Tag Archives: self

Who Defines You?

“What follows ‘I am’ is far more important than what follows ‘You are’.” I put that quote up on Facebook a while back and got a LOT of traction with it. It seems so simple a concept – what you think and say about yourself matters more than what others think and say about you. Right? There shouldn’t be any argument about that. But in reality, we spend a lot of time thinking and worrying about how others perceive us; what they think of us; how they view us; what our reputation is and so on. I’m as guilty as the rest. And then something will happen, or I’ll ready something or hear something… and it’ll help to ground me. It will remind me: what I think of me is more important than what someone else thinks of me. Continue reading →

Teaching Our Children to be Victims?

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A while ago I wrote an article that brought great response about how some training circumstances and tools used by our military services today may actually be teaching our soldiers to die. What I mean to say is that the training may be conditioning them to expect their own death. In recent months I’ve been studying instances of violence where American citizens didn’t fight back; didn’t defend themselves; essentially were willing victims. As I’ve examined these instances I noticed somewhat of an age cap on the “willing victims” and I saw a link to our public school system and some policies that were developed in the late ’70s and early ’80s. This is a topic I’ve written about before, but I felt I needed to do some further study, and in this article I’m going to share some of that newly gleaned information with you. Additionally, I’m going to share a story about a thirteen year old 8th grader who, just in this past week, observed a set of circumstances in her school that led her to believe something might not be right. She shared her story with her father and he became VERY alarmed. We’ll discuss why. Continue reading →

Teaching People To Be Helpless

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Most recently I had a conversation with a gentleman who is a Marine, a veteran police psychologist and an avid supporter of self-defense. The conversation started because I had been asking questions about families and the environment set dependent on whether the family itself – that being the mother and father (or other primary care-givers) – either taught self-reliance or they taught dependence. I was amazed to find out that studies had been done which revealed children were born predisposed in their reactions to challenging events. I’m having to be very careful in my wording but to simplify it some, what I discovered was that some babies are born apparently less fearful of certain events than others. When such children are raised in households that teach self-reliance and over-coming challenge, then the adults that result stand a better chance of dealing with traumatic events without negative side-effects. Continue reading →

Make A Resolution To Give Up

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Every year people make resolutions to do something or some things that they believe will somehow alter their life for the better. They resolve to quit smoking. They resolve to lose weight. They resolve to get in shape. They resolve to cut back on eating fatty foods. They resolve to drink less alcohol. They resolve to find a different job that they’ll like more than the one they have. Resolve.. resolve… resolve. As I thought about it, reviewing a few motivational snipits I had come across, it occurred to me that maybe what some folks need to do is make just one resolution: the resolution to GIVE UP. “Give up what?” you ask. Let me share… Continue reading →