What are you feeding your mind?
Sunday, August 26th, 2007In The 1% Club, Positive Mental Nutrition refers to an ultra-healthy mental diet. A healthy mind, like a healthy body, must be continuously fed a diet (more…)
Archive for the 'Family' Category
Whatever happened to real boys?
Friday, June 15th, 2007“Whatever happened to real boys?” That’s a question a friend and client asked me recently. Not knowing the answer, I replied with “what’s a real boy?” It’s a question that a lot of folks are trying to answer these days. John Eldridge raised a similar question in his bestseller Wild At Heart and Bill Perkins raises it in his (more…)
The Stranger
Tuesday, June 12th, 2007The piece below was sent to me from 1% member Palmer Bayless. We could not determine the source but thought everyone with a 1% mentality would appreciate it. It is called “The Stranger”
The Stranger…
A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small Texas town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.
As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors:
Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger…he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.
If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn’t seem to mind.
Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)
Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home… Not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush.
My Dad didn’t permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.
I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked… And NEVER asked to leave.
More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first.
Still, if you could walk into my parents’ den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures (continue…for the rest of the story) (more…)
A Blind Spot In Marriage. Have You Seen It?
Monday, May 7th, 2007When driving, we’ve probably all shared the experience of beginning to merge into another lane of traffic, only to be interrupted by a loud horn from another driver we were about to collide with. We weren’t intentionally trying to crash into the other car, of course. We just didn’t see it. We looked in our mirror, glanced quickly over our shoulder, didn’t see another vehicle and confidently began our lane change. Where did the other car come from? It was in our (more…)
Refining Your Long-Time Horizon
Thursday, May 3rd, 2007I fielded a phone call earlier this week from a long-time client asking for advice about her teenage son who was trying to recover from a pretty significant mistake. To say the least, it was an unwise decision, generated in part by crooked thinking, by asking himself the wrong question. This young man is not alone. Our biggest regrets often originate when we factor in only a short span of time, such as a year, month, week, or even the next 15 minutes. Reflect for a moment on the choices you’d love to buy back, if you could, that were facilitated by a short time perspective. Teenagers and adults alike are quite vulnerable to this type of spontaneous, feeling-driven thinking. On the other hand, we tend to make wise decisions when we take into account the longest (more…)
Now It’s Safe To Eat at KFC??
Monday, April 30th, 2007In an associated press release this morning, it was reported that Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants will eliminate Trans Fatty Acids. KFC’s fried chicken buckets soon will be stamped with a health message along with the famous likeness of its founder, Colonel Harland Sanders. The banner will proclaim that its chicken has zero grams of trans fat per serving. Obviously, this is good news for people that ingest fried chicken on a regular basis. Trans-fatty or not, fried foods are one the top “Low Energy” foods you can choose to put in your body. Also note that trans fatty acids are much more likely to be found (more…)
Easy and Common
Tuesday, October 10th, 2006It’s easy and common to gradually become disconnected from the people we love the most. This is apparent in many marriages, particularly when children are involved. It’s easy to get swept away in kids’ activities, social commitments, business obligations and the chronic stuff that keeps us preoccupied. This well-intentioned busyness can fiercely compete for time with our most important relationships.
If, overnight, we became dramatically distanced, we would notice it and remedy the situation immediately. If we put on 10 pounds overnight, we’d take action to fix that as well. Since the relational gap happens little by little, it’s easy and common to become accustomed to it. Rather than fighting for our priorities, it’s easy and common to simply accept things the way they are.
You are probably aware of (more…)
So you think you are having a bad day?
Tuesday, October 10th, 2006On our radio program this past Sunday, Steve and I interviewed tri-athlete, Scott Rigsby. Scott is a double amputee who lost one leg in an accident after graduating high school in 1986. Scott was thrown from the back of a pickup truck, dragged over 300 feet on the hot asphalt and then pinned underneath a 3-ton trailer. Listen to the full interview to hear about the “miracle tow truck.” Twelve years later, Scott asked his orthopedic surgeon to remove his remaining left leg. Today he is (more…)
Trans Fatty Disaster, Years In The Making
Thursday, October 5th, 2006A few weeks ago New York City’s health department introduced a proposal that would bar cooks at any of the city’s 24,600 food service establishments from using ingredients that contain the artery-clogging substance, commonly listed on food labels as partially hydrogenated oil. Like the tobacco industry, the food industry (and the government) has long known the toxic effects of trans fatty acids on the human body. However, until recently, very little has been done to educate and warn the public and change the cost-cutting practices of food manufacturers. Like smoking, ingesting trans fatty acids causes (more…)
According to the Surgeon General, Negative Emotions…
Wednesday, August 9th, 2006I was rereading Tom Rath’s valuable book, How Full Is Your Bucket, last week when I came across a suggestion that caught my attention. Rath and co-author Don Clifton point out that cigarette smoking has been shown to reduce life expectancy by 5.5 years for males and 7 years for females. (Of course this doesn’t mention the consequences of second hand smoke on the rest of us) Relating these smoking statistics to research on positive emotions and longevity, the authors suggest that negative emotions may very likely shave off more years of life (10) than even smoking. In light of this, maybe there should be a Surgeon General’s warning about the danger of negative emotions. No doubt, negative emotions are responsible for far more damage to individuals and families than smoking. This got me thinking.
Smoking and negativity have a lot in common. Obviously, both begin as a choice. Over time, these choices become unconscious, automatic reflexes that inflict damage to oneself and those in close proximity. In addition to short term consequences, there are also the ultimate consequences of both smoking and negative emotions. Like smoking, expressing negative emotions provides temporary satisfaction that will inevitably need to be quenched again in the not to distant future. Both smoking and negativity become stubborn addictions that their owners become accustomed to and rationalize quite cleverly. As a non smoker, it’s hard for me to understand how someone could knowingly, willingly pollute their bodies with a cigarette or anything else for that matter. And I have the same curiosity for the negative crowd as well. The damage spreads well beyond the source. As with smoking, the negative “bucket dippers” create a ripple effect of second hand negativity that circulates and pollutes their surroundings.
If you have enough reasons to quit, you can snuff out that final cigarette once and for all. We all know those who have done it. Likewise, if you have a big enough “why” you can overcome negativity and the collateral damage it causes as well. Consider who you are building up as a result of your positive emotional energy. And, who are you pulling down as a result of your negative energy? How could you infuse your best relationships with your best self in the next 48 hours? It’s worth thinking about! What do you think?
Coach
