Take a look at this photograph.

Because I have.

For a week.

 

And, after a week of looking at it. . .I think I will just go ahead and dump it off my phone.

I’m done looking at it now.

I’m finished with this photo and I am finished with the conversation within my head that it prompted. Finished, I tell you.

You see? Sometimes. . .I talk to myself.

Don’t you?

Be honest. You do too. Don’t you? It’s okay to say it here. Sometimes, we talk to ourselves.

And what we have to say to our inner selves is so base. . .so cruel. . .that what we say to ourselves we would never say to someone that we loved. . .or even cared about a little.

When I look at this picture, I don’t see how far we have come in two months. I see no great strides, despite the fact that I had already run three miles on this day, enjoyed a wonderful day at the park with family, and was in the midst of enjoying an evening Halloween Party at the happiest place on earth.

I see the same person I saw in August when this journey began. I see sloppiness. I see how the light is hitting those not-so-hard-to-miss places that remind me that I have really let myself go. That’s what I see. And we could kibitz around through comments that negate all of this.

This is not what I am looking for here. . .I want to say something about “self-talk.” It’s this kind of “self-talk” that carried me through a dark time in my life where food and the consumption of food were confusing to me. The cycle of eating and then feeling bad about it. The end solution. . .don’t eat.

So, I am finished with this conversation. As our pop-sage, Pink, says, I am going to “choose the voices in my head and make them like [me] instead.”

Easy?

Not as easy as I made it look.

Wait. . .

DID it look easy?

Because it isn’t. Really. But I want to flip this.

Because you may say, “This just isn’t true of you, Paul. I see ____________.”

Wait a minute.

Isn’t this what a good lead learner may say during a 1:1 interaction with a struggling student? Listen to the pervasive self-talk that may be in place maintaining a running dialogue of self-defeat within your learners. Conversation openers might sound like, “I’m so _______ (fill in the blank)” or “I just can’t do ___________” or the most insidious, “I’ll never be as ___________ as ____________.”

These are the silent communications that take place inside of our student’s heads each day and I can say this with a high-degree of confidence because I am still a student. Aren’t you?

I knew that you were. I heard you say it quietly in the fact that you are still here reading. There is something to learn here, I hope, about the power of “self-talk” in our personal and professional lives. As the keepers of our bodies and the lead learners of our learning communities.

So, what about that student who still struggles with reading.

Wait.

Let me ask this a little more suggestively.

What about that student who still struggles with the reading we ask them to do as a part of our curriculum.

And I hear you out there. . .”Mr. Hankins, our students do have standards that they must meet and these do include rigorous reading assignments.”

Yes. I know. I’ve read these standards too. But. . .what is it about the power of self-talk that might help us to introduce the readings and reflections we might hope that our students would use. . .would internalize. . .to become better readers, if the louder talk they are hearing says that they will never understand anything that comes of reading because they are _____________ (fill in the blank).

I ask you to fill in the blank because you know your students better than I. I would submit to you that the students I have talked to 1:1 can fill in that blank with the kind of self-deprecation that would make Ricky Gervais look like Dr. Phil.

And the conversation goes on. Class meeting after class meeting.

I wonder about the kinds of reflections our students might do that would move beyond even the “purposeful talk” that Jim Burke has been working with of late. Even “purposeful talk” still sounds to me like academic speak coming from a student who is not speaking that language in the first place.

And this is not to refute Jim’s ideas. I love Jim’s ideas. I would like to adopt the idea of “purposeful talk” next week. But, my own example of “self-talking” that comes of one image captured within microseconds of time says to me that this is the direction to go.

It’s time to think about “self-talk.” Seriously.

Stay tuned. We’ll be talking here.

And as for that picture. . .it’s here to anchor this post.

But it will not “weigh” me down.

Because my “self-talk” over the past week has led me to lose 5 pounds over the vacation period, running at least three miles a day.

Oh. . .and this morning?

I ran the Navy Physical Readiness Test. A test I struggled with when I was in the Navy. I always passed it. Begrudgingly passed it. One must run this in less than fourteen minutes at my age to earn an “excellent” rating.

I ran it in 13:45. Which earns me a “satisfactory.”

In the 20-24 age group.

Self-talk. Are we listening? And what are we saying?

Sometimes. . .I talk to myself.

And I’ve decided.

I think I need to be a little more friendly to myself.