As I was painting the window this morning, my mind went “from
A to Z” very quickly. I thought about
the power of our thoughts, and how they can become our reality.
In high school I had an Algebra teacher named Mr. Epstein. I wasn't a great student because I didn’t
care that much about school. I did just
enough to get by my mom’s strict demand for “good grades” without really
learning how to study. I think it bugged
Mr. Epstein that I wasn't very dedicated.
One afternoon, after giving yet another test, he placed MY
paper on the overhead projector.
Everyone knew it was mine because my name was at the top for everyone to
see. He proceeded to go down my test,
putting an “X” by each answer, saying, “Don’t do it like THIS… or THIS…or THIS…” Yes, I was humiliated, but definitely not
motivated!! I hated math after that and
up until I was 41 years old, felt like there was NO WAY I could do math.
But then I returned to college to get my AS degree and had
to take some math classes. Luckily for
me, my first teacher was Ross Taylor, former principal (and Rod’s boss) at
Dixie High School. An occasional test he
returned to me had a long paragraph of praise, written personally to me!! (And he did that for every student!!) It was amazing how that affected me, and how
I KNEW I could do math after that!
Now, the point that came to my mind as I painted the window
was this: I don’t know “for sure – for sure”
how many questions Mr. Epstein marked wrong on my test. Perhaps it was the entire test, as I've come to believe, but it may have been a few.
But over the years, as I have THOUGHT about the experience, and TALKED
about it, that one afternoon in my math class grew, and became a much bigger detriment to me than
it needed to be. That was MY doing, not
Mr. Epstein’s. The “boomerang” of my
thoughts came back to hit me in the head and punish me for a very long time!!
Too bad I didn't understand this concept earlier in my
life. Thank goodness I know it now!
We need to be careful what we
choose to think about and dwell on, because it just might become our reality!!
No comments:
Post a Comment