Issue #48

In this issue:

Word to the Whys

Life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it.
Rev. Charles Swindoll

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
Confucius

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, I was wrong.
Sydney J. Harris

You must be interested in finding the best way, not in having your own way.
John Wooden, legendary coach

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.
Tom Peters

Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.
Rita Mae Brown

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
Thomas Jefferson

One day I overheard my parents talking about they didn’t have enough money to pay the bills, and I knew just what I had to do.  I ran and got my piggybank and buried it in the backyard where they couldn’t get their mitts on it.
Jack Handey—Author of Deep Thoughts

See Eric in Action! Click for a video preview of Eric's
dynamic, insightful presentation style.

Links of Note...

The answers are just a few clicks away...

Getting Them to Give a Damn: How to Get Your Front Line to Care About Your Bottom Line
the new book by Eric Chester reveals the management techniques that leading-edge employers are using to get these quirky, book-smart, and streetwise employees—Eric calls them 'kidployees'—to contribute in innovative and entrepreneurial ways.

Available now. Order your copy today! -more-

SHARE Whys News

Do you like what you are reading? Know someone who would enjoy receiving Whys News?

Click the link below and sign them up!

WHYS NEWS
FOR A FRIEND

Generation Why will not share their information with anyone, nor will we contact them in any way other than to send them Whys News.

Pause and Affect

I'd like to think I'm smarter in this New Year than I was in '05.  In fact, I'd like to think that I'm smarter today than I was yesterday.  The only true measure of this is in the quality of my decisions and whether I’ll be able to recognize and avoid the mistakes of my past.

As a parent and step parent of four Gen Whys aged 20-to-25, my theories and strategies as a youth 'expert' are always on the line.  The assumption many have is that since I show business leaders and educators how to effectively communicate with today's youth, I must have perfected this to a science with my own children.  If you share that belief, then I have some prime Florida swamp land that you might be interested in...

Truth is, I am a master of the "Ready... Fire! Aim..." approach to parenting.  I have a short fuse and I often react too quickly to situations that arise, only to discover later that I have said and/or done the wrong thing and completely missed the mark in connecting with my kids. Later, in the privacy of my own thoughts, I find myself uttering "If I would only have handled that another way…" It frustrates me when I realize that I was capable of a much better response, but I didn't take the extra few seconds to allow it to surface.

Animals are largely S-R (stimulus-response) creatures.  When they receive stimulus to their brain, they respond instinctively and without much thought. You and I, however, are S-P-R (stimulus-pause-response) beings.  Our life's course is determined not by the stimulus we encounter, but rather how we respond to it.  In between our S's and our R's we have the ability to P: to pause, think, analyze, and gather data which will lead to a much better response. When we skip past the pause, regardless of the reason, we do so at our own peril. 

The best leaders are quite simply those among us who make the best decisions.  They gather all the facts and then rely on their experience—and the experience of others—to help them make the best possible decisions, to yield the best possible results.

In his best-selling book, Blink—The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell demonstrates how the subconscious mind works behind the scenes drawing upon past experiences, and other stimuli beyond our conscious perceptions.  But when we're interacting with Generation Why and relying on our gut feelings, past prejudices, and initial impulses to guide us, we're likely racing head-on into no-win arguments and angry confrontations.  If we Blink rather than Pause, we will lose far more battles than we'll win, regardless of how "right" we are.

As I look to this new year, I am going to work extremely hard at improving the communication and relations with each of my adult children. If I am indeed smarter today than I was yesterday, then I can surely avoid making the same mistakes, but only if I remember to pause...take a deep breath...think things through...and not allow the emotion of the stimulus to bury the right answer in a pile of immediate response.

Think back to the run-ins, altercations, and tricky situations you experienced with your students in 2005 that resulted in hurt feelings, decreased performance, and perhaps an ugly scene.  You know...those times when you really blew it and wished like crazy you had a "do-over." Well, the bad news is, we don't have a rewind button in this never-ending drama we called life.

The good news is, we do have a pause button. And like my television remote control at home, my pause button is going to get a serious workout this year.

Whys Idea—The 10 Penny Pocket Reminder
Develop a habit of looking for positive things to comment on in your school or classroom.  First thing in the morning, place ten pennies in your left pocket and then discreetly moving them one-at-a-time into your right pocket, but only after you’ve said something positive to one of your front liners.  "Hey Ben, great looking shirt!" (Move one penny.) "Thanks for helping Joe with his reading, Sarah! It's really helped to boost his confidence." (Move another.) After a few weeks, you won't need the pennies anymore, as you'll be in the daily habit of looking for the best in your Whys and positively remarking about it.

Whys Cracks

Wax On, Wax Off (times two) - Ten-year-old twin girls in Vienna, Va., were awakened after midnight by an intruder. It was a masked man who broke into their family home and went straight to their bedroom, police say. He grabbed one of the girls and tried to gag her, which woke up her sister. The two girls, who have been taking martial arts lessons for self defense, "responded the way they were instructed to," said a police spokesman: they beat on him. The ruckus awoke their parents, and their father quickly arrived and beat the man with a table lamp, but he escaped. Their mother recognized the man's voice: it was the girls' Tae Kwan Do instructor, she said. Police went to the home of instructor Andrew M. Jacobs, 42, and arrested him after he admitted he was the burglar. Police noted he had bruises on his face. (Vienna Connection, Washington Post).
But it was his pride that suffered the biggest bruise.

The Buzz
What are THEY Saying?
What do your colleagues have to say about LIVE Generation Why Presentations?

"Your keynote address at our annual convention of 30,000 attendees has received tremendous positive feedback!"
~ Eamon Conner, Education Manager, International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions