People have been asking that all my life. It least it feels that way. When I was being honest, I answered, “No, I could do better.” Sometimes, I just reacted defensively, “I did do the best I could,” but I was bluffing, hoping to avoid criticism or punishment. Maybe, I upped the ante in my defense, “What I did was fine,” or at least, “What I did was good enough.”   I wish I’d answered, “Yes, and I’ll try to do better next time.” What kept me from that answer? What seems to so

We've been talking about ways of working with disappointment, but is there a way of getting rid of disappointment entirely? There is, and it’s kind of simple. It just isn’t easy. We can rid ourselves of disappointment, by dropping all expectations.   It’s wonderful when we find ourselves in the place of no expectations. When we were working toward our first charter school, we held a community meeting at which three architectural firms made presentations about the school they

The biopsy is today. My anxiety has been hitting pre-dawn. I’ve learned to breathe through it, just focusing on my breath, inhaling, deep breaths, shallow breaths. Mostly, I’m amazed, I fall back to sleep.   Two weeks ago, I hadn’t expected this anxiety. Then I stopped joking about my two new specialists, my urologist and my neurologist. I got past my neurology scare, made it through two PET scans, came out clean, exhaled, and slept well one night. Then I began worrying about