Hello and happy Friday! I know what you are thinking. You are just so excited that this blog is a day early, right? 😂 I have big plans all day tomorrow, so I decided I had better write my blog tonight.
I am going to leadership workshop tomorrow. I am so excited! I know leadership will be awesome for 2 reasons: 1. Leadership workshop is put together and run by high school students. They start working on it the summer before it happens, and spend at least one evening a week working on making sure it is awesome. Those guys aren’t getting a grade for all of their efforts. They just do it because they believe in helping younger kids develop great leadership skills. How cool is that? 2. This is my 4th leadership workshop. It is always 1of the best days of my life.
If you don’t have leadership workshop in your school, and want to know more about it you can visit workshopco.org or @workshopstories on Twitter. Lindsey Miller and Reed Howard have created a company to bring leadership workshops into schools. Lindsey and Reed are perfect for this because they know exactly how to build an incredible workshop day. My brother attended one of the workshops they put on, and has never forgotten it. Leadership Workshop is an amazing experience that I wish all students could have!
This week, I got my inspiration for my blog where I get a lot of my ideas from, school. 😉 A friend asked me the most important question in the world. Okay, maybe not the most important question in the world, but a very good very important question. He asked me why I do everything I do, with the Acalympics. He wasn’t being snarky, he was genuinely curious. In trying to come up with an answer, I realized that his question was something everyone has to answer for themselves when they come up with a goal. I think it is absolutely essential that you know why you are doing something, because that is what will keep you going. Also, I found out if your why is something that you are passionate about, work no longer feels like work.
The best example, I have for this concept comes from an amazing teacher I follow on Twitter. (If you don’t follow @marietculver, you should go look for her!) Ms. Culver is a teacher at a school in my district. She and her students have put together and work to upkeep an amazing garden. Almost daily, she has really amazing pictures of the garden and her students working in it. Trust me a garden the size of the one that they keep, has got to take a lot of work. Yet, in the pictures, both she and her students look happy. My guess is that gardening and teaching her students about gardening is Ms. Culver’s passion, and she no longer thinks of it as work. It is obvious she is passing that passion down to her students.
I have noticed that when I start to get frustrated with what I am doing, if I can remember why I am doing it in the first place, it helps! In the case of Acalympics, I am not really passionate about math. I like math, but it is not my passion. I am not passionate about creating websites, and I am certainly not passionate about blogging. It took me a whole week to publish my first blog. I kept alternating between being worried that no one would want to read it, to be worried that everyone would read it, and think it was dumb. I couldn’t decide which was worse! True Story! But, then I remembered why I wanted to make a website in the first place. I realized that I really just wanted to help people. That was my passion!
I wanted to help people feel more comfortable with math so I tried to think of a way they could practice and it would be fun. The reason I made a blog was again, I wanted to help people. I feel like there are so many negatives and convenient excuses for people to not do something. So, I wanted to have a voice, even if it was just a small voice, that said “yes you can do it!” Realizing my desire to help people, was what made me finally publish my first blog. So, that is my advice for the week. Knowing why you are doing something is crucial.
Okay, I am going to eat some dinner and play with my dog for awhile. Have a terrific weekend! Go play acalympics.com😉
Acalympics.com 
Thanks for the contact info on Leadership workshops. I’ll pass it on to our local school. What a great idea & great experience for both the presenters & attendees!!!
Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life!!! Wish I had learned that earlier in life. For me it was do what you can be good enough at to earn a living. There weren’t a lot of options for women in those days – nurse, teacher, librarian, secretary or homemaker. I didn’t learn what my passions were til I was retired. One of them was a hobby all my life – gardening both for beauty & for food production. I was raised on a few acres of land where we kept horses, chickens & grew a very large vegie garden. At a very young age, after my dad prepared the ground with his tractor, my sisters. Mom & I would create rows, fertilize & put in the seeds. As the plants came up we kept the weeds down & watered. When the produce was ready we picked & processed the food or ate it fresh. Processing consisted of sitting around a table for hours shelling peas, cutting corn off the cob, etc. then blanching the vegies & packing them in freezer boxes to eat throughout the winter. At a young age this was all a chore, something we had to do. I didn’t learn how valuable it all was til I went to college & experienced canned peas for the first time. Also, as a teenager I had a job to earn some money. I’d been chosen to represent my local Girl Scout Chapter at the International Roundup in Colorado Springs, & my folks couldn’t really afford to send me. So I grew an acre of corn, sitting out there to scare off the blackbirds who wanted the tender young shoots, and picking & selling the produce at a roadside stand for $.25/dozen. I found out I wasn’t good at sales. LOL
Oops, better sign off this post & go make lunch.
LikeLike
Continuing on with my previous post. I found all thru my life that gardening was something I did wherever I lived & realized I loved watching seeds sprout, grow & produce their bounty & I loved watching the perennial flowers & shrubs come up & bloom & offer their pollen to the bees & nectar to the hummingbirds & beauty to everyone each year. Now that I’m retired I can spend more time in my gardens & now produce about 80% of the vegies & fruit we eat & it’s all organic & practically free.
My second passion began as a child. Mom had a horse & used to put us up on her & walk us around when she returned from a ride. We rode horses quite a bit as kids & teens getting on & getting bucked off or taken under a low limb. Never had lessons, but I loved being around them. As an adult married & raising your dad life was too busy for such a hobby & I rode very seldom. However, again, once I retired my heart drew me back to horses. At 50 yrs old I bought a horse who turned out to be a bolter. That convinced me to begin lessons which led to training my horse which led to another very green 4 yr old horse which I trained & rode for 16 yrs, then got a second horse who had never had training. I’m still working with him & hope to ride for many more years. I love being with horses; they’re special animals who read us like a book & reflect what they read back to us. I worked at the stable in CO developing & directing a huge riding program for several years. I taught Kaden for awhile when he was 7, & you used to get up their with him, but you probably don’t remember that do you?
So yes, I have passions which thankfully I can still participate in & will continue as long as possible. I’m so pleased you are recognizing yours & using your passion to help others. Proud of you !!!
LikeLike