Uh-oh….

“I became a dental hygienist, because my counselor told me I'd be good at it. So I did that for 20 years. And it was not my passion. It was my career. And I didn't change until I fell off the deck and broke my leg and my neck. And that's when I realized, I could have died doing things I didn't want to do because I was renting my counselor's story for my life. And so that's when I realized that I always wanted to be a teacher.”

Today’s guest

Barbara Bray is an author, speaker, keynoter, consultant, and difference-maker. She is the host of the Rethinking Learning podcast, founder/owner of My eCoach and co-author of Make Learning Personal and How to Personalize Learning. Barbara is author of Define Your Why where she focuses on re-defining your WHY during uncertain times.

Barbara on why this conversation matters

“We’re living during a very uncertain time. I want people to believe in themselves. Know that they're beautiful, that they need to love themselves. Profoundly. When you feel that you need this person to love you, that person to do whatever for you, stop, stop, look at you. You're amazing. Believe in yourself and look at how you have gotten through so much yourself and what you're doing. And remember, it's not what you do, it's who you are. And that's what we love. I want them to recognize that when you love yourself, then it's really easy for other people to love you.”

How you can use this episode as personal PD

Barbara mentions early in the interview “I've always been somebody very curious, since I was very little. And I always wanted to learn how to create in new ways.” Her spirit of curiosity has had a profound impact on her multiple creative outlets: writing, workshops, podcasting etc. On a scale of 0-10 where “0” equals stuck-in-a-rut and “10” equals an unending explorer, where do you sit? If you sense you have that spirit of curiosity, but you’re not exercising it, what holds you back?
In the second part of our conversation, Kirsten and I explore “ikigai” – the Japanese concept for the meaning of life. (See the illustration at the right.) If you’ve never done the exercise, try your hand at it – at least the four major circles. How easy or challenging is it to jot down ideas? What do you reveal about yourself?

Closing Thought

“Instead of us being the only experts in the room, we need to let go and let the kids explore and come up with some of these questions. And we don't even know how to do that. Teachers don't know how to do that, because they weren't taught that way. So teachers are compliant, only because that's how they were taught.”