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The best year of my life. My connection to my wife, my kids, friends, colleagues, students, our community, and strangers on the street has been strengthened. I’ve created a better version of myself. I’ve unlocked an ambition in myself that I don’t recognize. I’ve changed. I’m a new person. I’ve changed my perspective on life and realized that being grateful and providing service to others is the most important path I can take. If you told me 5 years ago that intentional breathing exercises, meditation, journaling, living by higher values, following perspective life tools, and showing gratitude would change my life, I would have said politely that this sounded nice and carried on with my day without a second thought. I was good, I was happy, and I was productive until I was not. Anxiety popped up inside me sometime in 2019 and stayed with me for several years until I recognized the beast and started to learn and use mindfulness practices to try to tame it.
How might we offer mindfulness practices that unlock our potential and create a better version of ourselves?
Cohort21 Season 12 Action Plan
This, how might we question, is as much for me as it is for those who I try to share my action project with. The service component of my action plan has a two-fold benefit. It can help others navigate life with mindful clarity and calm. The second benefit is selfish. Helping others gives me a boost of energy which helps to hold me up. Maybe this is because I’m 47 and I’ve traveled around the sun 47 times and now I have life experiences, both good and bad, which I’ve learned from. I’ve had an awakening that is going to fuel me for the last half of my life. Cohort 21 helped me to synthesize my thinking and build a research-based mental health resource aimed to provide help and direction for those who may need to Ignite the Spark inside themselves. Ignite Spark is a 6-pilar course over 10 weeks for 7 grade 6’s who have elected to take this course. The 6 pillars of ignite spark are:
- Meditation
- Journaling
- Yoga
- Thinking tools
- Calming techniques
- High Values
Students who select this course this year commit 1000 minutes to these practices between March and June of 2024. This is the start, this is my passion. I can’t wait to take my next step.
Hi Bob, this is such a great opportunity for you and your students and I am so excited to see how and where it goes. I’m also excited to hear about how your students feel at the start and end of this journey as well. Middle school is such a big time neurologically and you are giving them life long tools. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Thank you Bob for sharing your journey with Cohort 21 and with the coaching team. You’re exemplifying the values you want to instil in your students and it is truly inspiring.