka moment, I was able to make the class into a game. The game being enrolling the families to contribute to the class directly instead of shutting them out of the creation! What I wasn't open to was that the families have a ton to contribute and are part of making this class happen, just as they had at the end of June.

With this new found excitement I ordered tons of American History books off of amazon and found some really fun activities for class. My next step will be engaging the parents in contributing to this class, whether it be with a lesson, or a plan for a field trip, or ideas for class discussions or curriculum, or maybe there is something totally new that they can offer. I'm all ears.

Today, I emailed someone on staff to give me the names and contact info of the parents so that I can connect with them now and have a unifying vision for our class come September.

With all of this I am taking ownership of the class, bringing it to life, and being really hungry for it to begin. I'm excited!

To review, there were a few things that I had to do to see the chrysalis that I can bring to class:
1. I had to consider that I was not truly fully involved in the class. What I was involved in was a "poor me, I have to do this myself" attitude.
2. I thought about what I had to give up to be able to see a new possibility for how this class can work. And what I saw was that I was taking my point of view too seriously (and as if it were the truth and not just my opinion) that no one will help me and that I'll have to do it myself.
3. Make a game out of it (by taking the significance I put on the class out!). The game is to get parents involved in the vision that I have for the class of being fun, exciting, and a contribution of all of our efforts.

As a teacher I get to create context all the time, and now I have a new context to live into, that of contribution and generosity!