Father – Disney Leadership Keynote Speaker

He Said Pushing His Son To Excel Pushed Him Away

We spent the weekend at Disney instead of going camping.

Kids (especially great spellers) notice the coolest things, like misspellings.

Going through each day of our lives, we are presented with a multitude of free learning opportunities. I often wonder how many I miss and how others feel about this concept.

Yesterday in North Carolina, in complete casual conversation, I asked a stranger if he had any advice on raising boys, since his boy is almost 18. He said, “Communication“.

He pushed his son so hard in sports that his son started to pull away and retreat – while they we’re together. It was no longer fun for the boy to be with his Dad, during years 12-14.

Duly noted.

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MidLife Heartbreak?

Midlife heartbreak or midlife opportunity. Pretty simple. Two choices. You get to pick one.

If you and your spouse (and yes, want to acknowledge some readers will not be parents), worked hard all your life and played by the rules, and you gave birth to a child without eyes and never able to walk, which would you pick?

Mid Life heartache or mid life opportunity?

Well, there was a Family that had to make this choice. They were featured on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition as well as numerous other media pieces, including a heartwarming You Tube Video feature, about 6 minutes long, available at the end of this post.

One of my “secrets” to unspeakable joy is the daily effort to read, listen, watch, experience, think, do and reflect on the countless blessings that surround my ordinary life.

You have all these blessings too. But in order to feel the Peace and Contentment that are the fruit of these blessings, you must become fully aware.

You must become willing to invest time everyday. Even if it’s only six minutes. Will today be another day to postpone your new beginning?

If it’s not, click here.

What Would You Do?

Two simple choices:

Ease up and just deal with whatever comes your way
Proactively, relentlessly pursue a cure

They both have pros and cons.

Welcome to life – the real world.

Promise Me

Have you ever done something you weren’t supposed to do? And in order to do it, you had to do it in a sneaky way? And often, there was a close friend who had already done the thing, and they helped you?

Smoking, drinking, stealing, bad pranks, and so on.

Seriously, these are things adults do not make a conscious effort to teach children. Can you imagine a Mother saying, “Come here son, it’s time you learned how to smoke cigarettes.”

Heard a Chantix commercial last night. Chantix helps smokers quit. Let me set the scene:

Mom comes on saying, “I smoked a pack a day for 25 years. I could not quit smoking, no matter how hard I tried.”

Until one day……

“I told my son to promise me he would never start smoking.”

He said, “Promise me you’ll quit.”

And the Cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon. Little boy blue and the man in the moon……he turned out just like me…..my boy was just like me….

Thanksgiving Tradition Cancelled?

“Dad, would you cancel Thanksgiving?”, my son responded brilliantly to my serious-sounding question.

I had just antagonistically asked him, “We don’t need to go to Twistee Treat today. I mean, we can skip one Monday. It’s no big deal, right? What’s one Monday?”

Five years ago, I spontaneously suggested to our son, as we were leaving his school, that we stop by Twistee Treat on the way home. “Let’s get some ice cream and celebrate a great week and kick off a great weekend ahead.”

What child turns down ice cream, right? The very next Friday, as we where leaving his school, he asked, “Are we getting ice cream?” We all know how this turned out.

Every Friday, for more than a year, was Twistee Treat day.

Until one casual Monday, when I said, “Why don’t we go to Twistee Treat and celebrate the great weekend we just had and kick off the week ahead?”

So here we are, five years later. Do you think he’ll have trouble recalling ice cream with his Dad? I mean, for as long as he lives?