On a recent airplane ride I resumed listening to an audiobook I had started a while back. While some may find the title of the book potentially offensive, the book is “The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson, it is a good read. The asterisk really is in the title of the book. In the text (or audio version in my case) the asterisk is not there. Anyway, the point is that this book looks at finding what is really important in your life and focusing on that.
The author discusses that we live our life based on our values. He discusses what he sees as good, healthy values. His list of good, healthy values includes; honesty, innovation, vulnerability, standing up for oneself, standing up for others, curiosity, charity, humility, self-respect, and creativity. What determines these as good or healthy values is that these are internal values, things we can control. A partial list of bad, unhealthy values includes; dominance through manipulation or violence, always being the center of attention, not being alone, being liked by everybody, and being rich for the sake of being rich. These are bad or unhealthy values because they are external and frequently out of our control.
Manson discusses that self-improvement is about picking and/or finding better values. This section of his book reminded me of what we discuss in Chapter 1 about building positive, healthy relationships. We even use the Lundy activity where we look at 16 characteristics of positive, healthy relationships. I find it encouraging when outside reading or activities remind me of things we teach in our classes. We have such a great collection of knowledge, wisdom, and advice that our trainers teach their staff. The information in our courses is not just a ‘what to do while at work.’ We need to get our staff to see that Mandt classes are daily living skills that apply to our personal as well as our professional lives. We not only are training our staff to work well with each other and the people we support, we are giving them skills they should use to live a better life.
Dr.Dale Shannon – Director of Instructional Design
