Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is life, fight for it.” —Mother Teresa
Making the best of the years, inspiring others despite pain, exhaustion and frailty, defeating cancer even in death and through her example learning lessons about ourselves, our craft and our life…
“We have enough programs and trainings – positive behavior, restorative justice, diversity and inclusion, implicit bias.
Our children come with so many issues. There is so much bullying and teasing. I see so little empathy!”
Niroga Notes February 2016
Recently the principal of a large middle school told me that he is looking for a shift in school culture, not another program. He said, “We have enough programs and trainings – positive behavior, restorative justice, diversity and inclusion, implicit bias. Our children come with so many issues. There is so much bullying and teasing. I see so little empathy! I believe the skills that Dynamic Mindfulness provides is the very foundation for this shift.“
Niroga’s Dynamic Mindfulness program systematically develops stress resilience, self-awareness, emotion regulation and healthy relationships. Read on to see why we need Dynamic Mindfulness in our schools today, and think about what you can do to make it happen.
In Gratitude,
Bidyut Bose, PhD, Founder and Executive Director
Stress is Making our Children Sick
“Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?” reads the title of a recent article from the New York Times. In a large California High School, 54% of students showed moderate to severe symptoms of depression, and 80% suffered moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety. These statistics are alarming! “We are sitting on a ticking time bomb,” said one teacher.
We are bringing our two day Dynamic Mindfulness training to the Los Angeles, CA area. Please share with your Southern California connections and community.
Challenging Our Basic Assumptions and Trusting the Process
“Here and Now…Breath and Relax”- Dan Millman
After Centuries of ‘Sameness’ We are Finally Seeing the End of Average:
Yes, ‘normal’ is the psycho-pathology of the average and it is time to herald in a new era!
Rose is the Director of the Mind, Brain and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where he heads up the Laboratory for the Science of the Individual.
You have to be out of your mind to tap deep courage. Literally.
Most of your fears are mental. The trick to cultivating courage, therefore, is by getting out of your mind and into your body. Learn why and how to use a three step approach to have more courage on your personal and professional journey.
Eric is also the author of Leadership as a Hero’s Journey
Speaking of Hero’s Journeys, Discover the Lessons Learned from Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and Apply Them to Your Own:
Filmmaker Patrick Soloman discusses his movie “Finding Joe” & Dan Millman shares “The Four Purposes of Life”.
Calling All Parents – Mission Fed Supports Anti-Cyber Bullying:
As the amount of cell phone and computer usage grows with children, cyber bullying is also on the rise and that’s why Mission Fed is proud to sponsor the Calling All Parents campaign. Led by the San Diego Police Foundation, in partnership with NBC 7 and Cox, to promote SafetyNet – A program designed to help parents and educators learn how to keep kids safe online.
Starting February, 16 through the end of April, NBC 7 and Cox will features a series of commercials “Calling All Parents” and asking them to be more involved in their children’s computer usage at a time when technology is becoming central to their children’s lives. The commercials feature Mission Fed as the sponsor and highlights our commitment to making a difference in the lives of our members and our community.
Thanks this week go to Eric K, Wade at WS Radio, Larry H, Vinod L, the Mission Fed team & Everyone Living the Hero’s Journey and Way of the Peaceful Warrior!
Pay it Forward
Love,
Neville
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”— Benjamin Franklin
Were you Blind Sided this Weekend? Lessons from Michael Oher and Super bowl 50:
“The future holds everything I want”
10 Principles of Success:
Stay Informed: Change Politics through Change.org
Were you Blind Sided this Weekend? Lessons from Michael Oher and Super bowl 50:
With Michael Oher playing in Super bowl 50 this past weekend, I wonder how many people rented or re-watched the movie The Blind Side.
And how many with no pre-existing loyalties to either team found themselves rooting for the Carolina Panthers just because of this “American Dream” story?
While some have criticized The Blind Side as presenting a white savior narrative in which a black man is unable to overcome poverty without the guidance of a white mother, my overall assessment was more charitable as I believe in a different circumstance the roles could be reversed, and our family couldn’t help but rent it again the night before the Super Bowl.
As a sports obsessed culture, we seem to have developed our own selective blind spots to domestic violence charges by professional football players, and remain blind to the persuasive devastation of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) in football players of all skill levels, so maybe this story is a bright spark in a culture of selective seeing- given such a long-standing passion and tradition for American football.
Baby Mike learned as a child to close his eyes to bad things going on around him, reopening them with an affirmation that the world is good.
Big Mike grew up in a community, steeped in pervasive & institutional racism with attitudes and actions shaped by social “norms” -normal being the psycho-pathology of the average- rather than behaving into true “Christian” values. Sadly, like many people in this country we are not yet color blind to actualize the promise and potential of every person.
Mr. Michael Oher now for the second time had an international stage to demonstrate the power of his off-the-charts protective instincts and give us something good to highlight from the gladiators of our time that literally sacrifice their minds and bodies for their fame and fortune and their patricians, and our collective entertainment.
Yet, how many of us steer clear or are literally blind to certain parts of our local community? How many of us behave into societal norms, remaining silent on matters that matter most in a civil society?
If all our youth are the “quarterbacks of our future”, can and do we protect their blind side with our well-honed protective instincts?
Perhaps as part of Super Bowl 50 in this leap year we can reach for a new goal line, focusing on and celebrating the unsung heroes not just on but off the field. Like Michael if we would all just exert our protective instincts, maybe we could model taking care of each other, and create an opportunity for everyone to achieve their potential both on the field of play and in the real game of life.
Now that would be a REAL contact sport and deserving of the cherished ring!
One month into the year and I’ve already had several leaders express concern about meeting this year’s goals. Sober realism is a necessary leadership trait, and so is deliberate optimism. Seeing your opportunities in a positive way is both necessary for your own aspirations, and to energize others. Recognize that by thinking about the future optimistically your thoughts focus and crystallize around the results you seek.
You may find that a positive affirmation helps you maintain optimism about the future. Whenever you drift into concerned thinking, you might repeat a sentence to yourself, even something as open ended as “The future holds everything I want” can keep you in a hopeful and forward looking frame of mind. Granted, this affirmation isn’t a catalysts for change, but it can alter your perspective about your experience, which in turn may initiate your openness and willingness to take the risks you need to reach your goals. Thinking positively about the future directs your mental energy toward promise and optimism. When you feel that the future holds possibility and engagement, you will focus on what’s going right, and communicate this state to others. This feeling of contentment allows you to look at the things that occur in your work and life – even things that might seem negative – as opportunities for growth. Viewing your experiences as a series of possibilities means you see the future as an opening instead of something unknown and fearful.
In 2015, more than 130 million people took to Change.org to create the change they want to see in the world.
You can see a few of the thousands of victories our users won below. And if there is something you want to change in 2016, in your community or in your country, you canstart your own petition today.
Stay Informed:
Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Change Politics, a new platform from Change.org that connects you with candidates and helps you make more informed decisions on Election Day.
With Change Politics, you can ask candidates about the issues you care about and upvote the questions you want answered. Top questions and favorites will be presented to candidates on January 31st, in advance of the first state primary.
21st Century Real-World Education, Photos that Need No Words, Movement BE, Restoring Innovation and Creativity in Education & Executive Thinking
21st Century Real-World Education: The Age of Humanity & Humility Restored- Reflections on the Youth Success Week in Oceanside 2016
Where Common Sense is Uncommon Practice, & Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy…
4 Years ago, in 2012 a previous leap year, Steve Farber, bestselling author and speakerhttp://www.stevefarber.com/along with myself and a lot of help from our friends, some of whom are recidivists on this leg of the journey, connected 880 parents, educators and civic leaders together on the USS Midway aircraft carrier in San Diego to Re-Energize Education.
4 years later in 2016 another leap year, we find ourselves, with your help “sparking” (a nod to Sparky/Helice Bridges of Difference Makers International)http://blueribbonstory.org/ another LEAP in education. This time however, it is not just about academic/traditional education, but about educating the whole-person. This time it is not just about students. It is about all of us, all of humanity. Life-long learning is not optional anymore. As Marlaine Cover of Parenting 2.0 the largest parenting site on Linked-In would say it is part of the mandatory curriculum in Life Skills 101!https://www.parenting2pt0.org/
Why this and why now…
By any measure, as a species we are simply not living up to our potential. In this context, I don’t mean academically or vocationally but with respect to unleashing our talent, serving each other, and making the world better than we entered it.
We seem to have lost our way in this proverbial race to the top. To the top of what I ask? To the top of the largest number of people experiencing loneliness, alienation & depression? To the top score for inequality; boasting the biggest divide between the haves and have nots in human history? Maybe to the top of business with leaders and captains of industry willing to make unethical and value-extractive decisions in the name of the profit motive and self-interest? Or perhaps the top of political leaders, striving to be prophets in their own land, and willing to use fear (false evidence appearing real) and fascist rhetoric not heard since Hitler got standing ovations in the ‘30s to curry favor and attention, seek power and feed their ambition addiction? What does this say about the civic leaders we have matriculated and are cultivating in schools today? What does this portend about the future? Did we get the facts and figures right but miss the real lesson? Has education failed us? Have we failed ourselves?
Your political views, history, cultural conditions and personal choices might find you disagreeing vehemently with me on some of the aforementioned, it is thankfully a free country, but here is something we might all agree on…
If you are like 99% of us, you are stressed. Stress is the #1 epidemic in most of the world, costing us billions in both hard costs and human consequences. We have traded false formulations of success (counterfeit correlation) for our happiness, wellbeing and fulfillment both as individuals and as a community. It is almost as if we have forgotten what it means to be human. Have we really lost touch with our humanity? What is going on?
“Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure!”
Some of us are empowered as hell and not going to take it anymore. It is time for another renaissance, another dawn of age of humanity. We need a new prescription, but since prescription without diagnosis is malpractice, let’s look a little further before treating the condition, or focusing on the symptom and not the system…
Changing the Focus: Historically in education, we have foregrounded school work striving for A’s in Academics and Achievement and privileged the Intelligence Quotient (IQ). But times have changed and we haven’t kept up. In today’s conceptual era (CQ), as we prepare both our students and ourselves for the innovation economy, or what some call the imagination economy, it is time for us, not just our kids to do more homework. Here I am not speaking of homework- conventionally thought of school work we do at home- but real-world work enhancing emotional intelligence (EQ), social intelligence (SQ) and (CQ) to create human beings able to effectively navigate and advance civil society, where character matters as much or more than competency.http://8keys.org/
Today getting straight A’s is a compulsory matter of practicing Attention, Awareness, Appreciation and Affirmation. It is time to stop seeing the role of education as putting important stuff into the brains of students, rather to switch our focus to pulling the genius that is already within out as Educator par Excellence Starla Lewis reminds us!http://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/mar/02/womens-history-month-local-hero-starla-lewis-champ/
All this ignited by the vision and commitment of Oceanside born and raised Superintendent Dr. Duane Coleman,http://www.oside.k12.ca.us/, powerfully supported through the inspired leadership of so many and whose work and words I reflect and refract here, flipped not only my switch but my orientation to both examining the issues as well as scouting and paving the path forward.
Convention and Counter-convention:
We talk about how hard it is raising kids. That is because we are working on the wrong job! The real work and focus should be on raising a parent, one that comes with no training manual, little experience, where parents are capable only of modeling and teaching what they have learned and therefore a role in dire need of remediation, accommodation and assistance. Dr. Ken Druck’s work in this regard, not to mention his international contributions as an expert in transforming adversity into opportunity is a beacon to a new and upgraded operating system for parent-ing- and kid-ding J http://www.kendruck.com/
We think the issue is the kids. However, the real epiphany is recognizing our limits as parents & educators. What is the environment I am creating, and the mindset I am basing my work on? It takes introspection and humility to recognize that I must take accountability for my choices and actions, and that there are no resistant recipients, there are only inflexible communicators.
As much as bullying totally sucks, it represents real world homework for both parties to improve their emotional literacy. Problems and horrific disasters as a result of bullying result because we don’t give and do enough emotional literacy homework. We are too busy doing the academic stuff to get into the best school, so the school of hard knocks gets forgotten and then hits us upside the head and heart…
As much as teenage drama can get thoroughly exhausting, it represents an opportunity to do our real world homework in social literacy. All the world is indeed a stage and here we can act out and act on the skills that will build this hugely important muscle, if we want to make a difference in the conceptual era. “OMG, put down your selfie and re-orient to we instead of me, s’il vous plait!!”, or it doesn’t matter how many languages you speak, you are culturally challenged…
Sadly, you are only a kid, and then a young adult, for just a short time, and then relegated to adult status for the rest of your life. Yet instead of celebrating childhood, we lament that “youth is wasted on the young”, then do our best to steal it from them with developmentally inappropriate expectations, forcing them to grow up, catch-up, over-extend, over-schedule, all over-tired. Savvy youth such as Drew Kesslin proud teacher ofdad Larryhttp://successredefined.com/demand to experience and preserve their youth for as long as they can, and luckily for her, Drew’s parents “get it”.
Time steals our youth fast enough. Why are we buying into and contributing to this forced acceleration? What if the opposite reality became the norm and you were only an adult-in-training for just a short time, and then rightly trained and equipped, your youthful attitude, zest for life, belief in the impossible, & focus on the positive were the longest season of your life cycle during your short time on earth?
Kindness is NOT weakness
Busy is a false indicator of us doing work of importance
Sleep deprivation is a lousy indicator or your amazing ambition. If you can’t make time to sleep, what you are really saying is you can’t make time for creativity, the alternation of activity and rest, and the opportunity to be your best self.
P: Play more. This is a prescription Dr. King prescribes with equal efficacy to antidepressants or other medicines
O: Others are important. Make connectedness count. We are social creatures. Loneliness is today’s smoking when it comes to health risks. Are you a pack a day isolate?
D: Downtime matters. Our lives are way too fast-paced and just as elite athletes needs the oscillation of intense training with rest and stretching, you do too. Take more breaks and experience more breakthroughs!
Children learn what they live
You are brilliant, powerful, limitless, love and boundless
I AM in the positive
Shoulder to shoulder, not face to face we can change our world
Celebrate the moments no one will ever know, when you best self showed up!
You wanted one day, in your wildest dreams to be WITH the greatest people on the planet. Little did you know that one day YOU would be ONE OF THEM!
There are so many others to honor and esteem doing this transformative work for the greater good. Please look them up, learn about their work and support them.
They could well change your life!
CAYS Organizing Committee:
Stedman Graham, Stedman and Associates CEO and CAYS co-founder
Bobbi DePorter, LFI President and CAYS co-founder; President of Quantum Learning Network
Luisa Csathy, Founder, Giving Tree Movement
Dr. Ken Druck, Founder, Jenna Druck Center
Steve Farber, CEO and Speaker, Extreme Leadership
Neville Billimoria, SVP and Chief Advocacy Officer, Mission Federal Credit Union
Helice Bridges, CEO and Founder, Difference Makers International
Starla Lewis, CEO, C.E.L.L
Marlaine Cover, President, The Global Presence
Tia Ross, CEO, Motivating the Teen Spirit
Marcy Morrison, Career Coach
Lisette Omoss, Community Volunteer, Realtor, Photographer
John Cotter, Speaker, Community Activist, Career Educator
Look into my eyes. Thanks for helping me find my smile…
Love,
Neville
Thanks to my wife Barbara for teaching me what it is to be a better human being!
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be
honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have
lived and lived well.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
s Angeles, CA area. Please share with your Southern California connections and community.
Happy Soul Food Friday! 