The sink is piled high with dishes. The trash is overflowing. Laundry hasn’t been done in days. The baby is crying, and the third grader needs help with homework. And my husband is playing Xbox. I don’t want to have to ask for help, I want him to notice I need help and do it. My urge for him to read my mind and miraculously unload the dishes and clean out the sink without me having to ask is temporarily outweighed by how bad the dishes piled up are bothering me. “Could you empty the dishwasher and reload it, please?”
“Would you rather me 1) give you a high five or 2) work on a puzzle with you?” I asked my five and nine-year-old over the holiday break. It was one set of about twenty force choice questions from the Five Love Languages for Kids quiz I was giving them in order to explore how my husband and I can continue to be mindful of how we can best customize our parenting to each child. Both easily answered, “Work on a puzzle with you.” The Love Languages quiz started in romantic relationships and describes five primary love languages: Physical Touch
I have the opportunity to coach a lot of middle managers. Quite often they are middle-aged men, and I’m working with them because there is some issue with how they lead (or actually don’t lead) others. Through some type of feedback mechanism, these men are described mildly as “aloof” or “disinterested” (always related to how they are with people, not necessarily the tasks or functions of their job) to more extreme words like “jerk” or “a**hole”. I’m brought in most of the time to try to fix their “personality”. Making them more caring and a better leader of people is
“I can’t turn little Johnny into a Stanford bound student,” said one school principal when I was meeting with him. “These parents expect us to take a B or C student with a 21 on the ACT and create Ivy League individuals. I get all the hype about growth mindset,” he said. “It is everywhere in my world, but the truth is, I can’t take your five-foot-nothing kid that can’t jump and turn him into Michael Jordan no matter what I do.” I get it. Some goals are realistic and some are just delusional. He was quite funny sharing these thoughts,
January. The time to set a resolution for better living and better outcomes. Have you set one or two or ten? Resolving to be better is always a good thing but resolve rarely accomplishes. As Paul David Tripp says in New Morning Mercies for the December 31 devotional: …the reality is that few smokers have actually quit because of a single moment of resolve. Few obese people have become slim and healthy because of one dramatic moment of commitment. Few people who were deeply in debt have changed their financial lifestyle because they resolved to do so as the old