Have you ever had that moment where you’re stuck in a project or experiencing a challenge? Then you just take one more step into it, and it seems like things just clarify? All of a sudden you gain a little bit more understanding and you see a little bit better?
I had one of those moments a number of years ago. I was a teacher in Houston, Texas. I had just finished a unit on genocide with sophomores. It was a pretty weighty topic, but essential for the students to understand. One of the things that I always liked to do inside my units of study was talk to the students and just ask questions. (I didn’t realize at the time that my questioning was an unconscious form of coaching my students.) Inside the genocide unit, we’d been talking about the genocide in Darfur. I asked the students if there was anything they could change in their lives in Houston, Texas that would possibly ripple all the way to Africa, and, maybe just maybe, affect the people over there.
Some of the students laughed at my question. In fact, I had one student that raised his hand and quickly quipped Mr Rob (my education moniker), “If you’re telling us to go change and do something, what are you doing about it?” I responded that I was trying to educate them in the hopes that maybe one of them had the creative mind and could possibly figure a solution to to help the world in bigger ways. The students laughed at me again.
At the end of that day, I sat down at my desk and started to wonder if maybe I wasn’t getting the traction I thought I was capable of getting as a teacher. Perhaps, I wasn’t inspiring students the way I was supposed to be inspiring them, or was it possible I was just asking the wrong questions. Within about a week of that occurrence, we were coming to the end of the school year, and a senior came into my class that I’d had been a prior student of mine. I remember thinking that she was going places in life. Her name was Samantha, and I hadn’t seen her in quite some time. I welcomed her into the classroom and asked how she was doing. She said she was so great. She had received a full ride scholarship to a university in Colorado. She had dropped by my class because she wanted me to read her college entrance essay.
I paused wondering why I would be interested in reading a college entrance essay. After some more prodding from her, I read the letter, while she sat across from me. The essay was titled “Project Zimbabwe.” I have kept that essay all these years. I want to share it word for word with you. Here is the text of that essay, replicated exactly how it was typed.
“Last year in my world history class we did a unit over genocide. During the unit we watched Hotel Rwanda. The movie was based off a true story of genocide which a genocide of the Tutsis. The movie brought me to a screeching halt, and made me think of all the acts of violence, be it every day crime, civil was or extermination of a race. I couldn’t understand how people did not want to lend a helping hand ,or much less not even know about the depth of these situations. So, I got to thinking. I thought long and hard and came to the deciding fact that I wanted to help.
So I began with just myself. I knew I couldn’t change the world, but I could at least better myself, and maybe lighten some one else’s day. I started by volunteering at hospitals, nursing homes, and an organization called SIRE. Then it spread to a few of my best friends who wanted to get in on helping. So I and 3 other girls began working at food banks, and shelters. Then from there it became an unstoppable snow ball effect. The group that began with just me now has 15 girls. We are not an official organization, nor do we have a name. We are just a group of teens who wants to better our future community, nation, and even our world.
June 12th of 2008 I decided we needed to broaden our area of help. I was thinking why do we need to just help our community and city? So I brought the idea up to some of the girls in the group and they loved it. Much to my surprise there were thinking somewhere along the lines of helping in the Middle East and ravaged countries of civil war. We took the idea and ran with it.
At the time one to the group members had a father that was stationed in Iraq. She received letters from him on a once every two weeks basis. In the letters he wrote about his love for her and the typical parental things, but the things that stuck out and grabbed me the most, were the things he would say about the children and women there. It literally was heart breaking seeing some of the photos of village children with no clothes and dirt on their faces. So we held a meeting and unanimously decided we needed to help in any way we could. We came up with the idea sending care packages to her father and he and his troop delivering them to the city. We informed her dad and once we got the letter saying it was an “okay” we started to plan.
We set out and fundraised for about four weeks. We sold candy bars, had car washes, did swim-a-thons, anything we could do to raise money we did it. In the food weeks we raised 3,540 dollars and 22 cents. With the money we raised we sent boxes upon boxes of clothing, toys, non-perishable food, and little care notes to her dad’s station. It took about two weeks for everything to get to Iraq but when we got the response letter back from her dad everything was worth it.
The letter came in a box, and in the box were pictures of the village we helped. One picture continually sticks out in my mind. It was a picture of a little girl, she couldn’t be older than 5, and she was wearing the clothing I had picked out and holding a Barbie doll in her right hand. It was the most gratifying things to see that even oceans away we were able to better our world. Even though it was just a tiny gesture, it made all the world of difference. From that moment on it really sunk in; the fact that even being a small group we were able to make a difference.
Two months and 20 days later we have another project that is underway; Project Zimbabwe. We decided to move into African countries. We wanted to help out in Darfur, but it is just too big an issue for 15 girls. Thus, the conclusion of helping ravaged villages in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe faces growing danger of economic collapse and open civil war. Many villages have already been destroyed in riots about economic and social issues. So we decided to do the same thing that we did with the villages of Iraq. We choose the village in the brush lands of Matabeleland North province, in western Zimbabwe.
This is not a village that has been ransacked by political riots, or overcome with civil war, but instead is a village that is facing a difficult time of drought, an unstable government, and a few harassments by police. I found this village reading an article on BBCnews.com. It was a series of articles called Dumped in Zimbabwe’s poor villages. The articles talk about the hardships these villages face. We choose this village in an unbiased fashion. We put 10 poor villages on slips of paper and put them in a hat and the village located in Matabeleland was the one selected. So just like the last time we got our location we sat down and planned.
Just as last time we fundraised but this time for 6 weeks. In the six weeks we made a total of 5,124 dollars, through various corporate donors and such. And just as the previous project we set out and bought clothes, food, water, and toys. I think the final count was 32 3x3x3 boxes filled with various merchandise. The boxes were shipped off on Friday October 17 and should arrive in the village in about 3 weeks. A family member of mine is traveling around the world with many of his comrades of battle, sort of like a life’s pursuit, but they will be making a stop in the village to see if all has gone as planned, and our package was shipped and taken in by the people. I realize that I can’t change the world by sending one care package after the next, but at least I can have the possibility of making someone or some people happy.
This is all due to the unit of genocide in Mr. Roberds’ world history class. Thank you for the lessons you teach.”
Samantha did what she did because I asked a question. I taught my students to always take the next step. I believe that one step up makes all the difference. Look at the difference Samantha made by taking one step up through each of her challenges.
So in your life. When you find the boulders, and the trees seem impassable. When you find the challenges are too much to overcome. The trick is not to leap. The trick is to take one step up. If we continue to take one step up, we will constantly find progress in our lives.
I want to give you a quick, high school-style reference to remember how to take one step up. I call it One Step Up. However long it has been since you reflected on using letters for grades, I think you will be able to use them more effectively now. On your “F-days” or Failure Days, when you’re failing and someone walks up to you, and they say, “Hey, take that frown and turn it upside down,” you want to punch them in the face. So, instead of your F days, focusing on trying to jump from F to A, just go from a Failure Day to a “D-day”, or Dismal Day. If you really look at it taking one step up: dismal is a lot better looking than those that are failing.
On your Dismal Days when it’s a little bit dark. Why don’t you just look at where most of us sit most of our lives and that’s a “C-Day”, where it’s a Comfortable Day. Step up from dismal to comfortable. As you do that, you’ll find that most of your life sits around “C-Day”, it’s comfortable and average.
But if you continue to take one step up, you’ll find that your “B-Day will come along and that’s a Breakthrough Day. That’s what I experienced when my former student Samantha came in and gave me her college entrance essay. Breakthrough Days give you energy. They make you want to keep going. They cause you to want to be, do, and have more.
Don’t stop on your Breakthrough Days. Take one step up to an “A-Day”, an Auspicious Day. What the heck does that mean? The Latin root of auspicious implies divination from observation of birds. Think about things from the perspective of eagles.
When you’re buried inside the boulders, when you’re lost in the mountain, when you can’t see the forest through the trees, and you are sure you cannot go any step further, take one step up and realize that if you will see it from the view of eagles. The view becomes green, the boulders are smaller, the trees become beautiful.
And at that point, you realize one step up makes all the difference.
If you are ready to take the next step up with me, book a time to talk about what coaching can do for you.