I'm Sorry...Volare

"If you're wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically." - Dale Carnegie

The other morning was great. Before school I helped Sofia with her homework and danced to the Gypsy Kings with Bella, right up until the last bell.

As I opened the door she gave me a giant hug and kiss while Sofia, aware of all the eyes on her, felt a little overwhelmed and gave me a quick peck on the cheek and escaped down the hallway.

Bad move.....

With the whole world watching, I got on my knees and hollered, "Sofia. I LOVE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!"

When I got up I turned to see Bella wearing a huge smile, remembering how I've done that to her many times.

And although I won't remember every moment of my life, I will definitely remember that one.

Every day doesn't have to be just another day. One thing can happen to make it special enough to be remembered forever.

And if this is true, why can't we be the ones that make this one thing happen? (How ironic that outside of class I have a, "What is the one thing?" sign. Before they come in I want them to have at least one thing in mind they don't understand that THEY WILL before leaving.)

Maybe so much of life comes down to the one thing, the one thought, the one moment......that creates exactly what we want or don't want, depending on the one thing we've been focusing on the most.

....What we CAN do or what we CAN'T .....What we WANT to happen or what we DON'T want.....

Either way, we get what we focus on....

Our reality as adults is that we are perpetual students of life. We forget this. When we mess up we either get down and beat ourselves up, get defensive coming up with excuses or how it wasn't our fault, or lie convincing ourselves we didn't really make any mistakes.

What if instead we focused on doing one thing better today that we didn't get yesterday? Do you know how powerful that is in creating the life you desire so much?

In my last post I unintentionally made a student's former teacher look bad, and risked that student seeing it and damaging her self-esteem.

When it was brought to my attention I was appalled that I did this. Before I write or do anything I ask myself if it is ego-driven or motivated out of love.

My "Be More of a Man" post was a call for us men to be more love-driven than ego, which is fear-based and an attempt to prove our value to the world.

It is too easy to put another down to lift yourself up, and it happens way too often in this world. I apologized for this immediately and sincerely thanked her for helping me improve myself.

I carry a note in my pocket as my "one thing" to keep myself to this higher standard, because not only is pointless to make another look bad, this teacher is so good and loving it was downright unfair to her, whether I did it unintentionally or not.

To use the first phrase Bella learned to say, "That's un-ah-thept-a-ble".

Michael Jordan said he made more baskets than anyone else because he missed more. He wasn't afraid to try, to miss, to fail....and to learn from each one. How can anyone not get better with this attitude and desire?

This gave me the courage to wonder what other mistakes I may have made. BAM! Another big one came right away.

That same day I kicked a kid out of class. He hasn't had great success in school, is termed SLD (severe learning disabled) and has given excuse after excuse this year of why he didn't do something.

In an attempt to break through these established habits I hollered, "Go find someone who doesn't believe you're better than this!"

And he got up and left.

Sometimes kids in his situation are used to the world giving up on them. In fact, in order to have any sort of control and power in their lives they will do things to purposely upset others to be able to say, "See? I knew it. I knew he would give up on me."

And to him that was exactly what I had done.

What makes it worse is that he had maturely accepted his consequence of not doing his reading homework by staying in his seat all day, read during lunch and recess, and was so into his book that he couldn't put it down during math.

Wanting him to do well on the upcoming math test and failing several times to redirect him, I failed to see how hard he was working, and I reacted in a way that could have made him think I'm the worst of all, even when he finally works he is given up on and thrown away just because he wasn't working on something else.

I can't change what I did, but can change what I do the next day ("Every day is a new life to the wise man" - unknown).

I apologized to him and praised him in front of the class for what he did do right, rebuilding our relationship, and hopefully empowering him to become strong enough to look at what he did wrong on his own.

Saying "I'm sorry" is powerful when meant, both for the person saying it and receiving it. What can we apologize for today? Many times it's to ourselves, for stopping to dream big and do big....and becoming our biggest selves....our biggest, most successful, loving selves.

As the song says, "VOLARE"....meaning, "I WILL FLY!"