Spring Week 2 - Daily Decisions that Inspire Creativity

Thank-you all for your comments and discussion questions and principles today. I enjoyed learning from you and thinking about what sort of things entice me to procrastinate and what kind of love keeps me from doing so.  I appreciate each of you so much. I hope you are all excited for our final semester!


Here are this week's inspirements. You already wrote #1 in class so just post it below ASAP so we can encourage one another in our goals. Don't procrastinate the rest of the items though... #5 especially should take some thought. And have a happy Easter!

1. Post: Your goal for the week from Friday's discussion
2. Read: Creativity Inc. Intro - end of Chapter 1. I also copied and encourage you to read chapter 2, but I will leave it up to you. I found it fascinating. (And buy the book now if you haven't yet so you will have it for next week. This is the last time I will be linking the PDF on Google Drive)
3. Watch: Should You Live for Your Resume or Your Eulogy?
4. Write: in the comments below, a scripture and principle and discussion question from your reading or watching that relates to making daily decisions that inspire creativity
5. Prayerfully Decide: on a creative project for the semester, (you can use the decision making principles you have written so far to help you decide!) be prepared to share it with the class. (Don't worry, you can change your mind about it later if you find it doesn't work out).
6. Buy or find: notebook to keep track of decision making principles

---------------------
Here are everyone's presentations from Monday. I enjoyed listening to all of you and the variety of things you each learned! Thank-you for preparing for this and being willing to share with others... my phone kept running out of memory so if your presentation gets cut off, it is because my phone ran out of memory and I had to erase some things before I could film again. Plus, you probably noticed I was struggling with my little ones that day so the filming sometimes goes a little crazy.


 

Spring week 1: Daily Decisions

Thank-you all for your participation and insights on our nature walk. I hope the Spirit gave you something to ponder at home afterwards. If you want to share anything you've thought about since, please comment below!

One thing I thought about was how a better analogy at the river would have been to consider the bank of the river the boundary we discussed and the river could represent the filthy river in Lehi's dream... that seems more accurate because crossing the river took us to a beautiful view and that is not the case with crossing boundaries :-) But the bridge could have represented Christ's help in overcoming a temptation to get in the river... anyway I'm sure there are all sorts of other ways to see that analogy.

I also though about how when I really love someone, I don't try to see how far and how long I be away from them without offending them - instead I try to do all I can to stay connected to them and be around them. I want this attitude towards my Savior.

One more thought I had was a connection between the scripture Caden shared last week and the comment Elisabeth made when I asked about the state of our heart when we are trying to see how far we can get to the edge without breaking any rules (if you don't remember, she insightfully said our heart was already on the other side when we had that attitude). Caden's comment last week was "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." So putting those things together helped me realize the importance of keeping my heart on serving my Savior.

It's funny, but when I went to that Nirvana concert I mentioned in class - I really didn't think I was breaking any rules in the Strength of Youth pamphlet - and since I wasn't breaking rules (I thought Nirvana was "good" music) - it was okay for me to be there. I felt the same way about having a boyfriend in high school (even though we were together very often - we weren't going on official "dates" so it was okay). That was the attitude of a heart that was in the wrong place at the time of those decisions. (But just so you know - I had a different upbringing than most of you and I did not understand the gospel well in my teen years - thankfully I had a change of heart before it was too late).

I am excited to discover principles of decision making with you this semester. Last semester we learned all about the importance of rest and play along with meaningful work. This semester, we want to discover what principles can help us make decisions that will allow us to incorporate those things in our lives to live joyfully and wholeheartedly.

Correct principles of decision making should be practiced every day. Not only because we will need that practice when making big "life-altering" decisions, but also because it is the small, daily decisions that really determine where we go in life.

This is a very busy time of year for many of you so I will try to keep the reading light this semester, just be sure you are writing questions and quotes as well as applying the principles you discover each week to make this an inspiring end to your year.

Here are the inspirements for this week:
1. Make: A 5ish minute presentation about your take home message last semester to present to families on Monday.
2. Watch: Inside the Mind of a Master Prcrastinator
3. Find a principle (or more if you'd like) in the scriptures about how to become better at not procrastinating. Post your principle(s) with the reference and a discussion question below.
4. Reply to 4 (or more) people's comments.

Week 10 - Zayin, the Illusion of Fear, and Letting Go of Being Cool

 
I sure love you guys. Your online discussion last week was so beautifully profound, I wish we could get all the youth in the world to take a peak at it and see how great it is to be collaboratively seeking truth and helping each other dig deeper into how to joyfully live. You are incredible. I think you should try to continue commenting on quotes and questions in the future when you can - I believe it helped deepen the class discussion for everyone.

So the class discussion was also wonderful - we talked about how to stop judging ourselves, how to be still and how to practice calmness and joy through gratitude and love. We also listened to music as we made ourselves slashed names (like it talked about in Guidepost 9: writer/cook/philanthropist etc). If you were not in class, I encourage you to try this - use your patriarchal blessing as a guide too - and make your name as long as you want. Most of us had awesomely long names. We talked about how we are all unique and we need to stop pigeon holing ourselves into "one identity" that we are known by.

We also go into teams and made plans for a collaborative project to work present to families. You guys came up with such great ideas in just 10 minutes! Impressive.

Here are this week's inspirements. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Watch: Jim Statley talk about Zayin in the Hebrew alphabet.*
Read: The Illusion of Fear 
Read: Guidepost 10 and Final Thoughts
Write: A goal from last week's reading/discussion, and a quote and question from this week's video or readings. Comment on other people's questions and thoughts if you'd like.
Prepare: Take your writing from last week, and prepare a 5ish minute presentation to teach our families what you have learned this semester. You can do it in any creative way of your choosing - speech, skit, game, video, song, poem, art, powerpoint, etc.
Collaborate: on this Google doc to help with the collaborative presentation we will be putting together on Friday.


*Jim Staley is a Hebrew scholar and a preacher. I love his talks on the Hebrew alphabet. The letter Zayin is the letter of perfection. I think you will see connections to what we've been reading and discussing.

Here is another song about stillness:

And here is the song we played on our hike, if any of you were interested:

Week 9 - Letting Go of Anxiety and Self-Doubt

This morning was so nice and peaceful. I am glad some of you could join us for the temple and I hope everyone had a reflective hike.

We wrote and talked about things that "get in the way" of our spiritual daily habits, educational goals, family relationships and our joy and creativity.

We hiked with things that got in our way (with arms tied to each other's and then feet tied to each other's feet).

And we talked about why we let things get in our way. It was discussed that it is often because it is easier or more comfortable to get distracted or just go with the status quo. But we agreed that hiking with "things in our way" is much slower and difficult than when we let things go.

It was mentioned that chains can be broken one by one and how uncertainty is like faith (described in Alma 32) and it is where curiosity, inspiration, and creativity, growth and experimenting take place. As we feel truth swell in our hearts, enlighten our minds, enlarge our souls and become delicious - it grows into knowledge and our faith becomes dormant in that thing. Then we can get curious about the next adventure in growth.

We just have 2 weeks of class left before our family presentations! Any of you  are welcome to come over anytime this week to get going on them and we will make some time to work on it on Friday. We are available Tuesday before 5, Wednesday before 3, and Thursday after 2 and before 5:30.

Plan on an extra long class on March 18th (I had it on the calendar from 2:30-6:30) we will have a simulation and finalize our projects.

Here are your inspirements for this week:

1. Read Guidepost 8 and 9 in GOI,, comment below with: your goal for this week (from Guidepost 6 or 7), a favorite quote (from Guidepost 8 or 9), and a question by TUESDAY.
2. Carve out 30-60 minutes to sit quietly outside (somewhere without people) with a pen and reflection book, your Gifts of Imperfection book and the this printout with a review of the semester. Write down what you have learned about yourself and wholeheartedness through the last couple of months.**
3. Type out what you don't mind sharing.  Include a personal example. Post it in your own blog, a google doc, or on our discussion blog  by Wednesday. Type the link to your writing in the comments below. Several in the group are out of town this weekend and will need to see your writing so they can comment by Thursday. 
4. Comment on at least 4 questions and 4 writing links (8 total) by Thursday.

There are 15 youth in our class,  so we should have 16 goal/quote/question comments by Tuesday (including mine) and 16 more writing links by Wednesday (32 total). And don't forget to comment on 8 things by THURSDAY night.

**if you were not in class Saturday. It would be helpful to start your writing with the questions we pondered on our hike:
1. What gets in the way of your spiritual daily habits? Why do you let it?
2. What are your daily and long term educational goals? What gets in the way of your daily ones? Why do you let it?
3. What gets in the way of joyful family relationships or what causes contention in your home? Why do you let it?
4. What gets in the way of your daily joy and creativity? Why do you let it?