Episode 72. 3 Mistakes I Was Making Early in My O&M Career

You’re listening to A Step Forward, episode 72 and we are getting VULNERABLE today. Whoo. I can’t believe what I’m about to share, but I have to know… do you face these things, too?

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Okay, I'm shaking right now, I want to puke, let's be real, let's be 100% real, I am a total perfectionist. If it wasn't such an issue in my life that holds me back from so many things, I would be like loud and proud with it. I would probably get a sign. I would probably have like a flag, like, is there a coalition of perfectionist? It's horrible. But I am. I’m an enneagram, one, wing two, and I really feel like three is a base for everything in my life. So that means the one, I have to do things perfectly. The two, I have to help people. And the three, I almost have to I love to be a high achiever. So sharing all the times I've made mistakes, and there’s are not even all the times, it's a lot. I'm gonna have a horrible vulnerability hangover after this gets released. So please give me some love because I need it.

Moreover, I'm sharing this all this stuff to let you know that we're all human. Sometimes I think that I get people who say very nice compliments, very nice, and I love you all. But mistake, somebody having a voice and a platform and buying a microphone, for somebody who’s perfect. And that's not the case whatsoever. And granted, I've made a lot less mistakes over the years, because I've developed processes that help me have things in control. I don't have to recreate the wheel every single time. That's kind of why 2020 was so hard. We didn't launch our signature course in 2020 because we didn't know if those same processes were still gonna work. And now that we have all that under a teaching belts, and we're moving forward, and a lot of people are going back to in person, I'm confident that the process is inside what's now called impacting independence; it used to be called opening for students with multiple impairments. They are tried and true, not just by me, but by over 150 other teachers. And here's the thing, we can show up for that course, because we aren't perfect. We can show up and learn because we know all of us, none of us are perfect. Nobody has their act together. As much as I would want my act together with every single thing. I don't. And if you do, you're probably not going to resonate with most of these things. You are absolutely perfect.

It's important for you to see behind the curtain, the real me. And in fact, it's the trials and tribulations that make it impossible for me to stay quiet and not help others avoid the same mistakes. Especially when I see it over and over again. I'm so lucky. So lucky, that I get to talk to O&M specialists around the world. Like my DMs are filled with words like crikey and other people in other parts of everywhere. And I love that so much. And it shows me that I'm not alone in these things. Neither are you. We're all just human trying to do the best. You probably have an enneagram wing two as well or you are in enneagram two, because you're here because you like to help people. You're not here because you have all of your stuff figured out. Right?

So grab some coffee, some tea, go on an open cup walk if you're lucky. If you don't know an Open Cup is when you like literally go on a walk with an Open Cup, it makes you walk so slow. I told my mom this side note, I told my mom this. My Mom, I love her dearly, but she's like, high, high performing professional in corporate in South Florida. That city just goes so much faster than where I live in Texas anyway. And she was like, Nope, that's not for me. I spill it everywhere. I was like, yeah, towards the end of my walk, I tend to spill my coffee. Sometimes if I'm like, Alright, I'm over this, I need to start walking faster. Okay, that was a side note.

Okay. So here are my top three mistakes that I've made earlier in my career, I don't want you to make these so just, listen up. The first one, my sweet friend, is not listening to my gut. I cared so much about what other people thought. So here's my example. Here's my first or second year teaching, I was on a field trip with a co-worker and their class to a place within a mall. And as you know, at least here in America in order to get to the mall, from the bus stop you have to cross the parking lot. And typically, there are like restaurants, the front of the parking lot close to the street. And there were, and they were fast casual drive thru restaurants. And realistically, there was no safe quote on quote, way to do this from the bus stop. Like by the books, and even with my university teaching, which was radical for the type of university that I was at. I was taught and structure discovery at a university. It's still my little first or second year teacher brain was like, this isn't in the red book like what are we doing.

I was so worried about what other people were going to think of me if they drove by and saw that I was with this class. And we were going to cross this parking lot. So the teacher of the class, has visual impairment, had this visual impairment, maybe all their life, at least 50 years of their life like a long time. Small in town, they probably gone to the mall, they set up the field trip. My brain wasn’t thinking that. My brain was just so caring about what other people thought of me that I audibly questioned his judgment. In which he got frustrated and continued to do what he needed to do in order to get his students do their does the nation. What good did me caring what somebody who possibly could have driven by thought about what we were doing? This teacher had the absolute best intentions for their students crossed in a pretty safe way. And all I did was hurt our relationship. He no longer trusted me. And I didn't even have an idea as to what to think about him. I questioned his skills as a traveler. Wasn't right of me. I didn't even take into consideration that this man had better O&M skills than I did. I was so stuck in my ego that I couldn't see someone else knew better than I did. Like, how horrible is that?

Now, luckily, probably because of the many years that I've been teaching. Around the years I've been teaching that person would be in high school. Okay. They were born the year I started teaching. Okay, we're not gonna think about that. And you’re probably like, that person would have grandbabies by now, Kass. You're such a young. But it's been a hot minute, I'm losing track of the years, but I know that they would be in high school, they wouldn't be a college. I'm somewhere around there. Anyway, anyway.

Now, I haven't been in that exact situation for a long time. But even throughout the years, I was able to eventually rebuild my relationship with that teacher, by trusting them that they knew what they were doing, and also allowing other people to have their thoughts of me. Their thoughts of me, unless I'm actually doing a bad job, and I'll share some things later on in this episode, where I was and somebody did share their thoughts with me and it helped a lot. But somebody else's thoughts of me, if I'm standing in full integrity, my work and I am showing up as the most impactful, effective teacher as I can in that moment. That's on them. And these thoughts were not like my boss's thoughts, those thoughts matter. They weren't a co-workers’ thoughts like on the job. I was thinking more gossipy thoughts. Those thoughts don't matter. Somebody else's thoughts of me are just that. Their thoughts. It's kind of like the lesson of the lamp. So that lesson is two people go to an antique store and they see this lamp. And it is bright and shiny gold. You could bedazzle it. You could decorate it however you want, this lamp. One person says, Oh, that's so gaudy, yuck. One person says, Oh, I love that lamp. So which is it? Is the lamp gaudy? Or is it beautiful? It's neither. It's just the perception of the people looking at the lamp. The lamp is what it is, it's a lamp. The point being, and the lesson here being, kind of like Bernie Brown says, unless the person is willing to be in the arena. They don't get a say. And she says it much more eloquently. I'm going to stop it there. You don't get to have an opinion. Or I don't have to take on your opinion.

That was my first mistake. And I'm so glad I'm over that. Well, that was a heavy, heavy, heavy backpack to wear, trying to be perfect for everybody else. It didn't work. It drove me to frustration, and overwhelm. And I was still on the stage where I needed to learn how to make those decisions for myself. And now I do and now I have a process for all of it. But at the time, I didn't.

Okay, so number two, oh, this is the worst. I mean, I say it's the worst, but I haven't actually, like lost anybody. Nobody's died on my watch. So in that case, we’re okay. But at one point, so there was a time, my working days, or I felt really overwhelmed. And I was giving so much of my work that I didn't have a life outside of work. And I was feeling shame when I was the last one out of the office, but I wasn't having the impact to show for it. And it's just kinda like this inkling like, man, I know my learners can be getting better but I don't exactly know what to do. And to me, it felt like a mountain of issues that I needed to attack. But it's just really like taking one step every day. And you have to show up every day anyway. So you might as well take that step and not waste it. But I was wasting it. I shared this in an email recently. And it was really embarrassing. I was taking so much work home, that I didn't want to look at it during my planning times. And so I would like surf social media, I would end up wasting time. And guess what? Guess what I had to do that night, I just stay late. I wasn't doing the right things in the right order during the day. And then I ended up having to take more call at night, it was so backwards.

Luckily, I was called out by one of my co-workers. And that like snapped me. Oh, immediately sent me right back into place. And I'm so thankful for that person that they had the ability and the capacity to share that feedback with me. So I really was not performing at my best during that time. And I was trying so hard and then couldn't figure it out. But I was just prioritizing the wrong things in the wrong order. And I needed to go through that experience in order to become a better teacher. And then later on, I had kids and man, I was rocking and rolling with my learners and still working many hours past my contract time. And then I was jolted into the reality of not being able to stay late. I had to be able to pick up my kids. And I had a life that I wanted to lead outside of work.

And at some point for me, there was a period of a few months, where if I left work after 4pm, about 15 minutes after our contract time, I didn't get to eat dinner just because of how everything happened, how long it took to pick up my kids and I had to feed a toddler and then I had to feed a baby two different types of food and I just, we had to roll into bedtime, and then I wouldn't really get to eat dinner and it was just a mess. So it was jolted into this place of how do I create the same impact in the lives of my learners and still leave on time. So at that point I had to take to shame off, I wasn't eating, I had to leave. It was only when I created systems in my instructional processes, that I was able to continue to create the impact that I wanted to create and still live a life outside of work. We love our jobs, but we have to have balance in order to show up in integrity.

Okay, so that leads me to number three. And that was, at first I was throwing spaghetti at the wall, I had no processes for anything. I had just ideas of what needed to get done. But on a day to day basis, I had no idea how to do it. And I think that's where a lot of us get stuck. And we just make up this process that may or may not make sense, may or may not take extra time. And then we roll with that, because we all have processes. Like if we said, Hey, we're going to give you all the ingredients to bake a cake, I need you to bake a cake, you would figure it out, you would do it, but it's not going to be the best cake is it going to take you a longer amount of time or shorter amount of time. In order to do that. Let me just share with you some processes that I have just within my own personal life and then more related back into our teaching.

So just a few weeks or months ago started these processes. Every night, I have a closed down procedures. And every morning, I have opening procedures within my house like things that I do every night, around the dishwasher. I make coffee, I make some cold brew. And there are some other things that I do every night, right. And then the morning when my kids are eating breakfast, I unload the dishwasher. I have my coffee it's already made. And the other things that I have there takes about 10 15 minutes. And then I don't have dishes in my sink. Because dishes in my sink stresses me out. Cool. That's an easy process. I'm in my mid 30s and just started this gives her seven years of just started this the whole time. I've been so stressed out about dishes in my sink. Because dishes are horrible. They're not a joy and joy. For me, it's like a struggle care. I just I cannot put the dishes. But I have this process in place. And now it doesn't take that long. And now I'm not stressed out.

Let's talk about another home process that I do not have an order is my mail. I cannot remember to get my mail. I drove by the mailbox once twice a day, if I leave multiple times a week, tell me I'm in terms of giving mail, when someone says Hey, did you get that thing sent you like oh, you sent me a thing. I should get the mail. And then it takes me four days to get the mail. And then what happens? I have mail piling up. I have like mail file folders on a wall that stressed me out. I don't want to see that. And then I just put the mail in the, not even in the folder, just like the filing cabinet thing on the walls. It’s just all there, it’s a mess. Don't mail me anything. That right there is a good example of how you can have a process that works for you in a process that doesn't. But either way, you have a process right? Well, back when I was throwing spaghetti at the wall, I had these really inefficient processes. I would like take notes on a notepad. When we started to get smartphones, I was so scared of somebody seeing me with my smartphone out. And I do have some like stories that happened with a smartphone out that I, if you haven't heard them, I'll tell you at another time. But I did have a situation where I look bad in front of somebody very important, because a student said that I had my phone out when I was trying to teach her how to use the phone for the lesson. And it obviously did not work she was not getting on.

Okay, but so now, right? If I take a note, on a piece of paper, which I don't anymore, I just I'm upfront and tell all my admins Hey, I'm going to take notes on my phone, if you see me on my phone, I'm taking notes. I just share that with them very upfront about it. I'm not on my phone on social media ignoring my learner, I'm taking notes, and this is how I'm going to do it. And then this is where it's going to go. And then if they want to have access to it, they can have access to it. But simply by doing that, I'm able to cut out the writing it down on a piece of paper. And then I can copy and paste it into the data collection form that I need. Or I can just have data collection forms since I'm contract, on my actual phone, little Google Form. Those are processes those are much easier. If you don't have those processes in place, you're just wasting a ton of time.

So the trick is to think about are our processes helping us or are they keeping us stuck? Do we even know when we're stuck? That's a topic for another day. So I've shared three mistakes that I've made. In my teaching, we have all made mistakes. And we can all always get better.

One of our participants from impacting independence, who's also on our planning committee for the International O&M online symposium, Dr. Molly Paisley said, “Before taking the course I was struggling with figuring out where to start with skill instruction for a student who did not have comprehensive O&M services prior to my arrival. Now, I'm excited to go through the framework to create a comprehensive plan that I can then discuss and eventually roll release with our teachers and family.”

Those are the kinds of things that you get to have, when you join our program, if you can come in, and start from a place of being an actual student, and open and willing to learn, for me, what these have allowed me to do, learning from these mistakes and developing these processes, and looking at how I was teaching and getting the right angles, impactful teaching strategies, and just killer collaboration with the rest of my team. Now, whenever I get a learner, I know exactly what to do with them. I don't have that feeling of overwhelmed, I feel confident. I feel like I can go into a meeting with their parents having a good relationship with them having a good relationship with the admins, a good relationship with my learners. I have a clear path for the day to day, what am I going to do? How am I going to get there? And I can take this system into any situation or structure. I'm excited to share with you as things progress for me as I start working with adults, how exactly this all fits into that as well and how it all really relates to every aspect of that.

Okay, here's the 30 second recap, and I'm getting ready for my vulnerability hangover. Okay, the first mistake, top mistake that I made earlier in my career was caring so much about what other people thought and not listening to my gut. I wasted a lot of energy with that. The second thing was wasting a lot of time at work by not prioritizing what I was doing in order to save time. And then the third one was throwing spaghetti at the wall and not having processes for the day to day tasks that I needed to get done in order to take each step forward.

Just so you know, impacting independence closes for registration on August 5. If you're interested in getting the systems and processes that I mentioned earlier, head over to alliedindependenceonline.com/impact to learn more, or just feel free to send me a DM if you have a question that hasn't been answered, or if you just have a question in general, I am super happy to talk to you. Alright, I hope that you can take these skills and use them to take one step forward every day. See you in a few weeks.