Your Beliefs Shape Your Learning

The pandemic and lockdown are a type of disruption in school/college that can create a gap, taking a young person’s mindset off- track, and coming back on track can take years. This pandemic is traumatic for many people, and youngsters get affected by such experiences deeply, as they have an impressionable mind.

• One way to decrease the negative impact of 2020 is to have extra classes at the end of each school day and decrease the number of holidays.
• Another suggestion is to recruit an army of tutors, consisting of recently unemployed professionals, to educate the children.

Resilience isn’t something you’re born with, but something you build. 

Psychologists say it’s comprised of behaviors, thoughts and actions that anyone can learn — a skill that can be improved, just like running or speaking a new language.

• Relying on others. Resilience has a lot to do with leaning on the people around you and with developing strong, supportive connections.
  
• Trust your own abilities. Keep a list of accomplishments you’re proud of to serve as a reminder of the times you’ve been resilient before.
• Be kind to yourself. Give yourself permission to set physical, mental and emotional boundaries.
• Change your outlook. While you can’t always control the situation, you do have control over how you respond to it. Cultivate optimism in the face of adversity.
• Take the next step, even if it’s small. Build hope. Make a list that includes a goal, steps to achieve it, potential obstacles and strategies to overcome them.

Systematic studies of learning styles have consistently found no evidence or very weak evidence to support the idea that matching the material to a student’s learning style is more effective.

There is no conclusive evidence that people preferentially use the left or right hemisphere.

Certain functions are processed more by one region of the brain than others, and this is known as lateralization. But we all use our entire brain equally.

...is the belief that your abilities can be improved through effort. 

And this means you can get better and hard work pays off.

• Don’t praise ability or intelligence: That promotes a fixed mindset. Compliment effort, process and choices.
• Don’t ignore outcome, tie it to effort: You can be happy about success, but attribute it to effort.
• Respond positively to failure: Failure isn’t bad, it’s a tool for improving.
• Don’t just say “Try hard.” Set goals: Blind repetition doesn’t work. 
• Practice a Growth mindset in all areas of life: There’s no area where they cannot improve with hard work.
• Share your own Growth mindset efforts: Practice it yourself and share your results.

• Walking meditation. “We weren’t meant to sit in cubicles all day and when we disconnect from nature, we suffer a lot of stress.”
• Red light meditation. While stopped at a red light, turn off your radio and focus on deep breaths.
• Running/cycling meditation. If you run or bike, leave your headphones at home and focus on the experience.
• Eating/drinking meditation. As you eat or drink, focus on the various flavors, textures, and sensations of the particular food or drink.
• Waiting meditation. While in line, observe your breath or surroundings.
• Task-related meditation. For example, washing your hands, folding laundry, taking a shower, washing dishes, or brushing your teeth can serve as mini-meditations if you focus on the experience and stop your mind from wandering.

If you know that you will eat junk food because your refrigerator is filled with it, remove all the junk food.

Just as removing friction aids in doing the activity more often, adding friction can aid to remove the bad habit, by making it difficult or cumbersome to do so.

Example: Cigarette smoking declined due to adding taxes, banning in public places and removing from vending machines.

• Turn your paper 90 degrees so it’s longer than it is tall. 
• Pair images with your own words.
• Arrange them on the page in a way that makes sense to you. 
• The images don’t have to be complicated or artsy. They don’t have to make sense to anybody else. They just have to be meaningful to you.

Slow things are slowly driving us crazy. Society is now on a fast pace, and this has wrapped our sense of timing.

The accelerating pace of society has set off a cycle, resetting our internal timers. Rage for others who are slow eventually sabotages our timers. This is a downward spiral, where will power doesn’t work, and can even be detrimental.

Evolution has given us impatience. We are given the impulse to act, to choose, to abandon or to chase something else, in the limited time we have, instead of spending time in a single unrewarding or slow activity.

Taking into account the speed of communication that is now 10 million times faster than before, and human movement, which is now 100 times faster, we can see society picking up speed and becoming increasingly impatient.

1. How can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? 
2. How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness?
3. When life sends you in the wrong direction, how can you be sure you'll stay out of jail? 

Frederick Herzberg states that the motivator in our lives isn't money.

• The motivator is the opportunity to learn;
• To grow in responsibilities;
• To contribute to others;
• To be recognized for achievements.

• In an evaluation of Dancing Classrooms in New York City, 95 % of teachers said that as a result of dancing together, there was a demonstrable improvement in students’ abilities to cooperate and collaborate.
• Dancing improves reading and math scores.  “physical activity has a positive influence on memory, concentration and classroom behavior.”
• Arts benefit everyone regardless of their vocational pathways.