 Presentation skills or the ability to get up in front of an audience and sell your ideas is a critical piece to educational leadership training. The ability to use anecdotes and stories as major "pins" during longer speeches is a fundamental skill. And, it's one that untrained presenters often miss. Your audience or class is able to retain the information you present much longer when it's encapsulated by a meaningful story.
Teaching this skill can be a larger task -- particularly when you need to give students individual attention to hone their skills and provide feedback. Title: The Art of Living Every Minute of Your Life
Featured: Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen Publication Date: 2008 Summary: Dr. Remen talks about her work and tells the stories of what it means to really live your life. She also shares the daily review technique that she teaches to help her students see life as new again. There is much warmth, humor, compassion, and inspiration to be found here. Ghost Conflict (n.) - When your current argument isn't really your current argument but rather is a replaying of an old script from past conflicts in your childhood or past relationships in general. A ghost conflict plays out angry word for angry word, tone for tone, volume for volume, and posture for posture as the conflict you experienced in the past.
 So far you've noticed the difference between the event itself and the meaning you give it, looked at how many of your beliefs are formed, and then examined how your beliefs can become self-fulfilling prophecies. This week is about how to tell if your beliefs are healthy or helpful. And for that, we need to introduce two important concepts: Explanatory Style and Cognitive Biases and Distortions.
Title: An Experiment in Gratitude, The Science of Happiness
Publication Date: 2013 Selection Reason: What if you told the people who've positively impacted you the most, what their influence has meant to you? Below is the fun experiment that shows what simply practicing gratitude can mean to your happiness.  “He told me not to worry about it,” began the conversation with a recently let go friend. “I just don’t understand what happened. He said it wasn’t a big deal.” The more my friend talked, the more I winced. It was clear what had happened. His boss had actually been honest when giving the corrective feedback conversation. The problem was the supervisor immediately minimized the conversation they had just undergone. What he had done was indeed a “big deal” and he should have worried about it enough to make sure it never happened again.
 Taken from a David Wilcox song, Broken Cup Syndrome has to do with where you find your own sense of security and self-love. You have a cup inside you that is constantly being filled up through your own as well as others’ validation. This affects your self-esteem and self-worth. The trouble is that the cup has a leak. There is no one-time fill-up.
You require a steady flow to keep the emotional water filling the cup. That validation comes from both yourself and from other people. Or, to quote my more religious students, every day you have to go to the well.  So far in examining your thoughts you've seen how your interpretations of what happens to you are separate from the events themselves. You've also delved a little into seeing how some of your beliefs about how the how world works are created.
This week, it's time to look at how those stories and beliefs affect you and how they influence what you create and even what you filter out as you see the world around you.
Title: Loving Yourself
Featured: Louise Hay Publication Date: 2007 Selection Reason: Louise Hay talks about what it means to really love yourself. The first step is often to turn off all criticism -- both of yourself and of other people.  Your first experience or exposure to a person, topic of study, or subject creates a first impression. This initial decision will then often disproportionally shape your ideas about that person or subject going forward. When new information comes in that contradicts this primary opinion it is often not even noticed or it is ignored in favor of only seeing information that supports the first appraisal.
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My Writing and Other Resources for StudentsA growing collection of writing and other resources for students to use to continue their growth. 
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