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Want to Lift Your Spirits? Follow These Five Practices

For many of us, this time of the year can bring with it a great deal of complicated thoughts and feelings. Not only do we face many expectations from others, but we also hold numerous expectations for ourselves. Meanwhile, this is a time when we often experience difficulties, disappointments, and setbacks and feel emotions most acutely.

It is only natural that we want this to be a time when we feel centered, connected, and confident in who we are and what we do. We want to feel good about ourselves and to have others feel good about us. The challenge is to overcome what life brings us and not be pulled down by events over which we have little or no control.

The good news is that there are several experience- and research-proven life strategies that we can employ now—and throughout the year—that can lift our spirits and our confidence, make us more resilient, and leave us feeling more connected to those around us. Here are five of those strategies to try.

Forgiveness:

We might think that forgiveness is primarily about removing the blame and resentment we feel toward someone who wronged us. Yet, while freeing the other person from the grudge we hold toward them is certainly a part of the process of forgiveness, equally important is freeing ourselves from the emotional burden and preoccupation that resentment carries for us. Of course, forgiving is also important when we need to forgive ourselves. Forgiveness allows us to become free to engage, grow, and live free of guilt and shame.

Gratitude:

Consistently taking time to consider and reflect on what is good in our lives can shift our outlook, even during times of stress and strain. Gratitude can help us to become more resilient and better able to manage relationships in our lives. When practiced regularly, gratitude can function much like a muscle that allows us to recognize what is difficult and may cause us to struggle without becoming stuck or preoccupied. Meanwhile, our positive and appreciative outlook can spread to others and inspire them to be more optimistic and less preoccupied with disappointments and stresses. Gratitude, positivity, and optimism can give us confidence, help us to remain centered, and feel connected to others in our lives.

Authenticity:

Being authentic is more than choosing to be oneself, and it is not a matter of simply removing one’s interpersonal “filter” to do and say whatever comes to mind. In fact, authenticity has more to do with being clear about what we value, what we want to accomplish, and who we want to be. Becoming more authentic starts with acting with purpose, focusing on what matters, and finding alignment between what we spend our time and energy on and what is most important to us. Authenticity is engaging in the journey from where we are to who we wish to be. Authenticity gives us courage to act, helps us to become centered in who we are, and frees us to connect with who and what is important in our lives.

Altruism:

We might not think much about altruism—doing things for others, making donations, volunteering, and similar selfless activities—as being just as important and rewarding for the giver as the receiver. Yet, going out of our way to help others also improves how we feel about ourselves. The truth is that doing good feels good. When we help others, our mood improves, and our well-being grows. Research studies have found that altruism can reduce feelings of depression and even provide respites from pain in people suffering from cancer. Doing good can help us to feel better about ourselves and more connected to others.

Hope:

We might think of hope as a naïve view of life and susceptible to being dashed by the words and actions of others. But hope is more than a verbal form of optimism or an idealistic view of life. Hope is the realization that success is possible with patience, effort, strategy, and persistence. Hope is a key motivator that pushes and pulls us toward our goals and is not dependent on the immediate expectation of success or the departure of problems. It gives us confidence that staying the course will lead to what we seek, and it can help us to be resilient in the face of setbacks because we see today’s experiences as part of a longer, more important life journey. Hope can give us confidence, keep us focused, and connect us with others who share our goals and values.

Obviously, we cannot always control the day-to-day experiences that may disappoint or depress us. However, we do control what we do to preserve our outlook and overcome what may briefly set us back. Tapping the power of forgiveness, gratitude, authenticity, altruism, and hope can make an amazing difference.

Five Common Assumptions About Learning We Need to Fix

In Your Corner, Student Learning

December 12, 2024

Five Common Assumptions About Learning We Need to Fix

The world of education is filled with ideas, strategies, and approaches about how to learn. Unfortunately, many of the most popular learning strategies—while they may generate some learning benefit—do not represent the best approach to learning. Students often rely on mediocre strategies because they seem to work well enough for them, and they are not aware of better, more effective approaches. Consequently, they may be spending more time and exhausting more energy than necessary to learn well enough, rather than experiencing greater learning returns, often gained with less effort and time invested.

This is a good time to inventory the learning practices upon which our students rely to determine whether they are using some of these mediocre strategies and how they might gain the best learning advantages. Here are five common learning approaches that can be transformed into some of the best learning strategies by having students make a few adjustments and tweak their approach.

Common assumption #1: More practice leads to the best performance. Practice builds habits and muscle memory, absolutely, but not all practice is equal. Careless practice and unaddressed errors and confusion can undermine learning and motivation. Practice that leads to the most improvement is focused and purposeful. The highest levels of learning success result from setting challenging goals, seeking and using feedback to adjust, regularly measuring progress, and sustaining focused commitment.

Insight: The best performance results from the best practice.

Common assumption #2: Reading (and rereading) is the best way to build understanding. Repeated exposure to the same content can be marginally helpful. However, rereading, by itself, does not necessarily increase comprehension. The best way to check and build understanding is to follow reading by explaining the content to someone else or writing a summary. Having to clearly explain a new concept can surface areas of uncertainty or confusion. If returning to the text is necessary, students can do it with intentionality and in search of clarity rather than in service of repetition.

Insight: Explaining a concept is the surest and most efficient way to check and build understanding.

Common assumption #3: Longer study sessions lead to the best learning. Spending more time listening, reading, and studying is of limited value once students begin to lose the energy needed to pay attention and process information. The longer students attempt to study, the more they are likely to fight fatigue and loss of focus. Additional content studied during extended sessions becomes difficult to retain.

Insight: Short, focused study followed by reflection builds greater understanding and better memory storage.

Common assumption #4: It is best to study one subject per study session. Students may think that by focusing on a single class or topic, they will retain what they have learned longer. However, multiple research studies have shown that alternating among subjects during study sessions can increase understanding and retention of information. When students switch to a new topic or subject after a moderate study session (twenty to twenty-five minutes), their brains search for connections and seek to categorize the information studied. This approach is known as interleaving.

Insight: Breaking study sessions up and studying more than one subject in shorter sprints is the best approach.

Common assumption #5: Taking notes is the best way build learning recall. While taking notes can be better than nothing, the best learning comes from taking notes strategically and spending time reviewing them. Jotting random statements or trying to capture a transcript of a lesson typically yields limited learning and disjointed recall. On the other hand, capturing key points, organizing an outline that reflects the lesson, and summarizing key concepts can lift learning and support more efficient review and study.

Insight: Taking strategic notes and using them to refresh and self-evaluate understanding is the best way for notetaking to reinforce comprehension and increase recall.

Our students deserve to know and be able to use the most effective learning strategies and approaches we can offer. Taking some time now to inventory and assess with students the strategies they use to study can build confidence and increase the effectiveness of their learning efforts.

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Share your story and the tips you have for getting through this challenging time. It can remind a fellow school leader of something they forgot, or your example can make a difficult task much easier and allow them to get more done in less time. We may publish your comments.

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