Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Joan of Arc, Jesus. What do these historic legends have in common? They all did the right thing. And it cost them everything.

We often assume that doing the right thing comes at less of a cost than taking the wrong route. We also wrongly assume that it should be rewarded.

It’s no doubt that this belief is ingrained into our psyche. It’s been part of our lives since we were children. We’re always looking for the easy way to get to the end. Tattle tailing is something kids often use to solve problems. Getting an adult involved alleviates them from extra work to solve their own issues. Of course, we can’t expect children to address problems without first teaching them how to do it. Sometimes it doesn’t happen and the kids turn into adults and use others to solve their problems. The right way is hard.

To be like MLK and Jesus, you need to embrace the difficulty that comes with doing the right thing. Complex problems cannot be solved through Twitter debates. If you can shut your phone off and forget about the problem, you’re likely not invested enough in it.
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If you really want to stop racism and corrupt capitalism, organize debates, protests and campaigns. However, be prepared that it might not work and could cost you everything.

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"This is what you deserve. You could be good today. But instead you choose tomorrow."
- Marcus Aurelius

Most of use spend too much time in the past or the future  instead  of the present.  Procrastination is the ultimate denial of the stoic - to assume that tomorrow will be better than today.  Work never goes away, suffering does not diminish by relegating a task to another time and the sacrifice required to forgo pain for pleasure  will never disappear. 

Eating healthy,  making your bed and doing exercise  are acts that can be done immediately and will not get easier  if you put it off until the next day. 

Ignore the simple but difficult tasks in your life and small  problems become big ones. 

You are what you deserve to be. 

How does one become a social media expert? There   aren't  any phD programs that specialize in mastering social media.  Just like an electrician can only be certified after several hours of on the job training, expertise on almost anything can be established through experience. 

Do social media experts have more experience with social media than the rest of us? 

Doubtful.

It's difficult to be an expert a shoelace tying , bed-making or filling  tanks of gas.  These are things we all need to do and spending time becoming the 'expert' is irrelevant.

Social media experts don't tweet better, hit the like button more efficiently or upload images more effectively than everybody else. Instead, they've created a label that holds no merit. That doesn't mean they are fraudulent, it just means that they've replaced  the scientifically rigorous study of people's interactions in an online environment with an idea that you can become an expert  without the hard work. 

Be wary of smoke and mirrors. If you're someone who is a self-proclaimed expert in anything, be sure that you have the experience, education or   skill set to effectively navigate your craft. 

When you’re walking down a busy street and you see someone drop their phone, do you pick it up and give it back? What about seeing someone with a baby carriage struggle to open a door? Would you help?

Almost all of us would without hesitation, stop and help someone open a door or pick up a fallen item.

The interesting question is: Why do we do it?

Helping a fellow human-being with their daily struggle is an essential quality that has been carefully crafted into us through years of evolution. Being ultra-social beings, we must be able to help and support one another if we’re going to be successful as a society.

Some of us believe that empathy is the driving force behind all of these courteous acts by strangers taking place every day throughout the world. Empathy is the emotional motivator that provides us with a hit of serotonin every time we cooperate or help. Oxytocin is also known as the bonding hormone. Mothers receive huge hits of oxytocin when their baby is born. It provides a euphoric feeling that helps reduce physical pain and increase the bond between her and the baby - which is a good thing because those early days of parenting aren’t easy!

Here’s the trouble with empathy: it’s extremely biased. According to Paul Bloom, we must be very careful not to lead with empathetic feelings because we’ll have a tendency to support those most like us. While this might not seem like a bad idea, Bloom suggests looking at it in greater scope. For example, the Make-A-Wish Foundation spent over $10 000 on turning a terminally ill boy into Batman and parading him around the city in a Batmobile. No doubt it was a very special moment for the boy, his family, and the city. Empathy wins, right?

Maybe. 

What if that money was used to purchase mosquito nets used to prevent the spread of malaria in Africa? Hundreds if not thousands of lives could have been saved. Where is the empathy in that endeavor?
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Instead of leading with empathy, we’re better to use reason and compassion when dealing with people in need. Compassion differs from empathy in that were not mapping the feeling of another individual on our own. Instead, we support and help one another because it’s the right thing to do.

We should pick up the fallen phone because it will make that person’s day better not just because we’d want someone to do it if the rolls are reversed.

It’s a subtle difference but an important one. ​

Students are taking to social media in droves to protest mandatory in-class presentations. Citing discrimination, they’re calling for alternatives to public speaking, especially for those individuals with anxiety. 

Should public speaking be abolished from education?

According to a recent article in the Atlantic, over 90% of hiring managers say that oral communication is an essential skill in the business world. Educators feel that public speaking builds confidence, improves critical thinking, and teaches debating skills.

Traditionally, public speaking has been feared more than death. High school students are especially susceptible to presentation anxiety because it often takes place in front of their peers during a vulnerable time in their lives. A presentation that goes sideways could cause intense fear and anxiety. 

Is this good or bad?

If public education’s main job is to prepare student’s for the world, then it would make perfect sense to continue to have kids practice public speaking throughout their schooling. Educational institutions are designed to be places of practice and learning that are sheltered from the harsh realities of the ‘real world’. If students can’t face their fears in this protected environment it's highly unlikely they’ll be able to manage a presentation in a business setting. 

Safeyism (the idea that we’re over protecting our children) and anxiety are very real problems in education today. It’s unfortunate that they happen to be polar opposites. Perhaps a hybrid approach to public speaking is the most effective way to keep it in schools (having kids present in smaller groups first is an example). 

In a world where populism is favoured over expertise, it would be a disaster to abandon our ability to converse using oral communication. 

Seth’s blog today  talks about the importance of doing in the effort of learning something. This is a fundamental principal that sometimes gets confused when we’re in pursuit of a new goal. 

So many of us can watch some YouTube videos and have the confidence to be the next president or knowledge to understand the dynamics of a complex economic and political system. 

The trouble is that experience is still the king when it comes to learning. You can’t swim by reading books or watching videos. Even advanced scientific theories have no credibility without experimental evidence backing them up.

How many of you are teaching innovation without experimentation in your classes? 

Never under estimate the educational value of turning over a log to learn about habitats or programming a Sphero to reinforce computational thinking.  

...is to understand that your job or career or goal requires you to keep showing up regardless of how you feel. Putting in your best effort each and every day will build the grit required to to great work. There must have been days when Michelangelo wasn’t jazzed about chipping away marble for hours at a time. He did it though and now we have David. 

If you find yourself making the type of excuses that prevent you from showing up, then you may need to rethink your job or career or goal. 

​In 1955 the average child spent 2-3 hours outdoors every day. Rain and snow forced some inside down into the basements of friends to build forts, play board games and generally horse around. When outside, kids made tree houses, played war games, hung upside down on monkey bars and rolled through the streets on their bicycles. This was all without parental supervision. 

In 2018, the time kids play outdoors without supervision has shrunk to almost zero. Those kids who are granted freedom, typically have tight restrictions on where they can go and generally come from homes with single parents who work. 

Time in school and homework has increased exponentially as well. Homework is assigned in kindergarten and increases steadily until high school. 

Kids are now spending more time in structured play. Sports, music, art, dance and play dates are all organized, supervised and facilitated by adults. 

What are the benefits and consequences of a reduction in free play?

First the good. 

Childhood injury and accidental mortality are at an all-time low. Supervising adults are able to intervene in risky behaviour early enough to prevent minor and serious injuries. 

Kids are becoming highly specialized at an increasingly younger age. Most NHL players being drafted now played only hockey growing up and did it throughout the entire year. The result is an NHL that contains a historically high level of skill, speed, and size. The same can be applied for almost all professional sports.

Adult-child relationships are the strongest in recorded history. Kids now see adults as partners, leaders, and coaches instead of authority figures. Increased corporation between adults and children has led to more supportive and productive households. Teenagers are confiding their problems to their parents which allows for early interventions.

Unfortunately, all of these benefits do come at a cost.

Diagnosis of childhood anxiety and depression are the highest they have ever been. The attempted suicide rate for children and teens has more than quadrupled since 1955. Young adults ability to cope with setbacks in life has caused a monumental shift in culture at post-secondary institutions. Onsite school therapists are overwhelmed with students seeking support. Some statistics show that over 50% of all university students are diagnosed with either anxiety or depression at some point in their schooling. The course curriculum has changed to offer ‘trigger warnings’ for sensitive content that may potentially upset some students. 

In the younger grades, children are increasingly requiring adult intervention to solve interpersonal problems and structure their day. When offered unstructured time in school to solve a problem or create something new, students constantly require feedback and details for the outcome (ex. How do I get an ‘A’?). 

The message to push through the tough times and use ‘grit’ has mostly fallen on deaf ears because educators are increasingly finding it difficult to find the balance between safety and uncomfortableness in their classrooms. Living increasingly structured lives has reduced the ability for kids to learn appropriate self-initiative skills that can be found when setting up a game or solving a problem amongst themselves on the playground. 

It appears that Steven Pinker was absolutely correct when he tells us in his book ‘Better Angels of Our Nature’ that the world is safer, healthier and smarter. It’s impossible to predict what the future holds for a generation of kids who don't get to play very often.

However, it does seem to be an important step in development for children (and adults).

​What is the difference between a leader and a manager?

Are the titles interchangeable? 

Traditionally, managers were the people who kept the systems running. They made sure the work was done on time and with the best quality possible. Managers trained, supported and praised workers to ensure that the widget was built correctly. You earned a management title when you had enough experience and intelligence to effectively keep the systems running. 

Leaders were visionaries. They took risks and led from the front. Leaders didn’t necessarily have to be the person at the top of the hierarchy. It was awarded to anyone willing to inspire others to follow them into potentially dangerous situations with the hope of coming out better on the other side. 

Sometimes in education, we get the titles mixed up. We tell students to be leaders but really we want them to be managers. Great managers get the student council running properly, they keep track of all their school work and submit it on time with their best effort, and they support their peers so that the whole system works better.

Leaders push the boundaries of their education. They look for alternative ways to solve problems, they write controversial essays, and they seek out new ways to improve their school. They take risks and own up to their failures. They push for change.

When you’re evaluating someone’s leadership abilities, make sure you’re not mistaking them for a manager.

The original definition of trauma included only physical damage to a human being. Blunt force trauma was the result of an injury due to a motor vehicle accident or other non- penetrating wound suffered by an individual. That word has evolved over the years to include mental damage. The most famous being PTSD - post-traumatic stress disorder. 

PTSD occurs when a person is exposed to a highly stressful situation such as a war zone or a natural disaster. People diagnosed with this condition find themselves locked into a highly altered state and are generally unable to disconnect from their experience even though the threat has been removed. In the old days of WW1 and WW2, it was called shell shock. 

PTSD is a very important adaptation for human beings. Evolution carefully crafted this condition in us back during a time where the world was ripe with danger. PTSD allows humans to maintain a highly alert state which clearly would have positive survival benefits if you had just witnessed a saber-tooth tiger attack your tribe. 

Today soldiers in war zones and EMS workers are the most likely to experience a diagnosis of PTSD. What is interesting is that when help is received, there’s over a 90% chance of recovery. 

Humans are resilient.

If our mental recovery from very traumatic events is possible, why is that we spend some much time and effort ensuring that children are shielded from events that may trigger negative emotions? 

Failure and criticism are non-existent in elementary education and quickly fading in high-school and university. It’s clear that teaching resilience and grit requires students to embrace pressure and possibly failure. 

Individuals who recover from PTSD often report living happier lives than before the traumatic incident. Recognizing that life is fragile, taking pleasure in the small things, and focusing on interpersonal relationships are the main reasons why PTSD patients are happier. 

Humans have complex stress systems built into our anatomy. We’re designed to be stressed and recover. Look at someone who lies in bed all day. Their physical bodies begin to atrophy. The only way to maintain a healthy body is to put it under some form of physical stress. 

Our minds are no different.

Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2) is Canada’s version of the Navy Seals. They’re elite military operators whose skill sets range from training locals in the art of insurgent warfare to jumping out of planes behind enemy lines. They can fight in the desert, the arctic and under water. Unlike America’s special forces who can field highly specialized Navy Seals, Army Rangers, Green Berets, and Airforce Combat Controllers, the JTF2 are Canada’s only special force and need to be able to fight on land, sea and in the air, alone. Essentially, they’re the jack-of-all trades and they’re really good at what they do. 

The challenge with being a one stop shop for national defence is that you can’t be an expert in everything. If you spend too much time training for underwater operations than you’re bound to miss out on important training for air insertion. 

So how does JTF2 train to be an effective fighting unit that is coherent in all areas of the battle space without being an expert in every area?

Instead of being the best in one area, they learn to be really good in all areas. More importantly, they practice extreme flexibility. When they enter into dangerous combat zones, they’re acutely aware that they’re not experts in everything. They work together to minimize the risk and maximize success knowing that their skills may not be perfectly polished. This happens though detailed planning, having access to the best equipment possible and the understanding that failing to use their strengths is worse than overestimating their weaknesses. 

Extreme flexibility is a differentiating asset in a world where specialization is the norm. Kids are taught to be the best at a sport, a subject in school or an art. Nobody today is willing to settle for above average. The issue is that being above average at sports, school AND arts makes you far more versatile in a world of change than someone who has placed all their eggs in one basket. 

Understanding your strengths and embracing your weaknesses gives you the needed insight to perform in areas of unknown. The JTF2 prepare as best as possible but know that their strength lies in extreme flexibility. 

The next time you have the opportunity to participate in something you’re not an expert in, dive in guns blazing and embrace your weaknesses. It will only serve to make you extremely flexible.