For Father’s Day 2011, nothing – and I mean NOTHING – beats a gift straight from the heart. And nobody delivers ‘straight-from-the-heart’ type gifts quite like precious little 7-year-old girls… especially my Ambrosia!
I mean, just check out the excitement; the enthusiasm; the PURE JOY of GIVING! I have a LOT to learn in this area and this kid is one of the best teachers I know.
Enjoy the video. WARNING – you might want to grab a big box of Kleenex first! I know you’re gonna Love That Feeling!
Opportunities to teach life lessons – in this case why you should never lie and cheat – can come from the strangest places. Just the other day I was walking my seven-year-old daughter to school. We were chatting excitedly about a new recipe we were going to make from scratch that evening. It was Ambrosia’s favorite – shrimp fried rice!
However, she had a BIG concern. I recently took on the Insanity Workout program, purported to be THE hardest workout ever recorded on DVD, at least for public commercial distribution. Ambrosia watched me huff and puff my way through one of the routines where I ended up literally drenched with sweat. She realized that this was one helluva workout for anyone, and even more so for her 57-year-old step-dad. Bless her little heart, she didn’t want me to be all worn out by the evening where I might have to postpone our little cooking adventure.
Mind you, I have a long track record of starting things and not following through. So in order to keep myself accountable, I decided to video record all 60 days of the Insanity Workout program and post them on YouTube. Ambrosia has been part of a few of those videos and can attest to the fact that I put my ALL into my workouts. Today she thought it might not only be OK but quite necessary for the ‘old man’ to take it easy. She definitely didn’t want any excuses from me, especially where shrimp fried rice was concerned!
“Russy, why don’t you just TELL the people that you did the workout… but don’t REALLY do it so you can save your energy for tonight.”
There’s nothing quite like the sweet innocence of a little child. With the very best intentions she was offering me permission to slack off; to hold back and not do my best; <gasp> to lie and cheat! I couldn’t resist the chance to teach a valuable life lesson.
“People will be able to tell if I’m faking it,” I explained to her.
“How will they know, Russy? They won’t be there to see you.”
Can’t argue with that logic, right? However, because I had ‘been there’ before, recalling my own childhood when my mom ALWAYS knew, I shared with Ambrosia some of my hard-earned wisdom. “Trust me… they will KNOW!”
“What do you mean, Russy?” Ambrosia honestly thought she had given me an airtight alibi to sneak one past my viewers.
“Well, do you ever wonder how Mommy and Russy know when you’re lying?” I asked and waited for her reply. Of course, like any other kid, she has tried to put a thing or two by her mom and I.
Now the kid was really intrigued. In her mind I immediately became like the magician about to reveal the most guarded secret to his best trick.
“They will know because *I* will know!”
“Tell me, how do you FEEL when you are telling Mommy or I a lie?” I queried, playing on her emotions.
Ambrosia admitted that she didn’t feel very comfortable.
I continued, “And when you don’t feel comfortable, you don’t LOOK or ACT comfortable. You squirm and you can’t look people straight in the eye. That’s how people can tell.”
By this time we were arriving at her school. But I could tell Ambrosia fully understood the lesson. My guess is that she learned as much, if not more during that 8-minute walk than she did for the rest of the day.
There is an old principle that says, “Whatever you do unto others, you do unto yourself.”
I’m going to suggest that the reverse is also true. Whatever you do to yourself – lie, cheat, etc. – you do unto others. And that’s how they know! In everything, do your honest best. When you do that, I KNOW you’re gonna Love That Feeling!
Remember laughing at your parents because they couldn’t stop the clock light from blinking on their VCR, let alone try to watch a program on the darned thing without going through five pages of hold-my-hand instructions?
You remember VCR’s? Look in the mirror, Bud! You’re getting old… and FAST!
It is literally impossible NOT to learn in today’s world. You HAVE to learn just to keep up, you have no other choice. The world we live in today is SO different than the one we experienced even 10 short years ago.
Hopefully, you’re not still thinking that learning comes exclusively through institutionalized education. If that’s the case, watch today’s video… then watch it AGAIN! Let the reality of its powerful message sink in. We live in an age where information – virtually ANY information – is available at your fingertips, not only through your computer but through your phone and other amazing devices that were nothing more than the stuff of science fiction from our youth. Think of all you had to learn just to work all those fancy gadgets!
Back in the early 1970′s when I was matriculating for my Bachelor of Music Education degree, I had to spend what to me was a small fortune since I worked my own way through college. For this I got the privilege of sitting through hours of boring lectures and sifting through horrendously dull tomes not only in my own major subject, but other subjects in which I had absolutely NO interest because… well, just BECAUSE it was required that I take those additional courses if I wanted to EARN my degree and graduate.
Today, all those same ‘facts’ and information that used to cost so much in terms of money and time now are readily available online for FREE! As a result, institutionalized education is being forced to change with the times from being a repository of ‘facts’ to providing stimulation for creativity and expansion through experiential learning. You simply can’t get by in today’s world just by ‘knowing’ stuff. Anyone can ‘know’ stuff. You make your way in today’s world by what you DO!
OK, that heading may be a bit of a stretch. However, last year when I was in the hospital fighting for my life, my wife Maggie would ask the doctors and nurses all kinds of questions during visiting hours. Then she would go home and spend a couple hours during the evening Googling all the conditions and terms she picked up earlier. The next day she returned armed with pages of notes and better questions. At a certain point, she felt my primary doctor was tap-dancing around some critical issues. As a result we sought a second opinion and ended up switching to another care giver where I have been able to make a rather remarkable recovery.
Compare this to twenty short years ago when the doctor would give a prognosis and patients would blindly accept it as their fate! Now because of the information age, people are taking back personal responsibility for their own destinies.
What would you like to do with your life? With virtually all barriers removed from access to information, you really have no excuse not to become anything you could ever dream of becoming! The ‘knowing’ part is right there for the taking. It’s what you do with what you know and who you become in the process. True living is making the most of yourself. You’re gonna Love That Feeling!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License
I've been a student of personal development for decades. The Secret of Deliberate Creation is BY FAR the best program I have ever studied.
I use these principles every day to create the life I want to live. They work for me. They may work for you. Start living life on YOUR terms!
All the best from Toronto,
Russ Hamel
