She paced back and forth and stormed, “I never see myself not having money for food or sleeping in my car because I have no home to sleep in. I never see myself without a family to support me. All I got from these presenters was that I must get very low if I want to be successful, which means I’ll never be successful. What kind of motivation technique is this?”
Make a list: Birthday Presents to Ask for
Birthdays should be wonderful events in everyone’s life. For some reason, however, grownups do not think of birthdays the same as kids. While kids see it as a happy moment with lots of gifts, grownups think of the birthday party as a checkpoint for their life and expenses, expenses, expenses.
Obviously, when you are happily wealthy, this is not a problem at all. I remember the stage in our life when we could spend money on everything we wanted and the dilemma was whether to travel to China for my daughter’s birthday for 3 or 4 weeks.
This may be fun, but most people do not have this luxury.
How to Make Troubled Teens Relax: Change Your Parenting
What are troubled teens? Could your teen be troubled? Can you do anything about it as a parent? What can you do? Get your answers right here.
In the past few weeks, I overheard talk about a teenager (let’s call him Jonathan). Besides being very talented, he used to be friendly and “normal”. But recently started to miss classes, show up late, fail various subjects and behave indifferently. One speculation was that he might have started using drugs.
I thought this was serious enough to report to his school through a friend of ours, who is his teacher. “Speculation or not, the school should look into it”, I said.
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Skills You Don’t Learn at School
Unfortunately, there are a lot of things we should have learned at school, because as a society, we cannot rely on parents to be able to do it by themselves. For example, we cannot expect all parents to teach their kids literacy and numeracy because not all of them know enough and out of those who do, not many are also good at teaching.
Stress is Like Living in an Ambulance
Living in stress is like living in an ambulance all your life. You are on the road most of the day, you live in a small space, not many people around, everything is difficult, your decisions are all about life and death, mistakes are critical, there is no time to waste, not time for fun, not enough time and space to make your own meals, you see (too) many doctors, you develop a dark view of the world from frequent exposure to accidents, drink driving, violence and self neglect. Through the eyes of the stressed person life sucks!
Working Kids: The Value of Money
Last week, my son went to a small pool party and one of the kids who were invited did not show up. Somebody said Nick could not come because he was working. Nick, you should know, is a 14-year-old kid and had just started working at a donut shop that had opened next to his house. Obviously, a whole conversation started about working kids and whether or not it is good for kids to go to work.
Everyone Knows the Truth
Ronit and I love movies about relationships. We prefer movies showing “real” people (as opposed to flashy, overly unique characters) going through “real” challenges and hopefully completing a positive personal journey by the end of the film. This way, we can take something home with us, discuss it, learn from it and share the growth.
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Cooking, Eating and Success
My mom always says, “You will eat tomorrow what you cook today” (my mom was a chef, so many of her proverbs come from the cooking world). I think she heard it from her mother, who heard it from her mother, but I am sure that if I trace it long enough back, I will discover this proverb is very ancient, but I doubt most people understand it.
You see, many people cannot find the correlation between their actions and the outcomes they get. When such people are still young, we say it will take them time to learn. When they get older, we call them “stupid”.
I guess this means we are all stupid, because none of us have the ultimate formula for cause and effect. After all, life is a big guessing game based on trial and error and our level of success depends on which attempt we are at.
Nevertheless, there is one thing I know that definitely works and that is doing things in the right order: First we have to cook, then we can eat!
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Marriage of Singles
The current vibe around marriage and likely divorce has caused many people to stay single for a lot longer than they ever would have in the past. The upside of this is more personal development, more independence and an improved financial situation. The downside is getting used to making decisions alone, looking for potential partners and keeping a clear personal space.
Is this a problem? It can be.
You see, having kids is something that cannot wait and should not wait. The quality and quantity of eggs in women goes down over time, which makes having a baby more and more complicated. Women’s physical fitness and flexibility also goes down with age, making matters worse.
From a family planning point of view, having kids over 5 years provides fewer options than having them over 10 years. The age difference between kids is a very important factor in healthy emotional development, but if there is not time, you can only have them close together, which can be challenging.
Being single for a long time causes many people to continue living as two singles sharing a home, instead of a married couple. This gets messy very quickly. In extreme circumstances, the two singles keep things ready for separation, which only makes separation more likely.
After “hunting” for a partner for a long time, the habit of collecting and evaluating potential mates is harder to shake and having affairs does not seem like such a big deal. Why invest in making your marriage interesting if you can just “refresh” your life with someone else from time to time? Alas, the way back is hard and most couples cannot make it.
And there are other economical and social reasons, which is why marriage was invented in the first place.
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The "Other" Parent
In many marriages, one partner is the main “bread winner”, spending his time (or her time, but mostly his) outside the home, being busy with work-related stuff some of the time at home and needing support from the “other” partner (typically the woman). This creates an imbalance in the family.
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