Durelle Price
Durelle Price is dedicated to building strong communities by strengthening families and youth. She serves as an educator, coach, motivator, and coalition/initiative leader mobilizing communities across the country and building their capacity to serve. The Family Matters Seminars and Workshops founder and author of programs such as Intelligent Dating, Teen Esteem, Successful Survivors and Response Matters, Price hosted the Nashville public television educational series “Family Matters” featuring her award-winning dating violence prevention program DATE SAFE.
Durelle pioneered projects including: The Community Accountability Project; Kids in Crisis—Helping Hands; PeaceFeast ’99 and most recently Operation Yellow Dress bringing The Yellow Dress, a one-woman dating violence prevention play, to Texas schools. She serves on the New Beginning Center board and has been strategic consultant and board officer to the Rockwall Community Solutions Cooperative and is formerly: president of ANTHEM Family Safety Council; president of a Tennessee regional task force; and liaison to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Her professional journey advanced from Victim Advocate, Crisis Counselor, and Executive Director to Leadership Consultant at FranklinCovey. Durelle worked with Dr. John Covey to write and design custom curricula including the highly acclaimed 8 Habits of a Successful Marriage program. She has traveled across the U.S. certifying educators to facilitate to military, couples, parents, and youth. Currently, Durelle embraces her role supporting educators as they guide students and their schools to new levels of excellence through The Leader in Me initiative. Price was honored to serve as a consulting writer on best-selling author Sean Covey’s book, The 6 Most Important Decisions You’ll Ever Make: A Guide for Teens, which features highlights from her Intelligent Dating program.
Categories
FranklinCovey Consultant Blogs | Durelle Price | April, 2010
Cold and Calculating
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Ahh…the sweet fragrance and comforting sounds of spring at last arrive! The smell of cut grass and the whirrin
g of lawn mowers on Saturday morning fill the newly arrived warm air. Birds chirping in the morning replace the sound of the ice scraper on my windshield.
For the past several months I have been nothing but “cold and calculating”—skin chapped and paled from chilly winter winds; eyes red and blurred from all late night study sessions; right hand permanently locked around the empty mechanical pencil; head down in the pile of eraser fodder generated from hours of calculating and miscalculating algebraic equations and tricky word problems. Such was the life of one who was manically focused on her goal of effectively juggling a math-intensive course load; various community roles; and that of Price family winter “cruise director” responsible for keeping the holiday family fun afloat—maintaining order and balance on the Good-Ship-When’s-It-Gonna-Stop. (Please, please, my head’s about to pop!) By mid March, I was ready to assume an alias, abandon ship and park myself on a beach somewhere south of here.
Taking a hiatus from just about everything including this blog, I was on a mission to unleash my own greatest potential by achieving the private victory found only in the execution of habits 1,2, and 3 of the 7 Habits. Habit 1: Be Proactive required me to engage others in holding me accountable for proactively managing myself (e.g. doing my homework and staying on schedule).
It was easy to practice Habit 2: Begin with the End Mind—simply put, the end was: make grades that aren’t an embarrassment. I was engulfed by math anxiety (a euphemism for a debilitating condition that causes skipped favorite television programs, incessant head-scratching, ugly brow-furrowing and massive consumption of number two lead and legal pads). Therefore, I had to practice Habit 3: Put First Things First. So, I enlisted the services of retired geo-physicist-turned-tutor, Dr. Howard Taylor to help me manage and overcome the “condition” as well as make the grades.
Three months later without much damage to my GPA, I am no longer “cold and calculating.” I have emerged into the warmth of the spring sun triumphant! With statistics still on the horizon this summer, I am armed with the habits necessary to manage stress and my time effectively and conquer the negligent behaviors that would undo my success. Thanks to this Private Victory, I’m confident that math is no longer my foe (still not my friend, but no longer a formidable foe).
I never cease to be amazed at the value of this curriculum and its relevance in my life. Are you facing a formidable foe? Ever wonder where you fall on the effectiveness scale? Check out this Self-Scoring 7 Habits Profile that will allow you to evaluate your current level of effectiveness. Hey, the only thing you have to lose are bad habits.