#gdmlicc2018

By: Haley Babcock

According to the character strengths assessment through the VIA Institute on Character, my number one character strength was ‘Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence.’ As an artist, I’m constantly reminded of the beauty and wonder humans are capable of, and I’m innately motivated to find beauty in everything and everyone and help others see it too. My second strongest trait was ‘Humor’ (I also like to think of it as ‘Joy’), which was especially not surprising considering I walked out of the womb onto a stage with a permanent smile and a stand-up mic in hand.

I was, however, surprised to see at the very bottom of the list, dead last, 24 out of 24, was ‘Courage.’ The disclaimer says rating lower in one character strength versus another doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a weakness or an inability on your part, rather it simply means it will take more focus and energy to demonstrate this characteristic. Did that stop me from thinking I’m a big, fat coward? 

Luckily, for the fourth session of Community Connect our topic was: Courage, Confidence, & The Comfort Zone. As we worked through the session with Dr. Christi Hegstad, aka The Deliverer of Truth-Bombs, I realized one of my biggest personal and professional challenges:

Hello, my name is Haley, and I am a Comfort-Zone Junkie.

I’ve been really reliant on my comfort-zone for the last couple of years. I avoid opportunities to make connections with new people. I haven’t been questioning my processes or habits and I definitely have not been taking many chances. It’s been easy to tell myself it’s not so bad; I know the people I know, I do the things I like and don’t do the things I don’t want to do, and I can easily foresee what’s to come. But I’ve also been restless, bored, even complacent, which has truly lead to discontent and anxiety. Luckily, this program popped up just when I needed it, and it’s forcing me out of my comfort zone with the power of a thousand mongooses. Seriously, just writing this blog post is at least 78% out of my comfort zone because I’m not a writer and who am I to share my thoughts on the internet?! 

But heck, everyone else is doing it, so here’s another GIF and my top 3 take-away tips for Breaking the Comfort-Zone Habit:

Tip 1: Define your PURPOSE

Knowing your purpose makes you confident; Confidence = Courage. Dr. Hegstad has really been driving home the need to be rooted in your purpose. Since defining my purpose (“I am a nurturing artist and educator dedicated to mentoring others to build confidence, creativity, and curiosity”) I feel more prepared to serve others, more excited to align myself with new people, and more confident in my abilities. While my purpose is technically in my comfort-zone (because it’s what makes me me) it gives me confidence knowing I have a jumping-off point and I have more courage knowing I have worth, knowing I have something to give other people.

Tip 2: Do your research

I’m currently in the process of building and launching a pilot internship program for college students at work. Not only is this a completely new program, I have also never run an internship program before. When I found out this was going to be in my charge, I was more than ready to bow out before I even had the chance to try! During the last session, one of the mentors at my table (the wonderful, Julie Stewart) talked about how, in the face of leaving her comfort zone, she did as much research as she could to help prepare her for a new challenge and it reminded me: I am a researcher and an over-preparer. For me, having as much knowledge as I can, helps me feel more confident and ready to leave my comfort-zone, so I like to research and ask lots of questions. I’ve now contacted someone in the community who currently runs an internship program, I’m meeting with another person who works with college-age students, and I’m researching similar programs around the country. I may still be anxious about this program, but with research and investigation, I am taking steps to downgrade my comfort-zone from a full armored face mask to a fashionable, tiny hat.

Tip 3: Practice makes Courage

Being asked to do something you’re not experienced with is a sure-fire way to make a RED ALERT sign go off in your mind. Which judging by the chorus of groans in our session, is exactly what happened when Dr. Hegstad asked a room full of adults to draw a portrait of the person across from them in 3 minutes. Well, groans from most with the exception of the artist in the room - me! Coincidentally, I’m currently teaching a unit on self-portrait drawing to my 7th and 8th grade students. Every time I introduce this unit, I’m greeted with terror: “What?! I have to draw MY face?! But I don’t know how to draw a nose! How do I draw hair?? I JUST CAN’T DRAW!” And my response is always the same: To get better at anything, you have to practice. My students constantly impress me with what they’re willing to try and even further, I’m more amazed by the support and encouragement they give each other when they see their classmate is out of their comfort zone. In our session, we discussed that we’re each our own worst critic. After the portraits were drawn in our session, the other person didn’t throw a fit when everyone showed each other their drawings; they responded with warm remarks, kind laughter, and compliments. Just giving “the thing” a try will almost always end up better than we tell ourselves it will and more often than not, there are people around us encouraging our practice, helping us to build courage, and break out of our comfort zones.

by Guillermo Bailey

Culture Club - Time (Clock Of The Heart) 

*click the link above to experience a time warp back to the 80′s

This Boy George and Culture Club song premise sounds soooo familiar. Time is precious, time is a gift, so don’t waste time. Now that we have that established let’s get back to my reality (not yours because I know you would never waste time <winking emoji>). 

To save you the reader some time, this blog will take you on average 3 minutes to complete not counting the video. There, now feel free to revel in your newly found minutes, muh ha ha ha ha! In fact, imagine if every piece of information came with this disclaimer, would it change how you went about our day? That small addictive phone game with vexed birds and sickly swine will only take up 30 minutes of your time every time you play it. That brand new Netflix series you “need to binge” will only take 13 hours. That new harmonica course you always wanted to take and master will only take 1 hour per day, for the rest of my life. OK the last one is a bit of an exaggeration but I think you get where I’m headed. Time can get away from us fast. 

I’ve been taking a budgeting course and one of the things we talk about with money seems to apply to time too. If you don’t budget money and make it work for you then you’ll wonder where it’s gone. It is so easy to spend a couple of dollars here and there on frivolous things and then look at a balance sheet at the end of the year and think “where did all the money go”? Well time is no different my friend, and it’s actually even worse. I can make up for a budget shortfall through more earnings, more efficient operation, or even borrowing it from someone with lots more money than me. Let’s try that with time.

First you can’t earn more time because time is finite, there is no way to earn more time. Secondly you can’t borrow time from someone else. Your time is yours and yours alone. Once a second, a minute, an hour has passed there is no going back. It is spent FOREVER unless you are one of those super smart people who have unlocked the secrets of the universe. I’m looking squarely at you both Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye. I always feel like you two know more than you are letting on. So barring any leaps in quantum physics we are solidly stuck in our current time continuum. 

Some of us however are masters of time manipulation and efficiency. Ask the average Olympic athlete in a timed event how important time is and they will tell you it matters quite a bit. To be even more specific we can ask Cha Min-kyu of South Korea how important time is considering he lost a gold medal to  Håvard Holmefjord Lorentzen of Norway by 0.01 seconds. These two athletes made the most of their experience in fractions of the time most of us have available every day. Now I’m not saying that we have to live in fear of the clock, but maximizing our time is in our own best interest. 

This all leads to the questions of how do we use our time best? What is your way to make time your slave not the other way around? What are you doing with your time that makes you, your community, or Central Iowa better?

Tell me your thoughts; I’m interested and listening because “the time is precious I know”.