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Persuasion, In A Different Light

What separates Arlene Dickinson from most women, and entrepreneurs in general?

Here's an example of the way she thinks:

Click Here for an interview with Arlene

Click Here after the video to visit Arlene's Blog

Jackson Katz - Violence against Women - It's a Men's Issue

Do you think so many men would treat women poorly if they understood these principles?

Do you think so many men would treat women poorly if they were raised differently?

The solution to the problem starts at the genesis of life.

Life is Hard

Have you ever heard the phrase: 

"I learned it the hard way"? 

What does that mean exactly? Was the person that said that phrase for the very first time looking for an easy way to learn something, but ended up learning it a more difficult way? Was there some sort of physically tough obstacle in the way of his quest to learn whatever he was seeking? 

I think, generally speaking, learning something the hard way comes with some type of challenge attached. Like, "I went the hard way" versus "I went the easy route". Also, I think that when you "learn something the hard way" it tends to leave a more impressionable mark.

These are some of the questions that came to mind when I read the following passage from a book called Fathered by God by New York Times Best-Selling Author, John Eldredge; the subtitle: Learning What Your Dad Could Never Teach You:

"Life is hard. While he is the beloved son, a boy is largely shielded from this reality. But a young man needs to know life is hard, that it won't come to you like Mom used to make it come to you, all soft and warm and to your liking, with icing. It comes to you more the way Dad makes it come to you - with testing, as on a long hike or trying to get an exhaust manifold replaced. Until a man learns to deal with the fact that life is hard, he will spend his days chasing the wrong things, using all his energies trying to make life comfortable, soft, nice, and that is no way for a man to spend his life." 

I was genuinely angry after reading this small paragraph. And I'm going to assume that at least one other person in this world has felt like this - I realized that I spent too many years of my life trying to make everything comfortable. After reading this passage, the truth that resonated struck me at the core and literally brought me to a state of severe frustration(another one of those palm-slaps-forehead moments, except I was in the car so I punched the steering wheel instead).

Now, my own time and energy wasted was only half of my dilemma. Because after I was purely aggravated about my own existence, I started to think of all of my friends and this same truth being evident in many of them. I started to think of people that I don't even consider friends anymore because if I felt my heart telling me I needed to share some truth with them - I resisted. There was such a sensitive atmosphere around them that I refused to follow my heart and potentially offend them. 

Brevity and Transparency are core principles that drive me. But I know hundreds of people that suffer from this mental disease of being offended too easily; myself, at times, included. My passion for changing the lives of future generations has clouded that inclination to "play it safe" with people I care about, and that same passion has fueled my resolve to include this principle at the core of this entire paradigm shift:

Life is Hard.

Listen to ET's advice:

Changing Education Paradigms by Sir Ken Robinson

Growth, Growing, Grown

Dr. John C. Maxwell, world-renowned leadership expert, often says that our personal success is directly proportional to our ability to learn, un-learn, and re-learn. I firmly agree, and submit that simply learning something, a skill or a trade, is only a small portion of the overall learning process. We are creatures of habit and routine. Its very easy for human-beings to get into the process of doing something, and we often fall into routines subconsciously. Its also energizing, in most cases, to learn something new.

However - UN-learning has been the biggest benefactor to me over the years(and I fear that re-learning will play a major part in my later years). A mentor of mine was talking to me about a book he was reading, and referenced the power of assumptions. In the medical field, assumptions have been made to treat certain conditions such as kidney stones. Logically, doctors have assumed that random calcium deposits could be prevented by a low-calcium diet. The downfall came when those patients, who had experienced kidney stones and resorted to a low-calcium diet as prevention, actually produced kidney stones more often than before.

I've had the privilege of having these "epiphany" moments at times. Something like, (as my open palm slaps my forehead) "Darn-it! That makes so much sense! I can't believe I've been doing it wrong this whole time." - and I'm confident that many of you have experienced the same. After several years of investing in my personal growth and having these moments, I started to notice a pattern of strength in the things I was un-learning over the things I was simply learning. I noticed that the things I was un-learning were more detrimental to my success. It was when I un-learned different habits, that I [grew in my self-confidence, became more financially stable, developed better relationships, etc]. In general, I felt more successful, fulfilled, and inspired.

At one point in my career, I was solely focused on learning new things: new sales techniques, reading more books(which isn't necessarily a bad thing), having more assets, having more "tools in my toolbox". I took for granted the assets I already possessed and constantly looked for the "silver bullet" to achieve whatever my goal was at the time. For the better part of the last 3 years, I've begun to focus more on un-learning the "un-success" principles that I had learned - and my life has taken a huge turn for the better.

I won't claim that my cause is the one change that our country needs. But I do believe that it is one of the most important things that could change the way our country operates for the next 50 generations. In order to create the magnitude of change that most of us desire to see in the world we live in, we have to start with our children - the Next Generation. Why not start at the roots of the world we live in? In not too many years, the kids, teens and young adults of the early 2000s will be running companies, influencing our government, and influencing our world as a whole. 

Why not raise up successful adults so that they make better decisions than us? So that they are smarter than we are? So that they learn principles that will make them more successful than we are? Why not create a better world for our children and our children's children? 

Why not create a foundation for the generations to come so that more people spend their young adult years developing, innovating, and creating? 

..Instead of spending energy "un-learning"

Please share your thoughts and opinions on subjects like: 

• the current education system? 
• major issues that our country faces? 
• parenthood in America?

Its All Wretch and No Vomit

Hey Gang, 

   I watched a very impactful video via YouTube recently, and wanted to share with anyone who hasn't had the privilege to see it.

What Do You Desire? 

                   by Alan Watts

                      

-----

What do you desire?

  What makes you itch?

  What sort of a situation would you like?

Let's suppose... students, they come to me and say,

  "Well, we're getting out of college and we haven't the faintest idea what we want to do."

So I always ask the question,

  "What would you like to do if money were no object? What would, how would you really enjoy spending your life?"

Well, its so amazing, as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say, "Well, we'd like to be doctors", "We'd like to be engineers.", "We'd like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can't earn any money that way." Another person says, "I'd like to live an outdoors life and go mountain climbing."

"Let's go through with it, what do you want to do?"

When we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him,

"You do that. And forget the money."

Because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is, to go on doing things you don't like doing. Which is stupid.

"Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way...."

But it's absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don't like in order to go on spending things you don't like and doing things you don't like, and to teach your children to follow in the same track.

See what we're doing is we're bringing up children, and educating them, to live the same sort of lives we're living. In order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing. So its all wretch and no vomit, it never gets there.

So therefore, its so important to consider this question: What do I desire?

-----

I included the script of the commentary from that video so I could show you all what impacted me the most the first time I watched the video. It stated, what I think, is the essence of what it will take to create a more successful and better-educated America. And that is where I derive my passion.

In answer to Watts' question, I desire to see more people living fulfilled lives than those living in quiet desperation. I believe that a vast majority of people are living below their true potential, and the method to interrupting this recurring pattern of turning out "average" has to start at the genesis of the life of the next generation. 

When two people decide to have children, they are making an 18-year commitment to raising a human-being(and anyone who accidentally gets pregnant has involuntarily made that same commitment). This is where the whole process starts: raising the next generation of human-beings organically to become a successful generation.

Over the duration of this blog, I will reveal some simple truths and my perspective on current, prevalent issues that I believe are extremely pertinent in today's society, as well as what I think are some of the keys to raising up the next generation to be more successful than any other generation has been before.

This is a small, crazy idea: changing the next American generation for the good. But there will be a movement created.. Leading to a more-prosperous, more-abundant America.

Please feel free to leave comments, questions, ideas, opinions. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.