Ursuline News

A Letter From the Principal

Dear Families,

I love when an idea that has captivated me starts popping up everywhere. I recently read a book called The Gap and the Gain, by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. The invitation in the book, much simplified here, is to shift your lens of assessing success and happiness away from the gap between where you are right now and where you want to be, to looking more at all you have gained to be where you are right now.

This feels counterintuitive! Goal setting and knowing where you want to go is important in work and life. And unfortunately, we often fail to see how far we have come as we strive to this ever-shifting ideal, which makes the invitation to judge ourselves based on what we have achieved such an interesting one.

In a recent blog post, educator/author George Couros invited readers to focus on what they will gain over what they could lose when considering a change in life. The post is primarily about work opportunities, but it feels like a resonant echo of this other invitation. How different would our lives be if we thought more about what we have than what we don't have or what we could lose?

Our seniors are in a liminal moment in their lives. Quite soon they will move from being students to graduates. I like to ask seniors what they wish they had done differently over their four years. As they reflect, I hear everything from wishing they had met with teachers more or tried more new things, to wishing they had just paused and enjoyed it more. I then remind them that in mere months they will be freshmen again, and they can put all those lessons to use.

I also like to ask the seniors what they have gained in their four years. When they reflect on who they were in their early days of high school with who they are now, they recognize all they have gained. It is beautiful to see them resting in that perspective. I pray they can carry it into the next phase of their lives and not fall into gap thinking as they meet so many new people walking in the door carrying different experiences.

“Comparison is the thief of joy,” often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, is one of those quotes seen frequently, and it has the smack of utter truth. It is too common to see friends, family members, or ourselves wringing our hands over how much better someone else’s situation appears to be than the way we see our own (I’m looking at you, Social Media!). For our girls it could be about a college acceptance, an invitation to a social event, an award received, the water bottle they carry…. there are countless ways that they might shift from feeling joy from something they have gained to feeling it is “less than” in comparison to what another has.

Of course, we all know that adolescents are not the only ones with these feelings. Yet again, the opportunity to shift our lens is at play. If we could teach our girls to see all that they have gained in their lives and celebrate these gains, I wonder what that would look like? If we could consistently model gratitude for what we have and our joy in what we have achieved, I think our girls would start to notice. I also think we would be seeing ourselves more like God sees us, as His beloved.

You and your daughters – especially our class of 2024 – are in my prayers!

Dr. Andrea Shurley
Principal