Bolder Boulder!

I finally got around to uploading my pics last night. I lost about 7-8 minutes off my target time because I stopped to take pictures and Twitter but it was so worth it. So much fun!

Will someone please make a Facebook app so I can pee?

I had a dream the other night that I lived inside Facebook. For the most part it was pretty cool. The only catch was you could only do something if there was a Facebook app for what you wanted to do. For instance, you used the cooking app to make food, the sleeping app to sleep, and so on. There was one major bug. THERE WAS NO APP FOR PEEING. I had to go really REALLY bad, too. So there I was, crossing my legs in Facebook waiting, pleeding, begging for some developer to make an app to let me pee. Then I woke up. I think its time to step away from the computer for a while.

Teaching kids a learning mindset

My son gives me a hard time when he sees me reading parenting, motivation or any kind of self-help book.Our conversations go something like this:

13YO: "Why do you read books on parenting when you are already a parent?"

Me: "Because I want to get better at it."

13YO: "I think parents should just be themselves and not do what other people think they should do."

Me: "Well, what would you do if you wanted to learn how to do something really well and you knew there were people out there who had more experience then you did? Like what if you wanted to be a better skateboarder? Could you learn from other people who are good at it?"

13YO: (eye roll).

I love reading books that make me think and hopefully make me a better parent, friend, partner, leader, etc. Especially when it comes to parenting. The world is already a challenging place and I feel like one of the best gifts I can give my kids is to teach them tools that will help them thrive and contribute in the world. But I can't teach them something I don't know anything about. In this particular case, I wanted to know why some kids are open to learning and take criticism well and why others are crushed and paralyzed over any negative feedback.

Then a friend of mine recommended Mindset by Carol Dweck, Ph.D. and I have to say, it was fantastic. Here is the excerpt from the back of the book:

World-renowned Standford University psychologist Carol Dweck, in decades of research on achievement and success, has discovered a truly groundbreaking idea - the power of our mindset.

Dweck explains why it's not just our abilities and talent that bring us success - but whether we approach our goals with a fixed or growth mindset. She makes clear why praising our children's intelligence and ability won't foster self-esteem and lead to accomplishment, but may actually jeopardize success. With the right mindset, we can motivate our kids and help them to improve in school, as well as reach our own goals - personal and professional. Dweck reveals what all great parents, teachers, CEO's, and athletes already know, and shows how a simple idea about the brain can create a love of learning and a resilience that is the basis of great accomplishment in every area.

If you have kids, manage people, or are faced with a need to shift your mindset to accommodate an ever-changing work and family landscape, this is a great read. For me, it didn't hurt that the cover endorsement was from one of my favorite tech gurus, Guy Kawasaki.

While her insights and research are relevant to many situations, my focus was on the points about kids. She talked a lot about how we've spent a decade over-praising our kids and now we wonder why their self-esteem is so wrapped up in achievement. We have a generation of kids who think that being good at something is based on innate talent instead of hard work. This fosters a fixed mindset where kids constantly have to defend how smart they are instead of a growth mindset, where they can relax and enjoy the process of learning. Here are a couple of her tips when working with kids to help shift their mindset to one that is growth-based:

• Praise the amount of effort and hard work they did, not just how fast they accomplished something.
• Encourage them to try things they like, or are interested in, but that they don't feel they are good at. Teach them that with hard work and effort, they can get better at anything.
• Ask them questions like "What did you try hard at today?" or "What mistake did you make that taught you something?"
• Don't let them make excuses for why they didn't win at something. Don't blame the coaches, the weather, or put down the kids who won. That another child worked harder and deserved to win is perfectly valid.
• Don't be tempted to call them brilliant or smart when something comes easy for them. This can backfire when something requires effort or hard work - they could conclude that they are not smart if it wasn't easy.
• Don't label your kids (i.e. she's the musician, he's the scientist)
• Most of all, be aware when you judge your child's achievements as reflections of your success of failure. If they do well, you are a success, if they don't, you fail. This causes us to pressure our kids to do well so WE will feel good and we lose sight of what it teaches them.
  

These were just a few of the points Dweck made that really inspired me to take a look at how I relate to my kids' achievements. If you want to learn more, I encourage you to read the book!

(Note: I am not affiliated with the publisher or author of this book nor was I compensated for this review. This is just a book I found really helpful and insightful.)

The Perfect 3-mile Run

Its one week before the Bolder Boulder, the big 10k race that takes place in Boulder every Memorial Day. Its a super fun race for both beginners (me) and seasoned athletes (not me). I run really slow. I mean, REALLY slow. I probably run slower most people walk. The best part about running slow is you get to see EVERYTHING.

There is this wonderful, 3-mile loop around my neighborhood that is my favorite "baseline" run (a run I'll do when I'm not training for anything). I ran it this morning and thought I'd share some pics.

I usually have to run by a few residential blocks and then I hit the neighborhood park. Within seconds, I'm on a quiet, paved path that makes me feel like I'm miles away from suburbia.

There are mature trees, dirt paths, a winding, babbling creek, flowers, and giant ants. Well, not REAL ants. The kind you climb on :)

Once you get through the paths, it opens up into a huge open-spaced park with a soccer field, volleyball court and basketball court, swing sets and jungle-gyms. Its awesome!

It takes me 45 minutes to do this loop (told ya I was slow). So its not a big interruption and just the ticket when I need a break from the computer to clear my mind. Now that spring is here, I'm so excited to have the perfect 3-mile run right in my backyard!

What all women (ok, just me) secretly want for Mother's Day

I’m going to do all men a favor and take the guesswork out of Mothers Day. Thanks for thinking of it but we really don’t want the Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman double-heart pendant forged from silver she mined herself in the wild west of oh….east Hollywood. It's kind of cute but it'll just get stuck in my bike chain like all my other necklaces. How that happens is another post. We don’t want a fancy dinner out that secretly means we can’t afford a babysitter later for New Years and have to stay home watching the wax version of Dick Clark use queue cards to count to ten. And we know you love us dearly but please don’t get us anything that makes housework easier cause it will just go to waste and we’ll have to pay to replace the custom bay window we hurl it through. But just so you don’t think I’m all negative with no solutions, there’s good news. The things we really want are so simply, so easy, and probably cost way less than a fifth of good tequila or a refill of Ambien (all the same to me).

I secretly want to have one night where the cat is not allowed in the bedroom.

Its not that I hate animals (ok, I do) but not really because the collective gasp of planetary horror would literally suck me into a vortex so strong my cavity fillings would pop out (which isn’t so bad cause they’re mercury) and my already-skimpy eyelashes would shoot out from my lids, stabbing the nearest person so hard they get pinned to the wall like that kitchen scene from the movie Carrie. I have a big presentation due so that doesn’t really work for me right now. So I love animals. My beef is that our 10 lb cat likes to sleep right over my legs on the outside of the covers, pinning me underneath and paralyzing me in one position. Before you get all the cat is only 10 lbs and I should just fling it off with my feet (which I sometimes do), you have to remember I’m ASLEEP. When you’re asleep, that innocent, fluffy weight is really the spiked foot of a flesh-eating mass of pure evil that just oozed out of the nostril of some alien that looks like your 3rd grade teacher only with the face of that guy from Saw II. I’m just asking for one day.

I’d like to watch a chick flick in my own home.

There are four males in my house. I am mom to three of them and partner to the one with facial hair. I always get outvoted when it comes to movies. For once I would like to watch a movie where none of the characters get impaled, decapitated, ripped to shreds by rabid sharks, or blown to bits during an apocalypse caused by some creepy kid born without a belly button. I like it when the hot reporter still has all her limbs at the end of the movie and isn’t being stalked by her telepathic dead ex-boyfriend. There are pretty dresses, love scenes, slumber parties and maybe a unicorn. A movie where no one cares what she did last summer and the cute guy who saves her from the careening meteorite turns out to be pretty normal, is a great kisser, and doesn’t have a plutonium detonator in his back pocket.

I secretly want a pool table where the dining room table is and I want to stop caring if my kids wear shoes to school for one day.

It’s not like its hurting anything. Some kids in poor countries don’t even own shoes and playing pool is way more fun than eating meatloaf and I bet the balls are dishwasher safe. It’s not like they’re going to learn more if they have shoes on or like there’s broken glass or smoldering cigarettes laying around the school floors. Plus, if they didn’t wear shoes, that’s one less place they can hide drugs, or a knife, or stash money to buy those Monster energy drinks you won’t let them drink at home. Then I could use all those unused tablecloths to make the same dress Scarlet O’Hare made out of her curtains because we all secretly want one of those anyway.

It would be cool if I could have those things for Mothers Day. But if that doesn’t work out, that chocolate mousse cake from Whole Foods is pretty OK, too.