Dear Readers,

This week I was reminded of how important it is to always be open to feedback and education because things are always changing and shifting.

I was reviewing my benefits package for work and feeling grateful for the fantastic medical coverage that we have and the time that we are given to understand it and the fairs and the office hours and I started working on doing the calculations of what things were going to cost and things were not matching up. Jeremy was saying the same thing but I found myself getting emotional about it even though I knew what he was saying made absolute sense and he was right to question what I was saying. Why?

I think it works a little bit like this. In the great classroom of life, there are many students but let’s just focus on five for the purposes of this discussion.

Rational and Logical and Factual sit in the front row of the class and they take notes and raise their hand and are on task and do NOT stray from the lesson at hand.

Emotional and Creative sit in the middle of the class or near the back or maybe even on the floor and are painting or finding it hard to follow everything because they are wrapped up in the rainy day outside or the beautiful drawing they just did to depict what is going on in class but not really taking in the lesson.

Emotional and Creative are just as valuable to the class but they don’t really get along with Rational and Logical and Factual because they want to talk about the teacher’s hair or the way the chalk on the board smells or how beautiful the decorations in the room are and Rational, Logical, and Factual are all business and don’t have time for all that.

I guess the idea is to find a way for all five of these to co-exist and to remind yourself to ALWAYS be LEARNING. There is always another thing to learn.

There is always something you can learn from another person whether it’s “this is a good way to act” or “what they said made a lot of sense, I am getting emotional about it because I have my own stuff going on” or “I don’t plan to act that way at all, so this is a good example of how not to act” the combinations are endless.

The best example I can give is that when given the opportunity to get defensive and upset about something that was a perfectly logical and rational dispute of factual information, I gave it up and said, WAIT, time to call on Rational and Logical and Factual, since now is NOT the time for Emotional.

It has taken me many years to get there and I don’t always call the right members from the classroom of my brain, and I am still learning.

Think About It.