Our first quarter at school is over and we are into the next one. How is your fall season going? Something we are introducing this quarter is a stronger emphasis on Habits of Mind. Do you know about those? The Habits of Mind are 16 skills that Art Costa and Bena Kallick studied over several years with thousands of people which are essential to helping people move forward in their lives. I’ve been putting together a curriculum for all our teachers and students to be able to better understand the skills and put them into practice. It’s been a challenging, but rewarding endeavor. I’m about a fourth of the way through preparing what we will need each week for this year.
Anyway, I mention it because maybe you will find some of these skills beneficial also. This week we will be looking at Persisting. To persist you must adopt a growth mindset where you believe that you and your life like clay can be cultivated and improved through your efforts. This is in contrast to a fixed mindset which believes you are the way you are as if carved in stone and nothing can change or improve that.
At times we all face difficulties academically, physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, or circumstantially. Are you facing anything challenging right now or have you run into obstacles or experienced discouraging setbacks? Hang in there. Obstacles can be worked around. Learn from the negatives and embrace the positives. Develop discipline. View obligations as opportunities. Surround yourself with people who can hold you accountable and support you. Celebrate even small victories and progress. Here’s a few examples of how others keep themselves moving forward.
Also realize that by far the greatest help in developing persistence is not striving harder. It comes from trusting and obeying God. When everything seems against you he is always for you–ready and willing to use his abounding love and almighty power to bring about the best in you and for you in ways that are not readily seen or understood at first. Walking each day by faith is much more effective than enduring through sheer will power. If the only purpose in persisting to achieve all our various goals is some type of self-fulfillment then we have sadly missed our true purpose and ultimate goal. Our goal is not self fulfillment but rather it is self-abandonment. Only when you surrender to God do you experience real, abundant life as he changes you to become like Jesus and works through you to help others.
Jesus put it this way, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:23-25). God’s life for us is much better than anything we can persist to pursue on our own. To those who overcome by faith God promises the unsurpassing joy of his daily presence and the reward of eternal life with him and all the others who join his family.