The Power of a Pause
Those who know me...like, really know me and all my deficiencies, know that I have a hard time with pausing. I am fast and furious, with no time for nonsense. I come by it honestly, my mom is like the energizer bunny. Growing up, she would sweep the floor at least fifty times a day, I am certain. She would clean the dairy barn each morning, scrub brushing every square inch, literally it would shine when she finished. The milk inspector (who was "The Grinch") would often tell her that we had the cleanest dairy farm in the country. Fast forward to my high school years, my basketball coach would frequently give me the, "slow down" look and say, "go to fifth gear." It is who I am. In my career, I have been told by more than one supervisor in my early years, there is plenty of time, slow down...take your time. While I don't believe that nonsense, because we are not guaranteed tomorrow ...there is merit in taking your pedal off the gas a tad at times.
Most of you who know me, know also that I am a tad bit stubborn too, which at times is a terrible combination. As sad as I am about it now, I gave my own dad permission to attend my wedding, but only after a few people that I respected told me to allow him to come because if I didn't, I would regret it later. They were right. I have plenty of regrets in my life and most of them would have been avoidable, had I had the essential skill of pause, (see what I did there educator friends) before the age of 30-something. I don't really know when I started to learn the "Power of Pause", but I did.
These last few days, albeit they have been super intense as a principal, it is my love to take on a challenge, think through the issue at hand, and begin problem-solving. Knowing full well that I will make some mistakes along the way, but that I will learn. I had someone ask me this morning how I handle these stressful times in a school, I immediately responded, with..."I pause, think about the problem, begin working through various scenarios and how each can potentially play out as the dominoes begin to fall (because, well...they will), determine which plan has the most potential for success, make a commitment and go with it." Inevitably, nothing goes as planned. Good thing I grew up on a farm where everything always broke when it was needed the most or on a holiday (when the stores where you could purchase the replacement parts were closed). It was in these times that as a kid I despised living on the farm. Now, I am forever thankful for those days of watching my dad, "Jimmy-Rig" (as we called it) random parts and pieces to get the equipment running, because the cows had to be fed. Those days of working in the cold air taught me how to go about whatever task it was faster than the day before. I would often visualize how to do the task faster, what steps could I take to shorten my task and get back to a warm area as soon as possible. This training has served me well to serve in education. We also, in most cases could not afford to take our equipment to be worked on, my dad had to do it himself. Who knew this would have prepared me for the education profession. It is in my DNA to find ways to, "make it work." I am a problem-solver and I love it. Most of my life I have had to figure out how to do more with less, which requires me to pause. The power of a pause in my life is critical to my answer.
My life growing up has taught me to go fast, to go slow. There are times that you must go fast, only to reach a point where you need to go slow. The last few days have been fast with information, crazy fast. Everything was changing at an exponential speed and I suspect this will only get worse over the next weeks. In fact, most of the time; before I could not even communicate a specific change, another change emerged and I finally decided to pause and it happened. The information eventually emerged that I needed to make decisions. Although it was nearly 7:30 pm when it happened, my pause allowed me to respond to what was most important to families and the impact on them for the moment. It will change because we all know that even on our best days change is inevitable. It is how we face the change and in what spirit that will determine our success or our failure. For there is rarely ever a solid right answer. All answers have repercussions. I do believe though, if you can find the time to pause, you will find the power to get to a rational decision that you can move forward with, scaling the hurdles appropriately as they emerge. The next days, weeks, and months will build our character in one way or another...maybe through the COVID-19, maybe through another mechanism. Maybe this is our reminder in this time to pause and then react versus...hear it or read it and immediately react. In my own experience, it is when I reacted to my immediate emotions that cost me the most in regard to my own character, even when my intentions were right and good.
That is it for my Treece ramblings today, in a nutshell:
Most of you who know me, know also that I am a tad bit stubborn too, which at times is a terrible combination. As sad as I am about it now, I gave my own dad permission to attend my wedding, but only after a few people that I respected told me to allow him to come because if I didn't, I would regret it later. They were right. I have plenty of regrets in my life and most of them would have been avoidable, had I had the essential skill of pause, (see what I did there educator friends) before the age of 30-something. I don't really know when I started to learn the "Power of Pause", but I did.
These last few days, albeit they have been super intense as a principal, it is my love to take on a challenge, think through the issue at hand, and begin problem-solving. Knowing full well that I will make some mistakes along the way, but that I will learn. I had someone ask me this morning how I handle these stressful times in a school, I immediately responded, with..."I pause, think about the problem, begin working through various scenarios and how each can potentially play out as the dominoes begin to fall (because, well...they will), determine which plan has the most potential for success, make a commitment and go with it." Inevitably, nothing goes as planned. Good thing I grew up on a farm where everything always broke when it was needed the most or on a holiday (when the stores where you could purchase the replacement parts were closed). It was in these times that as a kid I despised living on the farm. Now, I am forever thankful for those days of watching my dad, "Jimmy-Rig" (as we called it) random parts and pieces to get the equipment running, because the cows had to be fed. Those days of working in the cold air taught me how to go about whatever task it was faster than the day before. I would often visualize how to do the task faster, what steps could I take to shorten my task and get back to a warm area as soon as possible. This training has served me well to serve in education. We also, in most cases could not afford to take our equipment to be worked on, my dad had to do it himself. Who knew this would have prepared me for the education profession. It is in my DNA to find ways to, "make it work." I am a problem-solver and I love it. Most of my life I have had to figure out how to do more with less, which requires me to pause. The power of a pause in my life is critical to my answer.
My life growing up has taught me to go fast, to go slow. There are times that you must go fast, only to reach a point where you need to go slow. The last few days have been fast with information, crazy fast. Everything was changing at an exponential speed and I suspect this will only get worse over the next weeks. In fact, most of the time; before I could not even communicate a specific change, another change emerged and I finally decided to pause and it happened. The information eventually emerged that I needed to make decisions. Although it was nearly 7:30 pm when it happened, my pause allowed me to respond to what was most important to families and the impact on them for the moment. It will change because we all know that even on our best days change is inevitable. It is how we face the change and in what spirit that will determine our success or our failure. For there is rarely ever a solid right answer. All answers have repercussions. I do believe though, if you can find the time to pause, you will find the power to get to a rational decision that you can move forward with, scaling the hurdles appropriately as they emerge. The next days, weeks, and months will build our character in one way or another...maybe through the COVID-19, maybe through another mechanism. Maybe this is our reminder in this time to pause and then react versus...hear it or read it and immediately react. In my own experience, it is when I reacted to my immediate emotions that cost me the most in regard to my own character, even when my intentions were right and good.
That is it for my Treece ramblings today, in a nutshell:
- Be thankful for our time here on earth, even the worst times prepare us for something greater later.
- Hurdles present opportunities to scale up our skills for success.
- Sometimes we have to "just make it work" the best we can.
- There is Power in Pausing, may we all practice our pause in the hard times to see other perspectives and to celebrate the success.
I can't predict the future. I don't know what the weeks ahead will hold. I don't know if and when we will really go back to school. I don't know if I will live or die by the end of COVID-19. I do know that regardless of all the scenarios...I am going to use the power of a pause here and there to hopefully embrace whatever life presents.
Much love and many smiles my friends, Treece
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