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Showing posts from October, 2023

Update on The One Percent Solution

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  A few years back, I traveled to Chicago and had an interesting conversation with my new friend for three hours. He was 68 and off to windsurf in Hawaii for two weeks. As I asked him about his greatest insight into life, he offered the following comment. "Nothing replaces sustained, incremental efforts compounded over time." When interviewing successful athletes, lawyers, entrepreneurs, artists, and parents, I find that his insight remains one of the great truths in life. And yet, only a few take advantage of such a simple solution to life's sweet rewards. More recently, we have considerable data to support the power of the one percent solution to change fundamental patterns in the brain. With incremental efforts over time, we can relieve anxiety, depression, ADD, sleep issues, and more. Let's consider why the one percent solution is so powerful.   The Temptation of the 100 Percent Solution Life will give us challenges. This is inevitable. Many wait until the challen

The Dangers of Unlimited Phone Use

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  In today's digital era, teenagers are practically married to their phones.  As parents look on, perhaps with a sigh of relief that their teenager is quiet and preoccupied, there is an underlying problem.  Some of us have acknowledged this problem, but not many.   This article is an effort to reduce complacency and encourage action.   The Link Between Phone Use and Mental Health Issues Few seriously consider the role of electronics in the dramatic rise in mental health issues among teens.  Even though we often find children/teens isolated with social media, playing games, or surfing, we do not seem to have a heightened concern for such activities.  We do not see joy, happiness, and increasing motivation to thrive when we observe our children during these times!  Instead, we often see, and children report the opposite:  frustration, embarrassment, anxiety, sadness… to name a few.     Mounting evidence suggests a direct correlation between prolonged phone usage and many mental healt

The Power of Automaticity: Maximizing Your Child’s Amazing, Automatic Brain

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  Our brains are designed to learn.  As your child is growing up, they are exposed to a vast quantity of information.  Most of it they master, with an easeful, automatic process. When you start teaching your child how to speak, write or read, you notice that you don’t really ‘make’ the learning happen.  It simply happens automatically, when you expose them to the opportunities to learn. And once children learn how to say “Mommy”, they no longer have to think about how to pronounce the word or where the word comes from.  When they think Mommy they say “Mommy.”   And while neurologists tell us that this process takes hundreds of millions of brain cells, we just take most of it for granted.  My point here is that… Children learn almost everything they need to know experientially and automatically, if they are given opportunities to learn. Why is that so important?  Because the automatic parts of our brain serve to give us a huge advantage over all our competitive species here on the plane

Why do your kids keep asking the same questions... over and over?

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  It seems unbelievable. Some children constantly ask the same questions repeatedly, day in and day out. Trying to be patient, you answer. Then, you answer again. And then again. It can be annoying, irritating, and downright frustrating! So perhaps you come down firmly, and what happens? Then, your cunning son or daughter adjusts the question slightly and asks the same thing again. You then answer again. Then tomorrow, you got through this again. And again. And again. What’s the deal? They don’t do this at school. They don’t do this with their coach. They don’t even do this with the neighbor. Sometimes they question ridiculous things you are confident they know the answer to. And other times, they relentlessly keep negotiating over limits. Why do they ask for more when you have said no a hundred times? Why do they keep whining when you ask them to stop? Why don’t they get it? One answer could be that you relent and give in to them. This isn’t good; you don’t need me to emphasize that.