Zero-cost method to reaching your goals (academic, career, fitness and health): Get up an hour earlier. You’ll be amazed how much you can get done and how “on top of it” you feel.
16, 18, 21
Play to win but play fair. Be a gracious winner. Someone has to lose. Sometimes it will be you. Don’t whine.
10
Practice real-life mental math: Calculate time / age: If someone was born in 1994 how old are they today? Make change in your head: Cost is 14.27, how much change do you have if you give the cashier 20 bucks? Calculate percentages: tips, tax brackets, sales!!
12, 14, 20
Show them a picture of a riptide and explain about swimming parallel to the shore instead of fighting it. Google Outer Banks NC green fluorescent dye in riptide.
9-15
Choose to love despite the rage. See poem by Lucas Jones “ I Will Teach My Sons to be Dangerous Men.”
12, 14, 16, 19, 21
What do you think about the word “refugee?” Let’s talk about what it means. Personally, I don’t understand all the complexities of immigration policy, but I figure anyone who escapes violence and walks hundreds of miles with kids in tow, trying to get to safety and gain an opportunity for a better life for their family can live next-door to me anytime.
13
I heard a song today, “I love you to the bone” by Sammy Copley. It’s a beautiful story of a lifelong love. It’s my prayer for you that your spouse will have that song played at your funeral after you shared a 75 year- long happy marriage. It’s my prayer that your life is filled with love and laughter, and most importantly a partner who grows with you in all good things. And that you love each other to the bone.
21
Two rules: First, don’t be a sh!tty person. 2. Try to have some fun. Everything else is just “whatever.”
13, 21
You can’t grow in faith (or character or friendships) without learning to be humble. To forgive. To listen without agenda. To allow for the possibility you may be in the wrong. Ask for help. God will give it.
16
Stand up (or sit up) straight in photos. Don’t slouch or lean. (You can touch or be close but don’t lean in.)
12, 14, 21
Just because you love someone doesn’t mean they feel loved by you. Meet the kids where they are.
2, 9, 21
If you have to pretend to be someone else to get or keep a relationship or job, etc. then that relationship/job is not for you!
15, 17, 21
Before you quit your job - or leave your spouse, etc. consider that you may be suffering from anxiety or depression. We sometimes attribute outside things (or people) as the cause of feeling desperate for change. But sometimes it’s just that our brains are fogged with anxiety or depression. Help is life- changing.
21