The Child Outside

Most of us start our journey as parents based on our own childhood. If we were active, we want our children to be active. If we were good in math, they need to be good too. If we weren’t allowed too much ice cream, we make sure they can have as much as they want. If our parents divorced, we focus on staying together with our spouse, just so that the child doesn’t have to go through the same plight. The list goes on. The pattern is the same. We base our child-raising behavior on our own childhood.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Only … the child we raise is not us. She only looks like us. She talks and walks like us. She even likes some of the same things we do. But she is a child in a different world. She has different parents, different friends. And while in so many ways she is like us, in so many she is different as well. She is her own person. She is not the child we carry within. She is the child outside. If we are to become better at raising our kids, this is where we need to start.

A few readers suggested I wrote on the topic of teaching The Excellence Habit to children as my next book project. After some initial research I believe, before teaching children anything, we need to do an inventory of ourselves as parents.  If we want the best for our children, it only makes sense to be prepared to give the best as parents and as people. Why? Because our children have the uncanny ability to see everything. Just as we could see our parents too. It took us some time to understand our parents, but we could see them. So our children will see us, copy us, and become us. No matter what we teach them.

A case in point: Big Vlad was my friend, name-mate, and the bass-player of our high-school rock band The Silhouettes. Once, as a curious side-note to a conversation about the Beatles, he quipped:

“I can’t wait to have a son, so I can mess him up just in my own peculiar way!”

“Yeah, right!” said I. “Your son will care to listen to you just as much as we listen to our fathers!” 

“No, no!” insisted Big Vlad, “I’m not going to talk to him. I’ll just make him a playlist and one day put it on for him to hear.”

It was an unusual fantasy. At that moment, I too realized that while just a teen, I had been thinking about how my kids’ life would be different, and better than my own. Big Vlad had a daughter and as far as I know, she never played in a band. Neither did my son.  

The point of the book will be to answer two critical questions that we all have: Why do we so often fail as parents, despite our best efforts and intentions? What habits can we build in order to raise healthy, successful, and well-adjusted children? 

So, dear reader, would you want a book like that? What else would you need to make it worth your while? Are there any awesome books on raising a child I should read before anything else? Please, send me a line, let me know what you think! Thank you. 

"Serious About Writing?" - A Conversation With Shawn Coyne

Listen to The Excellence Habit podcast. My guest is Shawn Coyne, a twenty-five-year book-publishing veteran. He's acquired, edited, published or represented works from James Bamford, John Brenkus, James Lee Burke, Barbara Bush, Dick Butkus, Harlan Coben, Nellie Connally, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Ben Crenshaw, Catherine Crier, Brett Favre, David Feherty, John Feinstein, Tyler Florence, Alan Lomax, David Mamet, Troon McAllister, Robert McKee, Matthew Modine, Bill Murray, Joe Namath, John J. Nance, Jack Olsen, Scott Patterson, Steven Pressfield, and many, many others. His longest collaboration has been with writer Steven Pressfield.  Shawn edited a number of Steve’s books including The War of Art, Gates of Fire, Turning Pro, Tides of War, and The Authentic Swing.  He is also Steve’s literary agent, manager, and his business partner in Black Irish Books (www.blackirishbooks.com).  If you haven’t read his books, you should!

For more information about The Story Grid and to read Shawn’s blog- visit Storygrid.com. 

Thank you for listening. Sign up for First Look Access.

You Getting Back To You - By Sharon Sullivan

If you can bend you won't break in so many circumstances.  It's tough to become pliable and stay that way.  The ego is often rigid and overconfident, and if you give into it too much then you will lose the opportunities of working within a group, to work with different types of people being present for new ideas, to learn how to think and wonder.   It's tough to be bendable, liquid in your opinion, opening our self made doors to let anything new in especially a new way of thinking. Letting go of our old shell we've long outgrew.

I often wonder why we cling so much to our persona years and years passing by the opportunity to change, evolve, grow further, more temperance, more edge, more life.  

I think that it is a false sense of the fountain of youth.  If we only listen to a certain decade of music we will be young as we sing along.  It is our because we were limitless in our perception of our possibilities?  Is it because we are bold and decisive.   We wore just about any new style and could pull it off with confidence. We were fit without even having to think about it.  Now we've regressed into finding our favorite pair of shoes only, or that one coat that fits.  It is the feeling of feeling different that is the can opener to reveal vulnerabilities. We question our own abilities to create something new.   We keep the door shut to any new thought trusting outdated methods maybe too religiously.  Doing well but not great.

Being pliable keeps out mobility in action both physically and mentally and it is only worked when we work out and feel pain.  When the pain subsides, we will be stronger and more flexible and pliable.   We will be more willing to accept new options, new ideas.  Sedentary will only box you in and make everything tight around you.  Need proof?  Put on your best jacket and if it feels tight and doesn't slip in with ease, then you are fixated in your ways.   The very action it makes you feel boxed into that article of clothing which has transformed into a straight jacket stealing your confidence and ease;  your own stubbornness not to control your actions, your habits, your lack of routine.   Our lack of balance is simply and socially accepted. 

So a simple exercise to take a good hard look in the mirror or stepping on the virtual scale, is to take away one thing you love. Not anything life-changing. In fact the smaller it is, the more it reveals how pliable you are or not.   It can be that afternoon cup of coffee, your favorite socks, starting your car to warm it up before you get in.  All these routines of comfort that we cling to with a vengeance that we can do without.  We don't trust ourselves our decisions after life has kicked around a few bad decisions so we curl up and tattoo our daily routines in our mind.  These happy little seemingly harmless addictions have a holding power over more than your daily comfort.   Give one of them up for a day and see if you can make it through the week.  You will get the shakes and be a bit cranky but it's a test, a reflection in the store window that does not compensate like your mirror at home. You can fall off the wagon but for your own sake get back on because in trying you break the hold and you become painfully pliable in one small portion of your life.  Now what else can you do?

Once you do it once you can do it again.   Now you are on your way to getting yourself back.  The one with the new ideas, good or bad, let's whirl this one out and take a chance.  The character to handle the good result, the strength and grace to handle and correct the bad result.   Either way the great feeling of new oxygen in your lungs and subsequently new ideas in your view.  You are on your way to take inventory of the current state of affairs, then put in the time to work a new idea.  Even if that initial idea is a bust, it strengthens your resolve to change and leads you to another idea.  The possibilities no longer float over your head but rather move directly in your lane.  Put your foot on the accelerator.  This is good.  This is change.  This is you. The time is right.  No time to waste.

"It's a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself.  Makes you wonder what else you can do that you've forgotten about."  -American Beauty

Sharon Sullivan - CEO of First Step Resources

Originally posted on LinkedIn on Feb 15, 2016

Our Internal Circumstances - book excerpt from The Excellence Habit

When we discuss the power of context and its role in building our Excellence Habit, the assumption is that all context is external. However, there is another kind that really matters. This is our internal context. On any given day, we wake up, and the stream of our consciousness starts and takes us through our morning routine. Without major changes, our mental state tends to become more and more habitual. If there were no outside disruptors, the trends in our lives become more clearly outlined. If we liked our first job, we tend to like the second one as well. If we were driven in college, we tend to become more ambitious in our careers.

Within the context of our minds, we take the facts from our daily lives and process them against our personal history. With each day, any changes that we make are less and less noticeable. Based on our beliefs and values and on our environment, we create a mental context that allows us to feel more or less in control of our lives. Our mental state becomes a product of habit. We tend to have the same reaction to similar circumstances. And while we tend to spend a lot of time thinking about and noticing our external circumstances, we tend to pay little or no attention to our internal context. Our thoughts and our feelings often go on automatic. We rarely decide to “have a good day” regardless of the coming snowstorm and the dreaded month-end business review. On the contrary, we tend to anticipate and justify our bad moods based on the external context.

Just as with our external environment, our mental context is a major factor in the results we get. And just as with our external circumstances, our internal state can have “broken windows.” From childhood trauma and bad experiences, to poor habits and wrong choices, we carry with us the luggage of our inner circumstances. And just as with the broken windows theory in criminology, we are exquisitely sensitive to minor changes in our internal context. Without noticing, we can be affected by a smell, a tune on the radio, or an old poster. An odd thought could pop up during a meeting at the office, and then we find ourselves drifting for fifteen minutes and missing important information. A full moon could trigger a sleepless night, which we try to correct the next day with extra coffee.

These are all small sensory-triggered changes in our mental context that can end up having a big impact on our day. However, there is another class of inner context factors that are even more powerful in determining the kind of life we are going to have. These factors are our prevailing thoughts, beliefs, and values. This is what we tell ourselves on a daily basis, and what we tell ourselves in situations that matter. And what we tell ourselves sometimes comes from a single moment. One point in time can define our lives. ... 

To be continued next week. Sign up for First Look Access.

If you're going to make it big, you'll have to write your own songs - by Sharon Sullivan

Just saw the Eagles documentary on Netflix , worth the entire 3 hours and it is amazing about the band, how it grew to have its own sound, the changes, the business end of it, how they named it "The Eagles."   The one person who told them what they needed to hear in order to begin to have a unique sound was Bob Seger.  He told Glenn Frey and Don Henley, "If you're going to make it big you'll have to write your own songs."   Glenn and Don had no idea how to write and compose songs at the time were only musicians playing local gigs.   So they retorted back to Bob; "What if we write bad songs?"  Bob Seger re-assured them "Oh you'll write bad ones sure enough but you'll also write good ones eventually; you'll have to work at it. "  

They did and eventually the Eagles were born. Working their own songs as they opened up for people such as Linda Ronstadt and lived above Jackson Browne they worked at opening up their own musical identity to the world.  To create a new idea, a new sound that was the first crossover band from country and rock and continued to maintain that posture directly on the fence.   It was the risk and the foundation and the fact that they were new to the song writing act, they weren't yet shaped by others, unqualified to criticize and clip their creative efforts.  From Take it Easy and Witchy Woman working with their current colleague in the industry they leaped off the cliff of music already known into their own sound.

It takes guts. It takes courage with your soul to really continue to work at something newborn in the world.  Working like a grape on a vine absorbing all the current events around them, the song "Take it Easy" was a hit as it told everyone during current edge of the 70s that everything was going to be OK.  Eventually they did write and compose "good songs" ultimately leading up to "Hotel California" being the most talked about song in their long career.  It was the culmination of all experience with their songwriting flourishing by practice and determination.  Business decisions were made,band members came and went, but it's the creation of their own unique take on the worldand sound that's what makes them an Eagle in the truest sense of the word.  Never wearing anything more expensivethat their favorite patched jeans, their excellence was in their standards of music writing , harmony singing, and musical talent.

That is the reason we love them so much. They had the courage to put those events into a time capsule attached to their personal thumbprint.  Not knowing nor being that concerned if it outlasted them.  Which it did, the latter concerts begin sung mostly by the crowd of fans.  We miss Glenn Frey dearly but we can always play any one of his songs and hear his words, his music.

It's the bold move to make your own sound.  While it's great to learn from colleagues, mentors, books, seminars, eventually you'll have to compile all of these forces into your unique sound.  A sound the world has not heard before, absorbent ofwhere you live, the time you are living in and if you work your soul into it then it will be timeless.

Like an Eagle, leap off the cliff and write your own songs, make your own sound. Whether is is really a song or a concept or a method, develop it as your own and share it with the world.  Your unique take is more important than copying a mentor; which is fine at first but eventually, you have to put your creation out there.  We don't always have to do what's been done.  We are living in new times, inspiration from the past great but how you put things together, your opinion, the way of the world in this time, your creation is far more important. 

Make it yours and make it excellent.

"Don't even try to understand.  Just find a place to to make your stand and take it easy."  Jackson Browne/Glenn Frey

Sharon Sullivan - CEO of First Step Resources

Originally posted on LinkedIn on Feb. 2, 2016