Favorite Ideas and Links - Daily Learning Focus

After our MFME trip in Feburary and the resolutions we set together, I've been making a valiant attempt to carve out a few minutes each day to learn something new. I realized I'm so busy dishing out ideas and help that I don't take the time to focus on my own learning and growth. I've started taking about 10 minutes a day to read or watch something that offers me new thoughts and makes my brain really think. I've been watching quite a few TED talks and General Conference talks. It's amazing how much difference those 10 minutes make!

Here are a few favorite subjects I've learned about in the past couple weeks:

WHAT CHILDREN NEED
I re-watched Rosemary Wixom's great talk from Conference about how to build up our children and be kind but strong influences in their lives. Loved her points about being more fully present with our children and our lives as we commit to disconnect with technology regularly (that helped prompt the big promotion we're doing on Power of Moms of Screen-Free Week next week).

IMPERFECT FAITH IS OK
I love Elder Holland's talk on holding fast to what we know and standing strong until additional knowledge comes. Faith and knowledge never start out perfect. The size of our faith is not the issue - it's the integrity we show towards the beliefs we do have. Do not start with what you don't know. Start with what you do know and build on that. Here's the link to watch it:

MOTIVATION
I thought a lot about what really motivates me (and my kids and those I work with at Power of Moms and in other capacities) and how to increase motivation as I watched this TED talk by Dan Ariely: What Makes Us Feel Good About Our Work

Here's a little description: Why do we work and attempt to accomplish hard things? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it isn't just money. But it's not exactly joy either. It seems that most of us thrive by making constant progress and feeling a sense of purpose - plus we need to feel that our attempts are appreciated and acknowledged. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely presents two eye-opening experiments that reveal our unexpected and nuanced attitudes toward meaning in our work.

CHOICE, HAPPINESS, AND SPAGHETTI SAUCE

This talk by best-selling author, Malcom Gladwell (wrote Tipping Point and Blink) was very interesting to me. It was really interesting to think about what brings happiness is not something that can be named for everyone but that rather, happiness is brought by different things for different people. He guy talks about how revolutionary it was when it was discovered through taste tests that there was no ONE or TWO spaghetti sauces that made most people happy. Rather, people liked very different things and the spaghetti sauce companies learned to make a whole lot of different varieties. Interesting stuff. Here's the talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

HOW SCHOOLS SHORTCHANGE KIDS
And I really liked thinking back to my days at Harvard Education School while watching this humorous talk by Sir Ken Robinson about how schools are shortchanging our kids in many ways and how important it is to nurture our kids' creativity: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Schools are set up to produce college professors based on the curriculum covered and methods used. But not everyone wants or needs to be a college professor! We need dancers and artists and inventors and organizers - none of which is promoted by the current curriculum in most schools.