The Power of One More: What All Humans Need

Hello, friend. Welcome back. I’m Susan Riley, your host for today’s podcast, and so I’m excited to be back with you for yet another week. Um, so, you know, for the Art Works for Teachers podcasts, we are looking at a variety of kind of information. So some weeks it’s gonna be a specific t. Or a strategy that you can use in your classroom another week, it might be from an interview, like last week’s interview with Merryl Goldberg, and we’re also doing some book features because I know that all of us educators.

Are ferocious readers. Um, and I wanna kind of talk back and forth with you a little bit about some of the books that I’m reading and the ones especially that I think we can take away some really great gold nuggets from. And so today’s episode is gonna be a book. Uh, kind of review podcast. And so we’re focusing on our book feature.

And this book, this, uh, that we’re gonna focus on this week is called The Power of One More from Ed Mylett. So I’m wondering if you have ever heard of Ed Mylett? Um, some of you, if you are into personal or professional development or leadership, may have heard of him. Uh, he has, he’s a serial entrepreneur, has had many different companies, uh, very successful companies, and then, Since then, he has also become an author and also a powerful motivational speaker, um, specifically for leadership and professional develop.

And so, um, specifically over the last couple of years, Ed Mylett has really come up on the scene in terms of a speaker that people are excited to hear from. And so, um, I’m gonna be really honest, Ed Mylett, when you look him up, um, he’s like one of these guys who’s got like all the bulging muscles, right? And you’re, you’re like, Oh no, not one of these guys again, Right?

Um, that’s like the first image that comes into my head. Um, so. Saw it. I was like, Oh, another one of these guys who think they have it all worked out and that, you know, their system is the best system and they, they go to the gym like three times a day. Right. Um, but here’s the thing, when I went on vacation this summer, Uh, I downloaded the book, uh, the Power of One More.

Normally, I don’t like audio books if I’m really honest. I like to able to have a book in my hand, whether it’s in a Kindle format or like hard cover. I like to have it in my hand so that I can highlight, um, and come back to things that I really wanna reread. It’s just how I like to, to read best. Um, but I know that in my team, lots of people love audio books and I thought, What better way?

To kind of deal with my flight than to just listen to a book, right? Um, it, it’s probably better for my mind than watching a movie on the flight anyway, and so I downloaded Ed’s book The Power of One More, and by the time I got through maybe 15 minutes of it, I knew that my impression of Ed was completely wrong.

Completely wrong. Uh, Ed Mylett is one of the most genuine people I think that you’re ever gonna meet. Uh, since then, I’ve kind of done some research on Ed and I’ve reached out to him and his team, and I mean, just delightful, uh, and truly want to make a difference. He, um, In the book, he kind of references his faith as the Christian.

He talks about that a little bit, but he doesn’t necessarily use that as, as the pillar. Um, for the book, he just references that his faith is important to him without trying to overlay it on someone else, which I appreciate. Uh, and he also talks in this book about his very personal journey. As from a child to an adult, a successful adult with a parent who has an addiction.

So his father was an alcoholic and he talks about, um, how he watched his father get sober and change and then stays sober for the remainder of his life. And what that taught him about the ability of people to change. And how to, um, enhance our leadership of folks who, you know, when we’re working with people who might be, uh, struggling a bit, how do we, uh, interact with them in a way that is kind, that honors where they are and.

Still helps them to grow. And do we believe in the power of change? Do we really believe that people can change? These are the, the premises that are approached in the book, The Power of One More. So, um, I encourage all of you, if you haven’t read the book, to either pick it up or download the audio version like I did.

Um, like I said, he looks like a big, rough and tough kind of guy, but Ed’s heart is pure gold. Um, so I wanted to just kind of offer that as an intro. An introduction so that you don’t necessarily turn away when you, when you see a picture that, So, um, like I said about the power of a war, just as a brief overview, it is grounded in his, um, in his experience with his dad.

And he wrote this book after his dad passed away. As a kind of way to honor what he learned from his dad throughout his life and how those lessons have impacted him over time. And as I was reading it, I was really moved by a lot of it. It was, it was a personal journey for him, but also he takes that personal journey and he makes it really practical to anyone else.

And so, um, I don’t know that you necessarily have to have, um, experience. Somebody who’s an addict in your life like Ed did, Um, or like I do. But, um, certainly I think it, it also helps anyone who is in a leadership position who is working with, with people who are different than who you are, right? And I think that’s all of us.

I think that applies to all of us. And so Ed has broken these lessons down into small chunks that we can all take away and learn something from in these lessons. And essentially the big idea of the power of one more is that what would you do if you had one more, whatever it is. If you had one more day to live on this earth, what would you do and how does that then reframe?

What you’re doing when you get up every morning. If you had one more minute with the person that you loved most in this world, who’s no longer here, what would you have said if you had one more chance to go back and change something that you really regret? What would you change the idea of that there is always one more that we can, um, be striving for.

There’s always one more moment, one more day, one more class, one more student, right, That we can, can work towards. And that gives us the motivation to, to really move forward and also to think very carefully about our own priorities and what we really want from our. Which as I’m getting older, , it’s something that I’m considering on a deeper level.

I think, and I, and I know that that might resonate with some of you who, especially who are veteran educators and you’ve been in this for a while and you’re thinking like, is this still what I wanna do? Or is this approach still the best approach that I’m working in? Right. Maybe I wanna try something different.

I think this kind of a book helps you to get clarity. The one thing that I did find really interesting in this book is something that Ed calls the six basic needs, and I wanted to use this episode to really dive deep on this particular concept that he talks about in the book, um, as well as one other one that I think is gonna be the best fit for us as educators.

Things that we could take away from this. So we’re all really familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy, right? So when I say Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we have psychological needs at the bottom, followed by safety, then love and belonging esteem and self actualization. And so, um, I’m gonna come back here and I wanna, for those of you who are watching me on video, I’m gonna share my screen for just a minute so that you can see the today’s graphic.

Now remember, you are able to download this graphic by going over to arts integration.com/artworks and clicking on today’s episode, and it’s right there for you. You can immediately download it. Um, so this particular graphic is called Maslow Plus Mylett because I didn’t think that these two concepts of the basic needs from Ed Mylett and Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs were competing with one another.

I actually think that they work together. So when we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs, it, it’s in a period, a pyramid shape, right? And so at the bottom we have the physiological. So, air, water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, those kinds of needs that we have, those are the base level needs, right? Then the next level up our safety needs.

So personal safety, employment resources, health, prosperity, property, those kinds of things. Following that is love and belonging. So we have friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection, and then esteem, which is respect, self-esteem, status recognition, strength and freedom, followed by self actualization, which is the desire to become the most that one can be, right?

So when we’re working in professional development or personal develop, We’re really looking at self actualization. So we know this as educators, right? Because we know Maslow before Bloom, right? That whole key of, we have to make sure that we’re addressing the physiological needs. Like if somebody’s coming to school sleepy, they’re not gonna be able to learn today, right?

Um, and if they are not feeling safe in the building or at home, they’re not in a place to absorb the information that we’re trying to develop with them. Right? Um, as I said, I think Maslow, we all understand this hierarchy of needs. Now, when we are considering this, we as, again, it’s in that pyramid shape, right?

And so the base level, you almost have to address each level one step at a time, right? So you can’t really get to self actualization until you’ve had your physiological safety, Love, and belonging and esteem needs met first. Right? So here’s where my, let’s understanding of six basic needs comes into play.

So in his book, The Power of One, Ed Mylett describes these six basic needs as follows, Certainty, which is providing security and safety, variety and uncertainty, which is giving people opportunities for change. Significance, which is giving recognition whenever possible love and connection, which is providing a cause that’s bigger than one person.

We’re gonna come back to that one for sure, Uh, growth, which is to offer challenges that stretch people but aren’t out of their reach. And then contribution, which is to share specific ways that people are helpful and are making a difference. So here’s what’s interesting to me about my my Let Six basic needs.

It’s not necessarily a pyramid. If you’re watching this on video, you can see they’re a stack of rings. If you’re not watching this. On video, and you’re listening to this on audio, I want you to imagine like a baby stack of rings, um, where there’s a large kind of donut ring at the bottom, and then you can stack the rest of them on top, right?

But essentially they all could fit together. You could just make it 3D if you pull it all the way up. So they all work together, but they could also stand alone. This is where I think Maslow and Mylett diverge. And I think it’s so interesting because if we look at Mylett six basic needs, what he’s identified as these six tenants, right?

Of things especially for working with um, other people. So if you were an educational leader, This is what you would do in terms of motivating your staff or working with your staff, and if of course you’re working in the classroom, how we’re working with our students, Right? So if we’re working with our students, we’re providing them with a sense of security and safety in the room.

That’s certainty. Like we know that every day when you walk into the room, there’s going to be a bell ringer and you’re going to sit down and do that one first, right? However that looks in your classroom, your routines, uh, what they know to expect. That’s really important for a lot of kids. It’s also really important for a lot of staff members, right?

We know that the first Wednesday of every month is going to be a staff PD day so that I can put that into my calendar. We know that every Friday is casual Friday and I get to wear my jeans, right? So the routines and things that we know, uh, which provide us with a sense of certainty is important. I know that I’m going to have my job tomorrow.

That’s important for people. And then the next step on his is variety and uncertainty. If an I, I’m not even gonna call ’em steps, I’m gonna call them rings because again, they can collapse into each other, so they work in tandem, or they could be a step on in and of itself. So providing variety or uncertainty, so opportunities for change.

How many times have we been stuck in a. That routines, a certain amount of routines are important, but after a while, if we’re just doing the same thing all the time, it gets boring. Right? And so things don’t, when we need some things to change, we need every once in a while to be there, to have this little bit of variety, the, the spice of life, right?

In order for, um, people to feel as though they want to be. Um, in terms of significance, so giving recognition whenever possible, when, when Ed outlines this in the power of one more. What he’s talking about is the idea that we need to provide people with recognition when they’ve earned it, and also to remember that.

We can’t take people for granted. So when you’re looking at individuals in your building who are working really hard and you know that they’re putting in the extra mile, recognize them in some way for that and not in a way that would embarrass them. So if. Standing up at an assembly, like recognizing them that way is gonna embarrass them.

Don’t do that , but maybe just a quick note that you, you see them, you recognize in that, in that, um, doing the same thing with our students, right? That you recognize the hard work that they’re putting in or what they’re, that they’re trying so hard, even if they’re not scoring well on those tests, the effort that they’re putting in is something that you recognize that’s significant for.

Um, one of the ways which I love, and I wanna do this with my, with my team, um, don’t tell them , is that when, the way that Ed does this with his staff is that he will actually write a note to, um, instead of writing a note to the individual themselves on his team, he will write a note to their children. Or if they don’t have children to their spouse or to somebody on their family that they connect with their mom, their dad, whoever it is, uh, they’ll write, He’ll write a note about them to that other person recognizing the work that they’re putting in or who they are as a human and how they went above and beyond, and just something that he appreciates about them.

He will write that to a person who is significant to the, the, the team member. I think it’s a beautiful way. Think about that if you’re a leader. How you could, uh, write a simple note of recognition to your team member’s, spouse, and just send it home to them on a card. Or if we’re a teacher and we’re working with students, send that note home to a parent that it’s, that, not just a phone call, but actually a handwritten note that I have noticed over the last couple of weeks that, you know, Jill has been really working hard on.

This particular subject, and I’m so proud of the work that she’s putting in. I just want you to know that, you know, that’s, that goes above and beyond, but it’s also something that allows people to feel significant, to feel seen. Um, then we have love and connection. So this is, Providing a cause that’s bigger than one person.

So oftentimes when we think about loving on our kids at school, right, Sometimes there can be some backlash to that cause they’re not technically ours, even though we, we will claim them, right?  as as educators, right? Um, but this idea of love and connection is that we are looking at how can we provide opportunities for those in our care, staff, kids, whoever they are to experience.

Being a part of something that is bigger than themselves, that’s bigger than just the test, or that’s bigger than just that lesson, it’s more meaningful than that. So are we engaging in projects that, um, impact other people or provide some sort of significance for those, those kids or those, those staff members?

That they contributed to. Right. Um, these are when we’re looking at maybe those couple of times a year projects where we’re helping those in our community, providing that kind of connection for people. Then we move into growth. So offering challenges that stretch, but that aren’t out of reach. This is when, you know, we wanna push those people who we know they could do so much better.

They’re on the, the verge of a breakthrough here. If we just get them to stretch a little bit, everybody, even if they say they don’t, everybody. To be challenged just a little bit. The key is to make sure that we’re not going too far. Right. And that’s, that’s where we wanna make sure that we’re reevaluating our goals for people.

But I think it’s interesting, you know, I, I taught elementary school for a long time and, um, when we, when we’d have people come in for performances, they would say all the time, I can’t believe that your students could do that quality of work. I mean, that’s like middle school or high school level. And the thing is, I mean, it, it’s just the bar that I.

Right. I, and I had faith that they could do it. Now, was I gonna make my fifth graders, you know, learn a, um, a magical, an acapella Now that’s gonna be too challenging, Right? So there’s, there’s the stretch, right? I know that that’s too challenging, but can they do perhaps a piece in another. Yeah, they totally can do that.

So setting the bar at a, at a height, that’s just right where they can’t reach it so that they can, when they get up there, they feel that achievement. Um, and then finally, contribution. So sharing specific ways that people are helpful and are making a difference. So this kind of goes right along with that significance part and love and connection, being able to recognize those efforts that they’re making, but also pointing out specifically, Here’s how you made a difference today.

Here’s what you have contributed to this particular effort, and I thank you for it. So according to Ed Myla and the the book, The Power of One More. Um, the idea is that people wanna see all six of these, right? And it doesn’t need to all happen at the same time, but you also don’t have to go in order either, right?

So you don’t necessarily have to provide significance for recognition, um, before you’re sharing contribu. You could do both simultaneously. And that’s why I like his six needs. I think they stack together and, and work so well together. I also see the parallels from these six basic needs to the Maslow’s, uh, pyramid, right?

Clearly the certainty of security and safety goes with, of physiological and safety needs, right? And love and belonging connects with love and connection and significance. So there’s definitely some parallels. I think they work in tandem with one another. And I think that was something that, um, I wanted to share with all of you so that um, when you read the book, you can kind of start to make those connections for yourselves and see how that would maybe manifest itself in your own school or classroom.

Um, and so the other part that he talks about in this book that I found really helpful was the clarification between standards versus goals. So according to, um, Ed, the standards, predicate goals. So you gotta have standards before you set a goal. And oftentimes when we’re considering standards, right, when we’re thinking about standards, we’re thinking about.

Educational standards, right? The benchmarks that we put into place that students are gonna reach in order to, to be aware that they’ve hit mastery at something, right? That’s a standard for us. But in this book, the way that Ed framed it, which I found really interesting was the idea, uh, a standard is what will you tolerate versus not tolerate.

So if you set a goal, I’m gonna totally throw this out there as something that’s, that’s not something we would do as educators. , let’s say our goal is to, uh, to make a million dollars this year on teacher pay, teacher products. Okay. Um, , I’m not saying that that is, that is your goal, but I’m just putting it out there just randomly something totally random.

If that’s your goal, what are you gonna tolerate this year? Um, that gets you to that goal versus what will you not tolerate? So will you not tolerate not making a million dollar dollars this year, or will you tolerate making just eight 50? You see what I’m saying? So in his definition of standards, it’s what will you tolerate versus not tolerate?

And you could write a standard either way. So if your goal was, I’m gonna make a million dollars this year, I’m not gonna tolerate anything less than a million dollars this year, what does that then make you do in your goals? Right? To set you up for success with. Right. So does that mean that you’re gonna go run a a bazillion sales on teacher pay teacher, or you’re gonna make sure that you have a huge email list, or you’re gonna work on marketing efforts this year?

I’m just trying to pick this out randomly so that we can kind of get our heads around this idea of standards in a different kind of a way. Right? What would you tolerate versus what you wouldn’t tolerate? Let’s do another example. Let’s say you wanna lose 50 pounds this year. Are you willing to tolerate losing 40 pounds?

If you are, are you willing to tolerate losing 30? What’s the lowest you’re willing to tolerate losing this year? Because that’s your real standard. That’s an interesting way to think about it, right? Because if you are willing to tolerate losing 10 pounds this year versus the 50 you set out, then that’s gonna change how you approach your goal.

Right. So your goal setting then is simply mapping out how you’re gonna get to the standard that you’ve set. So if you have set a standard and for yourself and you’re willing to tolerate losing just 10 pounds, then your goals are gonna be a little different. Your goals might be, then I’m gonna take a walk three days a week.

You know, and, um, I might hit the gym once a week for some weight lifting. Um, versus if I’m, if I wanna lose 50 pounds and I’m not willing to tolerate anything less than 50 pounds of weight loss this week, my goals are gonna look a lot different. I’m gonna do 45 minutes of cardio five days a week. And I’m gonna add in 20 minutes of weightlifting three days a week, and I’m gonna change my diet because I’m gonna have to lower the calorie input.

Do you see what I’m saying? So there’s a difference, um, in terms of standards of what we’re willing to tolerate versus what we’re not willing to tolerate. That then shapes our goals for getting that there. Now, if we take that in context for education and what we’re trying to do in Educat, Um, think about as you are setting your professional goals this year.

So let’s take it back to what we do here at the institute. If your goal is to implement, um, four arts integration lessons this year, a lesson for every quarter, okay? If that’s what you’re willing to tolerate, that’s your standard, right? That’s the minimum. Then what are our goals in order to get there?

Well, my goal is to take one course to learn how to write a lesson where there’s some standards alignment, and my other goal is to take a look at the, at the lessons that are available in the accelerator and download those and try at least two of them as somebody who’s already written one. Right? So a couple of different kinds of goals.

If your goal is to become an arts integration specialist this year, Or that’s your standard and you are not gonna tolerate anything less than becoming an arts integration, uh, specialist this year. That’s your standard. Well then your goals are gonna be, I need to complete Sprint one in the certification program by, you know, October 1st, and I need to complete Sprint two by December 31st.

And so you’re setting your self up for a very different kind of year. With your goals, depending on what your standards are for yourself and your professional journey. I thought that was a, There were two very interesting things specifically for educators in that book that we could take and really run with, and I hope that, That you found those interesting as well.

So that’s it for me today. Again, the book is called The Power of One More. Uh, it’s by Ed Mylett, and I’m gonna put links to both Ed’s book and his website onto the show notes today. You can find those over ed arts integration.com/. Artwork. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you found this episode helpful.