DaveShearon

A lesson while fishing...

My monthly post is up over at Positive Psychology News Daily.  

Chasin' your goals!

Here's another in the series on Positive Psychology through Country Music, this time in honor of the late Jerry Reed.  The first lines to this song are:

East bound and down, loaded up and truckin!

We gonna do what they say can’t be done.

We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to git there.

I’m east bound just watch ole Bandit run!

My classmate, Caroline Miller, is an expert on goals, and she's helped me re-evaluate their importance.  Caroline says the toughest regrets her clients face are those about goals they did not pursue.  Goals can generate focus, determination, energy, and excitement.

So, how 'bout you?  Any crazy, wild, can't-be-done goals pulling at you?  What are you trying to do that "they" say can't be done? Or have you lost the ability to feel the pull?  No guarantee you'll succeed, but opting for the safe way often isn't very successful either.  What's going to be your story?

These don't have to be pointless, daredevil style goals.  Maybe you want to do something that matters.  I once ran for and won a seat on the Nasvhille School Board because I wanted to make a difference.  Resigned for the same reason.  Now I'm working to improve lawyering and education.  Seems crazy sometimes, but it sure is energizing!  Is something like that pulling at you?

Who's your Smokey?  Who's going to try and stop you.  I'm not talking about those who have reasonable expectations of you -- family and loved ones.  We've all got responsibilities to meet and we need to meet them -- but that's not the complete barrier to pursuing those crazy, demanding, challenging, meaningful goals we sometime make it out to be.  No, I'm talking about those out there who're going to want to stop you because, well, maybe just because!  Or maybe you scare them.  Or threaten them.  Whatever.  If you lead, some will accuse you of bad motives and personal character flaws.  Who's your Smokey?

And who's your Snowman?  Or your Bandit?  Are you hauling the load, or clearing the path?  Who's on your team?  Maybe yours aren't solo goals. 

If something's been pulling at you, if you've got a goal you've been fighting, you might want to give it another think.  If you've lost touch with your goals and are just sort of going through the motions, "fidgeting till you die" as Marty Seligman says, then maybe now's the time to re-engage.  Build some well-being, re-configure your explanatory style, dig into your strengths, nurture your relationships.  I suspect you'll find some goals glimmering into sight like stars on a moonless night. 

OK.  Enough preaching.  Sometimes that Baptist-since-birth thing just gets the better of me!

Hope y'all are doing well! 

What's in a bunch of words?

Surfing around, I noticed some posts in the political realm using word clouds on candidate speeches.  Made me wonder how my web sites might come out.  First, I went to www.shearonforschools.com -- the website I set up when I was running for the school board in Nashville and then maintained while I was on the board and for a couple of years afterwards.  I pulled all the text I had written (over 15,000 words), ran it through http://wordle.net, and got this:

I pulled all my book notes off that site (over 64,000 words) and got:

That seems about right to me.  I thought, talked, and wrote more about students as a board member.  I read and studied about how teachers and schools can change so they work better. 

Finally, looking at this blog since the Fall of 2005 when I started the MAPP program, I get:

Interesting in that my sense is that my focus has turned more to lawyers, lawyering, and law schools over the last two years.  I suspect, however, most of that work has produced products such as materials and powerpoints for CLE presentations, memos, etc. -- none of which would show up here.  On the other hand, I do still do a good bit of work in the K-12 education world, including working with Superintendents' Study Councils through the Penn Graduate School of Education, the work with teachers from the UK in the summer of '07 and with Geelong Grammar School in Australia in January of this year.  And the continuing work with my colleagues John Yeager and Sherri Fisher at Culver Academies.