This week I put out an incredibly insightful and inspiring podcast with Darius Namdaran founder of Bullet Map Studio. Darius has been motivated by his personal experience with dyslexia to create online training and coaching content to help families with dyslexic teenagers prosper during their exam years. Perhaps your child is dyslexic and you remain unaware, as was the case for Darius for many years. Perhaps you can relate, but the feeling of being misunderstood is due to another reason. Either way, this podcast is a fantastic way of getting into the mind of someone else and opening up our minds to an attitude of curiosity and greater empathy.
What REALLY stuck with me is that words from challenging childhood experiences can trigger us. All these years later, expressions such as ‘I feel let down by you’ or ‘I feel disappointed’ have a huge impact on Darius today. It makes perfect sense. So often in life we feel misunderstood and we have battles to work through. Certain words trigger me. I value trust but have grown up with a some people who are wary of me. Because being positive in the UK is a bit weird, surely I am after something.
Darius is raising amazing awareness about dyslexia and helping those who are struggling with it through his talent with maps. Mind mapping has been a lifeline for Darius’ career as a student, teacher, property investor and community worker and it has been of great benefit to his daughter as she studied for exams. There is a huge amount of pressure on kids in schools at the moment, I often feel like we need to make allowances for the extra pressures today with social media. I don’t think our teenagers are equipped to deal with these levels of anxiety. It’s encouraging to see mindfulness practise being introduced and Denmark leading the way with teaching empathy skills which are crucial. I would also like to see listening skills being introduced, can you imagine how much this would help in boardrooms, parliaments and the likes.
I loved hearing of the experience Darius had at school and the teachers who made a huge impact. Is there something special about Geography teachers? Although I confess to remembering my one as rather scary!
Whatever your battles are, what matters is the kind of person you are. We can all pull a Darius and mix our pain with compassion, kindness, honesty and hard work. I was deeply inspired by the podcast with Darius. At the end, we sang out to a song he loves and the words made so much sense to me in that moment. I heard the song differently. Some of the lyrics gave me such a huge compassion for kids going through something like this right now. My message today is – you or your child are more than dyslexia and any other struggles you may face. You are a beautiful human, capable of moving mountains. So hang on in there.
Just relax, take it easy
You’re still young, that’s your fault,
There’s so much you have to know
To be calm when you’ve found something going on
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you’ve got
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not
It’s always been the same, same old story
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen
Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away
I know I have to go
Just sit down, take it slowly
You’re still young, that’s your fault,
There’s so much you have to go through
It’s hard, but it’s harder to ignore it
If they were right, I’d agree, but it’s them you know not me
Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away
I know I have to go
