Parents need to know...informational parenting video by IZ.Media In this video created by IZ.Media we help parents recognize and understand some of the dangerous trends that are affecting children. The more you know, the more you can be prepared to protect your family values.
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Originally published as Lessons from Noah on Vision and Endurance, February 3, 2017 in The Daily Positive. By Jon Isaacson Whether you believe the account of Noah and his giant wooden boat is a historical record or just a nice story, the general narrative is one that most people, including entrepreneurs and business leaders, are familiar. There is a catastrophic flood on the horizon, and Noah is told by God to build an ark. Need an ark? I Noah a guy... Our main character heeds the booming voice of heaven and, in doing so, saves himself, his family, and the representatives of the animal kingdom that will repopulate the land after the flood cleanses the earth. The story told in the Old Testament chapters of Genesis 6-9 continues to receive some public acclaim with the recent opening of the life-sized Ark Encounter in Kentucky as well as many lesser-known attractions such as the Noah’s Ark Biblical History Museum in Winston, Oregon. The story of Noah and the flood has been retold through several Hollywood iterations both in the comedic form with Steve Carell in the reluctant modern-day version in Evan Almighty as well as in the very dramatic form with Russell Crowe at the helm of the massive floating wood structure in the picture titled "Noah". In our modern society fear is not hard to find, whether it’s a new calendar year, the opening of a financial quarter, or even an average day on social media, countless pundits proclaim the next catastrophe that will cripple our global economies. If there is trouble on the horizon, perhaps we can learn something from the archetype of a man who was calm under pressure and followed through with his convictions to create a positive legacy with a global reach. Individuals and scientific groups continue to search for the physical location and remnants of the wooden structure, perhaps in part searching for confirmation that we can survive the worst of what nature can throw at us. The Noah narrative may prove helpful to the aspiring entrepreneur as well as the modern leader navigating the troubled waters of managing with vision, maintaining the elusive work-life balance and living a life of purpose. What lessons might we learn from Noah as a visionary leader and innovator? 1. Your work should be motivated by vision. Your work should be motivated by a vision so that you can work tirelessly in the face of opposition. If you can see further down the road than most entrepreneurs, people will likely think your efforts are crazy. If people think you are crazy, they are either right, or you may be moving in the right direction! Most entrepreneurial success stories include accounts of all the detractors who stood on the sidelines mocking the entrepreneur's efforts. Star athletes are often motivated by someone in their past who didn’t think they were good enough. A chip on the shoulder seems to be a consistent motivator for success in the lives of those who are visionaries and game changers. Noah was building the biggest boat known to man during a period of drought, at the time there was nothing more nonsensical than the work of Noah and his family. Pounding nails day after day can become a menial task, but when those nails bring an individual closer to his goal, the mechanics become a work of art, the thud of the hammer a soundtrack, and the small evidence of progress perpetuates the effort forward. “VISION WITHOUT ACTION IS MERELY A DREAM. ACTION WITHOUT VISION JUST PASSES THE TIME. VISION WITH ACTION CAN CHANGE THE WORLD.” – JOEL A. BARKER 2. Your work should include, or at least not exclude, your family. While Millennials get a bad rap for “not being motivated,” what many fail to understand is that Generation X and Y grew up with the consequences of a society putting work above all else. What happens when the dust settles on a career, and the family has played second fiddle? The employee who was loyal to his company but no longer serves a purpose has neither company nor family in the end. Good organizations and intelligent employees understand that their personal, family, and professional lives all need investments of time to thrive. While many claim to work themselves for the good of their family, the one resource that none of us can get back is time. Noah included his family in his work, whether that was willing labor or not, in the end, the work kept them alive and literally brought them together. Time is limited, so it must be spent with purpose. “THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS WORK-LIFE BALANCE. THERE ARE WORK-LIFE CHOICES, AND YOU MAKE THEM, AND THEY HAVE CONSEQUENCES.” – JACK WELCH 3. Your work should have a global as well as local impact. Seek to do as much good as possible. Noah had a long term vision with an immediate sense of the work ethic required to reach his providential goal. Noah shared his vision, invited others to join in his game-changing work, and made a public effort to endure through the days, months, and years with no evidence that he was right. You could say Noah was globally minded in his overall vision while maintaining a heart for the local culture. Noah’s family were the only ones to enter the safety of the Ark, not because Noah excluded them or hid his work but because no one wanted to join him. Like the story, The Little Red Hen, no one wanted to pound the nails to do the work of preparation, but they sure wanted to taste the pie when the work was complete and proved to be necessary. Every decision we make has consequences. Whether our work will make a positive impact is often determined by an intentional use of the time and resources we have available to us. “IN EVERY DAY, THERE ARE 1,440 MINUTES. THAT MEANS WE HAVE 1,440 DAILY OPPORTUNITIES TO MAKE A POSITIVE IMPACT.” – LES BROWN If you recall in the modern day depiction of the Noah story, Evan Baxter/Noah (Steve Carrell), has an interaction with God (Morgan Freeman), wherein God shares the anagram of the Ark. God asks Evan, “How do we change the world?” Evan responds, “One single act of random kindness at a time.” To which God starts writing A-R-K on the ground with a stick and remarks, “One Act of Random Kindness.” Live your life with vision, spend your energy on purpose, and be intentional about the impact you make with the resources you have. Genesis ends the story with God placing a rainbow in the sky to remind himself and Noah that he will never destroy the earth by flood again. Noah has a symbol that reminds him of what he has endured, reminds him of his present opportunity and reminds him that whatever may come, he is a survivor. In a world of chaos with rumors of catastrophe and messages of fear, notice the rainbow breaking through the clouds after a storm. Service. What a ways that you can creatively discuss and teach your family to have a servant's perspective? We were throwing out ideas and decided that a few simple projects that we could do would be: 1) Dinner - at dinner time you cannot put food or drink in your own mouth, nor could you ask for anything. If you want to take a bite, you will need to wait until someone at the table sitting at either side of you offers. If you want a drink, something much trickier, you will have to rely on the stable hands of your fellow consumers. In service the point is to look for opportunities to help others and to work to reach people where their needs are in a manner that communicates care to them. Someone in our group noted that service means treating others how you would want to be treated and we discussed that in doing so it is important to think about how that person will receive it rather than just doing what you think you would want. 2) Chores - we decided to divide the family chores differently than we had to streamline the process and once the responsibilities were lined out, we then informed the members of our family that they would be responsible for the chores of someone other than themselves. For the duration of the experiment, you would make the bed of the person you were assigned to serve, you would clean their room, do their laundry and assume the responsibility for their assigned chores. As noted above, service entails attempting to understand what is important to the person you are serving, not only doing unto others as you would have them do unto you (the golden rule) but listening and adjusting to their perspective. No one likes chores, but they are things that need to be done. The dinner experiment ended up being pretty fun. Next time we do it we need to make spaghetti or something messy like that. What creative family experiments or projects have you tried in order to teach a principle to the group? Have you tried anything similar in a professional setting? Connect. Collaborate. Conquer. As American’s you would think the lessons learned from our most recent economic collapse which affected so many businesses, organizations and families would not be soon forgotten. Yet, when the going get’s back to going we often fall back into a sense of security and even our prior habits. Our family has struggled to dig ourselves out of a financial crater that resulted from the collapse of our family based construction business. While we have filled some holes in, there were holes we couldn’t fill and several holes that we are still filling back in. As part of that experience there was a period of time in our lives where we needed to utilize government assistance for food as our income had been reduced to just fractions of what it had been. We were raising three babies as well as a young child for which we were able to find assistance first through the WIC and food stamps which provided assistance for many our nutritional needs. Yet even with this food allocation there were additional challenges as many of our expenditures were in things like diapers, wipes and baby formula which were not items that were supplied through government assistance that we could find and many of the resources available through the community were limited in what they could offer due to high demand for these essential items. We were life imitating art as expressed by Eminem’s song Lose Yourself, “Best believe somebody’s paying the Pied Piper. All the pain inside amplified by the fact that I can’t get by with my 9 to 5. And I can’t provide the right type of life for my family ‘cause man, these goddamn food stamps don’t buy diapers.” I can remember the gutted feeling of going to the Department of Health and Human Services feeling like a failure, feeling like I worked too hard and didn’t belong in this place begging the government to help our family. Through a process of proving our need and our self employment income we finally received the food stamp assistance, I was pleased that the benefits were now on an Oregon Trail EBT card rather than the monopoly money that I remember from my childhood. We were thankful to have the help and because we had a larger family, the allowance from the government was a decent payment each month that enabled us to reduce the pressure of the pressure of having to worry about providing nourishment for our young family. One amount provided at the beginning of the month creates a need to be studious, disciplined and thrifty. By being creative and learning from others who were going through the same issues we were able to make our food allowance stretch through the month while eating a fairly healthy diet. Some of our families’ favorite meals are culinary innovations were concocted in the laboratory of necessity by utilizing the ingredients that were available to us. While our nation, or leaders and our families need to remember our not so distant past as we move forward, the only area that we have control of is our own experience moving forward. I know those who came through The Great Depression are forever impacted by the struggle of those years in American history. Our experience of being on government assistance is one that we are conscious to never forget, we are grateful for the help of those resources provided by the government, as well as the generosity of family and friends that carried us through our leanest times to date (there are so many humbling stories of people supporting us). Truth be told, those hard times may have been some of our best times as they forced us to be creative and to work together as a family. Our kids were too young to remember the details of the experience but they do remember some of the recipes and as noted above they are some of their favorites which create opportunities to remind them of lessons our family has learned. We recently met as a family to discuss creative methods for trimming our budget so that we could distribute our resources into areas that matter to us as a group. One area that we thinned our spending was in our grocery shopping, which was already lean when compared with other families we had discussed our ideas with. To make the process fun, to maintain a level of health and to challenge ourselves to try new things we have mixed our process to include boys vs. girls, food style challenges and themed meals all while staying within a budget that mirrors the parameters of the SNAP challenge by averaging $3 or less per person per day for three meals. Some of these family experiments we have documented on our Youtube page such as our challenge to utilize hominy in a video we titled E-hominy.com. Keep your lessons close. Be creative, be accountable and be a part of the solution. |
AuthorThoughts on personal and professional development. Jon Isaacson, The Intentional Restorer, is a contractor, author, and host of The DYOJO Podcast. The goal of The DYOJO is to help growth-minded restoration professionals shorten their DANG learning curve for personal and professional development. You can watch The DYOJO Podcast on YouTube on Thursdays or listen on your favorite podcast platform.
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