Too many things

I have too many things.  Most people in America do.   Vast amounts of things.  Just looking around my room, I see three computers, fifteen guitars, two amplifiers and various piles of music gear, a cupboard and desk with more office supplies than I will use in a year, a scanner I haven’t used in months, a printer, a fax, a television and a game console.  There are two crates of action figures in the cupboard and a desk full of craft related items.  There’s a rack of magazines I haven’t read in months and a display with 12 baseball hats on it. Aside from these goodies, every available shelf, drawer, nook and cranny are filled with decorative items of one sort or another in an effort to make sure no space sits empty.  And this is my workspace, supposedly optimized to remove distractions and get work done.

Things weren’t always this way. In my parents’ day, things were a little more rare, and thus a little more valuable.  There was one television in the house, where there are four in mine (and would have been five, had I not loaned one out).  In my parents’ house, we had tiny closets that still managed to hold our wardrobes, toys, vacuum cleaners, sports equipment, etc. My bedroom has two walk in closets and several dressers and chests, and had I not had a recent Salvation Army purging, would have been stuffed to the degree that I couldn’t find anything.   I thought I had an admirable toy collection in my childhood, but both of yours dwarf it by a factor of ten or more.  You’ve both had toys passed along to charity that were still new, simply because you didn’t have time to get to them before you outgrew them.

I know why it’s happened.  When your mother and I were young, we didn’t have a lot of money.  Material things seemed so valuable and desirable.  So when we gained money, we gained lots of things.  Having the power to accumulate all the things we desired and couldn’t have when we were younger was just intoxicating.

But as I get older, more and more I’m seeing these things as more of a burden than a joy:

• When I had one nice suit, I kept it immaculate.  Now that I have several, some of them have problems – a missing button, a determined stain.  But they haven’t been taken care of because I can just pick up another suit from the closet.
• When I had one guitar, I kept it in great condition – truly showcase quality.  With a multitude of them, I just don’t have time to keep them all sparkly.  Some are out of tune.  Several need string changes.  They all need dusting.  But who’s got a whole day to dedicate to keeping them up?  And in the end, I can only play one at a time.
• I used to adore action figures, so I collected them.  Recently I packed them all up because they were so problematic.  I was so busy keeping dust off, re-attaching accessories, finding display options that I wasn’t taking any time to enjoy them.
• Once upon a time, I could quote every lyric from every album I owned – I knew them intimately.  My collection is so large now, I’ve got a lot of albums I haven’t even heard, just taking up space.

I’m trying to turn this situation around for you, but not having a lot of luck thanks to doting grandparents and current culture’s burning need to keep putting things in your hands.  So this is a situation where I’m going to have to beg you to listen to my words instead of my example

What you don’t understand when you start to accumulate things is that the value in them is not the retail price or the volume, but the value you derive from them.  A new car in your driveway is worth a few days of pride and indulgence, and after the new wears off, the same value that your old car provided – a ride from here to there.

And worse than that, the accumulation of things becomes a burden in maintaining those things.  A big house full  of nice things takes a lot of work to keep up – time and resources that could be spent enjoying life instead of serving your possessions.  And if you decide to hire out the maintenance of your things, then you have to spend more time at work to earn money to do this – more time away from living life.

I can think of lots of things I bought that I would hesitate to buy again:

• A big house.  I really thought we needed this much room, but as it turns out, we gravitate toward the same small spaces and a lot of rooms are just repositories and museums for nice things.
• An expensive engagement ring.  This is a hard choice, because a lot of a girl’s ego is tied up in this little purchase.  But when you think of it, you spend several thousand dollars on a rock – and probably one that abused a generation of poor people to produce.
• Flashy clothes, cars and other status symbols.  As soon as a peer gets one, or the first time it stains or dents, it’s just another piece of junk.
• Toys, guitars, electronics and other distractions.  I really don’t know that they were worth what was put into them.  I don’t regret my passion and involvement with guitars, but I wish that several impulse purchases that turned out to be junk had never happened.

Why is America like this?  Because the people who sell you stuff are really good at it.  They research you, categorize you and send you messages designed to get you to pull out your wallet across every available medium.  We consume radio/tv/internet stuffed full of advertising. We get our food in carefully planned packaging designed to enhance its attractiveness.  Where once my GI Joes were loosely stuffed in a cardboard box, your toys today are bound in exciting positions with hundreds of attachments – even the dolls’ hair is sewn in place lest one shake of the box make it look less attractive.  We pay a premium for designer logos – they actually have us brainwashed to the point where we pay the manufacturer more for the privilege of  promoting their products for us.

It’s not easy to defeat this kind of onslaught.  But one thing I do these days when faced with a purchase is ask myself “Is this going to make my life better?”  Am I buying something out of need, or desire?  Will it make my life happier, or is it just one more thing to add to the collection.  And because I’m a bargain hunter, I remind myself that an object I won’t use is not a bargain, even if I got it at a significant discount.

It’s working so far.  And I hope it works better for you in the end.

 

Negative thinking

Negative thinking is likely the most damaging thing a person can do to themselves. It has a way of creeping into your thoughts unchecked and making house there. It’s reinforced by popular media. And it’s easy to get on the bandwagon when it’s flaunted by a friend. And it systematically limits your potential and your mental health.

I want to give you some examples of negative thinking and suggest some paths to replacing it with something more positive.

I will be happy when _____

Whether you’re waiting to get out of school, get in a relationship, acquire an amount of money or getting past a problem situation, the result is the same. The goal never gets there. If you think a million dollars will make you happy, be assured the figure will become two million when you get closer to the goal. That’s just the way it works. The mystique of the near-unattainable goal is what drives you, not the hard figures. You can be happy right now. Count your blessings, see the positive side of things. Keep pursuing your goals, but understand that happiness is not connected to them, and never will be.

I wish I were as ____ as _____

Maybe you want to be as attractive/ talented/ wealthy/ popular as a particular peer or celebrity. The truth is, there’s always someone better out there. If you get to a point where you equal your point of comparison, the point of comparison will change. Comparing yourself to others is not a winning proposition. You’ll either never live up to your goals, or you’ll set them too low. The real race is with yourself, learning to be better than you were yesterday and searching for your potential. Comparison points are just mileposts. Work to be a better you.

I can’t do anything right – I’m a failure

Everyone is a failure from a particular point of view. The most successful people fail regularly – but they achieve success because they refuse to let it slow them down. Remember your successes and celebrate them. And understand that when you fail, you’ve simply learned how not to do something and in so doing, made the path to success a little bit clearer.

And keep in mind that everyone thinks like this occasionally. The guy you envy for his sports prowess may be just as jealous of you for your intelligence. The girl you want to be as popular as may envy your stable family life.

Why do bad things always happen to me?

Bad things happen to everyone. It’s part of the natural ebb and flow of life. Everyone has ups and downs. If you’re at a low point, you have to understand that things will get better. If you’re riding high, understand that bad things will eventually come your way. Just make sure it doesn’t hold you back. Keep moving forward and the pain, the hurt, the suffering will eventually pass. Learn from your experience, avoid it next time if you can and grow stronger from the effort. The only losers in life are the ones who quit trying.

I can’t ______

Then you won’t. Simple as that. If you limit yourself in your mind, you won’t ever go beyond that limit. Turn your thinking around and say “I can”. Very, very little is outside the reach of a person who’s motivated to reach a goal. I learned “never say never” when I saw 5′7″ Spud Webb win the 1986 NBA Slam Dunk competition – beating 6′8″ Dominique Wilkins.

Certainly I could go into more depth here.  But the important thing to glean is that negative thinking is an adversary in itself -  just focusing on what you aren’t limits what you can be.

 

Ask why

One of the most important skills to master in life is critical thinking – the process of asking “why”.  It’s also one of the most difficult skills to acquire because it isn’t taught or encouraged in most life settings.

• In school you’re taught to sit still, be quiet, do your work and don’t ask questions.  You’re required to learn the curriculum whether or not it has any value or meaning for you.  In my school years, we studied textbooks written by mostly white Americans with a decidedly nationalist point of view.  I know of several teachers that in retrospect were not really qualified to teach the subjects they did.  I knew standardized testing did very little to benefit me and everything to benefit the schools’ funding process.  I had to submit to unnecessary disciplinary rules that were designed to keep less mature students in check.  And I would have been in real trouble had I debated these facts with the administration.
• In most workplaces you are to do your job and keep your mouth shut.  You aren’t supposed to question the direction of the company, the morality behind their decisions or the choices of anyone with a superior position.  While every company says they welcome suggestions and criticism, the squeaky wheel tends to get marginalized or replaced.
• In most religions, you’re expected to accept the words coming out of the pulpit without question.  If something doesn’t make sense to you or you think your elders in the faith have made some poor choices, they don’t want to know about it.  Most will entertain your questions, but if you don’t accept the party line in a reasonable amount of time, you’re branded a troublemaker.
• In politics, the persons in power want you to pay your taxes, accept the policy and smile about it.  They will tolerate a bit of activism in a democracy, but only to an extent, and that’s because they have to.

In most cases, people in power want you to be ignorant, naive, trusting, quiet and sedentary – it makes it easier for them to get on with their work and agendas.  Questions take time to answer – sometimes a lot of time – time that they’d rather spend on themselves and their agendas.  When someone wants to get out of line, it slows down the group dynamic and the leader feels they have to go to the extra work of rounding you up and getting you back in line.

But if no one steps out of line, then everyone is bound for the same destination.  A destination that may or may not be the best one.

The fact is, the people who really make a difference in this world do so because they choose to step out of line.  They ask questions.  They ask why something is done in a particular way and why it can’t be done another way. And thus empires are created, records are broken and occasionally, the world is improved.

Even if you don’t desire to be the next revolutionary, critical thinking still becomes paramount in your daily life.  You have to learn to ask questions and find answers in order to find the best life for yourself:

• Popular culture will tell you that you need to buy in to a culture of materialism and celebrity.  Why?  How does that benefit me?
• Financial institutions will tell you that everyone lives on credit and you must also.  Why?  Is it really good for me to be giving them thousands of dollars in interest just to acquire something I don’t really need?
• Fashion media will convince you that you need to look a particular way to fit in.  Why?  Is it really “my image” if I just copy everyone else?  Does the cost of my clothing say anything about the kind of person I am and what I’m capable of?
• Politicians will convince you that our policy is good, just and expedient.  Why?  Is it really necessary for us to be involved in a war?  Do we really need the level of bureaucracy we support, or are we just paying off the politician’s supporters? Isn’t a clean environment/higher minimum wage/local homelessness and hunger more important than yet another road or publicly funded art program?
• Religions will work to convince you that they have a unique line to God.  Why?  Is tradition necessarily right?  How can so many reverent people have such wildly varying approaches to God?  What if my holy book doesn’t make sense to me?
• You yourself will rationalize a lot of things to encourage an immediate desire.  Why?  Is this unhealthy food in front of me really what I want in the long run?  Am I staying in an unhealthy relationship for security that may not exist?  Am I doing something to impress someone I don’t really care about?

The process of critical thinking involves acquiring information and evaluating it to reach a well-justified conclusion or answer.  It’s about asking “why” and using the knowledge you find to come to the best conclusion.

Anything can and should be questioned.

 

Be rich

I want you to be rich.  Rich beyond your wildest dreams.  Because when you are rich, you will be happy.

And this wealth has absolutely no dependency on your bank account, investment portfolio or retirement plan.

We live in a materialistic society.  You are bombarded daily by messages from TV, movies, magazines, peers… most every source available with the idea that material gains bring happiness. And that’s easy to buy into when you’re young.  You think “if I could just have that car, or those clothes – I’d be happy”.  As you get a bit older, maybe it’s even more abstract.  “If I just had x amount of money, I’d be happy”.

You can validate this in your own life.  Think of the last thing you absolutely had to have in order to be happy.  Maybe it’s a piece of clothing, or a car.  It’s great when you first get it, but very soon the luster wears off.  Soon, it’s an everyday object and you’re looking lustfully at the next thrill.

That cycle doesn’t end.  As long as you convince yourself that material wealth is your key to happiness, you’ll keep looking for the next stage up.

But there are a lot of other ways to be rich.  Ways that are much more valuable than having a particular bank balance.

•  You can be rich in relationships.  A person who cultivates friendships and is great to be around can have many good friends.  Many people with lots of money often find themselves very lonely from the process of focusing on wealth and alienating people in order to get ahead.
• You can be rich in health.  A person who takes care of himself by eating right, exercising and keeping himself strong can have a wealth that the migraine-plagued, stress ridden, overweight executive would kill for.
• You  can be rich in family.  Devoting your time to spouse and children and building a healthy history together can enjoy those bonds to their dying day.
• You can be rich in knowledge. Devoting your time to reading, studying, practicing skills and growing as a person finds that the pursuit never gets old to them.
• You can be rich in character.  A person who is honest, truthful, loyal and shows integrity can build a reputation that people respect, trust and value

The funny thing about these kinds of investments are that most often, they lead to material wealth as a side effect.  When you are vital, knowledgeable, stable and well-liked, the doors are going to open for you to pursue whatever you want.

Be sensible.  We are all bitten by the materialism bug from time to time.  And it’s OK to indulge it occasionally.  It’s good to want a healthy financial future and to have the freedom to do what you want.  But if that’s your focus, you’re going to miss out on the wealth that life can really offer you.

Be rich.

 

Taking care of yourself

Life goes by quickly.  As you will age, the reality of this statement will strike you harder and harder.  The older you get, the more responsibilities you gain and the more experiences you have, the more it will ring true.

It’s hard to see that as a young person.  You feel invincible – like your whole life is ahead of you there on the horizon.  You revel in the strength and enthusiasm of youth.  And as a result, you often take risks with that life.  It’s so abundant and strong, you don’t really see the value of managing it properly.

Imagine with me for a moment.  Imagine that I set you down one day and tell  you that because of an unexpected windfall, I have opened a bank account in your name and deposited ten million dollars.  This is my gift to you, my legacy.  This will be enough money to sustain you the rest of your life.  At your age, when you earn maybe $5000 a year, this supply seems endless.  Even living on $100,000 a year would support you for your natural life and even past it.

You begin to live on the money and even spend a bit in extravagance.  Every day you draw out funds for your immediate desires, but it never seems like a lot is gone.  Even the purchase of a house doesn’t really put much of a dent in it. At this point, if a friend came up to you and asked to borrow $100, you’d probably agree easily.  After all, ten million dollars is going to be plenty of money for you.  You’d probably indulge yourself a bit with expensive cars, gifts for friends, the best clothes, the best restaurants – whatever your heart desires.

As time passes by, you notice the account is down to five million, then two, then one.  At age 50, the money is down to a few thousand, then nothing.  You’re over the hill with no job experience and no further savings to support you.

At this point, your perspective on that money changes.  You wish you still had the $100 you loaned to your friend.  Those expensive luxuries seem very foolish – you’d do anything to have that money at this point. You begin to look back in your life and wish.  “I didn’t realize the money would go so fast”.  “I wish I had saved”. “I wish I had invested”.  But the time’s past now, and you can’t have the opportunity back again.

That’s a lot like your life.  When you’re young, you don’t think a lot about the harm you do to your body, because it’s so strong. You can’t realistically picture it being weak and sickly.   You don’t think about the waste of your time because it’s so plentiful.  You don’t really think about preparing for the future because it’s so far away.

So you harm yourself.  Maybe you get involved with smoking, drinking or drugs, or you eat a diet full of fatty, caloric, sugar-filled junk food and soda.  You spend endless hours watching mindless TV or playing video games.  You spend the money as soon as you earn it on whatever happens to be in the front of your mind at the time. You risk life and health by driving poorly, doing reckless stunts or pushing the envelope in some way.

Those things can seem fun and harmless in your younger years.  But what you don’t understand is the toll they are taking on your body.  You don’t realize how unhealthy consumption habits are draining the vitality out of your immune system and building a body you will curse in your adult years and regularly trust to the care of a doctor.  You don’t realize how much you will kick yourself for wasting the energetic and optimistic heyday of your existence by wasting its efforts on trivia. You don’t realize that the expensive designer shirt you spent your money on today could probably purchase a car for you down the road, if you’d taken the money and invested it wisely.

You will realize it, of course – when you’re older.  And you will wish for the chance to go back and do things the right way. I can think of lots of things I would change if I could go back to those years again:

• I would have built a habit of a healthy diet so that I wouldn’t be fighting so hard at age 39 to get rid of excess weight and to reprogram myself away from gluttony.
• I would have kept physically fit and strong so I could enjoy playing the sports I enjoyed so much as a younger man.
• I would have saved and invested so that my first years out of college weren’t so hand to mouth.
• I would have spent less time being so cynical and noncommittal and taken  advantage of some fantastic opportunities I had to learn and grow.
• I wouldn’t have been as snobbish and spent some time getting to know some really remarkable people.
• I would have spent less time in front of the TV and more time in front of people.
• I wouldn’t have taken on some of the risky things I was involved in when I realize how closely I escaped death so many times.

I don’t expect you to read this advice and embrace it wholeheartedly – you honestly will not understand the value of life until you have less of it. But I do hope you can see some of the forethought in it and think about building a solid foundation to live on.

 

The Adult Perspective

Around your teen years, you’re going to start having difficulty with the adult world. We’re going to seem very disconnected from you. We don’t care about the things you care about and vice versa. We spend all our time watching the news instead of entertainment programs. We do things like improvements around the house instead of playing games or hanging out. We don’t understand why your loud music is cool, or your outrageous clothes/hair are desirable. We worry too much about your grades, your friends, your future. We fixate on money and work and don’t understand how tough peer pressure is. As a matter of fact, you may think at times that we just don’t have anything valuable to contribute to your life at this point besides a meal ticket.

Well, it’s true, to a degree. We do worry about different things and focus on different things. We disapprove of some of the things you think are great.  Maybe it seems like we just have hopelessly incompatible ideas about life.

But it’s your job to understand us, not the other way around. As your Dad, I do everything I can to understand and support you and to help make things better for you, but in the end it’s your responsibility to understand me and the adult world as a whole.

“Why”, you say, bristling. “Why do I have to try to fit into your world instead of you fitting into mine?”

It’s very simple. Adults are in charge of the world. We own everything. We make all the rules and enforce them. We own the businesses, we run the government, we make the laws and enforce them and we decide at any given point exactly how much of the world you can enjoy and what you’re allowed to do.

Think about it for a minute. As teenagers, you “own” a tiny little subculture -basically some ways to dress, speak and behave – and you probably learned them from some adults marketing them to you – selling you on the idea that something is “yours” so you’ll give them some money. You don’t own anything. You’re in the minority and you have no real power. What little power you believe you hold over adults is just by benefit of our concern for you. If you all packed up and left we’d be missing the emotional connections, but functionally everything would keep going just fine.

Think about a baby. Basically, they know how to cry, poop and eat. They have no concept of friendship, community, sacrifice, pressure. They are completely self-centered and they have no idea how the world works. If you were to leave them unsupervised, they’d die. At age 16, you’ve got nearly 16 years of a head start on them. You’ve got 16 years worth of experience about how the world works, how to get things done, how to get ahead and what’s worth enjoying.

As a father, I’ve got 30+ years on you. And I haven’t been sitting dormant or getting stupider during that time. I’ve been doing exactly what you’re doing – learning how the world works and how to make it work for me. I don’t watch the news because I’m boring – I watch it because I know how those news stories affect me and what I might have to do because of some recent development. I’ve been learning about friendship and loyalty and culture and history and having real world experiences dealing with people. Most other adults have as well. And we use that knowledge and experience to set things up so the world works for all of us.

I’m not saying this to demean or demoralize you. I’m saying it to make a point.

As a teenager, it’s your responsibility to learn to be an adult. You don’t really get to dodge the process. Either time, experience or need is going to ensure that you become an adult. If you want to get anything done in life, you have to be an adult. Even the teenagers who get held up for starting businesses or saving the environment or getting recognized by the media got there by interacting with the adult world. The teenager who raises money for some noble cause does so by talking adults out of their money. Teen movie stars or pop stars didn’t get themselves there – their parents did. The money you earn for a job you earn by acting like an adult for an adult.

I’m not suggesting you give up your childhood. Enjoy every stage of life. Taste the unique flavor it offers. But the fact is, the sooner you learn to fit into the adult world, the better:

• The world just does not make sense to you until you start thinking like an adult, because adults own and operate everything. We make the rules the way we do because we’ve learned that this is what works. And the sooner you learn to think like an adult, the sooner the world will make sense to you.
• You can’t achieve your dreams without establishing them in the adult world. And the sooner you realize this, the sooner you can take advantage of it.
• Adults treat other adults with more respect and freedom because we’ve all been through the growing up process and recognize that another adult has a basic degree of knowledge and competency we can count on. So to get treated with that respect, you have to act like an adult so other adults know you’re capable of handling it.
• You’re headed that way anyway – you might as well start establishing yourself there so you can be a front runner.

Even if you don’t really care for our culture and methods at this time, that’s the best way of getting inside our systems to make things work for you.

• You may think your wild hair/clothes are cool, but you’re more likely to get hired for a job if you look like an adult, because the adult boss wants someone that he can count on acting like an adult.
• You may not care about finances, current events or other grown up topics, but when you learn about them you get a better idea of how these worlds work and how they affect you.
• You may not want to get a job, but the sooner you start interacting in the workplace with other adults, the better prepared you will be when you get serious about going to work.

You don’t have to give up what’s meaningful for you as a teenager. Just understand you have to function on adult terms to get things done in the adult world. And everything you learn in the process is 100% applicable to the next stage of development you’ll be taking, so it’s worth the effort.

There’s a time to grow up.

 

Lifelong Learning

I can’t tell you how many times you’ve asked me “How much longer do I have to go to school” in your childhood. I’ll admit that I wasn’t a fan of school either when I was in it. But I can tell you about an experience that changed my mind about it.

In my senior year I was taking the only computer science course my high school offered. For the most part, it was a boring exercise into things I already knew pretty well. Until the day that our teacher showed us a silly little character animation she got from somewhere. It was so laughably out of date that a couple of my friends and I just felt like it was ripe grounds for a prank. So we got the source code when the teacher was out of the room and started studying it. And the next time the teacher pulled it out, it had been edited creatively into a little joke about some of the people in the class and the teacher. Yes, it was juvenile and probably something I shouldn’t have done. But it left an mark on me that continues to this day – learning with a purpose can be really fun.

Quite a few people let their school experience kill their enthusiasm for education. Mine was just the opposite. My study habits occasionally went by the wayside while I pursued other interests, but I’ve become a voracious learner, absorbing everything of interest I can put my hands on. I read between 10 and 20 books a year and many more magazine and news articles. I see something interesting and make a hobby of learning how to do it. I see complex systems and want to know how they work – how to take them apart and repurpose them and make them do new things.

The fact is, the world keeps moving forward. If your education ended with school, you can count yourself behind and getting farther behind every day. You have to do a certain amount of learning just to keep up. And a certain amount beyond that to pull ahead.

Don’t lose the enthusiasm for learning. Examine your goals and determine what skills will get you there sooner and find a way to build your knowledge. Pursue items of interest – know that “you CAN do that” and learn how. Go below the surface of required knowledge and find the gems underneath.  Learn to love ideas and experiment with them.  The impossible is only impossible until someone finds out how to do it.  Ask, learn and love it.

It will make you the person you can be.

 

Perception is Reality

“You can’t judge a book by its cover”.

I believed wholeheartedly in this credo when I was younger. Appearances were superficial – all that mattered was what kind of person I was. Even from a young age I was extremely well disciplined, had great people skills (when I used them), was intelligent, well studied, well read and a fast learner. I was a great friend with a lot of compassion and support to share and a stimulating conversationalist. I had great leadership skills and was very resourceful. I was committed to building myself into the person I could be. I was thinking about my career before most of my peers and laying tracks for it – building contacts, getting summer jobs that gave me usable experience in my field. I was a good employee, a good son and a good guy to know.

The fact that all those positives were hidden behind the mask of a person who dressed in a slouchy manner, had too-long hair and put on a mask of a slacker who didn’t care about anything beyond having a good time seemed irrelevant. “If they only took the time to get to know me…” And because so few people “knew me”, I had particular contempt for rumors and appearances. I didn’t care what people thought about me or said about me. In my mind, their opinions were invalid because they really didn’t know me.

It’s true that appearances don’t always reflect the person. But they’re all that most people have to go on. People make snap judgments because they have to. No one has the time to get deep into the psyche of every person they make contact with. So they get impressions and for better or worse, that’s who you are to them. If you’re seen as a slacker, you’re a slacker. If you seem like a winner, you’re a winner. The same thing works with your social circles. Hang out with the druggies, you’re a druggie. Hang out with the social outcasts, you’re a social outcast.

As distasteful as it is, especially to young intelligent people during their growth years, you have to work to cultivate the perception you want to be attached to you. You’re building a foundation that will follow you all your life. Although you have opportunities to redefine yourself with new schools, new jobs and other life shifts, the habits you build will follow you as well. You want to establish yourself with the general public, so to speak.

Take time to ask yourself what you want to achieve in life, what that requires you to be right now and how you can make people understand that’s who you are. Find the conflicts and decide on the better choice.

Let’s look at a couple of situations for example:

• As a junior high/high school person, maybe you’d really like to start on the baseball team. At your age, raw talent is not always evident and coaches basically are just picking people they think have potential. So, if you choose to practice at home instead of playing local leagues, your experience is basically invisible. Lots of kids want to sign up for the team when they realize that it’s cool or whatever and coaches have a lot of guys to sift through. I remember being a basketball freak who missed the 6th grade team because I missed a layup. Although I spent a lot of time in practice, no one knew. The tryout for the team was simply giving the 50 guys who wanted to go out a chance to take one shot and the ones who made it were in. So ask yourself – who’s more likely to make the team? The guy the coach has never seen who’s in a lineup with 50 others, or the guy that has played Park Commission baseball every year he’s been in school and can tell the coach what position he thinks he’s best suited for and why? Even if you don’t have the raw talent in place, most coaches will take the chance on someone who’s interested and ready to hustle.
• As a high school age person, maybe you think it’s cool to be a slacker, but you’d really like to attend an Ivy League school someday. If you spend your time goofing off and not taking your studies seriously, you’re not building a very good foundation. You’re going to want teacher recommendations. You’re going to want the parents of your friends to understand that you’re Ivy League material so they can help when they’re in a position of influence or offer you jobs that will give you the kind of experience that looks good on an application. You’re going to want the school staff to be helping you get the grades you will need and the peer support of family and friends to help you keep your studies together. You’re going to want college recruiters to see your experience and an image that fits in with their college. You’re going to have a much easier time if you’re perceived as a studious, driven person instead of the slacker who skipped class and hung out with the losers.
• As a college student, maybe you’ve decided you want to work in Marketing with Disney. You could coast through your studies and send in a resume after graduation in the hopes of getting noticed. Or you could get involved in campus activities related to marketing, donate your time doing marketing for campus functions or publications and do your thesis on something Disney-related. Who’s the more likely choice?

Obviously, you’re going to have more than one simultaneous goal and you’ll want to think these things over. Sometimes even dissimilar goals can be made to fit. If you want to be a high school scholar and all-state athlete, you can cultivate both perceptions by being intelligent on the field and competitive in the classroom.

It’s a very “teen” thing to ignore appearances. But remember that for many people, your book is the cover. Make the cover attractive enough to get people interested in seeing what’s inside.

 

Challenge Yourself

You’re not really happy with me now. We seem to have a lot of these moments lately. Usually the impetus is that I’m asking you to do something that’s a little difficult for you and you’d prefer to do something easier – or you’d just rather have me do it for you.

The easy way out of things always seems so attractive. It’s much more convenient to do things you already do well. It gives you a little ego rush and a big boost of confidence and often you can just about do it on automatic pilot.

But taking the easy way out isn’t as fun as it seems on the surface. Meeting a challenge is preferable on several fronts:

• When you’re challenged, you grow. You better learn your limitations and get a clear idea of how much you’re going to have to work to get to the next level. You get a better idea of how much effort something is going to take and that makes it easier to plan for it the next time around. And the more you practice something, the better you get at it.
• When you decide you will meet a challenge and do so, you fulfill a promise to yourself. In doing so, you begin to regard yourself as a capable and trustworthy person. This is the definition of integrity.
• When you challenge yourself and succeed, the gratification is easily ten times the superficial ego boost of doing something you’ve already done. When you repeat an action, you remind yourself that you’re at a certain level of achievement. When you meet a challenge, you remind yourself that you have the ability to move up and get better and better.
• When you challenge yourself, you expand your perspectives. If you keep yourself in your “comfort zone”, you find that the scenery stays static. There’s little new to consider. You tend to go to the same places, eat the same things, work the same way – because it’s comfortable, trusted and easy. It also gets very boring! If you are the kind of person that regularly challenges yourself, you find yourself seeking new horizons and finding new things you enjoy that you didn’t know about before.

Resist the temptation to stand still. In the end, challenging yourself is much more rewarding.

 

Talent

At some point in time, no doubt you’ve noticed people that are unusually good at certain things. The star student that aces every exam. The quarterback that’s perpetually an all-star. The guy with lots of charisma that everyone gets along with. The artist or musician that is better than anyone else you know. Often people say that this person was simply born with a natural affinity to these things – they have a natural talent. There’s something in their makeup that makes easy to them what you find difficult.

Talent is a myth, and a dangerous one at that.

Genetic differences between human beings are minor fluctuations, minimal differences that aren’t worth mentioning, for the most part. The difference between a “talented” person and one who isn’t is the degree of effort they put into developing those skills. Someone can be born slightly better suited for a skill, but it’s nothing compared to the amount of effort they put into gaining that skill.

The star student gets the grades because they’ve honed the learning process. They’ve learned how to listen, learn and study. You may object, saying that someone you know “never cracks a book” for a test and still does well. I know – I was one of those guys. The reason I rarely spent hours in study is because I learned how to listen properly in class and digest the material then, so study time just became practice time for me. And when I did study, I used methods and techniques that let me retain the material I was likely to be tested on effectively.

The star athlete may have some more natural athletic ability because they got more exercise as a child, but the bulk of their talent comes from learning the game, practicing regularly, visualizing results, weight training, etc. Michael Jordan may have had a body that was well suited for basketball, but there’s a million other guys with the same build that will never live up to his potential. The differentiator was the effort he expounded to be as good as he was.

The reason a belief in talent is dangerous is because it convinces you that something is out of your reach. Looking at a talented performer and saying “I could never do that” ensures that you never will. But if you understand that you can achieve those levels of accomplishment by investing yourself in them, the world opens up to you.

• You can be an outstanding athlete. All you have to do is practice and learn
• You can be an outstanding student. All you have to do is learn how to learn and dedicate the time required to your studies.
• You can be a great musician. Study the basics, learn from your betters and practice, practice, practice.
• You can be an outgoing, charismatic person. Study and practice

Believing there’s a talent prerequisite for the things you want to be is a horribly self-defeating worldview. Understand that you CAN do it. It just takes effort.