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AA County Schools compete in Sole for Souls challenge

Balanced Life Skills is sponsoring the visit of Brian Williams, the Sole Motivator for Sole4Souls, a non profit organization that has given away over 5.5 million pairs of shoes around the globe.  The following is the press release to our local media.  I have highlighted how you can help.

 

Annapolis, MD – November 4, 2009 – On November 9th, 5 local schools in Annapolis will host the Soles4Souls Think Kindness Program.  Soles4Souls, a Nashville based non-profit organization, is sending one of the nation’s top youth motivational speakers, Brian Williams to travel the country in search for the “kindest school”. Over 50 schools across the country have signed up for the Soles4Souls Kindness Challenge in hopes of receiving the first annual award.  

Students will be challenged to inspire their entire city to sponsor over 5,000 shoes for needy children throughout the United States and world. The Soles4Souls organization can distribute 2 pairs of brand new shoes for every $5.00 donation received.  

“We’ve set up a cutting edge website that allows each student to create a profile, send emails, post pictures, and allows for friends and family do donate $5.00 under their name. Individuals can also text message the letters AOK (acts of kindness) to 20222 and it will make a $5.00 donation on their phone bill.” Says Wayne Elsey, CEO of Soles4Souls 

Williams opens the challenge with an action packed martial arts speech with back flips and a brick breaking routine.  

“In martial arts I learned that kindness is the ultimate form of self-defense. Yet, when you do nice things for others, you open yourself up to be teased for doing the right thing. I tell students to have no fear and to be committed to being good people no matter what. Martial arts serves avenue to truly speak to the students,” says Williams. 

The entire school is given drop boxes, parent letters, Acts of Kindness Journals, morning announcement CD’s, and teacher packets with idea’s submitted by teachers from across the country.    

“If we can inspire every child in our local community to do kind things, then our world will truly be made a better place. We use shoes as the catalyst to teach the ever important life skill,” says Elsey.  

For more information about the program visit www.GiveShoes.org

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Dependability: keeping our word

Our word of the month is dependability.  All of us know that if we are dependable then we keep our word, we follow through on our promises.  In our day to day life we make promises to others all of the time.  In fact many times the promises just slide off our tongue very easily and before we have thought it out completely. 

Many times that happens most often with our friends and family.  Why is that so?  I believe that we take for granted that they, because of our relationship with them, will ‘forgive’ us if we do not keep our promise just the way we said it or at least they will be more understanding. 

Is that really fair to them though?  What is the long term effect if we make this a practice?  I know as a parent that when our children said they were going to do something and they did not follow through it was disappointing.  Then when we asked them to give their word again we would ask them again and again.  (that can be annoying for both the child and the parent)  If it is a really big issue, like what time will you be home or if your home work is complete, it could lead to losing privileges. 

We have talked about this many times too that we may also lose the trust of the other person.  If you are a child reading this – there is nothing that is worse than losing the trust of your mom and dad.  Do everything you can to maintain that trust.

One more part of this puzzle too.  When you do not keep a promise there is the feelings that you have about yourself.  Do you know that feeling I am talking about?  That guilting feeling?  The one that everytime you see the person you promised something too you just cringe.  That has a long term affect that I will talk about later.  But for now we can all work on keeping our word and doing so as quickly as we can after giving it to another person.
 

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Dependability: Definition

November word of the month at Balanced Life Skills is Dependability.  Being dependable is about our promises and commitments, our actions and being accountable for those actions.   This month we will explore this even more, to find ways that we can demonstrate our dependability at home and in all parts of our life.   Our students will learn the role that dependability plays in creating a good reputation.

 

Young students:

Dependability means: You can count on me!

Older students:

Dependability means: Following through with commitments even when it’s challenging to do so.

There will be more discussions on this site of this word to help everyone discuss it with their own children and to look at it more deeply with themselves in the coming month. Check back with us or you may join our community for even more information.

 

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Discipline: Thinking for yourself

All of us have friends that we like to hang out with and do things with.  Not all of our friends and acquaintances will have the same goals or even values that we have.  So what would happen if one of our friends asks us to take part in something that is not a good choice for us?  We know what that is called.  It is peer pressure.

No matter your age there is peer pressure on everyone and all of us must use our discipline so we do not allow others to get in the way of us making good choices for ourselves.  Every choice we make is going to have a result or a consequence.  It can be good for us and move us closer to reaching our goals and living our values or it can be bad for us and result in a bad consequence.

What would happen if we gave in to peer pressure to use drugs or alchohol, take part in an unsafe prank, or to not tell our parents the truth about a matter?  What would happen if we allow others goals for us to sway us from our own goals?

Even as teens and adults we can be swayed to consider following a line of work or education that does not really fit into our ‘purpose’ in life – or into what really makes us happy.  Then years later as we trudge through life and realize we are not happy, we may blame others for making us follow a certain course.  

Be 100% responsible for yourself. Recognize that “Discipline is remembering what you want.”  So what are the goals you are going after, that you really want to reach?  Think for yourself, do not be pushed by others to do something that is not in line with your goals and stay focused.  

Just because your friend are doing it – does not mean that we should do it too.  When you have discipline, you think for yourself!

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What makes disciplined people successful?

Have you ever noticed that those who reach their goals, that is achieve the things that they want, always seem to be the ones that do what is necessary, even when they don’t feel like it. 

There are many individuals who would have loved to have been in the Olympics, but there are very small percentage that the discipline to do what is necessary to get to that level of success and even less that place in the top 3 in the world.  If we look at what the most successful do though we see that every part of their life they practice discipline – so they can reach their goal.

How do they do this?   There is much involved but we could say that they work hard, plan ahead, practice, and schedule the time.  They know what they want to acheive and  then they practice what we will call WBP.  WBP stands for Work Before Play.  When we use our discipline we set our goals, make a plan, maybe get a coach to help us, then schedule how we can accomplish the goal, then we WBP.

No excuses, no goofing around, no doing it halfway.  We don’t play at it, or allow other activities to get in the way of it we just “Do it!”  There will be no procrastination… or if there is we recognize it immediately and complete the task at hand.

I have been working on this for so long and recently I read a book about getting things done that are important for the progress of my personal growth as well as reaching my goals.  The author, Brian Tracy, said “eat the big frog first”.  He went on to describe how everyday we should make a list of the three things that would have the biggest impact on our lives or business.  Then the hardest, most difficult of the three should be done first and stuck with until it was complete.  Eat the biggest, ugliest, stickiest frog first.  Then be sure to complete all three tasks no matter what in that day. 

Why?  Because when you get rid of that one you have a sense of accomplishment and the rest of the frogs don’t look that bad.  I have been trying this and it has been working very well for me.  You may want to try this too.  Having said that some of the hardest things to be disciplined about though is our diet and exercise.  More on that next time.

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The choice to show discipline

We have talked about all the rules and those that make them for us the last time with a special emphasis on the rules that we make up for ourselves.  When we make rules for ourselves like, ‘I am going to listen intently to others when they speak to me’, or I am going to work diligently to learn this new skill,  it is far more likely that we will demonstrate discipline and fulfill this promise to ourselves. 

Really though it is about making choices.  Every choice that we make has an outcome and a ‘consequence’ that goes with it.  This is a very simple principle that is key for our children to learn.  It is important for them to correlate choices with consequences – good and bad.

The formula is very simple E + R = O.  Event plus your Response (choice) will have an Outcome.  When we decide as adults or children that we will be 100% responsible for our choices and there outcomes (consequences) then we will be well on our way to creating the life that we want for ourselves.

How do we teach this to our children?  We can do this by creating opportunities for  some choices and then allowing them to have some failures and reap the consequences that go with them.  We only make progress in any endeavor when we have a failure and then work through it and get better / stronger on the other side.  

Never having a failure or not being allowed to have a disappointment from time to time does not build character.  It only builds an attitude of entitlement that will soon learn that in the real world not everything is going to go our way.