Author / Nathan Coumbe

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Posts by Nathan Coumbe

My mission is to learn, inform, inspire, and improve. I am a passionate teacher, an avid writer, a leader of people, and a strategic thinker. Wherever I am, whatever the work I am called to do, my goal is the same: make my little corner of the world better for everyone in it. To do this, I ask better questions and solve more interesting problems for those I serve. Think deeply. Think often. Keep exploring. Always be curious.
by Nathan Coumbe

Getting the grade

Students are so driven to get the grade that they will cheat on tests and assignments. 

Why?

Because we’ve taught them that the grade, not the learning, is important. 

If all our emphasis is on the grade, then of course they are going to cheat. Or cram. Or do just enough to get by.

“Will this be on the test?”

What is the end goal of education? Is it getting good grades, or imparting knowledge, skills, and wisdom to students?

If it is the former, then don’t be surprised when students cheat, cram, and stumble their way through class. 

If it is the latter, if the “why” behind education is learning rather than grades; encouraging curiosity and leadership rather than compliance; expect to gain willing enrollment from those in your charge. 

What is school for?

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by Nathan Coumbe

Teach someone else

Do you want to know how to retain anything you, yourself, are trying to learn?

Teach someone else.

A teacher, after all, is nothing more than a professional learner. Any teacher worth her salt will tell you that the greatest learning comes when one knows one will have to teach the material being learned to someone else.

The next time you find yourself reading a book, taking a course, or watching a video lecture, imagine that the reason you are learning the material is so that you can teach it to a small group of people in 48 hours.

Better yet – actually teach it to a small group in 48 hours. If you can’t get a group together, then teach a few people individually. If that is impossible, then write a blog post, or record a quick video lesson, and publish it.

“To know, but not to do, is really not to know.”

–Stephen R. Covey

To know and to do, but not to teach? Well, that’s just not right.

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by Nathan Coumbe

What is failure to you?

If you try something new, you might fail.

Why is that such a debilitating statement? Unless you are attempting to leap between two buildings or run past a speeding car on the interstate, our failures are rarely fatal.

Yet we are paralyzed by the thought of failing at a new side hustle, of being rejected when asking for a date, or of failing at the new hobby we have never before tried.

If being proactive means choosing how one respond’s to a situation, then we can fail proactively. You can look at failure as a reason to never again attempt something, or you can look at it as simply one way the new thing won’t work.

Thomas Edison tried 10,000 ways to make a lightbulb before he found the way that worked. He saw each failure, not as a discouragement to trying again, but as a stepping stone to success.

Choose to see failure as a learning experience and you will only ever improve the next time.

by Nathan Coumbe

What makes you uncomfortable?

Resiliency is a skill that can be developed through practice. The first step is choosing to practice. 

What makes you uncomfortable? The answer to that question will help determine where to start.

I hate asking people to make special accommodations for me: I always feel I am inconveniencing the other person (I rarely am), or that I am being a very annoying customer (if they think so, that’s their choice). So when my wife and I started to drastically reduce our waste production, I was uncomfortable with some of the suggestions she made. 

A story…

My favorite example took place at our local Mexican restaurant: they have delicious salsa that we would buy in large tubs to take home and use during the week. These tubs were made of styrofoam and had plastic lids. My wife suggested that I take one of our many empty glass jars and ask for salsa to be placed inside. I was so reluctant, so uncomfortably scared to simply ask. It felt dangerous, even though the worst thing that could happen was to receive no as an answer. No danger at all, but my mind made it feel dangerous.

After numerous arguments (I was scared, remember?), I grudgingly went to the restaurant and made the request. The host looked at me curiously, but he acquiesced and placed the salsa in our jar. He even went a step further and informed me that there were no preservatives in the salsa; it would only keep for a week or so. A wave of relief washed over me. 

But wait! 

The next week, when I went back for more salsa, there was a sign on the front counter. 

“$2.99 jars of salsa to go. Bring the jar back for a $0.99 refill.”

The host, who was also the manager, bought a stock of small glass jars and decided to sell them. He was actively encouraging people to reuse the jars while also proactively choosing to reduce the waste his restaurant produced. 

By choosing (i.e. being forced by my incredible wife) to do something that made me uncomfortable, my wife and I achieved one of our small waste reduction goals. But the most inspiring thing was the change it created in someone else. 

Seek out discomfort in all areas of your life. It makes you stronger mentally. Discomfort in the gym makes you stronger physically. 

Other people avoid discomfort, which means you will be doing things others won’t. The intersection of discomfort and action creates change the world desperately needs. 

Change makes things better. Seeking out discomfort makes things better. 

What makes you uncomfortable?

Go do that.

by Nathan Coumbe

Proactivity and resilience go hand in hand

Resilience is the ability to rebound from challenges, setbacks, and crises. When something happens, a resilient person is seemingly less affected by the event than a non-resilient person (not true). 

Is someone born resilient? Doubtful. 

Resiliency is a skill; it can be practiced and improved. It can be practiced by consciously choosing how to respond to a challenge, setback, or crisis. The effects of the event may indeed be negative: they might be seriously damaging to mind, body, or spirit. But that most fundamental human right, that of proactivity and the ability to choose, cannot be taken away by a negative event. 

Resiliency, therefore, is practicing proactive responses in the face of negative events. It can mitigate the long-term effects of a difficult situation.

Is it easy? Of course not.

Is it necessary? More than ever. It will make you stronger.

Choose how you respond; become more resilient.

by Nathan Coumbe

Your lens determines your reality

Imagine you are looking through a telescope. Is what you are seeing actually how the world looks?

What if the lens had a crack in it? The image is now distorted, but is reality actually cracked? Of course not.

Imagine a friend is looking through another telescope, and you are are both looking at the same thing. What if her lens had a higher zoom or some filter on it which changed the color? Or perhaps your friend has a degenerative eye disorder which makes it difficult to see. 

Would the two of you disagree on what you were seeing? 

Yet we do it every single day.

Each of us walks around using different lenses to see the world. Two perfectly rational people can look at the same issue and have completely different opinions about the “reality” of the issue. Stephen Covey would call these lenses paradigms — different ways of seeing the world. 

Why does this matter?

We can only become truly effective when we realize that our ideas and opinions are not the only ways, the correct ways, to see the world. Seth Godin talks about each person having her own unique noise in her head. What she wants is different from what you want, at least in some minuscule way. Sometimes that way is vastly different from yours. 

If, for example, you wanted to sell something to someone – an idea, a widget, or a plan – you would need to talk about it from the other person’s point of view. That person doesn’t care how you feel about it; they only want to know what it will do for them. We are selfish that way.

Be proactive when speaking with someone: consciously try to see the world through her lens.

Imagine a world where each person sought to understand the other person before arguing.

by Nathan Coumbe

Cats and proactivity

I have a cat. His name is Jack. Captain Jack Sparrow, if you want the full name.

Jack is the most annoying cat in the world.

If you go into a different room, he will sit outside the door and scream at you. “MerEYOWWWWWWwwwwwwwwww” or something like that. Over and over again until you return to the room in which he is sitting or you let him inside with you.

He beats up his sisters without mercy.

He went through a phase at 3 years old where he peed on the floor in front of our couch if my wife didn’t come home by a certain hour.

He scratches the paint off doors; eats expensive cables like they are spaghetti noodles; chews up the beater on my bass drum pedal; and just this morning, we discovered he had destroyed a set of blinds.

He also loves my wife unconditionally and makes her very happy.

For the first few years we had Jack, I would get visibly angry with him when he misbehaved. He knew it, too, and he never liked me as much as my wife.

However, since I started my deep dive into being a more effective and proactive individual, however, I have noticed a change.

I came to the conclusion that while what he did was very frustrating, I was choosing to react in a very negative manner which upset me and made him unappy with me. I was choosing to yell, to stamp my feet in anger, to curse the day we adopted him. What good did it do?

When I implemented “be proactive” into my life, I began with Jack. I lived by the idea that there is a space between stimulus and response where I could choose how I would react.

Now, when Jack misbehaves, I put him in time out – not with anger or scare tactics, but by simply picking him up and putting him into his room.

I feel better, Jack feels better. Now, he crawls up and falls asleep on my chest when I’m trying to take a nap on the couch, purring all the while.

Here’s my point:

You get to decide how a certain stimulus affects you. You cannot choose the consequence of the stimulus; I could not choose whether or not the blinds got broken when Jack climbed behind them. That was a natural consequence. But there are also natural consequences to my response:

  • I did not begin my day with negative emotions and stress.
  • My wife does not begin her day with negative emotions and stress, and our relationship is improved.
  • Jack knows that he misbehaved, but he also won’t run away from me when I return later today. He will instead greet me at the door with screeching and purring.

Something else you should know – since I began reacting better to Jack’s antics, his behavior has changed. He is less destructive, less abusive to his sisters, and less whiny.

Or perhaps, I just don’t notice it as much because of how I choose to respond.

If being proactive works with cats, how well do you think it will work with your human relationships?

by Nathan Coumbe

What does it mean to “be proactive”?

If practiced regularly, the ideas behind these two words will change your life. 

To be proactive means to take responsibility and initiative in your life. 

Being proactive means making a choice; it is the most fundamental human right we have. Stephen R. Covey truly understood this when he read the words of Victor Frankl:

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Frankl himself was a prisoner of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust: he lost his wife and most of his family in the concentration camps. In one of the most degrading situations in which a human could find himself, he realized that he still had the power to choose how he responded to his tormentors and imprisonment. 

Even if everything was taken away from you – your health, your money, your freedom – you would still have the power of choice. 

You might ask how Frankl could still have had freedom when everything was taken away. The answer is that he had freedom within his own mind – he could choose how he responded to the events in his life, however horrible.

Each of us has within us the power to choose how we react. If there is a rough situation at work, an angry customer, or a disappointed spouse, there is still a split second in which you can decide how you will respond. 

Response-ability –– your ability to respond appropriately. 

How will you take responsibility for yourself today?

P.S. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and read the first few chapters, especially the chapter entitled “Be Proactive.” You will be amazed at the changes you experience in your everyday interactions.

by Nathan Coumbe

The one book I wish I had read before college…

I have decided that this blog will be dedicated to helping others live a more effective, curious, and creative life. To that end, I believe we should start with basic and universal principles of living a good life. There is one book I wish I had read before I began college: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen R. Covey.

I first read the book when I was a junior at the University of Southern Mississippi, but I did not take it seriously. I simply believed I had more important obligations. Little did I know that had I practiced the fundamental principles contained within the book, I would have achieved more than I could have dreamed at 24 years old.

These are the seven habits:

  1. Be proactive.
  2. Begin with the end in mind.
  3. Put first things first.
  4. Think win-win.
  5. Seek first to understand, then be understood.
  6. Synergize.
  7. Sharpen the saw.

I will be exploring these in-depth in future posts. I hope that you will be inspired to live a more effective life as you follow along.

by Nathan Coumbe

Show up because it’s the right thing to do

Show up.

Every single day.

Just do it. (Sorry Nike).

This may sound like I’m trying to get you to go crush it at the gym, but I am not.

Whatever you feel called to do, however you feel called to do it, it will not happen unless you show up and do the work.

That may mean writing blog posts every single day whether or not the muse speaks to you. It may mean coaching an employee even if it isn’t a requirement of your job. It might mean practicing your instrument or drawing a quick sketch, even if you don’t feel inspired or if you’ve drawn something like it ten times before.

Showing up, getting your idea out into the world, helping just one other person simply by being there…it isn’t just good for you – it’s the right thing to do.

You never know when your work will get noticed; you just have to keep producing.

Show up. Because it is right.