On Purpose

At TLU we prepare students for lives of leadership and service, so it's no surprise that two of the most important questions floating in the air on campus are: How can I lead? And, how can I serve? These may sound like easy questions, but they are not. They are, in fact, the parent questions begetting a whole passel of questions with the same DNA. Am I being called to lead or to serve? Is it appropriate for me to lead or to serve in this particular situation? What is the best way to lead? To serve?  And so on. 

Despite the inherent complexities here, and maybe because of them, I believe that these questions are at the heart of your work as a college student. Yes, this is a writing class. Yes, you are studying to get a degree of some sort. But I want to suggest that it won't matter what kind of writer you become or what kind of degree you get, if you never explore a life in which you are called to a purpose much larger than these things.

In a community of faith like TLU, we can examine what it means to live life with a higher purpose in mind. We can strive to understand how God is calling us to share our talents and interests with the world. Maybe you don't align yourself with a particular faith life. Even so, I would suggest that there are virtues planted within you as part of your nature, like seeds waiting to bring forth something good for others. What might they yield?

In this final post, I invite you to consider the bigger picture. Do you feel that there is a higher purpose for your life? Why or why not? How does this purpose shape your daily life? 

Or, consider the strengths that were identified by the VIA Strengths Assessment. In what ways to you see these qualities allowing you to lead or to serve others?  

Thank you for the attention you have given to your blog this semester. I hope it has helped you sort out the highs and lows of your first semester at TLU. I look forward to reading your ideas soon.

    

On Gratitude

With Thanksgiving break approaching, but a yawning chasm full of work to be done beforehand, it might be useful to take a closer took at gratitude as a mental game mainstay.

In recent years, gratitude has become one of the darlings of positive psychologists. It has received a lot of attention. Some have suggested that we are in the  midst of a  World Gratitude Movement. Has it come to this? Has the world grown so ungrateful that we need a movement to help us remember to be thankful?

What's so great about being grateful anyway? Studies conducted by Dr. Robert Emmons at UC-Davis have suggested that "consciously cultivating an attitude of gratitude builds up a sort of psychological immune system that can cushion us when we fall" ("How Gratitude Can Help..."). This might be especially helpful as the semester wraps up just as cold and flu season kicks in. You body and your mind will be put to the test in coming weeks. Emmons findings point out that "grateful people are more resilient to stress, whether minor everyday hassles or major personal upheavals" ("How Gratitude Can Help..."), and we know from Mary Steinhardt's Krost talk that being resilient means we can bounce back from adversity. ("Facing Failure...").


In his TED talk, "The Happy Secret to Better Work," Shawn Achor reports that people who kept a gratitude journal reported higher levels of well-being. All they had to do was write down three things they were grateful for each day. Can a gratitude journal improve your experience as a student? Can it help you crush your next exam? While researchers conduct studies to find out, the only way for you to know is to try it for yourself.

Write a blog post in which you discuss the role of gratitude in your life. Do you experience feelings of gratitude on the daily? Why or why not? Based on your own experiences, do you think gratitude can help you have more success in college?

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Works Cited

       Achor, Shawn. "The Happy Secret to Better Work." TED: Ideas worth Spreading. TED, Feb. 2012. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html>.

       Emmons, Robert. “How Gratitude Can Help You Through Hard Times.” Greater Good: the Science of a Meaningful Life. the Greater Good Science Center, UC-Berkeley, 12 Nov. 2013. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_stops_gratitude>.

      Steinhardt, Mary. "Facing Failure with Resilience." Texas Lutheran University, Krost Symposium. Jackson Auditorium, Seguin. 3 Oct. 2013. Lecture.

The Value of Mistakes

In her presentation for TLU entitled, "A Life of Innovation," acclaimed poet Naomi Shihab Nye offered some thoughts on how to make space and time for innovation. She encouraged her audience to lower their expectations and to embrace a little weirdness now and then. She spoke about how innovation involves risk-taking and a need to stay strong when we face failure or rejection.  

Sports psychologist Alan Goldberg points out that "to master anything new, you must start out at the bottom, as a beginner. Beginners can only learn by making mistakes and figuring out through these mistakes what not to do the next time in order to get it right. If you give yourself too much of a hard time when you fail, then you'll be more reluctant to take the risks necessary to get you to your goals" ("Handling Failure"). 

Most of you are beginners at this college thing.  Heidi Halvorson's advice is simple: "Give yourself permission to screw-up" ("Why Letting Yourself Make Mistakes Means Making Fewer of Them").  She recommends replacing "be good" goals with "get better" ones.  For Halvorson, this means "the difference between wanting to show that you are smart vs. wanting to get smarter" ("Why Letting...").  Her argument explains that, ironically, allowing room for mistakes and considering ourselves works in progress can help us to achieve higher levels of success.    

You might think that the key to success is to completely eliminate mistakes and failures, but most people who have achieved anything will agree that errors are crucial to getting to the next level.  Here's a famous example of the importance of failure.  Ask any group of high-performing athletes or college graduates to pinpoint the mistakes they made that ultimately helped them to succeed and see what you come up with.  It's not the mistakes themselves, but what we do with them that will determine our ultimate outcome. As Mary Steinhardt pointed out, "what we do have control over is our response." ("Facing Failure with Resilience"). 

Write a post exploring your own feelings about mistakes and failure.  What role have mistakes played in your own achievements, in school and in other facets of your life?  What can you do to make peace with your imperfections?  What can you learn from them to help you in the future?  How might this help you to become a better learner, both short-term and long-term? 

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Works Cited

Goldberg, Alan. "Handling Failure." Competitive Advantage: Sports Psychology, Peak Performance, and Overcoming Fears and Blocks. Competitive Advantage, June 1999. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.

Halvorson, Heidi Grant. "Why Letting Yourself Make Mistakes Means Making Fewer of Them." Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers LLC, 1 Feb. 2011. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.

Michael Jordan - nike commercial (failure). YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2012.

Nye, Naomi Shihab. "A Life of Innovation." Texas Lutheran University, Krost Symposium. Jackson Auditorium, Seguin. 2 Oct. 2013. Reading.

Steinhardt, Mary. "Facing Failure with Resilience." Texas Lutheran University, Krost Symposium. Jackson Auditorium, Seguin. 3 Oct. 2013. Lecture.

Beating the Humdrum

We tend to see successful people when they have achieved their peak performance and are at last being recognized for it. In sport, we've all seen the classic moment when the Olympic athlete ascends the dais to be awarded a medal and the unspoken promise of future fame, and who knows, maybe even a stint on a box of Wheaties.  

The same is true of success in other areas of life. At the peak of your academic career so far, your high school graduation, you walked across a stage, received a rolled up scroll of paper (which was likely a fake just for "show," rather than your actual diploma), shook a hand or two, and descended the stairs to return to your seat in the crowd. Sure, your family and friends waved and cheered, but their hoopla was kept to a minimum, so the next graduate could move in to grab a fleeting moment of glory.

Our culture obsesses over these "summit moments," lifts them up as the end-all-be-all of our existence. We're led to believe that the whole point of life is to get to these moments, as many of them as we can, as soon as we can. Nothing else matters. 

As a result, we forget or we ignore all the day-to-day moments that are stitched together in our memories as one long, continuous quilt of the ordinary. And a sweaty, tattered quilt it is, since there's a lot of work going on between summit moments. There is no glamour in the daily grind. No recognition for getting up every day to do the thing that needs to be done over and over again until the work adds up to something worthwhile. 

The goal is sexy. A college degree. It sounds good when we announce it to friends and family. The work to achieve this goal is difficult and sometimes repetitive. It's truly fascinating stuff, but wait, what, that's required and really time-consuming? And I'm tired? Naw, that's boring.  As hell.

Maybe you've discovered this unfortunate truth. The college experience isn't the endless party you were sold at the movies. And it isn't a free-for-all intellectual orgy of scholarly debate in a hallowed hall, like that dream when you stood up at a podium and said something so completely brilliant that everyone fell silent in amazement.  

It's waking up to the subtle smell of your roommate's dirty socks that have crept across the floor to your side of the room, and knowing that you have to greet another day's work despite this unlaundered hostility. Or, it's the bleary-eyed commute from home on the two-lane highway past the cattle that don't have a clue about how hard you are working. It's the seemingly endless paper trail of homework that you are beginning to see stretching out ahead of you until it meets some point on the horizon and disappears in a weary blur.

This is why it's important to appreciate a sunrise or sunset when you can, and make friends, especially with people who have their head down in the books as much as you do. Do an occasional fun thing, be as gentle with yourself as you are able, and then get back to that latest dreaded piece of work that needs to get done.   

This is the ugly work of your eventual achievement. 

People wouldn't keep doing it if it wasn't worth doing.

Your thoughts?

Self-talk

According to Jim Taylor, "confidence is the single most important mental factor for success in sports" (41). And remember, academics is just sports for the mind! If this is a fair comparison, then it's worth looking at how we rate our confidence. 

Right now, put your finger on the pulse of your self-confidence.  How strong is that beat?   When you get up each morning, what do you say to yourself about how you will perform that day?  If you hear trash talk, then it's time to throw it out.  I'm not making this up.  What we say to ourselves matters.  Stephen J. Bull et. al. point out that "one of the most important determinants of developing and maintaining confidence is what athletes [students]  say to themselves" (43).  If we're putting ourselves down, then we're missing an opportunity to help ourselves out, on the court, on the field, or as Dr. Suess might say, in the rain and on a train, with a goat, etc.     

Bull et. al. list examples of positive affirmations for athletes like "I am strong" and "I can stay focused under pressure" (44).   Yes, these may sound cheesy.   Disco sounded cheesy, too, but that didn't keep millions of people from enjoying it for more years than was thought humanly possible. Try it.  You can boost your confidence with words, no tacky white leisure suit necessary.     

Jim Taylor adds that it takes more than just words.  Preparation, practice, struggle, and success are four other factors that help our self-confidence (49-50). First say it, then do it. It will take work.

Don't forget to call on your past achievements. I've been doing this for years without even knowing it. Sometimes when I'm in the middle of a stressful situation, I will say, "You can do this. You are a college graduate."  This once helped me get the last pickle out of the jar...and I didn't even take that class.  Recalling your successes can be a great reminder that you have made progress toward your goals - the very fact that you are sitting here reading this blog post proves it. 

Write a post discussing your own level of confidence.  What can you say to yourself that will increase your confidence about school work?  Or better yet, what can you stop saying to yourself that will increase your confidence about school work? 

Works Cited

Bull, Stephen J., Ph.D., John G. Albinson, Ph.D., and Christopher J. Shambrook, Ph.D. The Mental Game Plan. East Sussex, UK: Sports Dynamics, 1996. Print.

Taylor, Jim. Prime Sport: Triumph of the Athlete Mind. New York: Writers Club Press, 2001. Print.

Focus

I want to open this post by inviting you to make this a national day of service, in memory of the people whose lives were lost on 9/11/01. If you are working or going to school today, I encourage you to participate by finding small ways to serve others through random, or not so random, acts of kindness. 

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College demands mental toughness, especially the ability to focus for longer stretches of time. There are more pages to be read and papers to be written, experiments and problem sets to complete, with no one forcing you to sit down and get it done. Put this along side our hyper-digital, hyper-connectedness, and you have a near guarantee of slow-to-no-progress and the makings of a PhD in procrastination.

"Focus," says sports psychologist Terry Orlick, "is the first and most important element of success" (11). He believes that to perform at our best, we have to train ourselves to focus more often and more effectively. To do this, he recommends what he calls a "distraction control plan" (94), which looks like this:

1. Make a list of the most common distractions, whatever prevents you from studying or getting homework done.
2. Identify your usual way of responding to these distractions.
3. If your response is taking you away from your work, brainstorm a new way of responding that will allow you to stay focused.
4. Create a positive word or phrase that will help you to refocus.

    I recommend starting small. Don't expect to study for five hours straight each night, especially since most studies suggest that paying attention for this long is humanly impossible. Try not to dwell on ALL the work you have to get done. Instead, figure out what needs to be done first and try to devote yourself to that completely. When I start to get wigged out by my to do list, one of my favorite mantras is "one thing at a time." I've also been known to say, "I can do this. I have a college degree." These are pretty obvious, pretty boring really, but they work. Maybe I'll try something more exciting in the future. If you hear me say, "Mush, rodeo clown, make it happen!" You will know I'm tweaking my refocusing methods.

What about you? What can you do to minimize distractions and maximize your focus? Work through the steps above and try a new way of responding to distractions during your next study session. Just try it for one day. Then, write a blog post discussing the highs and lows of your experience with Orlick's Distraction Control Plan. 

Works Cited

Orlick, Terry. In Pursuit of Excellence. Champaign: Human Kinetics, 2008. Print.

Perseverance

All you have to do is google the name Diana Nyad and you will find out what courage and perseverance can lead to. The LA Times, one newspaper among thousands, is reporting that this Labor Day weekend Diana Nyad became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. That's 110 miles. She covered it in 52 hours. Oh, and she's 64 years-old, if that matters ("Diana Nyad completes..."). You can read all the juicy details here, and on thousands of other websites.

The first time I heard about Nyad, I thought she was a nut. I didn't know anything about her, except that last year she failed to complete the Cuba to Florida swim. What I did not bother to find out is that she failed several times before finally completing the swim. I didn't look beyond what I thought was a "failure story." I judged her without bothering to find out more. As I learned more yesterday, I came to realize that she is a world-class athlete and journalist who spends her time swimming, writing, and speaking words of inspiration to anyone who is blessed enough to be within hearing.

What kind of mental toughness does it take to set a world record? What kind of courage and perseverance does it take to fail, not once, not twice, but four times, and still be willing to try again? What does it mean to swim from Cuba to Florida in open waters without the protection of a shark cage? 

For me, Nyad's open swim in treacherous waters is the perfect metaphor for the college experience. She has had access to specialized equipment, lots of highly trained help, and years of training, just like the average college student. In spite of all this help, it was Nyad alone who had to decide that this was her goal. It was Nyad who had to commit herself to years of training, injuries, setbacks and failures. No one could install a high level of commitment into her, like a software download of Human Determination 2.0. It had to come from within her. Like Nyad, you must commit yourself to swim the mysteriously and challenging waters that stretch from here to graduation day. Like Nyad, you must look within yourself to find the courage and perseverance needed to make it to the other shore. 

The good news is that recent research points to mental toughness as a common factor among people who reach their goals. At times it has been a more important predictor of success than even IQ. Angela Duckworth, a research at the University of Pennsylvania, has studied this combination of passion and perseverance and named it "grit." ("The Key to Success"). Watch Angela Duckworth's TED talk on grit here. Then write a post about the how passion and perseverance might help you to succeed in college.

When in doubt in these first days of the semester, as Dory says, "Just keep swimming." 

And count on me for support. Like Bruce, I find that "fish are friends, not food" (Finding Nemo).   

Works Cited

Duckworth, Angela. The key to success? Grit. TED. TED conferences LLC, May 2013. Web. 3 Sept. 2013. <http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit.html>.

Finding Nemo. Dir. Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2003. Film.

Pearce, Matt. "Diana Nyad completes Cuba-to-Florida swim, reaches a lifelong dream." Los Angeles Times [Los Angeles] 2 Sept. 2013, Nation: n. pag. Los Angeles Times. Web. 3 Sept. 2013. <http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-diana-nyad-20130903,0,3322544.story>.

Mental toughness

If you watch sports long enough you realize that the best athlete is not the guaranteed winner. No matter what the sport, there’s much more to winning than pure skill. I am happily married to a coach and over the years we have watched our share of sports on TV. It's amazing how often an athlete's thinking process determines the outcome of the game.  

“What’s happening?” I ask my husband.

 “He’s having a meltdown.”

And sure enough, you can see by his stooped shoulders and shuffling step the guy has been reduced to a puddle of his former self. 

“How did she pull that off?” I ask about a come-from-behind victory.

“Amazing what can happen when you don’t give up.”

What my husband is describing is known as mental toughness. As Sport Psychologist Jim Taylor points out, “The obvious game is the competitive one that occurs against your opponent.  The more important game, though, is the mental game that you will play inside your head against yourself”(ix). The longer I live, and especially the longer I work with college freshmen, the more I realize that this mental game, and the toughness needed to win it, can mean the difference between success and failure.       

Yes, what you know is important, but this isn't quite enough.  Yes, ACT scores and high school GPA are strong predictors of academic success in college, but some research shows that non-academic factors also play a vital role in student success.  Intangibles like confidence, motivation, and commitment can also help students “score big” in the college classroom(2).  

This semester we’re going to explore the idea that mental toughness is a key component in academic life.  Each blog post will introduce a new aspect of the mental game for us to think about, to write about, and to integrate into our daily lives.  At the end of each post, I will pose a few questions, comments, or quotes for you to consider and respond to in your own blog. I hope you will bring your own set of questions and comments with you to class.

1. What do the words "mental toughness" mean to you? How does this relate to your performance at school?

2. Does one need to be an athlete to understand the importance of a strong mental game? Why or why not?

Works Cited

The Role of Nonacademic Factors in College Readiness and Success. N.p.: ACT Inc., 2007. ACT improve yourself. Web. 2 Sept. 2013. <http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/nonacademic_factors.pdf>.

Taylor, Jim. Prime Sport: Triumph of the Athlete Mind. New York: Writers Club Press, 2001. Print.