Noah really needed an ‘A’ on a term paper. His friend Jason tells him that lots of kids “re-cycle” papers they don’t write and offers to give him a paper his older brother got an ‘A’ on three years ago. When Noah asked his for advice, his father hoped his son wouldn’t cheat but he didn’t want to be judgmental …
COMMENTARY 783.2: Family Values
Our values — the core beliefs that drive behavior — determine our character, our ethics and our potential. Thus, the most important thing we can do for our children is to stimulate them to develop positive values that will help them become wise, happy and good. This is no simple matter. The first step is to achieve greater clarity about …
COMMENTARY 783.1: Experimental Operation
Tess, an earnest eight-year-old was worried. Her little brother was very sick and she overheard her mom crying on the phone: “They say his only chance is an experimental operation but it isn’t covered by insurance and there’s no way we can pay for it.” she sobbed. Tess went to a jar containing all the money she had saved. Though …
COMMENTARY: Power of Words
“Stick and stones can break your bones but names will never harm you.” Really? In fact, insults, teasing, malicious gossip and verbal abuse inflict deeper and more enduring pain than guns and knives. Ask anyone who as a kid was fat, skinny, unusually short or tall, flat-chested or big-busted, acne-faced, uncoordinated, slow-witted or exceptionally smart. In schoolrooms and playgrounds across …
COMMENTARY 782.2: Borrowing One Hundred Dollars
Tim knew his father was an important lawyer who worked most nights and weekends. So he was disappointed but not surprised when his father didn’t attend the last soccer game of the season. That night he got up the nerve to interrupt his dad’s work to ask: “How much do lawyers make?” Annoyed, his father gruffly answered, “My clients pay …
COMMENTARY 782.1: Improving Your Life By Improving Your Mind
Our abilities to think, reason and learn are among the most powerful tools we have to make our lives safer, more comfortable and more fulfilling. Yet many of us simply do not develop our mental capacities. Although we can learn important information in school, the wise person in pursuit of self-improvement realizes that education is a lifelong process of expanding …
COMMENTARY: Good Relationships: The Best Road to a Good Life
If we interviewed 100 people who are unusually happy, I think the most prominent common denominator would be unusually good relationships.
COMMENTARY 781.4: Making the Best from Adversity
No one wants pain, troubles or hardship, but it’s absolutely inevitable that we all will have plenty of each. And they won’t always come in forms we prefer, doses we think are manageable or at times of our choosing. Adversity is never welcome, but it is not necessarily our enemy. Still, the lesson we must teach our children is that …
COMMENTARY 781.2: How Honest Do you Have to Be When Applying for a Job?
Can a job applicant properly withhold information about a criminal record or being fired in a previous job? Can a woman who has just started dating properly say nothing about a previous marriage or abortion? These are problems of candor: When does an ethical person have a duty to reveal negative information about his past? First, let’s reinforce a basic …
COMMENTARY 781.1: Enough is Enough
What does it take to make you happy? How much do you have to have to be grateful? To the barefoot man, happiness is a pair of old shoes. To the man with old shoes, it’s a pair of new shoes. To the man with new shoes, it’s more stylish shoes. And, of course, the fellow with no feet would …
COMMENTARY 780.5: The Truth About Trust
Everyone seems to understand the importance of trust. No one seems to doubt the vital role that it plays in personal relationships, business and politics. We want to trust the people in our lives and we want them to trust us. Trust is so hard to earn and so easy to lose. So why do so many trust seekers resort …
COMMENTARY 780.4: Digging and Filling Holes
Charlie, a road crew supervisor for highway landscapers, came upon a pair of workers from one of his crews seemingly hard at work. He watched one fellow dig a hole while his partner waited a few minutes and then filled the hole. After a few repetitions, Charlie demanded an explanation. The hole-filler was offended: “We’ve been doing this job for …
COMMENTARY: The Perfect Father’s Day Gift
When I was young, I idolized my father, judging him for his virtues. For most of the rest of my life, I criticized him, judging him for his faults. I always loved him, but I didn’t always appreciate him. I was so aware of his imperfections (surely, no worse than my own) that I greatly undervalued his good qualities and …
COMMENTARY 780.2: Fixing Toxic Relationships
Are there people in your life who regularly cause you to feel bad about yourself? Most of us care what others think of us, so knowing that someone doesn’t like or approve of the judgments we’ve made or how we look can be hurtful. And when we’re judged by someone whose approval we crave such as a parent, spouse, teacher, …
COMMENTARY 780.1: Keep Singing, Michael
According to a story in Woman’s Day magazine, every day since Michael found out he was going to have a baby sister, he would touch his mommy’s tummy tenderly and sing all the songs he knew. Unfortunately, the baby was born in critical condition and the doctors warned that the little girl would not last through the week. Children are …
Commentary 779.5: The Carrot, the Egg, and the Coffee Bean
Let’s face it. Painful personal trauma and tragedy — like illness or injury, death of a loved one, loss of a job or an unexpected breakup of a relationship — are unavoidable. The question is: Will these private calamities erode our capacity to be happy or cause us to become stronger and better able to live a meaningful and fulfilling …
Commentary 779.4: Box Full Of Love
Todd was a sadly quiet eleven-year-old struggling to adjust to the death of his mother. His father left long ago and he was living with an aunt who made it known that she resented the responsibility. On several occasions, Sheryl, the boy’s teacher, heard the aunt tell Todd, “If it weren’t for my generosity you would be a homeless orphan.” …
COMMENTARY 779.3: Advice About Teens
Here are three suggestions for the parents of young teens, all learned through my own mistakes: First, remember, with emerging demands for independence, worries about peer acceptance, pressures of school and extra-curricular activities and a continuous search for self-identity, adolescents are on a physical and emotional roller coaster. Like every generation before them (including yours), young teens are often arrogant …
COMMENTARY 779.2: The Blue Stone and the White Lie
When my daughter Abrielle was 4, she came running down the hall screaming. “I don’t want to die! I swallowed a stone!” I immediately determined that nothing was obstructing her throat, but she was still in a panic. “It’s OK, sweetheart,” I tried to soothe her. “You’re not going to die.” She thought I didn’t understand. “But I swallowed a …
COMMENTARY 779.1: Dying From the Cold Within
One of the great challenges to our humanity is acknowledging and overcoming our natural tendency to think less of and discriminate against people who are different than us racially, ethnically, religiously or ideologically. Despite persistent rhetoric about prizing diversity, political debates often reflect disdain and contempt for those we disagree with and prejudices of all sorts are more readily stated. …
COMMENTARY 778.5: Learning From Pigeons
During an experiment, pigeons were put in cages with one green and one red button. In one cage, if the birds pecked the green button they would get food every time. In the other, the green button yielded food erratically and the pigeons had to persist to get enough food. In both cases, pecking the red button did nothing. Both …
COMMENTARY 778.4: The Best Dad
Years ago I heard a story of a dad named Paul who gave his young son a small chalkboard to practice writing on. One evening his son called out from the bedroom, “Dad, how do you spell best?” Paul answered him. Moments later, the boy hollered, “How do you spell kid?” Finally he asked, “How do you spell ever?” When …
COMMENTARY 778.3: The Parable of Brother Leo
An old legend tells of a monastery in France well-known throughout Europe because of the extraordinary leadership of a man known only as Brother Leo. Several monks began a pilgrimage to visit Brother Leo to learn from him. Almost immediately the monks began to bicker over who should do various chores. On the third day they met another monk who …
COMMENTARY 778.2: Who’s Right and Who’s Wrong?
On many issues of morality we are deeply divided. The volume and virulence of disagreement on issues like stem cell research, abortion, and gay unions is testimony to the undeniable reality that millions of Americans are lined up on opposite sides of a chasm, appalled at the ethical poverty of those they disagree with. According to a May 2005 Gallup poll, about …
COMMENTARY 778.1: Mental Sunshine and Flowers
Dave had to undergo painful throat surgery. Since he wasn’t a young man and made his living as a professional speaker, the experience was frightening and traumatic. He told me his surgeon was skilled and the hospital workers were competent, but the cold indifference of the parade of nurses and doctors who came in and out of his room was …
COMMENTARY 777.5: Motive, Tact, Tone, Timing
Trustworthiness is essential to good relationships, and honesty is essential to trustworthiness. Being honest isn’t simply telling the truth, though. It’s also being sincere and forthright. Thus, it’s just as dishonest to deceive someone by half-truths or silence as it is to lie. But what if honesty requires us to volunteer information that could be damaging or hurtful?
COMMENTARY 777.3: Keep Your Fork
When a pessimist is told there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, he’s likely to assume it’s an onrushing train. According to journalist Sydney Harris, “A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he’s prematurely disappointed in the future.” Pessimism and cynicism are fashionable these days, but it’s the people who see and …
COMMENTARY 777.2: Memorial Day, A Day of Remembrance
It’s not just an excuse for a three-day weekend or a day for barbeque and beer. Memorial Day is a time for Americans to connect with our national history and core values by honoring those who gave their lives fighting for this country. It’s said that this special day to salute fallen Americans was born during the Civil War in …
COMMENTARY 777.1: Day of Gratitude
Our nation was conceived by idealistic and courageous political leaders, but it was preserved by the immense and immeasurable sacrifice of millions of soldiers who fought and died to transform the democratic principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence into a country we proudly call the United States of America.
COMMENTARY 776.5: Coaching for Character
I’ve spent lots of time with some of the world’s most successful coaches. I discovered that many of them think about character a lot, especially traits that are important to winning – like self-discipline, perseverance, resiliency, and courage. They pay less attention to virtues like honesty, integrity, responsibility, compassion, respect, and fairness – aspects of character that make a good …