I was getting ready to board a plane, grabbing a coffee from Starbucks which happened to be connected to a Simply Books book store, when the title of this book called my name; That’s My Son: How Moms Can Influence Boys to Become Men of Character, by Rick Johnson…………THAT I needed to read!
I quickly grabbed my coffee, purchased the book. boarded the plane, and DEVOURED it! From San Diego to Minneapolis I couldn’t put the book down.
Have you ever looked at your boy and asked yourself this question, “How am I ever going to raise this little guy into a good man?” I HAVE ~ UGH!! I have such a deep desire to instill good character qualities into my boys, but sometimes I wonder, especially after I’ve lost my voice from hollering at them all day, If I’m equipped.
Whether you LOVE to read (like me!) or not, I promise you, this book you will appreciate. I was educated, challenged, and inspired. Additionally, I was validated. I know there are other moms are out there just like me, doing the best they can to raise Good Men!
The author Rick Johnson writes a clear message to mothers in an easy to read format. He delivers practical suggestions on how we, as mothers, can teach our boys good character qualities. He also provides insight on what it takes to be a man and what it is that makes a man “tick” – I NEEDED to know THAT!! After all, as Rick mentions in his introduction, he discovered there is much value in the old adage, “It’s easier to raise a boy than to fix a man.”
The main concept I took from this book is this: I need to frequently point out good character traits to my boys when I see them in their lives as well as in the lives of other males. Additionally, I need to point out bad character traits when I see them by asking this question, “Is that a quality of a good man?”. I’ve started this process and am amazed by how well it’s working. They are so happy when I verbalize their good qualities and understand the difference in their behavior when I ask them that simple question. I am noticing ‘baby step’ changes!! YIPEE!!
You can check out what others are saying about this book too by following the link below.
That’s My Son: How Moms Can Influence Boys to Become Men of Character
IF this title/book interests you and you decide to read it too, I would LOVE to hear what your thoughts are and what you learned.
Now……off to find my NEXT read! tj
Keeping it Personal is simply a concept. You could say It’s similar to what people have been talking about for years when using the phrase “pay it forward” or the phrase “random acts of kindness”. These are wonderful and amazing things!
BUT, we want to encourage you to take it a step further with Keeping it Personal. In addition to doing nice things, good works, and acts of kindness for others, keep it personal by focusing on the relationship. The connection. The association. The involvement with others.
WHY take it a step further? Here are The Top 4 reasons……….
1. It’s Broad. There are MANY MANY ways we can keep it personal with others. Each person has their own unique and special way to connect, bond, and communicate. Determine what you are most comfortable with and DO IT! LIVE IT! Keeping the concept ‘top of mind’ is what’s important. How are you sowing life into others?
2. EVERYONE can do it. Keeping it personal is NOT limited and anyone who is willing can do it. We all have people who we can relate to and share our experiences with we simply need to look for the opportunities. We are not limited to how many lives we can impact. Whether you’re shy or outgoing, live in a small town or a big city, young or old – YOU can make a difference!
3. It’s rewarding. When we GIVE we RECEIVE. What goes around, comes around. We reap what we sow. When we focus LESS on ourselves and MORE on the needs of others we receive blessings. There is nothing more rewarding than encouraging another person, loving others, brightening another’s day. It is purely food for our soul.
4. It’s FREE. You do NOT need to open your pocketbook, purchase anything, or hire people…….keeping it personal doesn’t cost a dime!! Giving of your time, encouraging others, sharing, smiling, going out of your way to sincerely ask someone how you can help, giving compliments, showing appreciation for the little things others do, hugs, phone calls, letters……..all these are FREE! Take action with the lingering thoughts that God gives you. Reach out. Make the connection. Share your gifts.
There you have it! Now, GO. Take Action. Live Keeping it Personal. Be a blessing. Be blessed.
Welcome back! This is part two of the post where I introduced Towanda. If you missed that, you can check it out by following this link. If you had made the decision to read on, lets give it a name.
First, you need to be WILLING to acknowledge that you have some character defects or areas that need work in your life. Remember, if you’re perfect you were supposed to stop reading – so the fact that you’re still reading this suggests that you’ve already accepted that you need some work and you’re willing. YIPEE!
Second, go ahead, name it! Be creative and have FUN with this! A couple of my friends liked the sound of Towanda, but they changed the first letter to correspond with their first name. If you’d like to do that, you could too! Here are a couple of examples: Lowanda, Kowanda, Awanda, Jowanda, Dowanda. It doesn’t matter what you name it, JUST give it a name so you can CALL IT OUT!
Third and Last, now you’ve got the name. Grab a piece of paper and a pen. Write the name that you came up with for your character defects at the top of the piece of paper and then below the name jot down character traits you’d like to attach to that name. If you’re experiencing writers block, feel free to look at Towanda’s list if it helps, she’s definitely got a lot of defects to choose from….UGH!
Now that you’ve identified your NEW unwanted friend, what do you do when she/he is triggered and all her/his character defects start to move through you. Keep in mind that the character defects are often individual – they do NOT always come out at one time. So be watchful, your ‘towanda’ may be sneaky and could creep in very quietly.
Before I share with you the steps to take to deal with your ‘towanda’ there are two things you need to do.
1. You need to PREPARE. What this means is create an accountability group. It doesn’t have to be huge – believe me, who wants to share this information with EVERYONE (except for me?!?!?). However, you need to let a couple of people know what you’re doing, people who you can trust and who will be honest with you. Know this, you need to be willing to receive truth from the people in this group, even when its painfully ULGY! This is VERY important, so don’t overlook it. Who will you share your unwanted friend character traits with?
2. Keep watch DAILY-EYES WIDE OPEN. At first it might seem to be a lot of work and you might miss your ‘towanda’, but over time it becomes easier to identify. Let me give you some examples of what you might be looking for:
- You feel a storm raging within you, your blood starts to boil, or your stomach is in knots.
- You get upset about a situation or with a person
- Things just aren’t going your way, the way you planned or expected, you may feel frustrated and irritable
- You’re having a bad day, you feel angry, you’re upset.
- You have the urge to talk negative about another person with a friend or co-worker – you are gossiping
- You’re feeling depressed and want to have a pity-party, be the victim
- You are impatient with others and nobody seems to do anything right.
- You are feeling disappointed. Others/situations are not meeting your expectations – you feel let down
If you start to feel any of these things?? FLASHING LIGHT – Lightening BOLTS – DING DING DING – your ‘towanda’ has been triggered AND is awake!! What do you do NOW? Immediately!! Let me suggest the following 4 steps that have worked for me………
1. ACKNOWLEDGE that you’re feeling your ‘towanda’. It’s OK! We are NOT perfect, we are a work in progress, we are human and unfortunately your ‘towanda’ will stay alive as long as you do. Your goal is to identify it and by acknowledging it, you’ve accomplished step one.
2. CALL IT OUT. I know this sounds silly, but actually say out loud what you’re feeling and speak against it. Let me give you an example of a situation:
You wake up with anxiety in your stomach, your mind starts to race about everything that needs to get done. You don’t know what the outcome will be in a certain situation so you are playing out every possible scenario in your mind, you are stressed out and worried that things may NOT work out how YOU think they should.
You acknowledge THIS is your ‘towanda’ – NOW you need to call it out, speak to it, say something out loud like this, “I am trying to manipulate and control this situation. I have the ability to control myself and no one else, I will simply do my best, the outcome I have NO control over.”
What you’re doing in this step is calling out the character traits of your towanda and speaking truth against the situation. To put it simple, identify the negative – then turn it around and hit it with positive!
3. PRAY. Go to God first. Share with Him your struggle, your situation, your feelings. Ask Him to reveal to you His will for your life and ask Him for the strength to operate according to what He wants for you. Humbly share with Him the areas where you may be wrong in your attitude, motives, and actions. Thank Him for His unconditional love and share with him the many things you’re grateful for. Lastly, be patient……..wait on Him. Continue to ask for His guidance and praise Him while you’re waiting. REMEMBER: He has PERFECT timing.
4. Tap into your ACCOUNTABILITY. IF you’ve worked the first 3 steps and are STILL feeling the ickiness of your towanda – call upon one of your accountability partners. Share your struggle and ask for insight. Be open to hearing something that you may have overlooked. When we are in the midst of a struggle, when we are angry, upset, or hurting we can easily overlook the characteristics of our ‘towanda’ – outsiders looking in, who are honest, can help uncover things we are not capable of seeing on our own.
That’s it! These steps ARE working for ME and I am grateful. Don’t get me wrong, Towanda STILL comes out (my husband and kids will confirm this) and I STILL have issues, BUT now I face them HEAD ON by following these steps.
What I’ve realized, since I’ve been doing this for several months, is that I often don’t get to step 4. I feel 100% better at step 3. AND, IF these step are “out of order” my issues can be blown out of proportion, I can add fuel to the fire by telling others my ‘dreadful’ story and be deceived about the reality. The REALITY?? I need to take an honest look in the mirror FIRST.
After talking this over with several friends, I realized that I’m not alone on this topic, SO I thought I would share a fun way……OK maybe it’s not FUN, BUT it is a ‘not so serious’ way to deal with our negative self talk, selfishness, poisonous pride, deceiving thoughts, resentments, and our larger than LARGE ego that needs to be tamed and managed.
Just like most things that make their way into our lives, if we acknowledge them, call them out, identify what they are we have a better chance of dealing with them and managing the situation. When we’ve got our blinders on or if we are unwilling to take an honest look at ourselves, a few things could happen. We can slowly lose joy, get stuck in ruts, and start to place blame where it does NOT belong.
Let me introduce to you Towanda. Towanda has been with me since I was born. We grew up together, experienced life together, faced challenges together, and even lived together. The funny things is………I didn’t really KNOW her until recently. Once I got to know her? Well, I decided I did NOT like her AT ALL!! She is negative, controlling, manipulative, insecure, resentful, selfish, insensitive, judgmental, and angry. LOVELY, wouldn’t you say?!?!? NOT!! Here’s the kicker about Towanda; Towanda is ME.
YES, Towanda is the name I have given all my MY “character defects”. Before I continue, I have to say this. If your name is Towanda and you’re reading this, PLEASE do NOT take offense. I grabbed the name from a scene that I remembered from the movie Fried Green Tomatoes. Actress Kathy Bates plays the character Evelyn Couch and gives her alter-ego this name. You can watch the Towanda clip if you’d like, it’s pretty funny! With that said, If you’d like to name your character defects “Teri” go right ahead, I won’t take offense. LOL
I was FINALLY able to see Towanda when God revealed her to me in February 2010. It was a love/hate experience. I thought that I had already surrendered MY will or should I say Towanda’s, BUT I had not. I was still in the drivers seat, trying to maintain the wheel. It took me 36 years to get to this point of being able to identify Towanda. I’m confident that many people in my world had met her before I was able to, but I’m grateful that I FINALLY did……even though it was a painful realization.
Our first meeting was tough, I cried when I met her. I couldn’t believe I had let her live with me for that long with out doing something about it. It has been a slow process grasping ALL of her character defects, but God continues to reveal to me more of Towanda as I grow in my faith and my walk with Him.
If you’re perfect. Not needing to change anything in your life, you can stop reading hear. BUT, if you’ve got some areas in your life that need improvement, or have identified some character defects, like me, you will want to read Part two of this post on Thursday. There I will walk you though the steps that I took to giving ‘it’ a name and explain what to do when your new found unwanted friend is triggered and wakes up!
You can read Part two by following this link.
Today’s Daily KIP REALLY got my mind racing about areas in my life where I rationalize. One way that I would describe rationalizing is excuses I make to justify WHY I’m making a decision or WHY I’ve done something that I had ALREADY decided and spoken that I was NOT going to do.
Let me share the most current situation that I’m struggling with……..VIDEO GAMES, yep – I’ve RATIONALIZED and I’m not happy about it.
When my boys were a few years younger, just starting to get into video game playing, the games they enjoyed were educational, some were rated E for everyone and a few were rated eC for early childhood. I felt these games were ’safe’ for their impressionable little minds. Games such as Mario Brothers, Dora the Explorer, NHL, NBA, NFL, and NASCAR speed racing, just to name a few, checked out OK with me.
I, personally, do NOT enjoy playing video games. I believe it is a waste of time. I don’t understand how most of the games work or how to operate the controllers. The bottom line IS, I’m just NOT into video games. As a child we had an ATARI where I attempted to play games like asteroids, frogger, donkey kong, pong, and pac-man. When the first Nintendo game came out, I DID get pretty good at Mario Bros. but that was the extent of my video game playing career. I have NO desire to pick it back up and master it by any means.
Because of my ignorance and extreme lack of interest I took the ‘lazy’ route and decided to base my video game buying, for the boys, on what the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) suggested. That was simple, NOT very smart, but simple. Here’s what I decided…….the boys could play E rated games until they reached 10, then they could play 10+ rated games until they became teenagers. At that time they could play T games. Then lastly, IF they were STILL into video games, by the time they were 18, they would be considered ‘mature adults’ able to make their own decisions and play the games they wanted to. That was my VERY naive decision, but I was going with it……………so I thought.
I remember the FIRST game that made its way into our home that was T rated, Tony Hawk. This is where the rationalization started. Honestly I don’t even know how it got into our home, it just appeared! A birthday gift? or something? My point is, I read the cover, my boys were getting bored with their current games, it was JUST skateboarding – RIGHT? With some blood – YUK! Come to find out, my boys ALREADY knew how to play the game!!! HOW? Because they played it other people’s homes. OH MY!
The door had opened to my U10 boys playing T games. The new obstacle for me now was saying NO to the MANY other requests to play other T games. Our conversation at Target in the video game isle would go like this:
Zachary: “Mom, can I get this game?”
Me (with a smile): “UM NO, that is rated T, please pick one that is rated E.”
Zachary: “Mom, all the E games are soooo boring, I have the ones that I like, can I PLEASE get this one? PLEASE, pretty PLEASE? It’s no big deal mom, I’ve played it before, it’s FUN! Plus you’ve already let me play Tony Hawk and THAT is rated T!”
Me (not smiling): “NO. AND really? You’ve played this one before too?”
Zachary: ”This is so cheap!! I never get what I want – It’s MY birthday money, I should be able to get the game I want!”
Me (frustrated): “Let’s go, we are leaving! No game!”
This ONLY lasted a few times until I ultimately RATIONALIZED and gave in. I would read the covers, consult with the “teen-aged” workers to get THEIR advice on whether THEY felt the game was appropriate for MY child and eventually I was purchasing T games. OUCH!
Here’s the kicker, it didn’t stop there – YES, I eventually broke down after NUMEROUS conversations like the one above and have NOW purchased 2 M rated video games. WHY? Because I was convinced by my child that the T games were NOW boring and the M games are no big deal, besides, they played them before with their cousins and with friends.
Enough said……this my dear readers IS RATIONALIZATION at it’s finest. I am NOT proud.
Understand this – MY conviction may NOT be your conviction. I am not sharing this story to pass judgment on any parent who has different views on video games for their children. I’m sharing my story to shed light on how easy rationalizing can make its way into our lives; inch by inch. I’m sharing this because I’ve seen rationalization become a common excuse for our behavior; with the excuses and rationalizations we can begin to buy the lies of this world that lead to destruction. Lastly, I wanted to share this to simply get you thinking……are there any areas in your life where you’ve rationalized or are starting to?
Fear, people pleasing, selfishness, comfort, laziness, unwanted judgement of others, and insecurity are what lead me to rationalize on the video games. I’m taking back the ground that was lost from rationalizing and making changes.
“Isn’t it BEAUTIFUL mama?” That’s how Zane described the “flower” that he gave me.
What do you think? Do you think it’s beautiful? The flower in the picture to the left; it IS a flower isn’t it?
He picked this flower just for me while he was on a bike ride with Rachel, our nanny, yesterday. Actually, she told me that he asked her to help him pick it……how sweet. Once he got it in his hand, he pedaled carefully on his bike all the way home; very cautious to eliminate any chance of having the fuzzy parts blow off. He was successful. It arrived PERFECT!
When I got home and saw this flower sitting on our kitchen counter in the plastic cup full of water, my heart melted!
After he gave me the flower I thought to myself, “While on a bike ride, would I have thought…THAT was beautiful?” Hhhhmmmmm ~ Probably NOT. But, now that I have it, now that I’ve received it as a gift, I think it’s beautiful! Why? Because of the heart behind it. the motive. the thoughtfulness. the joy.
What I’m noticing is this: As I GROW I gain different perspective. With different perspective comes NEW realities and NEW truth. With the NEW realities and NEW truth comes a greater appreciation. With that greater appreciation I see more things BEAUTIFUL!
I love the journey of growth that I’m on. I would definitely say that the things I find beautiful today are extremely different than that of 5 years ago. What I didn’t notice as beautiful before has NOW become beautiful to me. I’m NOT just talking about the flower I received. I’m talking about people. art. words. relationships. places. music. frogs. bad experiences (YES, BAD experiences are NOW beautiful!!). The saying, ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ has a more profound meaning to me these days…….I’ve got different eyes!
Has your perspective of what’s beautiful evolved, is it evolving? I’m grateful mine is………lovin’ MY BEAUTIFUL flower!
I don’t get a chance to spend much time on the internet, but when I do – I have a few favorite sites and blogs I like to catch up on. One of them is Extraordinary-ordinary.com – a blog written by Heather. Leah turned me onto her blog a few months ago after she read her story. Heather and I both have something in common……recovery. With that? I get a “part of her” and I enjoy her writing.
She posted this blog Best books on writing AND photography/photo editing tips – I read it. I appreciated the tips, but what I appreciated the most is the video she shared at the end. Above the embedded video she wrote, “Get ready to shimmy your shoulders…” that intrigued me so I watched it.
My shoulders didn’t shimmy, but it sure did stir up something in my heart. It got me thinking about what I’m doing in my life and with keeping it personal. It was like the questions and statements in the video/song were reading my mind; I’ve asked them OR thought them ALL before.
Then I questioned, is what we are doing a “form” of ART? Writing? Keeping it Personal?
What is ART? That is a word that I would NOT use to describe anything about me! In fact, I would say that I am the LEAST artistic person that I know!! So, like I always do, I asked dictionary.com what the definition was. It says: skill, creativity.
This makes sense to me: The video is ART, the song behind the video is ART, the writer of the song, Tanya Davis, she’s creative and has skill – to me, that is ART.
ME? I’m wrestling with how to describe what I’m doing. Here are my questions/thoughts……….
Just because I like them, does that mean I should I mic them? and see what might unfold? || I think of the significance of my opinions here, is it significant to be giving them? does anybody care? || Just because I’m into this does that mean I should live like it? AND really do I dare? || I can’t always tell if I ought to? || If I make it will someone take it and think that its genuine? Would they be glad that I did because they got something good out of it? || Will they leave me and be any more inspired? || I question the outcome of the outpouring of myself. || If I tell everyone my stories will it keep me healthy and well? || Will it give me purpose? be some sort of service to the world? || Is it worth it? how can I tell? || What am I passing on? || What seeds are being planted? || Can a broken heart make great art? || Experiment. (BUT, what will others think?) || Don’t care much. (BUT, I do!) || My heart is trying to hard to follow you, but I can’t always tell if I ought to.
Check out this video…….
Does is make you want to “shimmy your shoulders”? OR Does it stir something in your heart?
I think that what I’ve decided is that what we are doing is ART.
