Trust

Thursday's Thought Provoker:

Imagine if more people were raised in an environment where their life experiences instilled an ability to trust.

I recently identified a correlation between how coachable people are to the type of home environment in which they were raised.  Now this might be old news as I see a few studies on the issue, but I felt the need to pontificate on the matter.

As a coach and educator, I can quickly assess the environment at home, with about a 90% accuracy, based on how the child seeks and accepts coaching.  You see, when I child seeks out, accepts, and implements coaching you can tell that they have been raised in an environment where they learned how to trust.  In this environment, the child has had real life experiences where promises, advice, and direction have been honored and produced positive results or feelings.  Most of the time, the kids that are the most coachable, have been let down the least in life.

On the other side of the equation are the kids that avoid, deny, and reject coaching.  Typically, these kids have been raised in an environment where there has been little if any support.  Instead of reinforcing our natural desire to trust, these children's life experiences have been full of broken promises and bad advice.  These kids have been forced, through experience, to only trust themselves and their inability to trust acts as a steel blockade to coaching.

As a father I hope to create and maintain an environment where my children learn not only how to trust but also how to discern who is deserving of their trust.  I can string together a bunch of cliches to sound smart, or I can simply say that I want my children to understand that they can always get better.  Even when they believe they know everything or are performing at their highest level I want them to know there will always be room for improvement and in order to improve they have to seek out, accept and implement coaching.  They have to know who and how to trust so that they can be their best!

#DIFGTBAF

Motivate or Hate?

Thursday Thought Provoker:

Imagine if more people found motivation in others success rather than hating on them.

I am a firm believer in focusing on what you control.  I believe that living in a world where multiple constraints on resources will always exist, it is important to focus on how you appropriate these limited resources.  With that being said, I don't see the need to spend my most valuable resource, time, hating on the success of others.  Even if I don't care for the person or organization, I don't feel my time is well invested if I spend it hating on them.  I much rather use their success and all success around me as motivation.

My wife blogged about something along these lines a few weeks ago in Types of People.  It's amazing to think that people would want to hate on us and disturbing how many women spend time wishing ill on women they have never even met.  These same people probably spend the rest of their time wondering why they don't have or haven't accomplished things in their own lives.  Here's a tip...... Stop spending so much time worried about things you can't control.

90% of the time, you have little to no impact or control over the success or failure of others.  Therefore, if you are spending 90% of your time, energy, or mental effort trying to influence the success or failure of others you will not only fail in your hating! but you will also fail in your own life because you spent too much of your limited time on something you didn't control, other people, instead of what you do control, yourself!

Instead of hating, you should find motivation in the success of others.  As a father, I plan to model and teach my children how to wish well for all while finding motivation in their success.  I want my children to know and understand that their time and energy are valuable and should not be wasted focusing on others instead of improving themselves.  The steadily increasing number of haters in society is alarming and detrimental to the overall growth and development of a people or country.  If more people found motivation in the success of others to also do great things and succeed, there would be a continuous self sustaining growth.  Instead, we have too many people that look at what others possess or have accomplished with disdain and a dark envy that has shown to cause stagnation in their own lives.  SMH!

Imagine if more people spent less time hating and more time congratulating.

What I Wanna Do

Thursday Thought Provoker:

Imagine if more people did more of what they had to do than what they wanna do.

I mentioned this in a brief post on my crackbook account recently and it really made me ponder further on this thought.  It seems more and more these days that people are quick to tell you they haven't done or will not do something because they didn't or don't want to do it.  It is almost as if it is acceptable to not accomplish a task simply because you did not feel like it.  For real?  It is no surprise that most of these people have very little accomplished in terms of professional growth and success.  As a parent of young children and educator of teenagers, I expect these excuses from adolescents because they have yet to learn but it's alarming the number of adults that feel this way.

As a father I hope to teach my children the difference between 'have to do's' and 'wanna do's'.  I believe this is already being instilled in my 5 year old based on some conversations we have had about her gymnastic career.  We enrolled our children early in gymnastic classes partially because of my belief in how beneficial the sport is to physical development but mainly because at around 13 or 14 months my daughter walked across the back of our sofa.  We have pledged to not become the pushing overbearing parents so we often check with our daughter as the demands of the sport increase.

On our way home from the gym one night recently, we talked about her upcoming transition from development to team.  We informed her that she would soon 'have to' go to practice 3 days a week for 4 hours a day which meant she would also 'have to' give up other activities like dance at her school.  We then asked her if she 'wanted to' still move on to team.  After a few minutes of thought she responded, "Well I don't 'want to' give up dance but I don 'want to' do the floor routine and I 'have to' do it all if I 'wanna do' the floor."  Needless to say I was very proud.

At a very young age she is beginning to realize the correlation between the 'have to do's' and the 'wanna do's'.  Life, mature life that is, tends to be filled with more 'have to do's' than 'wanna do's' and typically the only way to be able to do the things you 'wanna do' is by taking care of the things you 'have to do'.  This simple truth crosses multiple facets of life from business, to sports and even academia.  It really comes down to honestly assessing your priorities to determine what you really 'wanna do' and what you 'have to do' to accomplish what you 'wanna do'.  While my daughter 'wants to do' dance at her school, she 'wants to do' the floor routine competitively more and she realizes what she 'has to do' in order to make that happen.

Imagine if more people did what they 'have to do' in order to do what they 'wanna do'.