All posts in lifemapp

Where's the Carrot?

Jun 19, 2007Posted by Dave Darby

Today was a day that reminds me why I’ve always worked harder than the next guy. We took off in the middle of the day to go play tennis with the kids, grab a fresh deli pizza on the way home, watch a movie and eat some watermelon on a 95°F day.

It was hot, exhausting and simply perfect.

Can you image taking 5 kids (9 years to 2 months) to play tennis? I know from experience that most people cringe when hearing me say things like that. “What?! You go out in public?” Yes. And we play tennis. And we go to the movies and parks and museums and, yes sometimes we go crazy.

But here’s the image. Now, let me preface this for those of you who don’t know me – I am a very loving father. I say ‘I love you’, I say ‘you are an important part of this family’, I say ‘man, I really appreciate the person you are becoming and I enjoy your personality’. I’m a Teddy Bear, ok? But Teddy Bear goes commando (not the underwear kind, the military kind of commando.) And then I start saying things like ‘Get it done – NOW!’, ‘Move it, I’m not waiting 20 minutes to load the car’, and ‘Cry and you’ll get another.’ Yeah, I’m a regular ole softy-kinda-hardass. When I’m loving, I am doting. When I am upset, toe the line and face the consequences cause here comes your own little mini-version of hell.

So, when we play tennis, there’s plenty of ‘Great shot!’s but there’s plenty of ‘What? There’s no crying in tennis! Run to the corner and back and let’s see how your attitude is.’ I do that with the girls too. In fact, Jonathan threw a temper and smarted off once today – once. He didn’t realize Daddy had ‘skills’ until a green fuzzy object gave him a new crew at 60mph from 80 feet. Yeah, I still got game. And his reflexes are pretty darn good – of course, he gets ‘practice’, so they should be good.

We ran 1 lap to warm-up, 2 to warm down – as a family. Even 2-year old Olivia. But don’t think it was all militant. There was plenty of laughter when someone hit a ball over the fence or buzzed the tower of someone looking the other way.

But, guess what? At the end of the day, we circled up, hands in the middle, hoorah! Everyone is tired, everyone feels like a tight member of the team and everyone feels like they did something pretty rewarding. In two days of playing, Lauren and Nicole are drop hitting shots into the server’s box and Jonathan is hitting long volleys. Nicole – the youngest player at 5½ is even maneuvering to hit (though not successful yet) backhand shots. Wow.

So what’s the takeaway here:

Find the middle road
Be a Commando, kids need to respect their parents, but only use that personality to reel everyone back into established boundaries, be a Teddy Bear most of the time and let them know the difference. There’s no problem in telling a child he/she is not meeting expectations or not pulling their expected weight – it IS a problem however if you are degrading them or deflating their spirits in attempt to ‘motivate’ change – won’t happen so don’t do it.

Push your child’s limits in a supportive way and stick with it despite unknowledgeable opposition
Don’t praise them when they suck. They know they suck and they know you suck when you tell them that they don’t. Trust me – I’ve coached kids and I am raising quite a brew. When kids experience ‘real’ success and overcome a ‘real?? challenge, they appreciate the times they sucked and they appreciate the accomplishment. But mostly, they’ll appreciate that you noticed the difference and made a big deal over it. If I were to put together a Top Ten list to raise great children, appropriate praise would be #2 only to #1 security. (I’m probably going to write on that this week FYI).

When our 2nd grade tackle football team started 0-2, the parents realized and appreciated the lessons and the teaching that was going on. But they were probably starting to prepare, as I would have as a ‘parent-only’, a big ‘you sucked, but you tried your best’ speech for what looked like an 0-5 season. To make matters worse, I had an assistant coach who was adamant that we needed to change our plan.

My 2-word response to his lengthy plea started with ‘No’ and ended with ‘change’. We then went 3-0 to finish and moved into the top playoff bracket in which we mopped up the team that bullied us for our first loss, tied the league??s 2nd place team and lost to the #1 team to finish 3rd in a league of 12. I assure you, had we implemented change just as the kids were getting used to their blocking assignments, we would have gone 0-5.

And trust me, those kids, those parents, those coaches felt achievement. It wasn’t a BS end of season party – we were celebrating hard work, a few practices that required headlights and we were basking in accomplishment. And that accomplishment was real and it was valid only because we had the good fortune to start off sucking. We should all be so fortunate!

If your job keeps you from spending that kind of quality time, quit
I have two businesses and we’re doing work on 4 continents – I ‘get’ job satisfaction, I ‘get’ career motivation and I ‘get’ cash flow. And from time to time, I’ve had to push and ask my wife and children to sacrifice emotionally, physically and financially. But if those sacrifices are not short-term and sporadic (3-6 months, no more than once a year) and if our kids are hating life and learning values, morals and priorities from someone other than me and my wife – then who cares?

Chase the carrot with your spouse and kids and let them have a say in which carrot from time to time. After all, you’re not the only one sacrificing and you damn well should not be the only one enjoying the spoils. But, don’t be the parent who forever chases that carrot only to find at the end of the race, there was no reward worth the sacrifice. I’ve seen that happen first-hand and it’s not pretty. The only acceptable thing you can say after many wasted years is “I’m sorry. My priorities were wrong. I would not make the same choices again and I won’t from now on.” But for too many parents and adult children, that comes too little and too late.

Go – work hard, play hard and have fun. As we say at LifeMAPP – Life’s too short for trial and error.™

Comments
Comments Off

Tagged
Business Coaching, Family, Finances & Economics, Leadership & Legacy, Learning & Teaching, Life Coaching, Parenting, Significance
Read more »
Tip #2: Develop Your Top Strengths

May 5, 2007Posted by Dave Darby

There is something going on in America that I am proud to be part of – it’s called the ‘Strengths Revolution’.

The take is this: resist the temptation from self-help books, family and friends to become something you are not or to spend much time, energy or money in improving your weaknesses.

Instead, devote your precious time, energy and money to improving your strengths. As John Maxwell puts it: let’s say you work on a weakness that is a 2 (on a scale from 1 to 10). You can spend a lot of your resources and, at best, become a 4-5 – average. Nobody appreciates or pays for average.

Rather put your resources into developing a strength – something you rate yourself as a 6-7 – to become an 8 or 9. That is excellence and people will respect and pay for excellence all day long.

So apply this to your life and think about reducing the time you spend in weak areas and do what you do best. You will find happiness and your Ideal Life there.

Comments
Comments Off

Tagged
Business Coaching, Leadership & Legacy, Learning & Teaching, Life Coaching, Parenting
Read more »
The Thinking Process: Why Do You Think That Way?

May 4, 2007Posted by Dave Darby
Wednesday it was HOW. Today is WHY.

So random thinking or sequential thinking – if you read Wednesday, then you’ve given thought as to which you are and probably psychoanalyzed everyone around you – good!

As I showed you, being left-brain or right-brain dominant has both advantages and disadvantages.

But what makes one person left-brain dominant (sequential/logical – 80-90% of the population) or right-brain dominant (random/creative – 10-20% of the population)?

Training.

I know, you were expecting me to give a creative, intangible idea like ‘genetics’ weren’t you? Sorry. It’s time to bust the genetic bubble for what it is – ignorance run amok. Scientists are laughing in their little labs – “People want answers – this is the 21st century. But, we don’t know the answers. Well, just tell them it’s genetic – they won’t know what the hell that means and they will give us more money to research and leave us alone for awhile.”

It’s this simple:
- physical traits = genetics
- social/emotional traits = conditioning/learned behavior
For example: scientists love to tell us that obesity is genetic. And we fall for it because, well, it makes us feel better to believe that it’s ‘one of those things’ we cannot control.

I am overweight – hell, technically I am obese as I pack 225lb onto a 6 foot, broad frame. I should be a buck-85. That’s 40lbs overweight. Do I look 40lbs overweight? No. I have a broad chest and can get away with an extra 20. But do I look 20lbs overweight? Hell yes. Why?

The mass majority of people who are overweight or obese will tell you – they eat a lot of food and have very little physcial activity. They’re not obese because they eat salads and have plenty of physical activity. They’re obese, and they will almost always tell you this, because they are bored, depressed or unmotivated. That’s learned behavior/conditioning – not genetics. Parents with bad habits (say little excerise and heavy eating in this example) - teach, here’s a surprise – BAD HABITS. That’s not genetics, that’s influence.

I would love to see the exception to the rule: the person labeled as having a thyroid problem who does not wrestle with depression, motivation and social starvation. I’m sure it exists, but that surely is not representative of the vast majority of overweight people in this country. So, let’s stop pretending and going with the easy labeling of genetics. And hey, if I’m wrong, tell me this: why with all of these medical advances (snake oils) are we as a society more miserable, more overweight, more depressed, more ADD, more on and on and on that we ever have been in the history of homosapiens?

Personally, I am not one to overeat. However, I work 80 hours a week – I don’t give enough time to excersice. Whenever I do get out and sweat with the kids or work around the yard, I drop weight. But, I don’t keep it off. Not because of genetics. Because I get back into my low-metabolic routine. And the point – I don’t care right now. Building a national reputation and helping the masses is our life. I justify that trade out, my ideal health for the extra time, to get LifeMAPP on the map.

So, back on track. Obviously, in the Nature vs Nurture debate, I see the formula as 95% Nurture.

Jul is and I are both right-brain random/creatives. Our goal is to raise balanced-brain children. To do that, you have to begin with training them to be right-brain/creative – it’s much harder to teach creativity than it is logic – so we teach and train our children to be creative, then we mix in logic. We have 5 kids who at this point have 3 distinct personalities. All 3 so far are right-brain dominant and I fully expect the other 2 to be as well. Because that is how we are conditioning/training them to be.

Why? How?

It is actually simple (remember Ockham’s Razor?). Left-brained individuals tend to be realists just as right-brained individuals tend to be intuitives. The difference between realists and intuitives? Seeing and being open to the possibilities that exist.

In real life terms? When our first-born started climbing the stairs at 14 months old, we let him. I’ve watched many parents cringe at that idea. Had we protected Jonathan, he would have had a different reality. He would have seen stairs as a utility to get from one floor to the next and focused on the potential for danger.

Instead, we (meaning I) let him explore. I encouraged Jul to stand back and watch rather than hover and protect. Stand back enough to let him fall, but close enough that he never tumbled more than a few stairs. Because of this, Jonathan saw the stairs as an adventure with many possibilities and saw (and felt) the inherent dangers of being careless. He saw the possibilities AND the reality of pain.

Now, like any parent, I didn’t like to walk out into the foyer and see my 2 year old climbing up the stairs – on the outside. He was undaunted that he had nothing between him and the wood floor 12 feet below. Rather than panic and squash his enthusiasm, I assumed the catch position while letting him work his way back down. Then, we sat down and talked about risks – and gravity. After a few of those talks (and a few gray hairs for Mommy) he stopped doing that.

Same thing on the playground.

You see, if done properly, kids can learn to see possibilities and because of those possibilities, see a greater reality. If you teach kids reality alone, they not only miss the possibilities, but their reality is skewed and distorted.

It’s easy to spot the brain preference of kids (and adults for that matter). If you see a child playing with a fire truck and that fire truck goes forwards, backwards and rushes to the scene to put out fires – left-brained/sequential/logical. If however, you see a child playing with a fire truck that, at 88mph reaches warp speed, achieves lift off, spiraling through space – right-brained/random/creative.

Tonka truck – created by a sequential thinker. Transformers, well you get it.

How much you wanna bet that the inventor of the gabillion dollar seller of transformers was told at some point by a logical – ‘why, that’s ridiculous, why can’t a truck just be a truck for God’s sake!’

Righhhhht! Or is it left?
Comments
Comments Off

Tagged
Business Coaching, Leadership & Legacy, Learning & Teaching, Life Coaching, Parenting
Read more »