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Jump ropes for Kenya students

This past week Balanced Life Skills students made 117 jump ropes for children in Kenya who live at an orphanage.  Next week I will be spending the week at the orphanage seeing what we can do to help and provide hope to the students there.  The group will be traveling with martials artists from across the nation and will include singer / songwriters, artists and a full film crew as we will be filming a documentary, “Roots of Happiness”.

The trip was put together by Brian Williams and his Think Kindness organization.  The documentary and our goal is to determine what it is that makes these children so happy when they have so little from an American point of view.  When the film is completed, we will show it to high school students here in America to inspire them to find ways of serving others.

The film you see here is our jump rope making day at Balanced Life Skills.  If you would like to help fund the supply of school supplies, teacher supplies and the shipping of the jump ropes you can by going to http://rootsofhappiness.com/joe

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Attitude: Definition

Each month we define and discuss a word of character development with all of our students. 

This month the word is Attitude.  It will be defined this way.

 

 

Young students: Attitude means “How I feel, how I think and how I act.”

Older students: Attitude means:  How you feel, think and act in the face of everyday events and obstacles.

If you would like to see how we will deal with this subject with our students please follow our discussions here during the month of July.

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Focus: reaching our goals

There are no parts of life that focus is not needed.  It does not matter if we are playing a game or doing the specialized work of a doctor or scientist.  But in fact many of us have problems focusing on the task at hand as we think about all the other things going on in our lives.  

I would like to think for a few minutes about the things that really need our focus.  For each of us those things may be different, but I would think that it is possible that many of them may be the same.  Who would not say that focusing on our family and health are two of the most important.  Yet for many children today the average amount of time their parents spend with them alone without interruption from media and other distractions may only be 8 minutes per week.  

Our health is another area that we could all agree needs our focus.  Yet our eating habits and workout schedule may be pushed to the side due to us focusing on other matters.  So many times I have parents tell me how healthy they and their children eat, yet both parent and child are not at a healthy weight.  So what is it that you want to focus on?   What are the most important things in your life?  

One of the things that will help us focus on our ‘most important’ things is by setting goals.  With a goal that is specific and with a completion date our mind can focus to reach that goal.  General goals do not help us focus.  Specific goals however concentrate our energy on the stated goal.  

Goal setting, focus and commitment to them is something I work on all the time.  In fact I invite you to join with me in that regard.  I believe that having ‘teammates’ is an important part of keeping our focus and reaching our goals and holding us accountable.  I am here and ready to do that with anyone that wants the support.  Of course it will be a two way thing, as in any team, both of us will benefit. 

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Disaster in Gulf creates a challenge for us

All of us have been watching the disaster that is occurring in the Gulf with the oil spill.  I am not sure how anyone else feels, but I am literally sick to my stomach about this event and worried sick about what the long term effects are going to be on the environment and the people of these regions.

Since the first week I have asked myself, What can I do?  What could we as a school do to have some positive effect for the environment and the people involved.   I was paralyzed.  I not only did not know – but I was getting to a point that it was hard for me to watch one more minute of the reports.

Today though I came upon a group that all of us can help and I would like to propose that we find a way to do so.  Here is the website for you to look at. 

http://www.matteroftrust.org/

Which one of our students will step up and make a plan to get our school, city and county involved with some solutions to the problem.  Taking action is the right thing to do.  Sitting around and complaining about what others are not doing is not the way students at Balanced Life Skills want to react to challenges.