PRISM
#OneWord2021
By, Michael Earnshaw
January 6, 2021
@MikeREarnshaw
2021 will be my third year adopting the #OneWord approach to improving myself throughout the 365 days rather than setting unrealistic resolutions. For my #OneWord 2019, I went with BELIEVE and left my comfort zones, both personally and professionally, more so than I ever even dreamed! If it wasn’t for BELIEVING, I would never have begun writing and sharing it with the world, speaking at educational conferences, or talking about two of my loves, Punk Rock and Education with my brother Josh Buckley on our podcast Punk Rock Classrooms. By living 2019 through the word BELIEVE I was able to move myself to be the husband, father, educator, leader, and the person I knew I was destined to be but had always lacked the confidence to get there.
Building off the momentum from 2019, 2020 started off amazing! I was flowing through the first few months, just like the word I had chosen to live by, WATER. I was able to break down even more barriers that stood in my way to make me better and stronger to help inspire others to work together to change our world for the better. By adopting WATER as my #OneWord2020 I was able to accomplish a goal that I have had since elementary school, to have a book of my own published. In January of 2020, I am proud to say that I was able to sign a contract with Edumatch and will be able to share the EduCulture Cookbook: Recipes and Dishes to Positively Transform School and Classroom Culture in the Spring/Summer of 2021!
Everything was on track for 2020 to be one of my best years yet! WATER was freely flowing and I was living my best life until a dam was built out of nowhere. The WATER was stopped and everything in my life began to overflow and flood out in every aspect. At first, I felt that the Covid-19 Pandemic was to blame for building a dam that was stopping my positive flow, but after months of living through a non-stop flood, I realized that it was me that had built the dam.
I was seeing the world through one lens. Everything that was happening, school shutdowns, quarantines, no toilet paper on the shelves, I only saw the negative in every situation. This had a horrible effect on me to be the leader my staff and students deserve, the husband my wife chose to spend the rest of her life with, and most importantly, the strong father my kids needed. My self-care slowly declined. Runs and weight lifting sessions were sporadic, I’d be lucky to get in two a week. Diet, I guess if you mean eating everything and anything I wanted. I wasn’t reading, wasn’t connecting with my crew, my PLN, and spending way too much time just zoning out in front of the TV every night with nothing good fueling my body.
Whenever something went wrong at home or school it wasn’t my fault, it had to be someone else’s. All of the goals I had set for the year were put on hold because the Pandemic wasn’t allowing me to reach them. I became depressed and self-destructive but of course, it wasn’t my fault, there just wasn’t any other way, it’s because of the Pandemic, right?
I only saw the world, my world, through my eyes.
I chose the word PRISM for my #OneWord2021 because I now understand that everything I mentioned above was because of me. I chose to use the Pandemic as an excuse. I wasn’t taking responsibility for my actions and took the easy way out. It took many months living through this to understand I was the cause of my own struggles, but I am grateful to have found see the light from a different lens.
I chose the word PRISM because of the simple, yet awe-inspiring job they do. PRISMS bring in one bland ray of light, one view, one perspective, but project a plethora of beauty, colors, and a rainbow of amazement out of the other side. PRISMS help us to see more than what is there, other perspectives, alternate avenues. PRISMS help us to see that there’s more than meets the eye, that there is light in the darkness, beauty in catastrophe.
PRISMS help us to see that there is so much to be grateful for even amidst our world being flipped upside down.
I will live 2021 looking for the light when everything around me is dark and bland. I will continue to BELIEVE and flow like WATER, and that will lead me to the rainbows that surround us all of the time. I will stop only seeing my ray of light, I will listen more than I speak. I will show gratitude daily because there is so much beauty that has come out of this pandemic and to truly move forward we mustn’t revert to how things were.
I will see the beauty in every situation.
I will see the beauty in others.
I will see the beauty in myself.
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