Category Archives: mindfulness

Education

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What are you actively learning these days? How do you look back on/see your formal and informal educations? What do you now most wish you knew at some past seminal time?

What do you study? What do you teach? In which domains do you do both, and what is the balance?

Who teaches you? What do you appreciate about them?

How do I do education well already?
–I suck up learning from almost all possible sources. Lately I revel in what I learn from my kids–pop culture, history omg (their formal humanities education is so much broader and and deeper than mine was), fashion, sailing, ballet, music, relationships. I am a student of life; my major is relationships. My cumulative GPA is strong.
–I study teaching, of trainees, patients, kids, audiences, etc. I make an effort to understand learner’s points of reference, readiness, and goals. I try to meet them there, and help them get where they want to go. I can modify my posture, language, and directiveness or collaborativeness based on needs and dynamics.
–I am open to what I don’t know I don’t know. I am extremely teachable.

How could I do it better?
–I realized years ago that it’s not the remedial student who bothers me. It’s the disengaged one. If a learner is earnestly trying, I will go out of my way to help–stay late, think of different methods, stick with them. But if they don’t want to be there, then I don’t want them there, either. The change in me is dramatic, and it doesn’t serve anyone. So these days, my goal is to be honest about my attitude, call out honesty from learners, and make agreements on how we will hold ourselves and one another accountable for a more optimal relationship. Come to think of it, I could apply this to any relationship, yes?
–I could be more critical, especially of things I read online. If I trust you, I will believe what you tell me, especially if I see you as an authority figure. Thankfully I am often surrounded by realists, cynics, and skeptics, who lead me by their critical example.

How does society to education well already?

Identification and accommodation. Much more now than when I grew up, formal education entities recognize and accommodate the diversity of learning styles and needs. Processes and systems are now in place for nonconventional instruction, schedules, etc.

How could we do better?

Value education of all kinds. I always loved the show Dirty Jobs, hosted by Mike Rowe. It taught us about jobs that keep our world functioning, that we never knew about, and that do not involve four year degrees. No matter how much we evolve toward a knowledge and gig economy, we will always need people to grow and process our food, maintain our machines, build our spaces, etc. As AI and machines integrate into all of our systems, formal and continuing education will need to innovate and keep up, and much of it will still not require university credentials.

Remove financial barriers. For the work that does require collegiate creds, and for the sake of liberal arts learning itself, we have to stop putting people into lifelong debt to pursue scholarly goals. It may not be my place to opine on specifics, and I still have the right to call out the irrational and unjustifiable cost of higher education.

Life skills. Reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic are fundamental skills, yes. So are kindness, curiosity, manners, and effective communication. These days it seems at all levels of education, people need to re/learn how to simply be with other people without getting into fights. Maybe we should make All I Really Need to Know I Learned In Kindergarten required reading every year through post graduate training?

My point in this post, I realize here at the end, is about intellectual humility:
“People who are intellectually humble know that their beliefs, opinions, and viewpoints are fallible because they realize that the evidence on which their beliefs are based could be limited or flawed or that they may not have the expertise or ability to understand and evaluate the evidence. Intellectual humility involves understanding that we can’t fully trust our beliefs and opinions because we might be relying on faulty or incomplete information or are incapable of understanding the details.” For a more academic explanation, see this article from Nature, which I reference here for my own benefit:
“Research on intellectual humility offers an intriguing avenue to safeguard against human errors and biases. Although it cannot eliminate them entirely, recognizing the limitations of knowledge might help to buffer people from some of their more authoritarian, dogmatic, and biased proclivities.”

The more broadly and humbly we approach education of all kinds, both formal and informal, the better we can all learn how to think, which is exponentially more valuable than learning what to think, since information and knowledge now accelerates and changes many times over in a human lifetime. An attitude of lifelong learning and growth prepares us all to be more flexible, agile, and adaptive to the uncertain and volatile world we have created for ourselves.

Learn how best to learn, keep learning and applying, and be better for it all.

Acceptance

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Two plutonium bombs in different locations. The only way to save the world is to defuse them at exactly the same 1/10th of a second, but only after the detonation key is deactivated from yet another location. And that cannot happen until the countdown has started, which gives the hero team fifteen minutes to get it all done.
“Okay,” badass girl hero says.
No denial, no, “That can’t be, you’ve got to be kidding me, there must be another way.”
Just, “Okay.”
And they get to it, one step at a time, improvising, committed together and flexing around obstacles one after another. In typical action movie fashion, the villain dies a karmically satisfying death, the heroes prevail, justice is served, and the world never knows it was miliseconds away from nuclear annihilation.
Props if you can name the movie. 😉

How do I do acceptance well already?
–I totally get it in my thinking mind; and when the thing I must accept is not emotionally charged, I adapt easily and take everything in stride. Flexibilty helps with this, and my life is generally smooth sailing.
–I’m better able now to recognize when I don’t actually fully accept something–when recognizing it intellectually is not enough to get to peace with it.
–When this happens, I can sit with the discomfort–accept it–and let is pass. I tell myself it’s normal and human to have a hard time with deep inner conflicts, that self-awareness in service of reflection, regulation, and more right action is a lifelong learning journey.

How could I do better?
–I need to find a better bridge between cognitive and emotional acceptance. I understand what is happening. I don’t like it, and get that I don’t have control. I recognize where I have agency and not. And yet, I still end up wallowing in irritation, anger, sadness, and resentment. Less frequently each year than the last, and less severely now than before, but sheesh, how long before I can just roll easier with it all and suffer less, FFS?
–Breathe breathe breathe. Maybe prayer? Writing definitely helps. Keep doing the work.
–Or (and?) just accept that this amount of mild to moderate pain and suffering is just par for the course? Huh.

How does society already do well at acceptance?

Is this mostly about inclusion? So many of my posts this month relate to identity, both individual and collective. No matter who you are or what there is about you, it seems easier now than ever to find those who will see, understand, accept, and even love you. They may not be physically local, but you can find literature, resources, and virtual communities to bond over almost anything, it seems. The caveat is that our culture is so emotionally charged right now, non-acceptance threatens to overtake and drive our collective in- and out-group encounters, dividing us more than uniting, making acceptance something we don’t even strive for anymore.

How could we all do better together?

Ask better questions. What is it that we need to do better at accepting, exactly? Facts? Fundamental disagreements? Conflicting values and goals? Shared ones? What questions will give us clarity on what is, and help us resist the urge to ignore, deny, dismiss, and minimize? How can we get to “Okay,” and move with calm and equanimity, peace and purpose, and even joy, toward what could be? What does “Okay” feel like, when/where have we felt it before, and how did we get there?

Maybe the first steps toward peaceful and productive acceptance, among others, are curiosity, non-judgment, and openness to learning. The primary reward and benefit of true, honest, cognitive and emotional acceptance, and what I long for most, is inner peace. I want this so much because I know that wherever and whenever I have inner peace about something, that peace lifts me. It exudes with a palpable force, and my impact on my surroundings is positive. When my innards are turbulent, conflicted, and agitated, I’m not the only one who suffers.
*sigh*
Onward. It is through the struggles that we grow.

Flexibility

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Speaking of… I write this from the emergency department, where Daughter is now observed for an anphylactic allergic food reaction (she’s okay now). *sigh* We do what we’ gotta do–will be here at least another 4 hours.

How do I already do flexibility well?
–I have an agile mind. It freezes occasionally, but most of the time I can assess a fluid situation and work out effective solutions on the fly. Every day in executive health is different and unique, with schedule disruptions from new symptoms, exam findings, test results, and events in other departments. The team, physicians and staff alike, move like gears shifting and sliding amongst one another, keeping the machine running as smoothly as possible.
–I have a low threshold to question and challenge ‘how we have always done’ something, especially when it’s no longer relevant or useful. This includes assessing my default assumptions, especially negative ones, about people. I don’t always do this readily, but more often now than before.
–I can change personal plans without much distress, as long as circumstances allow. I am seldom married to any given itinerary; my greatest sadness is when long awaited meetings with loved ones fall through.

How could I do better?
–I know there are situations where I am rigid, attached to my default assumptions, and not aware. Even when I am aware, I still resist flexing. I’m human. *sigh* So: more mindfulness… Polarity management… Perspective taking… Hmmm… I’m really glad I’ve written these posts this month–they will be a helpful handbook of skills and reminders going forward.
–Sometimes I may be too flexible, which can lead to indecisiveness and meandering. Wide collaboration and flat leadership hierarchy style have pitfalls. I think this is a minor weakness, though. I can sense pretty well when I need to decide something; and since most decisions are two-way doors, my openness to flexibility is still rewarded.

How are we already collectively flexible?

Freedom of expression; innovation. Conflicting opinions notwithstanding, American culture is pretty tolerant of widely varying manifestations of individual and group identity. We are relatively open, I think, to new ideas and creativity. We may not be the most flexible or open, but I think the number of innovations in many domains that originate in the US is a testament to our ability to flex…in technical and commercial areas more than social, in my non-evidence-based observation.

How could we do flexibility better together?

Cull bureaucracy. This feels like chasing a better balance between centralized and decentralized government/management, affording better local responses to acutely changing circumstances and needs. How would this work? Off the top of my head:
–Crystal clear vision, mission, values, goals common to and bought in by all locales
–Concrete, relevant, direct, attributable, and achievable metrics–adjusted to local specifics and still clearly aligned with global mission/goals
–Effective accountability and regular assessment, feedback and remediation as needed
–Balanced interdependence between nodes of the system; stakes for each unit in each other unit’s success

Promote experimentation, pilots, start ups. We facilitate flexibility when creativity and innovation is low risk and low cost. Manage sunk cost biases, apply iterative learning, practice seeing more doors that swing two ways. Collaborate and integrate between disciplines.

Stop punishing the masses for transgressions of the few. Regulation is complex. At least in medicine, the vast majority of practitioners make an honest living, making occasional accounting mistakes. My impression is that sporadic examples of fraud, admitedly severe, incite layers of global stricture on billing and verification, strangling all of us with at least as much time spent on paperwork as on face to face patient care, fueling burnout and alienating patients from their care providers. David French has written that it is not the severity of punishment that deters crime; it is the assuredness of it. I will park illegally if I think I won’t get caught, even if the ticket is $100. But if I know I’ll be charged $20 every time I do it, I won’t. So, maximize accountability and optimize systems for members to self-regulate effectively.

I hope you all had a Thanksgiving that fulfilled at least some hopes of communion, connection, and joy. Living with high risk medical conditions, when sudden and severe episodes trigger acute, indiscriminate, and impactful changes in plans, makes us even more flexible than we may already be. It’s useful, if painful, training. I am always grateful to walk out intact on the other side.