COMMENTARY 806.2: Saying the Right Thing

When someone you care about is suffering greatly, what’s the right thing to say to make him or her feel better? There are all sorts of traumas that can send us to the darkest dungeons of despair – the death of a loved one, being raped, getting a divorce, losing a limb, seeing a child sent to jail or on …

OBSERVATION: Life After Life-Changing Traumas

Research on the the post trauma lives of victims of tragedies like the school shooting in Connecticut, reveal that most survivors eventually escape their dark dungeons of grief and despair and that many actually led happier, more fulfilling lives. This evidence validates Nietzsche’s observation, “What does not kill me, makes

COMMENTARY 802.3: Appreciating a Parent’s Love

While window-shopping in New York City, I saw an old gold watch that reminded me of one my father gave me when I graduated from college. It had been engraved with the simple inscription “Love, Dad.” But it was stolen during a burglary years ago, and I hadn’t thought much of it or the inscription since. I always knew my …

COMMENTARY 800.5: 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 …

OBSERVATION: U.S. Senate on character: Senate Resolution 2012

Whereas the well-being of the United States requires that the young people of the United States become an involved, caring citizenry of good character; Whereas the character education of children has become more urgent, as violence by and against youth increasingly threatens the physical and psychological well-being of the people of the United States; Whereas, more than ever, children need …

COMMENTARY 797.5: The Road to Significance

The most traditional way to measure the quality of one’s life is to evaluate success by listing accolades, achievements, and acquisitions. After all, in its simplest terms, success is getting what we want and most people want wealth and status. Yet, as much pleasure as these attributes can bring, the rich, powerful, and famous usually discover that true happiness will …

COMMENTARY 795.1: I Just Talk to People

Marta was a hard-working single mother. When her minister sermonized about “living a life that matters,” she worried that working to raise her kids and going to church wasn’t enough. So, on the bus to work she made a list of other jobs she could do and volunteer work she could try. Sylvia, an elderly woman, saw the worry on …

COMMENTARY 793.1: Tell Someone They’re Valued

The students at Sandy’s high school were badly shaken by the news that a classmate had killed himself. The suicide note said, “It’s hard to live when nobody cares if you die.” Glen, a teacher, realized this was a teachable moment about the importance of making people feel valued. He asked the class to imagine they were about to die …

COMMENTARY 788.1: Put the Big Rocks in First

There’s a well-traveled story about a teacher who showed his class a one-gallon jar and a dozen large rocks. After a little rearranging, he got all the rocks into the jar, filling it to the top. He then dumped a bag of gravel into the jar until the spaces between the rocks were filled. Next he poured sand into the …

COMMENTARY 787.4: A Call for More Civility

When George Washington was 16, he discovered a booklet of 110 maxims describing how a well-mannered person should behave. He was so convinced that these maxims would help him become a better person that he set out to incorporate them into his daily living. Among Washington’s many virtues, his commitment to civility marked him as a gentleman and helped him …

COMMENTARY 784.1: What You Do Is What You’ll Get

If you want to help your children do well in life there are a few things you can do. A high proportion of high achievers had two things in common: First, there were lots of books in their homes and a great emphasis on reading; Second, there was a family tradition of regularly eating dinner together. Filling a house with …

COMMENTARY 783.5: Do A little More

In 1964, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment building in Queens, New York. She was attacked repeatedly over the course of an hour and despite her screams, none of the 38 neighbors intervened or called for help. Some were afraid. Some didn’t want to get involved. Some thought someone else would do it. …

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: 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 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 779.3: 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 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 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 776.3: I’m Better Than That

Ron, a nine-year-old boy, was being raised by his mother who didn’t know how to cope with his uncontrollable temper. She knew he was angry that his father had abandoned him, and she tried professional counseling, but nothing seemed to work. So she sent Ron to spend the summer on his grandparents’ farm. When he came home, he was a …

COMMENTARY 774.5: Justin’s Introduction to Candor

When my son Justin was in high school, I went to an open house to meet his teachers. I was taken aback when one teacher casually mentioned that she had disciplined my son for cheating on a homework assignment. I asked my son why he hadn’t told me about this incident. “You didn’t ask,” he said. To say the least, …

WORTH READING: What is Constructive Criticism?

An excerpt from WiseGeek.com: Constructive criticism is criticism kindly meant that has a goal of improving some area of another’s person’s life or work. Often constructive criticism refers specifically to the critique of someone else’s written or artistic work, in perhaps a teacher/student setting, that would allow that person to further improve the work or to improve their approach to …

COMMENTARY 773.1: Good Ethics Make Better Relationships

While I believe that good things tend to happen to people who consistently choose the high road, the correlation between ethics and success is a loose one at best. Thus, it’s pretty hard to sincerely promote ethics by appeals to self-interest. What’s more, when self-interest is the controlling justification for moral behavior, moral reasoning is replaced by a pragmatic cost-benefit …