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Rain Barrel awareness at Leadership AA

Yesterday afternoon I had the privilege of sharing a few minutes with Leadership Anne Arundel Flagship class of 2009 at their Environmental Day.  It was being held at Arlington Echo with the wonderful staff there helping out and some great speakers.  One of the artist who has participated in our Rain Barrel event from the very beginning had provided us with a beautiful painted barrel that we auctioned off.
We were able to announce the following:

  • In 2009 we are expanding our program to involve more schools including Rolling Knolls Elementary.

  • Our auction and awareness day will be held at Arlington Echo.

  • All of the proceeds of the auction will benefit Arlington Echo and their education efforts.

One more note on this project.  Recently we were able to assist the Children’s Museum of Washington DC to do some painted barrels that were part of the Green Expo on November 8,9 at the convention center in DC.   They have offered to partner with us on creating barrels in 2009 and we will be working together on bringing this program to Prince George’s County Schools.

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Gratitude in the bad times

It is not hard to be thankful when we are in the good times.  When everything is going our way and we are happy, everyone is getting along and times are feeling the best, we can be thankful for many things very easily.  It is when we are not happy, when we are feeling sad, frustrated, disappointed, angry or even envious that being able to see the things we have to be thankful about requires more work.
For me this comes back to how we talk to ourselves, and listening to the words and feelings of others that may bring us back to our ‘attitude of gratitude’.  Yesterday was not my best day of being a teacher.  I had been disappointed in a few students at the begining of the day and somehow I allowed this to affect my teaching style the rest of the day.
Has that ever happened to you?  Your disappointed by something or someone and you feel like you need to fix everything right now in this very day or moment.  What I should have done is as soon as I could see and feel this disappointment, is step back and look at what I have to be thankful for and meditate on that for a few minutes.  Had I done that I am sure I would have spent the rest of the day in a better frame of mind, and maybe even taught a better class.
I have said this before but I will repeat this again, for my own benefit.  You never accomplish your goals or be your best when you are trying or acting out of fear or anger.  It is only when you act out and respond to challenges and situations from a place of love and gratitude that you are able to reach your goals. I will continue to work on this and if you have ever had similar experience I would like to hear about them.  Sometimes it helps to know that we are not the only one that has an experience like the one I described.