Stuff I Learned Yesterday
About Stuff I Learned Yesterday
Stuff I Learned Yesterday is a podcast that aims to encourage, inspire, challenge, motivate, and improve the lives of those who listen to it. Stuff I Learned Yesterday is released each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Each episode ranges from 5-15 minutes long and contain short stories based on real events and lessons learned by the hosts. Friday episodes are called the Friday Forum and are filled with inspirational and motivational thoughts submitted by Stuff I Learned Yesterday listeners. Submit your story for a Friday Forum episode by calling 304-837-2278, visiting our feedback page, or click on the Send a Voice Message button on the left hand side of this page.
36- When the Grass is Greener on the Other Side
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When my neighbors, Allen and Mandy moved in a few years ago, their lawn was kind of lackluster. It was a brand new house with new sod. Most of the sod had taken root and was filling in pretty nicely, but it was just an average lawn. There was one spot in particular that the sod was not growing. Since it was a new home with new sod, the home builder came back out and laid down some fresh sod in that area.
Allen and Mandy watered it, fertilized it, and did all they could to get it to take root, but it died again. The grass in the rest of their yard was now looking really good. It was green, thick, and healthy looking…with a very noticeable dead spot right in the middle of the yard out near the curb. I didn’t really pay too much attention to how it happened or how long it took, but eventually, they managed to get the grass to grow.
My lawn is very average, and I think that is being generous. It has weeds, there are a few thin spots in the grass, and it’s not very inviting. When you walk on Allen and Mandy’s grass it feels soft and your feet sink down into it. It’s like a carpet. If I were to walk with my eyes closed from their yard toward my yard, I would be able to instantly tell when I crossed the property line. My yard is hard like concrete. Feet do not sink into my grass.
One day last summer Allen and I were out in his yard and I commented on how good it looked. We talked about how bad it looked when he first moved in and how that one spot refused to grow any grass for a long time. He said that they finally hired a professional to come out and maintain their yard. They spray it several times throughout the year with weed control and fertilizer, as well as aerate it, and water it regularly. Read More…
35- Friday Forum Teacher Edition
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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I got paddled at school every single year except Kindergarten, 4th grade, 9th grade, and 12th grade, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I’m happy to share another installment of the Friday Forum, dedicated to stuff learned from teachers. Read More…
34- The Life Changing Power of Words
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Really? An internet video? Yesterday’s episode tackled big topics like racism, homosexuality, religion, and politics, and today I’m offering wisdom from a YouTube video? Yep. That’s how I roll.
I have come to the conclusion that I am a sucker for those inspiration audition videos from The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and the like. I don’t watch those shows. I don’t really care for reality TV. You may not watch them either, but you probably know the videos I’m talking about. I’m talking about the video of Susan Boyle, who walked out on the stage of Britain’s Got Talent a disheveled mess and walked off an internationally recognized name.
I see these videos show up in my Facebook timeline from time to time with a comment from one of my friends that says something to the effect of, “Wow, this blew me away!” I usually scoff and tell myself that I don’t have time to watch a silly audition video from a reality show…and then I click on it. By the time the video is over my mouth is open in shock and eyes are welled up because of the moving story, dramatic music, and amazing performance. Yep, I’m a sucker.
A few days ago another one of these videos showed up in my Facebook feed and I clicked on it. The video was an audition of Alice Fredenham from Britain’s Got Talent in 2013. She walked on stage and approached the mic. As she walked, she kept her arms close to her body with one arm clutching the rubbing the other. It’s the type of thing we do when we’re scared or uncomfortable. She approached the mic and you could hear the quiver in her voice. The judges asked her how she was doing and she said she was scared. Clearly she was. Read More…
33- The Episode About Stuff We Aren’t Supposed To Talk About
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Today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday is one that I’ve had in mind to do since the beginning, but I’ve been putting it off. I wanted to make sure that when I did it, I had time to really think it out and choose my words carefully. The things I’m talking about in today’s episode are the types of things that seem to easily get people get upset. I don’t know if I’ve chosen the best words. I don’t know if it’s even possible to choose the best words, but I think it’s time to go for it.
The thing that pushed me over the edge to go ahead and do this episode is the recent controversy surrounding Los Angeles Clippers owner, Donald Sterling. He’s an educated man, successful in business, and well traveled around the world. A phone conversation was taped that he had with an associate of his, some say girlfriend, other say she’s an aide. That’s not important really. What’s important is that she posted a photo of herself with Magic Johnson to her Instagram page and this deeply bothered Mr. Sterling. He was troubled that she would publicly post pictures of herself associating with black people. Keep in mind that the woman he’s speaking to is half black and half hispanic.
I listened to the entire 9 minute clip that has been made public and it’s, well, it’s many things. It’s infuriating, confusing, sad, disturbing. He’s also upset that people are calling him about the the picture. Who cares? Who is calling him to express concern that this woman posted a picture with Magic Johnson? What business is it of theirs? If Magic Johnson was some sort of street thug or criminal or a figure of controversy, then I could see someone having an issue, regardless of the color of his skin. But Magic Johnson is an NBA legend and hall of famer. He’s a respected businessman and social activist. There’s no shame in posting a picture with him. Read More…
32- The Secret to a Winning Strategy
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I won something yesterday! It’s pretty cool, really. It’s a high quality microphone attachment for Apple devices like the iPad, iPad mini, and iPhone. It’s called the Zoom iQ5. If it sounds like something that you might find useful, you can check it out at www.goldenspiralmedia.com/iq5. That’s a link that will take you to B & H Photo and Video.
Would you like to know how I managed to win this really cool microphone? Here’s my secret. I entered the sweepstakes. That’s it. Now, you may not think I’m being serious but I am. The reality is that if I would not have entered the sweepstakes, I would not have won the mic.
And so it is with our goals. What is your goal? Lose weight, publish a book, start a podcast, develop a tutorial, learn how to crochet, build a birdhouse, restore that old car in your garage? None of those things will ever be done if you never take the first step, and all of them can be accomplished if you do.
Now, of course, there is a big difference in taking the first step in winning something, and taking the first step to giving up an addiction. I recognize that. However, I think the main difference is the way we look at it while we’re standing in that starting spot.
Let’s think of these things, and the journey we’ll go on, like we would a Monopoly board. We all start out on the space marked GO. What else is on that square? An arrow that is pointing us in the right direction. The very next space after GO is Mediterranean Avenue. It only takes one step to reach that space and the cost is only $60. The last property on the end of the first side is 9 times farther away and will cost twice as much. If you desire to reach the end of the next side of the board you’ll have to travel 19 times farther and pay over 3 times the amount as Mediterranean Avenue. The end of the third side is 29 times farther at over 4 times the cost, and the final space, Boardwalk, is a distance 39 times farther and will cost nearly 7 times more than Mediterranean Avenue. Read More…
31- Cultivating Beauty
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You know what I enjoy? Well, lots of things, really, but to be more specific, I enjoy sitting at a computer and producing podcasts or building websites. I can easily spend over 12 hours a day doing that stuff and not feel tired. You know what I don’t enjoy? Working out in my yard.
As you probably know by now, it was right at a year ago when I left the company I had worked for for 19 years so that I could follow my dream of producing podcasts and building websites full time. Last year I was focused totally on my business and saw my yard as even more of a nuisance than I normally do. I kept up with mowing it, but that was all. Since my wife doesn’t like yardwork either, this meant that our flower beds were totally ignored all year.
We hated not giving them any attention and were really embarrassed by how terrible they looked. We have two flower beds in our front yard. One of them contained a big bushy plant that must be the most resilient plant on the earth, and the dead stems of a plant that didn’t have near the staying power of his bedded brethren. In the other bed was a fire bush that we like because it too won’t die and it turns a really beautiful red hue in the fall. It was joined by two other bushes that were scrappy, but not really attractive. They looked malnourished and half dead. Probably because they were malnourished and half dead.
Both of the neighbors that flank our house have beautiful yards. One of those neighbors, Allen and Mandy, look like they are going for the yard of the month award…except our neighborhood doesn’t have one of those. They are incredibly nice people, and besides being pretty similar in age to us, they also happen to like Fringe and some of the other TV shows that we enjoy. Read More…
30-Friday Forum
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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, when I was 9 I sat on the front row of the movie The Return of the Living Dead just to prove to my brothers that I was brave, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I’m happy to share another installment of the Friday Forum. Read More…
29- Stop Worrying About What Other People Think
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Time sure flies, doesn’t it? It’s hard for me to believe that 20 years have gone by since I graduated high school. I’ve mentioned before that I graduated from the thriving metropolis (if you use the word metropolis in the loosest way possible) of Wellston, OK in 1994. I moved to Wellston before I went into the fourth grade.
It was an odd adjustment for me. I had previously gone to school in a much larger school district and the class structure was quite a bit different. Of course, like any new kid at a school, I knew no one and had no friends. I don’t know what it was that brought us together, but I soon became friends with a kid named James, and we were pretty much best buds from then on out.
We were a small class. I can’t find my senior yearbook at the moment, but I think my graduating class was around 36 kids. My wife finds it hard to imagine what my high school experience was like. She graduated with a group of over 450. The thought of a school with that many people freaks me out a bit. Since we were such a small class, and a small school, everyone knew everyone else. Just about everyone got along with each other, even if we did really hang out. I pretty much always struggled with trying to fit in or dealing with the fact that I felt like I didn’t fit in. I never really felt like I wasn’t liked, just that I was an odd ball.
I wasn’t athletic at all. Hanging out around the jocks was really not fun for me. If I was going to get picked on by a group, it was them. The band geeks were nice, but I wasn’t in the high school band, so I didn’t really hang out with them much either. I don’t really know why, but I was never interested in the party scene. In a small town, that’s pretty much all there is to do on a Friday or Saturday night. So, as I said, I just felt out of place. I was a geek, but that was before geeks were cool. Geeks are cool now, right? Read More…
28- Do You Want to Punch it Out, or Hug it Out?
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, my favorite cookie is oatmeal raisin, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a story of conflict and confession. Friday...
27- A Perspective on Perspective
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When I was in seventh grade one of my teachers thought it would be good to teach our class a lesson on perspective. She gave each of us a glass and had us fill it up half way with water. She then asked us to carefully study the glass of water. After we had time to study the glass of water she asked us a simple question. She wanted us to tell her if the glass was half full or half empty. She asked us to write our answer down on a piece of paper.
To me, this question was not as simple as she wanted it to be. No, I wasn’t one of those people who claimed that it was 100% full because what space was not filled with water was actually full of air. My problem was that I recognized that the cup was simultaneously half full AND half empty. The answer I wrote down was “both.” The teacher asked those who answered “half full” to raise their hands. She then asked those who answered “half empty” to raise their hands. She noticed that another girl and I did not raise our hands either time and asked us what answer we had given. It turned out that she had also written down, “both.”
While the answer we provided did not fit into the selection of choices that the teacher wanted, it was technically true. I wish I could say that the lesson the teacher gave us that day changed my life and opened my eyes to a powerful life lesson, but it didn’t. The only reason I remember the lesson is that I felt out of place by being only one of two people to come up with an odd answer. Read More…