What’s on Your “To Be” List for 2015?

A new calendar year  is around the corner.  Are new year’s resolutions on your radar screen?

I’ve never really been good at New Year’s resolutions.  They don’t fit with my life as an educator.  I live on the semester system with summer break in June/July and a vacation in December!  I live semester to semester to break….I’ve lived on the semester system all my life essentially – at least since Kindergarten and that was in 1961!  Wow 53 years of the semester system……The point is my resolutions are usually August resolutions – not New Years  resolutions.

Anyway, the point is, my thinking about resolutions has evolved…as I have, thankfully, over time.

Resolutions should NOT be about things you are going “to do”.  They should be about who you want “to be”

How do you want to be this year?    vs.    What do you want to do?

laveldanaylor.wordpress.com “We are human beings, not human doings” – Deepak Chopra

laveldanaylor.wordpress.com
“We are human beings, not human doings” – Deepak Chopra

 

Lance King (www.taolearn.com) talks at length about  helping students to think of themselves as human “beings” and not as human “doings”.  I have appreciated his words around this topic.  We become so caught up in the “doing” that we forget about our “being”.  When I think about the IB Learner Profile, it’s all about traits for “being”.  Of course, there are actions we must “do” in order “to be” a certain way.

For me, this type of thinking always resonates. It’s important to re-visit one’s “to be” statements and the beginning of a calendar year is a time ripe for re-visiting one’s mission (unless, of course, you are like me and you are so accustomed to life on the semester system that your list takes shape generally in August!)

When I consider my “to be” list the following comes to mind:  I continue to strive to be a good father, husband, friend and family member.  I continue to work hard to be a good listener, enquirer, learner, and an individual who operates with integrity, honesty, and compassion. I hope to be influential to those around me in my work in order to support adult learning, student learning, and overall school improvement.

What is on your “to be” list this for 2015?

One thought on “What’s on Your “To Be” List for 2015?

  1. My” to be” list is simply “to be!”Merry Christmas to you and yours! You would have made an awesome superintendent in Pemberton Township!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *