Carrots, Eggs, and Coffee Beans

A great way to start each day!!!

Hey everyone! It has been a while since I have written anything here. Since the last time I wrote, which was during the blizzard this winter, I finished my 7th year at West Clermont and turned my keys in. I decided to step aside from full time teaching for a little while in order to focus on writing, my personal health and some other opportunities I want to explore in the music education world. Watch for those things to be coming out throughout the summer.

Some of you may be asking after reading that about my health. I am as healthy as I usually am. However, I want to get in to better shape and need time, and energy, to do that. I was working 40 hours during the school day and then doing another 3-6 hours of rehearsal after school most days. That schedule takes a toll on you, especially as I am approaching 40 (next year).

It is hard to invest a lot of time and energy into something and walk away unchanged. I would say it is almost impossible because you are giving something a piece of yourself. It doesn't have a be any one thing. It could just be the chase of what you want. I know looking back at my life, I chased a lot of things. I am just now seeing how those chases impacted where I am today (both positively and negatively).

This brings me to a short story I recently read, "The Coffee Bean: A Simple Lesson to Create Positive Change" by Jon Gordon and Damon West. "The Coffee Bean" is about 100 pages and is a super quick read with large text and illustrations, which is right up my alley!

The story is really about how a carrot, an egg, and coffee beans react to hot water (pressure). When you put a carrot into hot water it becomes soft and mushy. When you put an egg in hot water it hardens and becomes a hard boiled egg. When you put coffee beans in water, they change the water into coffee. The moral of the short story is how does pressure impact us and in turn how do we impact our environment. If pressure defeats us (the carrot), we turn soft and mushy. We might complain more and have a defeatist attitude. If the pressure hardens us (the egg), we might be distant and short tempered. It pressure pushes us to thrive (the coffee beans), we can create a positive atmosphere to be a part of.

I know that I have been all 3 of these things. There have been times in my life where I was carrot and very defeated ready to change paths entirely because something was going my way. I have been a hard boiled egg, where I just wanted to keep to myself. I might not have been hurting, but I definitely wasn't helping in either other those states of mind.

I have also been the coffee bean. Full of infectious excitement. Eager to teach students and leave my mark on a program. I think it is easy to start something as the coffee bean, but over time it is hard to stay there. It is easy to react to failures and disappointments. It is hard to just move on from thing, events, seasons, etc. that should have been more successful.

It is hard to be a coffee bean when you don't put yourself on your priority list...

This season of life is about getting back to being the coffee bean. It's not about impacting a program right now, but about creating positive change in my own life right now. It's about taking chances on opportunities that I would have passed on because "I don't have time."

So what are you? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean right now.

I highly recommend you check out, "The Coffee Bean: A Simple Lesson to Create Positive Change" by Jon Gordon and Damon West. I know it made an impression on me and I think it will do that same for you.