Live Better: Don't Forget Your Roots OR Dance With The One That Brung Yo...

Don't overlook the things you did that got you to where you are. Your past successes probably are still relevant to your current goals. Remember the things you have done that worked, and consider if they are still relevant to what you are trying to do.

SNAPlife: Willpower Keeps You Moving - s2e2

So you've started something you think is really worth doing? Along the way, you feel like your motivation is waning. That's natural.

Willpower is the thing that keeps you going, keeps you moving toward your goal. Realizing that the value of that thing you are trying to do is worth more, in the long run, than that thing that is tempting you to stop.

Beyond the Syllabus: What Else Students Should Learn From School

As my return to the high school classroom nears the end of my first year, I have had some interesting conversations with some of my students. Few of these conversations had anything to do with the content of the class I taught, but were, nevertheless, important.

In this blog post, I want to highlight some things every student should learn from being in school. While this might be directed to students, teachers and parents should take a look, too. The education process has affects far beyond what is contained in the syllabi.


You are accountable for what you do and for what you don't do.

You don't get to just exist in the world and never face consequences. If nothing else is learned from a physics class, learn this: every action has…a reaction. In life, it is not always equal and opposite, but anything you do has consequences.

If you do something you are supposed to do, you should be pleased with yourself. You are accountable for the good you do. Even if no one on earth acknowledges what you did, you should count the good you do as credit to yourself. Not every good deed will be rewarded, but doing good to those around you, even when they don't deserve it, is the best justification for being alive.

If you do something you shouldn't, you are accountable for that, too. Accept the consequences of your poor choices. Acknowledge when you make a mistake and learn from it. Far too many people want to pass off all of their bad choices on others. They want to blame their past, or their friends, or society, or the media. The bottom line is that you make choices, and choices come with consequences, and you are accountable for them.

If you don't do something you shouldn't do, you should celebrate that, as well. Not doing the wrong thing is honorable. Going along with the trends of society don't alway lead to the best outcomes, so when you stand up and don't do something you shouldn't do, then you have cause to be proud.

Not doing the right thing is dishonorable. Standing by and doing nothing is almost the same as doing the wrong thing. If an injustice lives on because you did nothing, then you have, in part, contributed to the injustice. Just as you are accountable for doing the wrong thing, then you are also accountable for not doing the right thing.

In a society riff with passing the buck and pointing blame on others, accountability is not very popular. Truth is, you are accountable for what you do and also for what you don't do. You can't really blame anyone for the choices you make, and when you chose well, you are allowed to be proud of the outcomes.


You have to figure out how and when to use your "pocket technologies" in a way that advances you and your goals.

Most students and teachers in my building have, in their pocket, a device with more power and more functionality than, when I was in school, anyone could have imagined. Smart phones are more the norm than the exception, and they link students to each other, their families, a wealth of information, and a vast, vast arena of distractions.

There is little doubt that what I like to call "pocket technologies" are here to stay, for at least a while. I have been on conference calls where clients are paying over $100 an hour for consultation, and one or more of the participants were connected through an iPhone or a tablet. The business world has embraced the potential of electronics and have found ways to enhance productivity through them.

At the same time, they offer unprecedented connectivity to friends and family, as well as colleagues. They offer a vast array of entertainment options. To deny their social impact is to burry your head in the sand.

As a student, you need to embrace that pocket technology is not just a toy. It is a tool. One of the most important lessons you will learn in high school and college is how to use them effectively and in a way that does not inhibit your ability to do what you are supposed to do. You will have to learn when it is okay to play your game and when it is not; when is an appropriate time to use social media and when is not.

In your future, you will find that there are times that you can check your social media that does not interfere with your work. Yet, there will be other times that it does. Learning the difference is vital and begins… as soon as you power up.


People count.

You do not get to go through life saying you don't care what other people think. That opens you up to being cruel to others. That opens you up to being offensive. People count. Society is built on the principle that, sometimes, we have to give up a little here and there because the wellbeing of others requires it.

You don't get to do whatever you want. If that were so, you could just steal things from anyone. But because people are inherently valuable, you have to forfeit your right to steal, to assault, to murder.

People deserve to be respected. Even if they are different from you, even if they disagree with you. Respecting people does not make them right. It makes the valued.

There is a cliche that says your right to swing your fist ends at the end of another person's nose. There is a lot of truth in this.

You need to think about other people and how your actions will affect them. Sometimes, this requires compassionate sacrifice of your wants. Sometimes, this means being quiet. Sometimes, this means speaking up.

If you go through life embracing the idea that people count, you are taking part in making society better. Letting the idea that people count be part of your outlook guides you toward important values and attitudes that will help you make good choices.


Not everything is right. There are a lot of things that are wrong.

Far too many people in the 21st Century want to sit back and say they have no place to judge… anything. The harsh reality is that some things are just, flat wrong, and no matter how many people think otherwise, they are still wrong.

An extreme, made-up, example: Cannibalism of your neighbors is not right. Sorry… You don't get to invite people over for dinner and eat them. No matter how many people think this is right, it's not.

Thus, just because a lot of people think something does not make it right.

But just because someone is wrong about something does not mean you can be cruel to them. It does not mean you can bully them. It does not mean they should be excluded from things.

Other people are often wrong. So are you! Find away to live among all the mistaken people that still upholds respect and dignity.


Just because you believe something does not make it right.

I once made teeshirts with that on them. A lot of parents bought them for their teenagers!

See above! Not everything we think or believe is right. We have to be openminded, ever seeking truth, ever looking for flaws in our way of thinking.


Just because you don't believe something doesn't mean it is not true.

Again, closed-minded thinking will be a problem. You need to open yourself up to different ways of thinking.


You have to follow the laws. If you don't like the laws, work through the system to change them. It's called civilization.

That.


You are responsible for what you learn.

Not your teachers. Not your friends. Not your parents. Not society. Not the media. You.


You can be surrounded by 1000 books, two gurus, five sages, and have access to the whole Internet, but if you don't make the effort to seek knowledge and skills, the lack of gains is your fault.

I was once told by a professor that education was like walking in an apple orchard. You can settle for the apples that fell to the ground or the ones handed to you, or you can climb the trees, shake the branches, and get the ones growing at the top. The choice is yours.


You are your best teacher.

If you want to know something, you are the best at finding out how to learn something. When you need to know how to do something that is important to you, you will be motivated to learn it, and when that happens, you will learn it well.

The trouble is, you don't know all the fundamental pieces you will need to understand when the occasion occurs that motivates you. Thus, you have to grind through things that you probably won't like in order to get to the things you do.

You might have to (metaphorically) walk a long way before you come to the tree from which you want to pick apples!

You need to approach every opportunity to learn something as if it will be important, later. It probably will be, at some point.


Think. Then think some more.

The number of things in life and in academics that make sense on their own is surprising. Just because no one has ever taught you how to do something does not mean you can't figure it out on your own. If you know only a few basic things, you can probably figure out how to change a flat tire. So too, many things—if you stop and think about it—lend themselves to discovery.

The ability to solve problems is vital to the advance of civilization. Developing that ability begins by trying to solve every-day problems as they come up.

Learn to think and to use your experiences to overcome problems you face. You need not depend on someone coming to rescue you every time something comes up.


Learn from your mistakes.

Over the course of my life, I have done things many times after which I have thought how differently I would do them if I needed to do so in the future. My son built an elevated flower bed. He showed me how he had failed to account for certain things, but when he built a second bed, he corrected his mistakes.

Mistakes, as hard as they are to face, teach us how not to do things in the future. Failing to learn from a mistake is a sure way to repeat it.


No one is going to do everything for you.

At some point, you have to do for yourself. And at some point, you will most likely have to do for your children. And possibly, at some point, you'll have to do for your aging family members.

Developing independence is a cycle. You come to a place at some point where you should be able to take care of yourself. You should reach some level of independence that allows you to take care of daily needs.

Independence is not the same as rebellion, though. Independence does not mean going against the "system" or fighting against parental guidance. Independence is learned over time by incrementally accepting responsibility for your own actions and being accountable for what you do (and don't do). (See above!)



No one can do everything by themselves.

People are created to live in community. We are created to live with others, to learn from others, to teach others, to receive from others, and to give to others. Life is meant to be shared at some level.

Create a way of living that is open to others. Live so that you nurture others and build them up. Live so that people feel respected and honored by you. Live in such a way that you challenge others to be better versions of themselves.

And expect those around you to do the same.

Wishing To Want To…

Years ago, I mentored a young man who told he we needed to lose weight. I agreed to help him with that, and we came up with a strategy to help him reach his goal. For weeks afterwards, each time we met, he explained why he had not started doing the things we agreed would be useful to help him with his goal.

A few months later, I finally said something to him like, "You really don't want to lose weight. You just want the benefits of having lost weight. You only wish you wanted to lose weight"

As I thought about myself, I realized that his attitude toward weight loss was just like my attitude toward physical fitness. I wanted the benefits, but really didn't want to go through the steps to reap them. Even when I was in several seasons of my life where I was running twenty to thirty miles a week, it was never something I enjoyed. Weight training has never seemed like something I could bring myself to do consistently. I reached an epiphany talking to this young man about it.

I confessed, "I understand how you feel. I wish I wanted to work out, but I just really don't…"

I realized at that moment that wishing to want to do something was common. Some people wish that they wanted to study. Others wish that they wanted to do volunteer work. Some wish that they wanted to—as that young man did—lose weight. People wish they wanted to find a new job. Wishing to want to is everywhere, in every aspect of life.

How people respond to those things they know the should or ought-to do often marks the difference between if they continue to advance in an area or if they stagnate. If passing a course of study is needed to get a promotion… If losing weight is needed to be an active member of a friend group… If cutting back spending is needed…

The difference between thriving and getting by is often realized by facing the undesirable aspects of life head on. Pushing past only wishing to want to and simply doing what needs to be done is, in many cases, the difference between success and failure.

As we mature and develop, we learn to do many things that we need to do, whether we want to or not. Realizing that you only wish you wanted to do something is the first step in resigning yourself to actually doing it. When you finally realize that you will never happily take on a task, it becomes easier to simply decide to, enjoyable or not, do it. Mature people will simple decide to do it and take the necessary steps. They will give in to the ought-tos and shoulds that they decide are worth pursuing and make incorporate them into their lives.

Finding a Middle Ground: Gun Control

Yeah, I am going there. Politics is not a normal topic for me, but I have witnessed so many irrational, unhelpful comments and arguments on this topic, I feel like I need to weigh in. Enough fear mongering! Enough inflammatory rhetoric! My hope is to present some sensible observations.

But, since I am going for sensible and not sensational, I am fairly sure no one will take notice.

To begin with, the end goal of gun regulation is to protect society. This requires that guns stay out of the hands of people who would use them to violate the rights of others and out of the hands of those mentally unfit to have them.

It also requires that people who are sensible, responsible, and inclined to own them have access to weapons and ammunition. Every house on the block is partly protected by the possibility that the owner inside has home protection weapons. A home need not have guns. Just the potential that it does is a deterrent.

So, how does society achieve this? It will not be easy, and no one will be fully satisfied.

First up, hunters and shooters are going to have to bear the brunt of the pain in making this happen. While they have legitimate rights to engage in their sport of choice, they, as the prime users of guns and ammunition, are going to have to "buck up" and take one for the "team" (the team being the society in which we all live). Fishermen, because they fish, have to bear the brunt of fishing regulations. Radio operators, because they operate radios, have to bear the brunt of radio regulations. People who use guns the most are going to, de facto, be the ones most inconvenienced by regulations related to firearms.

There is just no way around it. Keeping guns in the hands of hunters, shooters, and home protectors, but out of the hands of those not deserving them will, inevitably, mean that it is more complicated to get guns and ammunition.  However, if something is worth having, it is worth planning ahead and working for.

Look, hunters plan for hunting season months in advance. Long before they go hunting, they have put hours and hours into planning their hunt. Part of that plan can be jumping through gun and ammo control hoops. Getting through the red tape needs to just be part of the process.

Similarly, shooters need also to suck it up and accept that they need to plan ahead and be ready to go through an annoying, but necessary process.

What kind of red tape do I imagine?

Graduated permits/licenses connected to the hunter's/shooter's purposes. Require hunters and shooters to demonstrate responsible behavior with simple firearms before allowing them to purchase more efficient killing devices. Guns should be permitted/licensed with mission-intent. That is to say, a permit to have a deer rifle would be different and cover different weapons than a permit to have a bird gun or a permit to have a handgun. The end result is that a track-record of responsible use would be needed before "assault style" weapons could be purchased. Just because I have a license to drive an F-150 does not mean I am allowed to drive commercial trucks or semis hauling harzardous materials. I have to, in order to drive different trucks, qualify and demonstrate proficiency to do so. Pattern gun rights after this, and we are making headway.

Severe penalties for possessing a weapon that is unpermmited or not in line with the hunter/shooter license/permit. The arguement that, if you take guns away from law abiding people, then only criminals would have guns is, though used irrationally and in inflamatory ways, more or less accurate. Creating a strict path for hunters and shooters to obtain weapons begs for harsh penalties handed out to anyone who does not follow that path. Again, the goal is to keep guns available to hunters and shooters, and to those wanting a weapon for home protection, but out of the hands for those who would use them to the detriment of society. If we make the laws that allow guns to be had complex, then the penalty for not following them MUST be severe.

Mandatory, un-appealable, harsh prison time for crimes committed while in possession of a weapon. This hardly needs explanation. Make the penalty statutory, bypassing the judge's ability to set it asside and lawyer's capacity to delay or mediate it with appeals. Of course, committing a crime while in possession of a gun would revoke the convicted person's right to have guns in the future–at least for a LONG time.

Limiting amuntion sales (including sales of primers) to mission-related purposes. Do you really need 500 rounds to go deer hunting? Not unless you are the luckiest deer hunter ever! Do you need 500 rounds to go target shooting? Maybe, if you can afford it. If you have a gun solely for home protection, you really probably only shoot a couple of rounds every now and then. A minimal stock of ammo is all you need. Linking the ammo sales to a specific purpose creates headaches for hunters and shooters, but makes sense in light of the number of guns already in existance. A system could be–albeit not easily–established where ammunition is available as NEEDED to support hunting and recreational shooting, while still making it difficult for the un-permitted, unlicensed to obtain it. I would envision that a shooter who has an advanced permit/license could obtain the ammo s/he wants for an outing. Akin to credit card companies setting and raising credit limits, the permitting/licensing system could establish ammo limits based on shooting history and patterns. Certainly, this is NOT easy, and yes, it taps into some level of privacy concerns. But so does shopping with a credit card, searching on Google, watching Netflix, and even looking up things for on-line shopping. A smilar approach could be connected to gun permits/licenses stipulating how much (if any) ammo a person could obtain at a given time. Remember, the goal is to keep a minority of people who would misuse guns from being able to ruin it for everyone else!

Besides making it harder on hunters and shooters and establishing harsh penalties for those who violate regulatory rules, the other side of the situation also needs attention. Social and mental health interventions need to be established and enacted to change the context out of which much violent gun crime emerges. Society is the incubator out of which all people grow, and where society is maladaptive, some people emerge who are predisposed to act in harmful ways. Working at the root of the problem is vital.

I cannot count the number of violent gun acts that have, in the last five years, been carried out by people who were mentally ill. Yet, mental illness in the USA is under-identified, over-stigmatized, and under-treated. Depression and other illnesses lead people to a place of hopelessness and despair, and sometimes to acts of violence–violence that is often expressed with firearms. Bolstering the mental health system in the USA and making it less restricted by insurance companies is a much-needed step in creating a mentally healthier society at large.

While discussing the relationship to mental wellness and guns, I would suggest that part of the permitting/licensing process would be a simple form on which a doctor, a general practitioner, could check boxes to say that nothing emerged during an annual check-up that would preclude the person from safely owning and using a firearm. Yeah, I just got way out there! Now, the doctors are mad at me, too. Look, I see it like this–if my doctor can tell me that, following such and such a procedure I should not drive a car or operate heavy machinery for some number of days/weeks, they can also weigh in on the appropriateness of giving someone a 9mm handgun or deer rifle. Yearly renewal of the gun permit/license should require a doctor saying that s/he saw no reason to deny issuing the permit/license.

Social interventions need also to be put in place. Decreasing unemployment, improving education, dialing down the influence of gang culture, and generally creating a more positive social context in our neighborhoods would have a sweeping impact on violence. I have heard this claim championed by more than one mayor of more than one large metro area.

As I now turn to closing out this blog, I reprise my expectation that nearly no one will ever read this. My failure to be inflammatory or to sensationalize the issue probably makes my ideas very uninteresting.

Nevertheless, my belief in finding a middle ground sums thusly:

1. Hunters and shooters have to buck up and accept complicated regulations with regard to gun and ammunition acquisition.
2. Penalties for violating the regulations have to be harsh and unalterable.
3. Penalties for possessing a weapon while committing a crime must be severe and also unalterable.
4. Mental health systems need to be made accessible, destigmatized, and fully covered by insurance.
5. Society must change so that neighborhoods enjoy better, safer, more fulfilling climates including access to education and employment.

The middle ground, when we find it, will allow hunters, shooters, and those wishing to have a firearm for home protection to have the weapons and ammo that they desire, tied by license and permit to the purposes they have expressed and connected to their history with weapons. People with a history of violence and those deemed mentally unsuitable for a firearm will be precluded for possessing them. The end result is that healthy, deserving, well-intended people will have guns and those that would use them to harm society will not.

I believe this is a middle ground in which we can live.