You are a delight
When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to grow up and be an adult. Be old enough to make my own choices and live my own life. When I got there, I realized how hard it really is. Do I feed my body good food or do I grab what is fast and easy yet again because I can’t seem to schedule time in a way that works? Do I make my money stretch to cover my bills or do I buy a new shiny on my credit card? Do I do the “adult” thing or act like a “kid”?
What people don’t tell you is that you are constantly your 4 year old self, your 13 year old self, your 67 year old self, all the time in every version of your body. So our choices, our decisions are fresh, every day and who knows which version of ourselves holds the lever. Is it my wisdom? My playfulness? My impulsiveness?
We aren’t fixed in our personality or identity. We are ever changing, ever flowing, and never truly in control. The sooner we can let go of marching toward some statue version of our perceived greatness, the discovery of our truth will become brighter, easier to observe, and delightful.
You are a delight to be observed through loving curiosity.
Want to read more from other brilliant people?
Carol Dweck Growth Mindset
Sandra Cisneros Eleven
Combating Negative Bias
Saber tooth tigers used to stalk and kill us. Watch the Croods for a good example as to why negative bias was important to pay attention to. However, as the world evolves and technology creates ease and adaptability for us, there are fewer tigers, but our brains want to make everything into a tiger, you know, to protect us.
Our brains are experts at identifying threats, but not as skilled in identifying the glory and wonder of the world. As we grow up, the negative experiences, touching a hot stove, a bad break up, getting lost or separated from a parent, these experiences stand out as neon signs flashing warnings at our future selves to WATCH OUT!
Taking an asset-based approach to life takes practice and time. It requires creating new neuron wiring and practice. Dr. Rick Hanson, a neuroscientist, in his 2013 Tedx Talk talks about how our brains, little by little, can counter the negativity bias and build a hard-wired positivity response. He indicates that over time, neurons will learn a new pathway and start to fill our brains with the positive versus negative, but we have to work at it, it is growing new patterns, developing new habits.
In our work cultures, we often perpetuate a negativity bias or weakness driven environment, We do annual reviews in which we are asked to reflect on our strengths and weaknesses, and create goals to increase our weak areas. It is ineffective and doesn’t stick. However, if we instead, learn about our CliftonStrengths® , how they are productive or unproductive, and learn how to best communicate and modify them, we start to increase a positive mindset that values what is right and good with ourselves and others versus seeing everyone, or ourselves as a tiger.
Asset framing is the first step to uncovering the beautiful way we are wired, which opens up endless possibilities for impacting the world around us in powerful, positive ways.
No Arrival
“There is no arrival. If you have arrived, you have died.”
This is how I started every AP Lang class I taught. I then went on to remind these High School Seniors that this was the beginning of the end. The last first day of PK - 12 school. The last homecoming. The last prom. The last of dictated courses (sort of). The beginning of the last year in this chapter of their stories. How will this chapter end? What will be the words right before they turn the page? How will they construct this chapter over the course of nine months?
And then they got to work writing their best arguments, standing on a tree stump in the middle of my classroom and declaring in their best Lorax voice who they were and what they stand for? “I am Julie and I stand for unearthing every person’s beautiful wiring.”
And that is what I do. I help people unearth the very best version of their wiring. I do that through coaching, through consulting, through writing, through speaking, through being a decent human and good friend. And it is always in the person’s hands. It is your story. How do you want to write this chapter?
I act as an editor, a proof-reader, a questioner, and a coach. Sometimes it is a pacing issue, and we need to slow up or speed up. Sometimes the order is just not resonating, so we rework, reorder, rediscover. It is an exercise and practice that is never mastered but constantly learned.
Are you facing a transition? A lull? A knot that you just can’t seem to worry out? If so, let’s connect.
Asset Framing
Puberty messes us all up. All of the sudden we care what other people say and do, care about the words that come out of their mouths, and are not told that for the next four years, hormones will drive while we hold on for dear life trying to figure out if we are in a perpetual fight or flight cycle. Will the waves of emotion pull us fully under?
We don’t talk about how puberty robs us of our own confidence by introducing comparison, self-doubt, negative bias, and inexcusable behavior from usually decent humans. Every middle school needs a class called, “Why did I do that?” and the answer most likely will be puberty. Why did I trip that guy? Impulse control is shot as you consider, what would that look like? What would happen if? And then hormones take over and, there you have it. Puberty.
Because we don’t talk about it, we have so many adults unsure, uneasy of their role in the world. Because what puberty robs from us, we have to build back. We also don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about the power of words and for every tearing down comment we receive it takes four authentic positive comments from people we trust, to out power that one put down.
It takes work to bring back the brilliance dampened by puberty. It takes work to build a personage that is truly ours, truly asset-framed, and actively fighting negative bias. The good news, is we can. We can stand on our assets. Most importantly, we can equip our kids with what is right and good about themselves as they navigate the crazy waters of teen-dom.
CliftonStrengths shows us our leadership wiring. When we learn more about how our top five strengths show up and work together, it gives us a clearer picture of what we bring to the world in addition to our dazzling personality. We bring our wiring, we bring our brains, we bring assets. When we are able to articulate our strengths to others, we have a common language steeped in assets. Steeped in showing what is right and good about each of us and how we show up in the world.
We have to actively create an asset-framed perspective to best serve ourselves and those around us, and it is crucial as we move through these revolutionary times to bring the very best version of ourselves forward. It is critical for our future to have adults who model actively being asset-based, asset-framed, and confidently letting kids know that puberty sucks, but we can get through it with our best in place.
Mosaic
Mosaics were used to pave floors. Creating not only a foundation to stand on, but an inspiring one. Mosaics from the 4th century BCE depicted heroes, stories, and history. Greek life and greek Gods captured, one pebble, glass tile, clay shard at a time. Soon, it was a commissioned art, creating beauty and the known with the odd and unknown.
It is the art of seeing bits of what was, to make what is.
Mosaic artists examine each shattered piece to see how it fits with the new vision. How does it fit into the bigger, better, and newer picture? Mosaics give each shattered piece of life meaning and purpose, and beauty by taking our broken pieces and build them into a new whole.
The true beauty is in the build. In the process of sifting through our memories, moments, and selecting with care and precision the pieces that go into the Mosaic of our life. There are moments that break us, push us beyond what we thought we could ever do or be. Crushing moments can also produce the very best pieces of Mosaic self.
Panic attacks.
Debilitating anxiety
Depression
Death
Each knocked the wind out of me as I crashed into the ground. Each broke moments into minutia that I painfully pulled my fingers through looking for those bits of myself that I recognized as gorgeous, as shiny, as pure. Those I picked up and grouted into the new version, the new path, the new version.
And I do it over and over.
Because the Mosaic is never complete. The examined life is never finished. The build is beauty in motion, and we are the creators of our own pieced together masterpieces.
Wordsmith Challenge 4
What did you want to be growing up? Why?
An actor. In Kindergarten, we acted out Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I was mama bear. I remember fully committing to the role and feeling the surge of frustration and love only a mom can have when her children at the table are needing to be fed and screwing around at the same time. I fell in love with the ability to transport myself to other worlds. I became a storyteller in my bedroom, producing elaborate dramas with my village of stuffed animals. This was my place of solace and safety. A place in which my large personality wasn’t just accepted, but expected.
I acted in every play at school, tried out for community shows, and drama was my longest kept major at University of Oregon.
People ask why I didn’t pursue. It wasn’t just one thing, it was a series of things that picked away at my confidence. When I had to make a decision, I was alone, and I wasn’t secure enough to dive in fully.
If I knew then what I know now, I would have done it. I would have gone all in and bet on myself. Because everyday my spirit continues to look for outlets, places in which I can create and belong in multiple stories across the universe. And I believe that I will find my new version, my acting 2.0, the place for my spirit to soar and perch, understanding that we are home.
Wordsmith Challenge 3
List the 5 people you spend the most time with. How have they affected your behaviors, thought, and life?
Randy Brock: n, 44, WM, spouse
He role models how to be an awesome human in the waves of COVID19. He works out, drives for meals on wheels, hosts podcasts, and does the weather. He gives the best hugs, is supporting our boys’ interests by building a fowl coop and talking video games.
Andrew Brock: n, 16, WM son
This guy. Smart, funny, thoughtful, and dialed in. When he sits on the deck and tells me all that he knows, I settle into the warmth of his stories.
Owen Brock: n, 13, WM, son
This guy. Razor sharp wit, conscientious, and empathetic. He smiles and this glint in his eye bubbles up from his spirit and I know something delightful or wicked is about to emerge.
Work team: n, amazing dedicated women
They push to address the inequities of our community in a way that gets shit done. I know we are better because they are working collaboratively and supportively across the community.
HFB: n, amazing, funny, smart group of women that I am so lucky to call friends
We keep us all accountable to being our most authentic, kick ass selves. We are different and yet collectively, a sisterhood.
“Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
CHIEF SEATTLE
And my list goes on to include my extended family, my extended network, my collaborative partners, all the people who are aching to do some good in our community, to make someone’s life better, if only for today. They all make me better, make me reflective, make me whole.
The web we weave is what matters in the end. The goodness of people connected and pulsing through the community-wide story. We are truly, better together.
Women on the Space Walk
History is marked today as the first all women space walk started at just past 7:30 a.m. ET. Jessica Meir and Christina Koch are embarking on a 5.5 hour space walk today that will inspire girls and women alike.
source: http://nasa.gov
NASA failed forward in the spring of 2019 as they realized they did not have enough spacesuits in a variety of sizes to fit all their astronauts and had to cancel the scheduled all women walk. Fast forward six months, and here we are. Watching these engineers replace the batteries on one of the arms of the space station.
It is exciting to see, empowering to watch, and relieving to understand that yet another glass ceiling has been cracked. We still know that young women lag their male peers in pursuing technical fields. I hope, as I listen to science classes ask questions through the live broadcast, that young girls are seeing themselves in Jessica and Christina’s spacesuits. In addition to Koch and Meir, Stephanie Walker, NASA Engineer, is working with the team from Houston.
Dreams. This is a defining moment for young women across the globe. In this five hour spacewalk, there are 330 minutes of live inspiration happening for girls everywhere to declare, “I want to do that. I want to be an astronaut.” And I hope so many do.
A return of sorts
Long ago, when I started a blog, I called it Not so Shiny Jules. It was random observations from just an ordinary human. As I shifted, it shifted with me to make room for more specific and pointed conversations about observations in the workforce world and I renamed it Julie Brock because I had also written a book and hoped to write some more.
And then life happened.
I didn’t write another book, instead I wrote a sort of long piece about reasonableness in a time of contention. I changed jobs two more times. We transitioned one boy to high school and the other to middle school. Randy changed careers.
And somewhere in there, my habit of writing shifted to the back burner. In one toxic place of work I allowed my voice to shut off because of threats and scrutiny. It was about reputation and maintaining status quo. It clipped my wings and recovery has been hard and slow.
It’s why The Reasonables continues to live in my google drive and here it bits, because the constant drumbeat in my head was one of accusations and fear. Who the hell do you think you are? Who do you think will listen to a damn thing you say? You are…and fill it in with the lowest form of insult and demeaning comments you can find.
I was done. I had listened to lies from people who didn’t matter and those lies weaved a dark cynical web in my soul, I felt my spirit fall into a protective deep abyss, and I’ve spent the last four years spelunking and calling for her.
Maybe she didn’t fall or retreat or leave at all. That might have been another lie I told myself while I was in the dark and couldn’t see the lies weaving tight, tight knots across my heart. Anxiety told me it was protection, no one could hurt me again.
But that is the strongest, most wretched, worst lie to believe.
We will get hurt. If we fear it so deeply that we cut ourselves off, we miss out on living.
I risked a lot by leaving my classroom in the middle of the year in 2015. I loved my work and the kids other parents entrusted to me for nine months, thirty-four weeks, 184 days, a year. I had created a system that made room for every student. It challenged each person to take ownership of their education, assess where they were and make a plan to get to where they wanted to be. I was a guide on their journey, and it was beautiful. I had non-readers start to read. I had kids who told me they couldn’t write start defining themselves as writers. I made room for failure, room for time-management, room for humanity and it was a place I loved.
My teaching license lapsed in June and I cried.
I won’t return to the classroom in that way again. It isn’t because I was burned out, but because the season had passed. I was good, maybe great, but was I making a dent in the overall system? Was I perpetuating a grind that was training our young humans to jump through hoops versus own an education they were proud of?
Sometimes the system cannot be changed from within. Sometimes a whole new approach has to be taken to create lift, to create change, to challenge the status quo.
And so I am returning to this writing thing, but this time around the mountain, I picked up some new knowledge. This time in my sabbatical from writing I found some truths that were slowly but deliberately gnawing away that densely woven web. I can only be who I am. And that doesn’t require explanation, a label, or justification. yes, I am an ordinary human observing the world, but I’m not just an ordinary human. As Walt Whitman reminds us, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, so I contradict myself. I am large — I contain multitudes.”
Into the deep abyss I go, not to find a thing, but to marvel in the multitudes of humanity. I have no idea what it will reveal, and my curiosity is giddy.
Maintaining Constructs
We build from the ground up. We lay corner stones within our foundations. We construct our buildings, both figuratively and literally to last. However, the strength and longevity of our buildings are contingent on the cornerstones, the foundations, and the materials used. Cheap in, cheap out. If great materials are used, then maintenance becomes crucial to the lasting power of the building. And every building, no matter how amazing the materials and upkeep, reaches a moment in which reconstruction, restoration, intervention must happen or the building, even though it looks pristine, will fall.
Photo by Will Langenberg on Unsplash
And we will say things like, "We didn't see it coming? How did it happen? But it looked fine?" Unfortunately, we can cover up crap for a while, but the longer we do, the harder it will fall and the more casualties we bring down.
So we need to check in on our constructs. What do we believe in so strongly that it holds up our identity and ideals? These constructs drive our world view. They keep us grounded in belief. And just like buildings that age, it is important to check in on the cornerstones and foundation for cracks or wear. To replace them is not hypocrisy or betrayal, it is progress and repair. It is a myth to believe that what serves us once will serve us forever; the world is too big for that.
What I appreciate about Winter is its ability to force us to look at the foundation because it will break shit with its hearty cold. It forces us into the basement of our soul, into the neglected corners of our heart, where we allow cobwebs and vermin to take up shop because we are convinced it is doing it's job. It is holding us up. When in actuality, we have been neglecting it in the name of strength, but by looking strong, the termites have been busy tearing holes in what was strong holds.
Go look, It isn't that scary, and truly, knowledge is power. You don't know what pipe to fix before it bursts, unless you look. This is a beautiful step in vulnerability because it forces us to look where we don't want to and, in most cases, consult an expert, so we can repair or replace with confidence that it will hold for a few more decades, years, moments. And frankly, as long as they are checkin in with regularly, no time is better than another, it is about the quality that is experienced by knowing that construct belongs, is solid, and is doing its job.