Raising tough, resilient kids

In our quest to be comfortable, well-fed, shock-free, and entertained, we have made life easy.  That’s what we were supposed to do, right?

Most things we complain about are very small.  

But this life, free of adversity, has made a lot of weak kids.

I believe in trials, disappointments, and hard work of necessity, for what it makes of us.

“Your job as a parent is not to prevent your kids from experiencing setbacks and failures, but to give them the tools and emotional resilience they need to weather life’s storms.” – Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson

If we always have it easy, we develop weak minds, and those weak minds will prevent us from facing what is necessary to get through a lifetime of what gets thrown at us without being crushed under a world that is “unfair” and “cruel”.

“Don’t wish life were easier, wish you(r kids) were better.” – Jim Rohn

“I can give my kids anything except desperation.  And for that, I apologize.” – Billionaire

Work hard on you

Many people think that if they want to get ahead they need to work more.  Working hard is a good thing.  It will help your career far more than not working hard.  And by hard, I mean diligently, with the right motives and focus.  But there is a limit to effort and hours.  

If you don’t possess higher levels of knowledge, character, people skills, then the value you bring to the hours worked is limited, no matter how many hours you work.

If you work harder on yourself and your own character, understanding, and knowledge, your job will improve.

I listen to perhaps three books a month, and read lots of other good stuff every day.  I subbed out TV, listening to music in the car, and social media to make time for it.

Your brain is hardware – and it will run the dominant software program you load in.

I work on myself.  And from inside my brain, come my outer results.

It’s the same with you.

Eat, move, and sleep well.

If you eat junky food, drink a lot of alcohol, smoke anything, don’t exercise to keep some muscle mass and your heart and lung capacity strong, and do not get enough sleep, then you will have earlier troubles with your health than you want.

If you eat badly today, you won’t die.  So you think, well, I can do that again because nothing bad happened.

But biology does not offer free passes, only delayed invoices.

Better the pain of self-discipline than the pain of regret.

Rock Bottom is fertile soil

Hit Rock Bottom?

Congratulations – maybe.  You are at a place that can create despair and misery or fuel strength, resilience and success.

Your poison or your fuel – it’s up to you.

Rock Bottom has built more champions than privilege ever could.

People who have had it easy are often weak.  Challenges crush them.

But a person who has been in the gutter, in desperation, and had their heart broken, can be uniquely positioned to succeed IF they have a vision and burning desire to be better and do better, and are willing to do the work.

Had trouble?  Made some mistakes?  People messed with you and caused all kinds of problems?

So long as you are breathing, it’s not over.

Stand up. 

Determine to win.

Get busy.

Let’s go!

Ripening

I am 61 years old.  (I have 39 years to go. Goals….) 

The accumulated years have a way of changing things.

I am unable to do the things I once could.

I am able to do things I once couldn’t.

I can’t run anymore.  I had to have my knee replaced 5 years ago.  I can’t do a deep squat or kneel down.  It hurts every day.  I still jump a dirtbike 80 feet most weeks, spring to autumn, and climb walls, work out, and go in the woods with a chainsaw to clean up – but I have to be more cautious and do less than before because of my knee.  

I can give advice I could not give when I was younger.  I can see and understand things I once could not.  I am wiser and more experienced.  I have resources of all kinds I did not have when I was younger.  I can make things happen quickly when necessary.  I am less attached to anything than before.  I have experienced great loss, and the sun came up the next day – every time (so far).

Life changes us.  We can tip the odds in our favor and stall some change, but it is coming for all of us. 

Death twitches my ear. ‘Live,’ he said. ‘I am coming’ – Virgil

Fight for your limitations, and they are yours.

When presented with a new idea that is outside the boundaries of your own limitations, you set for yourself, do you automatically say, “I can’t do that?”  Do you strive to convince the presenter that you cannot do it?  Do you spend your energy defending your own limitations?

If you do, you will surely keep them.

Instead, you could envision how you might be able to do it – how you might be able to go beyond what you thought was your limit.  You could dig in and figure out how you could get there, instead of how you can’t.

Let’s try it.  Pick one of these things you have never done – 

Can you kayak down a river?

Can you change the tire on your car?

Can you fix the gutter that is hanging off your house?

Can you read a 300-page book and pass a test on it?

Can you learn to read a Profit and Loss Statement and a Balance Sheet?

Can you use an AI app to study how a bumblebee flies and have it create a one-page summary report on the subject?

Can you use AI to make a photo of yourself and your child in a rollercoaster car speeding down the track?

Can you get a surfboard and go surfing?

What does your brain say to things that are foreign and out of your self-imposed comfort zone? 

Do you fight for “no”?  Or do you figure out “yes”?

Discipline = Freedom

“Only the disciplined ones in life are free.  If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and passions.” – Eliud Kipchoge

It’s a paradox.  If you do whatever you want to do, you will run out of options and be forced to accept whatever you get – and that will not be much.

Do you know someone like that?

However, if you discipline yourself, you will have options. 

Options = freedom. 

You will be able to call the shots in your own life.  

I like self-discipline – because if I discipline myself and hold myself to a higher standard than anyone else does, then I will never have to be disciplined by anyone else.  I don’t like to be disciplined.  I don’t like when people have to tell me I am doing it wrong or have done wrong and am subject to penalties – even if that penalty is just someone else knowing I’m a slacker who didn’t do their homework.   

No way.  You don’t discipline me – I’ll do it myself.

I’m the boss of me. 

My character and self-discipline keep it that way.

How about you?

Tolerant of others, strict on yourself.

“In others, look for virtue.  In yourself, look for vice” – Ben Franklin

Look for the good in others, and look for areas you can get better in your own life.

If you do this, you will have many friends who are happy to see you, and you will be humble.  And after years of trying to fix or neutralize your flaws and improve your strengths, you’ll be pretty damn good.

It’s easy to see how living this the other way around can get you in trouble. 

If you “Looked for the flaws in others and the virtue in yourself”.  That’s not going to work out too well.  People will hate you as you think you are better than them (you aren’t) and you won’t be trying to get better.

In looking for virtue in others and vice in yourself, what you are doing is holding yourself to a higher standard than everybody else.

Meeting a higher standard than others is a good way to become better than average.

Don’t you think?

To be a success, self-discipline is necessary

You know what the right thing to do is to move yourself toward your goals, to be a good citizen and neighbor, to be healthy, and to advance your career.  But who is making you do those things?

As a grown adult – nobody.  You want to drive your life/health/career/relationships into the ground? Go ahead.  Nobody is there to tell you to eat your vegetables and take the garbage out.  

Only you can do that.

Some of us do the right thing when we feel motivated.  But motivation comes and goes.  Most days we do NOT feel motivated.  We want to do things that are pleasurable and that take the least energy.  

This is where self-discipline comes in.  Self-discipline is doing the things you know you should do, even when you don’t want to.

It’s called SELF-Discipline because only you can do it.  From the inner…comes your outer results.

You can look at someone’s life and tell the amount of self-control and self-discipline they have in various areas of their life.  You can tell what they value and a lot about their character.

“If you do not have the ability to discipline yourself, the seeds of greatness are not within you.”  W. Clement Stone 

Can you do the right thing day after day even when you don’t feel like it?

What are you good at?

When people are not good at anything, they do not feel good about themselves.

For example, we can be average at work, and not great at some things, but when we step on the basketball court, we are good, and we know it.  Guess what we find ourselves doing a lot? Playing basketball.  And we get even better.

When we are good at things, we feel good about ourselves.

What are you good at?

That is probably the source of a good deal of our self-esteem.

We all have the talent and capacity to be good at something. 

Find it.

Heal ourselves, heal everything around us

This is something I found true.

If I am troubled, I live in a troubled world.

If I am unclear, the world is too.

If I am hurting, sick, heartbroken, angry, or bitter, the world will reflect my ailments and be ugly or cruel or cloudy.

When I get well, the world does too.

As we heal ourselves, we heal each other.

As we heal each other, we heal the world.

After all, nobody talks to me more than I do.

I am my world.  You are yours.

When you heal, your world does.

When you come together, your world does too.

You go first.

Fear and faith

Both fear and faith ask you to believe in something you can’t see. 

You choose.

This is an important choice.  It could mean everything, and probably will.

Fear or faith?

You can’t change the people around you

You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.

If the people around you are holding you back, bringing you down, and not supporting your moving forward, change the people around you.

Your reference group, the people you associate with, has a LOT to do with where you end up.

Who are the five people you spend the most time with or listen to the most?

Hate hurts you

If you hate someone, then you are defeated by him. – Confucious

You know it’s true.  Hate is hurting you more than the other guy.  It’s eating you up inside, costing you valuable energy.

It’s draining your happiness.  

Let it go.

Stop tuning into voices that say you are right, reinforcing your hate.

Let it go – for your own sake.

Evolving beyond your friends

Most of us have friends who are about like us.  Same interests, same vocabulary, same habits, and same level of success.

We like people who are like us.  

The problem is they keep reinforcing a life that we already know the results of when we live it.  If we want more and better, we have to learn new things, talk in different ways, and take different actions.  We will have to give up (some or all) of the old activities in favor of something new that yields better results.

Many of our friends won’t like that.

They don’t like it when you evolve beyond their own comfort zone.  They don’t like it when you do what they are unwilling to do but know they should.  They don’t like it when you are doing better than them and making them look bad.  

There are exceptions.  A real friend who truly cares about you will want you to do better even if you leave them behind.

If you have friends who want to hold you down for their sake, you don’t have to tell them you are right and they are wrong, or say goodbye.  You don’t have to say anything at all.  Just stop hanging around them (so much).

You have a life to build.  Move forward.

And don’t worry, you’ll make plenty of new friends on the way up.

Believe and achieve.

You have to believe good things are possible for them to energize you.

If I told you that you could be one of the top people in your field with all the things that come with it, if you want that and believe it, you will pursue it.  You will do the things necessary to get there.  Your belief will push you through setbacks and obstacles.

If you do not believe me, and/or you do not want it, there is no hope for you.

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” – Napoleon Hill

Do you have a big goal and BELIEVE it is possible for you?

Master yourself first

“In reading the lives of great men, I found the first victory they won was over themselves.” – Harry S. Truman

If you cannot control your lower impulses, control your attention, think before acting, delay gratification, and do what is right instead of what is easy and what feels good, then you will always have trouble of your own making.

You are your enemy/obstruction/problem, or your best friend and instrument of progress and good.  

Your choice.

Nothing will advance your success and fulfillment more than self-mastery.

Imagination

“Logic will get you from point A to point B, but Imagination will take you anywhere.” -Albert Einstein

Think.  Dream.  It’s the origin of innovation, creation, and adventure. 

Why not? 

Imagine – go nuts.

Being good, and doing good.

Being good is a start.  First do no harm and do not be a burden.

But DOING good – that is something different and better.

“What greater bliss than to look back on days spent in usefulness, in doing good to those around us.” – Dorthea Dix

What good needs doing?  

You’re up.

Long term goals guide the short term ones

If all your goals are short-term, you won’t accomplish anything big.

What do you want to be long-term?  Who do you want to be?  Where?  Think in decades.

Then create short-term goals that are part of the long-term ones – steps to getting there.

Meaningful satisfaction is not built overnight.  A decade-driven strategy lets you build purposefully – one intentional action at a time.