This one is for all of the educators (and learners) who have noticed pain showing up inside of them. I will predict everyone reading these words will be nodding their heads and perhaps even feeling a brief twang somewhere in their body. If we are moving in the direction of learning and literacy we will inevitably encounter pain. While the journey can be gratifying and fulfilling it also conjures up lots of unwanted stuff. To simplify I will just refer to it as pain. We want to help influence our learners further along, make a difference, inspire them, get past stumbling blocks. Most learners want the same thing. How do we get there?

The Matrix point of view brings us into contact with the basic learning process of noticing what works, what doesn’t work and making the necessary adjustments to keep going. When we and our learners are dynamically adjusted we just roll along. Life is good. When the pain shows up inside of us or them it can feel pretty sticky. We bog down and the struggle begins. We start doing the avoidance dance. There are lots of ways to avoid. For example, complaining is a great way to avoid doing important stuff. Who among us doesn’t get into a good rant every now and then? I’ll raise my hand to that one. Blaming can also “work” very well to take the focus off of our important stuff. We get some temporary relief in the short run but in the long run none of that works to make that painful stuff go away. Sooo… we could keep doing that away thing and end up feeling really stuck or ?

The matrix invites us to NOTICE. We can notice our toward moves and our away moves and how they feel when we are doing them. When we notice we HAVE our distressful stuff rather then being owned by it. The target is always hovering around in the middle of the matrix; good old psychological flexibility. We choose a move, notice what is going on, and notice what happens next. Are we getting there? Are we not? Are our learners engaged? What do we want to do next? Things slow down a bit as our noticing expands, we take in more information from our five senses and keep moving (or hit another snag). What has happened to pain? Well, it’s still there and we can choose to either keep taking it with us or not. Choosing means we have options and we increase the odds of getting where we want to go.