Mid Week Pick Me Up: Be An Over Believer

What's going on everybody, I hope this finds you striving and thriving and doing absolutely amazing. My name is Brian Martin. I'm a second grade teacher and host of the teaching champions podcast. Now, this past weekend, something incredible happened. Something that's going to go down in the record books, and it's going to be talked about for a long time. This past weekend was the Kentucky Derby. And this race saw an unbelievable comeback by a horse that very, very few thought stood a chance. The horse rich stripe was an 80 to one underdog. This horse wasn't even supposed to be in this race, another's horse had been scheduled to run, but had been scratched, in which strike was added to the race on Friday of race week. The trainer had never had a horse in the Kentucky Derby. And this was the first time that the jockey had raced in the derby. This horse, rich striker had only won one other race. And during the race rich strike started in the worst position, he had to make his way from the back to 19 other horses and make an unbelievable comeback. And when you step back, and you think about it, adds 80 to one, starting in the worst position, having a jockey in a trainer that had never competed in the derby before. And despite all this rich strike ran its race. It didn't know that it wasn't supposed to be there. It didn't know that it wasn't supposed to win. It just went out there and raced and became a champion. And you might ask yourself, what does the Kentucky Derby have to do with Teach? Let me ask you this. Have you ever heard your champions put limitations on themselves? Say what they can't do what they're not capable of? In keep themselves small? Sadly, let me ask you this. Have you ever heard an adult put limitations on the student? plant that seed in their mind? Have you ever heard or seen them feed that narrative of a student's beliefs about their own ceiling, their own limitations? We also need to look at ourselves, have we, myself included, ever contributed to our students beliefs about what they can or can't do? How far they can go? The possibilities that they have? Do we feed a limiting narrative with our words, actions and expectations? Or do we feed that belief that anything is possible, and that the only limits are the ones that we put up for ourselves? It's important that we ask ourselves, what seeds are we planting? Because at times, we may not even be aware of the message that we're sending to our champions. And I always fall back on the wisdom of coach Dabo Swinney, who's the head football coach of Clemson University. He's a national champion. And he always says that he's an over believer that he's constantly filling his players with belief about who they are the potential that they have the gifts that earn sight of them, about who they can become. And he says, The world is always filled with people who are going to be able to tell you what you can't do what you can't be. So he wants to be the opposite of that, and fuel his players with belief. You know, some of our champions, they show up to us, and the odds are 80 to one against them. On paper, one may think that all the odds are stacked against them, and that there's no way that even at a young age are champions are going to be able to succeed. So being over believer, be that person who tears down on those limiting beliefs, and helps these young people see all that they can achieve. We've been blessed with another sunrise, my friends. I hope you have an awesome day.