I know it has been a while since I have posted on here and I apologize for the absence. I have been struggling to get my feet underneath me firmly in the homeschooling department. There are some days when I feel like I am on top of the world and we are doing so great and my kids will be so much better for my efforts, and then there are other days when I feel like I am so deep in the ocean that I can't find my way to the surface and I know that surely my children would be learning more in public school. But see, even typing that makes my skin crawl because no matter how poorly the starting of this goes, in the long run there will be no comparison for the benefit of teaching my kids at home.
Well, while in the car today I found myself listening to talk radio. When I listen to talk radio it is usually the "conservative station", but when my husband is in the car he listens to the "liberal station". I enjoy listening to both, though there are times with both when I will turn them off with disgust. However, that is off topic.
The story we were listening to was about the findings in a recent study on monkeys and their problem solving and goal oriented thinking. One striking thing they found was that even though both monkeys achieved their goals, they did it in entirely different ways. One monkey was obviously patient and the other impatient. When given a goal, the patient monkey would wait until all of the "obstacles" were known before coming up with a plan to reach the goal. The impatient monkey would go for the goal as soon as it was visible and would have to deal with the "obstacles" as they arose.
So I posed the question to myself, "Which kind of monkey am I?" I have never been good at goal setting and very rarely achieve goals that I set and it has been a constant frustration for me. I don't know what I am doing wrong and it despairs me quite often. After hearing of this study, I finally realized what (hopefully?) my problem is. I am impatient monkey.
I see the goal and scramble to get there, bruising myself here, and scraping myself there, until I finally trip over something that I had seen as small and inconsequential in my mad dash, (if, of course, I had even seen it at all) and I knock myself out cold. Down for the count. When I finally come to and begin dusting myself off all I see is the beginning again and the goal way off in the distance, not understanding what it was, exactly, that prevented me from reaching that goal. So I start off again, renewed vigor, albeit a bit more wary of the obstacle that tripped me last time. But alas, my folly is not in the last piece of straw that has settled onto my back that collapsed me, it is the multitude of others hindrances that have piled up without my even being aware of them.
I have always been aware that I have a problem with follow-through. I just haven't ever figured out why. I pray to my Father in Heaven that this may be the key to solving my puzzle. I have been looking at the picture on the box and wondering why all these little pieces don't look like that yet. I hadn't been able to find a method for sorting it all out in a way that makes sense. Actually, I don't think I had even tried sorting.
There is another good saying here that fits. "You can't see the forest for the trees" Which generally means you are so focused on the small things that you can't see the big picture. I am backwards. For me the statement is more accurate when it reads "You can't see the trees for the forest". I have been so overwhelmed by the daunting forest that I haven't been looking at the trees. There is so much to be missed when you ignore the details. (Come to think of it, I had discovered this problem in my drawings nearly 15 years ago, so sad it took me this long to correlate that with my everyday life.)
To resolve this problem I am going to take a good hard look at the trees. I am in the process of doing this so I can't tell you yet what the outcome will be or what all the steps are. I will tell you that I started with a question. "Why do I always fail to stick to a schedule?" Instead of answering this question directly, I answered it with another question. "What is it that I am trying to schedule?" I wrote a list of everything that goes on in my life in a daily or weekly capacity that I need to fit into the schedule. Then I took each of these and wrote the specific details of what, in those items, fails, that makes it hard to stick with the schedule. For example, under the topic "Being awake at a certain time in the morning" was the fatal "going to bed late" and for me, the worse "Not feeling any pressing reason to get out of bed". After weeks of discussion with my sister on that particular topic I have come to the fact that this is a lack of willpower, but I had not yet found a way to make it less of a willpower struggle than it is. (I am currently testing a theory on a fix to this though.)
So now I am addressing the trees. I want to be the patient monkey and see the whole picture before I start cramming the puzzle pieces together and collapsing from the weight of one tiny length of straw. I can over come this. It will all be better in the end. I just need to strategically map my course before I go diving into my personal no-mans-land.
Well, while in the car today I found myself listening to talk radio. When I listen to talk radio it is usually the "conservative station", but when my husband is in the car he listens to the "liberal station". I enjoy listening to both, though there are times with both when I will turn them off with disgust. However, that is off topic.
The story we were listening to was about the findings in a recent study on monkeys and their problem solving and goal oriented thinking. One striking thing they found was that even though both monkeys achieved their goals, they did it in entirely different ways. One monkey was obviously patient and the other impatient. When given a goal, the patient monkey would wait until all of the "obstacles" were known before coming up with a plan to reach the goal. The impatient monkey would go for the goal as soon as it was visible and would have to deal with the "obstacles" as they arose.
So I posed the question to myself, "Which kind of monkey am I?" I have never been good at goal setting and very rarely achieve goals that I set and it has been a constant frustration for me. I don't know what I am doing wrong and it despairs me quite often. After hearing of this study, I finally realized what (hopefully?) my problem is. I am impatient monkey.
I see the goal and scramble to get there, bruising myself here, and scraping myself there, until I finally trip over something that I had seen as small and inconsequential in my mad dash, (if, of course, I had even seen it at all) and I knock myself out cold. Down for the count. When I finally come to and begin dusting myself off all I see is the beginning again and the goal way off in the distance, not understanding what it was, exactly, that prevented me from reaching that goal. So I start off again, renewed vigor, albeit a bit more wary of the obstacle that tripped me last time. But alas, my folly is not in the last piece of straw that has settled onto my back that collapsed me, it is the multitude of others hindrances that have piled up without my even being aware of them.
I have always been aware that I have a problem with follow-through. I just haven't ever figured out why. I pray to my Father in Heaven that this may be the key to solving my puzzle. I have been looking at the picture on the box and wondering why all these little pieces don't look like that yet. I hadn't been able to find a method for sorting it all out in a way that makes sense. Actually, I don't think I had even tried sorting.
There is another good saying here that fits. "You can't see the forest for the trees" Which generally means you are so focused on the small things that you can't see the big picture. I am backwards. For me the statement is more accurate when it reads "You can't see the trees for the forest". I have been so overwhelmed by the daunting forest that I haven't been looking at the trees. There is so much to be missed when you ignore the details. (Come to think of it, I had discovered this problem in my drawings nearly 15 years ago, so sad it took me this long to correlate that with my everyday life.)
To resolve this problem I am going to take a good hard look at the trees. I am in the process of doing this so I can't tell you yet what the outcome will be or what all the steps are. I will tell you that I started with a question. "Why do I always fail to stick to a schedule?" Instead of answering this question directly, I answered it with another question. "What is it that I am trying to schedule?" I wrote a list of everything that goes on in my life in a daily or weekly capacity that I need to fit into the schedule. Then I took each of these and wrote the specific details of what, in those items, fails, that makes it hard to stick with the schedule. For example, under the topic "Being awake at a certain time in the morning" was the fatal "going to bed late" and for me, the worse "Not feeling any pressing reason to get out of bed". After weeks of discussion with my sister on that particular topic I have come to the fact that this is a lack of willpower, but I had not yet found a way to make it less of a willpower struggle than it is. (I am currently testing a theory on a fix to this though.)
So now I am addressing the trees. I want to be the patient monkey and see the whole picture before I start cramming the puzzle pieces together and collapsing from the weight of one tiny length of straw. I can over come this. It will all be better in the end. I just need to strategically map my course before I go diving into my personal no-mans-land.
