Rob R Morris by The Victoria Napolitano Group LLC.

Real Life…Real Topics…Real Solutions

Rob R Morris Edition I Volume I

Decoding Your Past A Look Inside the Writing of the Book

Life is about

Choices Dealing with adversity

January 2014

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Being afraid does not define your character, what you do in the face of fear does.â&#x20AC;? -Rob R. Morris

Photography: William Young

/cover photography Collins Photography 1191 Pellham Drive Lompoc, California 93436 805-733-5197 Collinsfoto.com

Dealing with Adversity

EDITORIAL

Decoding Your Past About the book p.9 Editor & Art Director

Victoria Napolitano

Cover: Collins Photography Print: Hopelessly Romantic Media Productions

p. 11

Life is about Choices p. 19

Lead Photographer

Dave Storton Adventure Images

FEAR

Control it or it will control p. 23

No Winners or Losers

Print: Hopelessly Romantic Media Productions

Are we bad parenting? p.25

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fter writing my book, Decoding Your Past, I was amazed and pleased over the outpouring of support and personal stories I received from my readers. I created my blog, and began writing articles to maintain the momentum and excitement. Again I was astonished at the feedback. I felt I wanted more. I wanted a place my readers could get truly inspired, thus the creation of this magazine. I contacted a close friend who is a magazine publisher, Victoria Napolitano, and pitched the idea. She jumped at the chance to be a part of my vision. Her immediate response, â&#x20AC;&#x153;You will help and inspire so many people!â&#x20AC;?

n this magazine, my collection of thoughts and images has one purpose and that is to motivate you. Inside each and every one of usâ&#x20AC;Ś is a better version of us. We must strive each day to grow in depth and maturity. We must find ways to heal our wounds and manage our adversities. And in this process, we will create a better environment for those around us. I want you to take time, contemplate the meaningful words, and get lost in the incredible images. Sincerely, Rob R Morris

Rob R Morris Contact Information: Email: rob@robrmorris.com Website: RobRMorris.com

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Decoding Your Past about the book

-Rob R Morris

“Decoding Your Past” is a book about overcoming and making change in your life. It’s more than a story about a boy who went through many terrible things in his life; abuse, abandonment, depression just to name a few. It’s a story of how that boy had a significant life changing event. He made changes and put himself on a completely different path than he was heading. He struggled to overcome his issues through sheer determination. It’s ultimately a story of happiness and success despite the dismal beginning. The book serves as a guide for others to make significant changes in their lives by changing their patterns of behavior and creating a new direction. I had wanted to write a book about my life for many years but I never had the courage to sit down and put pen to paper. Most of my reservation was FEAR. I was afraid my story wouldn’t serve much purpose to an audience. About two years ago I decided that I was going to write the book. Despite my fear, I sat down and started the process. My first draft was about 60, 000 words with little direction. It was my life story but there wasn’t much meaning to those words. I had finished what I set out to do, which was writing a book about my life, but it needed something more. I wanted the reader to get something out of the story but I wasn’t sure what direction to take it. So it sat for a year. About a year ago, I came up with a direction for the book. I would use my life as the background story and I would provide key strategies for the reader to incorporate into their own lives. In the end, it would be a self-help book written as a guide to help others find happiness and success. The concept was the easy part. The actual strategies took me months to refine. I have always been an avid reader of self-help and leadership books. The problem I found with all these self-help books were they all had different opinions on what path to take in

life. Everyone had their own recipe for success. Some of the strategies seemed valuable and some of them… not so much. I started writing down these strategies I found in books and ended up with four pages worth of notes. At that point I was just confused. I knew I couldn’t write a book with four pages of self-help strategies. I also realized some of these strategies were so immersed with psychobabble, that it was difficult to understand them much less try and apply them to your life. After dwelling over this for a couple of months, I came to an epiphany. My life as a child was tumultuous to say the least. I had been through a great deal, which is why I had always wanted to write a book about my life. Not only had I overcome my issues, but I had changed my life and put myself on a successful path. So I began asking myself how I accomplished that and what strategies I had used in my own life. I came up with a very short list, much shorter than the four pages I had written down from other books. With this I had my direction for the book. I would disregard all the psychobabble and the four pages of items I had written down. My book would be about the strategies I used in my own life. The issues I overcame in my life were significant so I knew there wasn’t anything my strategies wouldn’t apply to. They were universal and could be applied by anyone to overcome a diverse range of issues. I compared my short list of strategies to the four pages I had from other books. I found most all of my strategies buried within some of the hidden meanings of these other books. But, I did notice one key strategy on my list that wasn’t in any of the other literature; a true understanding of your past because it dictates your future.

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One of the most important aspects to putting my life on a new path was understanding how I got to the point I was at. Not to spoil the book, but at one point in my life I contemplated suicide. Not just fleeting thoughts of suicide, but actually intending on doing harm to myself. I needed to understand why I was at that low and desperate point so I had to understand the roadmap which led me there. I quickly realized that in order to change the direction I was heading, I had to get off the path I was on. Moreover, I needed to understand how I got on that path to begin with. I am a strong believer in the idea that we must understand where we have come from to understand where we are going. We can’t change our patterns of behavior if we can’t understand why we do the behaviors we do. We can’t change our thoughts if we don’t understand why we think the way we do. All of this is dictated by our past experiences. This was such an important revelation to me yet it was nowhere in the pages of the books I read. So that became the underline focus of the book. In fact, that’s where the title “Decoding Your Past” originated. In the end, the book is a common sense approach to bringing about change in your life; putting your life on a path to happiness and success through a true self-understanding. It contains real life examples and strategies, not clinical psychology talk. The strategies can lit-

erally be applied to any issues in your life, minor to severe. I don’t discuss concepts of psychology; I provide a common sense approach to understanding your past, changing your patterns of behavior and putting your life on a new path. Enjoy the book! I want to acknowledge a couple of people for making this project come together. Laura Matthews of ThinkStory.biz – Laura did an amazing job of helping me focus this project. She is an amazing story analyst and editor. http://www.thinkstory.biz/ Jerry and Michelle Dorris of AuthorSupport. com – I had one phone conversation with Jerry about the book cover design. My parameters were that I wanted the cover design to represent the content and focus of the book and I wanted it to “pop.” That’s all I told him because I really had no idea what I wanted in a design. Shortly thereafter, I had a cover that I fell in love with. They also did an amazing job with the interior design and layout. http://www.authorsupport.com/ A special thanks to the loved ones in my life and my close friends who encouraged me throughout this process. Without your encouragement and support I may have never completed this project. -RM

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There are clear distinctions between people who succeed and people who fail, and one of the greatest factors is their coping skills and ability to deal with adversity. Our ability to cope can launch us forward, while our inability to do so will certainly destroy us.

Unfortunately we have a tendency to become consumed with these adversities. Instead of adversity being an event in our lives, it becomes our entire life. It creates what I call a “victim mentality.” We stay focused on all the bad shit happening to us, and we can’t see our way out of the tunnel. We become so preoccupied with the negativity that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for us. These events cause us to feel pain, anger, and resentment. We feel justified in these emotions because we have been wronged by someone or some event. At some point, we may turn into angry or hostile people. Compounding the problem, if we don’t get justice for these events, it only perpetuates the hostility within us. The anger and hostility become their own vicious cycle and take over our lives. The first step to letting adversity go is to deal with it. Obviously that is easier said than done. But it is a must. Catastrophic events happen to good people. There is no more explanation than that. We get so consumed with asking, “Why did this happen to me?” Bottom line? Sometimes there is no why. People get abused. People die in accidents. People are murdered, even by those they love. There is no why.

The longer we remain at a point of searching for the answer, the longer we put off dealing with the adversity. The longer we put of dealing with the adversity, the longer it takes to let it go. Part of the healing process of any adversity is dealing with it and letting it go from our minds. The events may never leave us completely, but by dealing with them and letting them go, we can learn how to manage them. When we can manage them, we can move forward with our lives. I recently received an e-mail from a woman, Pam. The e-mail reads, “I read your book [Decoding Your PastA Guide to Happiness and Success Through Self-Understanding] last night and am reading it again today. You have a gift, my friend. I really needed to read your book. While I don’t think the word was mentioned once in the book what I got from it is HOPE.

Dealing with

Bad things happen every single day to millions of people. We are plagued with adversity in various forms—job loss, death, violence, accidents, natural disasters, and manmade events like terrorism, just to name a few. We experience these events as children, adolescents, and adults. We experience these events when we are psychologically healthy and when we are not. When we are psychologically unhealthy, these events can have a compounding effect.

ADVERSITY

I have had to deal with a lot of things in my life, some of them very troubling. But that doesn’t make me any better or worse off than anyone else. We all have had to deal with adversity. Some of us have had more, some less, but we all have had it. These life experiences have formed us into the person we are today. How mentally healthy we are today depends on how well we have dealt with those adversities.

tains. I loved my job. My fiancé and I had a lot RobRMorris.com of 10 plans for the future. On April 6, 2002 my life changed forever. It was four months before our

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Dealing with

Adversity

In 2001 life was good for me. I was an Engineer/Paramedic with [name withheld] and engaged to the man of my dreams. We sold my house in the city and bought the house I live in now in the mountains. I loved my job. My fiancé and I had a lot of plans for the future. On April 6, 2002 my life changed forever. It was four months before our wedding. I had been at work for the 72 hours prior and only spoken to my fiancé by telephone. I arrived home loaded down with groceries for a birthday bar-b-que for my Mom we were hosting that day. I came into the house and called out to Jay and he didn’t answer. I walked past the downstairs bathroom and saw him lying on the floor. I thought he was working on something under the sink. When he didn’t answer me I went to see what he was doing. The next 30 minutes of my life I have relived over and over and over again. Running to get the phone, calling 911, telling them I was a Paramedic and that I needed help and that I was doing CPR, knowing that it was too late to revive him, but not wanting to give up. Wanting him to come back to me. It took forever for the fire department to get there. When the ambulance arrived they were not able to intubate due to rigormortis. I saw the dependent lividity, but didn’t want to. The Paramedic on the ambulance took me by the shoulders and told me that there was nothing that they could do. I knew this, but was not ready to believe this. He shook me and said, ‘You know.....you know there is nothing we can do.’ I wilted into a chair but felt like the floor had just dropped out from under me. I visually began a free fall in a dark, stone lined well. I kept grasping at the sides, but there were no holds. I never found the bottom of that well. I packed away the wedding dress and took some time off from work. I painted the entire outside of my house with a brush. They needed me back to work so I went back to work. Didn’t want to. I didn’t really want to do much of anything. My new reality seemed to be existing instead of really living. I have read a multitude of books, talked to counselors and chaplains and dear friends. I have searched my soul looking for the answer to ‘why?’ I would say out loud that, ‘Sometimes we don’t get to know why,’ but the stubborn, hard-headed part of me inside would still seek the answer. It pretty much consumed me. I 12

resigned from [name withheld] because I no longer wanted to be a Paramedic and be placed in a situation like I myself had been in. I sometimes feel like I should have seen the signs beforehand and that I should have been able to revive him. Fast forward to now. I read your book. I must have been ready to receive the gift you so freely share with the world. A spark of hope for the future. I thought of the song by Garth Brooks called, ‘Dance.’ I played that song at Jay’s funeral. ‘Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain, but I’d of had to miss the dance.’ Horrible, awful, rotten things happen to people, but it is how we choose to deal with them that makes us who we are. I took a time-out for a lot of years. I got really angry. But I realized while reading your book that I survived. And that I can do more than just survive...I can thrive.” We must find a way to deal with the emotions created from adversity and let them go. This is the only way to begin the healing process. We cannot move forward with our lives into the future if we can’t heal from the past. Our past experiences are important because they make us who we are. But our past experiences are just that—past. If we cannot let the adversity go, those past experiences remain current experiences, and we will never learn or grow from them. We must let the past go in order to learn and grow and move into the future. Pam’s story is heart wrenching to say the least. But it’s more than just a sad story. It’s a story of fighting back and resilience. Hearing her story empowers me. We can all overcome our adversities. No one said that was an easy task, but it is the right task. Pam will no doubt live with those horrific memories for the rest of her life. They will never leave her. But what Pam is doing is learning how to manage those memories in a way they don’t continue to destroy her. She is able to compartmentalize them so they don’t control her life and that’s the key; learning to manage our adversities. Pam has become a good friend and I have grown to know her a lot in a short period of time. She has amazing perseverance that we can all learn from. Repeating Pam’s last sentence in her e-mail, she said, “…I can do more than just survive...I can thrive.” I know she will. -RM

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are not defined by the adversities in our lives, we are defined by how we manage them .â&#x20AC;? -Rob R Morris

Photography: William Young

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San francisco at Dusk 17

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Life is About

CHOICES

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I have spent twenty plus years in my professional capacity watching and studying people and their patterns of behavior. I can say that based on these patterns, people often forget they have choices in life. More often than not, people chose to be right where they are at, whether that place is good or bad. That is a sad statement to make but realize this; by our inaction of changing the negative things in our lives we are thereby making a conscious decision to remain in our present state. It’s our choice to be right where we are. But why do we make these choices to remain unhappy or unsuccessful or to remain in our present state? That’s the million dollar question. There are no absolutes in psychology and in fact most of the time there are many plausible answers to any given question. There is the old debate of nature versus nurture when it comes to human development. Are we born a certain way (nature) or are we taught (nurture) to be a certain way? The truthful answer is both nature and nurture play a significant role in the person we become. There are a lot of generalities and behavioral patterns that come out of both the nature and nurture arguments with respect to our human development. On the nature side, our parents and the genes they pass down genetically play a key role in the person we become. In addition to our looks and heritage there are some predispositions when it comes to things like alcoholism, anxiety disorders, depression, mental illness, propensity for violence and addictions in general. With respect to nurture, our environment also contributes to who we have become. Such things include our ethnicity, socio economic status, social environment, parental involvement and religion to mention a few. I have spoken to numerous people on probation and parole and I’m always astonished at their response when I ask them why they come back to the same place, same neighborhood and same friends knowing it will likely have the same results. Their typical answer, “Where am I supposed to go? I don’t know anything else.” They have conditioned themselves to believe this is their only option. They are products of their environment and they believe they do not have a choice in the matter. They believe it’s their destiny and they accept it as such. It’s their reality and as a result, they will typically not do anything different to change their outcome. That means they will do nothing to help themselves. I do not say this to mean any disrespect to these individuals and in fact it saddens me to think they have come to believe this. It has truly become a self-fulfilling prophecy for them. They see this as their life and accept it, doing nothing to better or change it. 19

Chances are that you know somebody who fits into this model. I don’t say this as a means of criticism, it’s our human behavior. It’s how our brains work. Sadly, it’s typical. But typical doesn’t always correlate with good or healthy. Think of the domestic violence victim who continually goes back and stays with her abuser. Think of the person who is released from jail and returns to the same neighborhood and same friends. Think of the alcoholic who continues to drink after an alcohol related incident (arrest or accident). Do they really have any chance of succeeding or changing their lifestyles without changing their patterns of behavior? The answer is unequivocally, NO. Obviously these issues are very complex and I don’t mean to minimize them in any way. There is a lot of psychology and contributing factors (education, socio-economic status, drug/alcohol addiction, mental health issues) to these matters. The main point is this, nature and nurture both undoubtedly play a role in the person we become. Both obviously have powerful influences on our development, but neither are as significant as the choices we make in life. Our choices, by far, are a greater determination of who we become. We must understand the influences of nature and nurture on our development but they do not absolutely determine our outcome. More importantly, how we respond to those influences is a greater determining factor. If we truly want to make positive changes in our lives, we must change our patterns of behavior. It’s a choice to change those patterns or to continue with our same old patterns. We may not realize it’s a choice but it is. The female domestic violence victim must understand why she stays in abusive relationships or why she leaves one abusive relationship and moves to another. She must understand why she chooses these types of relationships. There are correlations within her that she must uncover. That individual released from jail cannot return to the same friends and neighborhood if they want a different outcome. They must see that this choice will likely end with the same results. Life is truly about the choices we make on a daily basis. We choose our situations and we choose our outcomes. And yes, doing nothing to fix or change our situation is also a choice; we are choosing to remain right where we are. We all have the ability to be happy and successful but we have to first make the choice to be so. We then have to make good choices that support a happy and successful outcome. You can choose to be happy and successful or you can choose not to be…but the choice is yours. -RM

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Sea of Cortez 21

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FEAR Control it or it will control you! Fear is one of the most prevalent human emotions and is capable of dominating your behavior or actions. Fear literally has the ability to paralyze you. Less dramatic, fear has the ability to control your daily behaviors and or actions. Fear has the ability to prevent you from engaging or bringing about change and fear certainly has the ability to prevent you from taking initiative. Have you ever walked into a night club, restaurant or anyplace for that matter and saw an attractive person sitting across the room? Perhaps the person even looked your way and smiled. All things would indicate the person is attracted to you as well. How many people would walk across the room and introduce themself or strike up a conversation. Chances are, not many. In fact, the percentages of people willing to walk across the room and make an introduction are very, very low. And why is that? The answer, short and simple is FEAR. In this case, fear of rejection. We are afraid the person will reject our initiative. And because of that fear, chances are greater that we will not walk across the room and take that initiative. Most of us can relate to this type of fear. Most of us have been in similar situations at some point in our lives. What we need to understand is that fear is a learned behavior. And in order to be successful in life or to bring about change, we must learn to control fear. Being afraid does not define your character, but what you do in the face of fear does. When my first son was eight months old I was sitting on the floor of my living room watching him play. He was standing and propping himself up against the adjacent couch from where I was sitting. He turned and looked at me, and without hesitation took his first two steps toward me. Unfortunately for him, I was about six steps away from him. As a result he fell. He whined for a couple of seconds then got back to his hands and knees and crawled back to the couch he had come from. He managed to stand up, again propping himself against the edge of the seat cushion. My son turned and looked at me and I saw the determination in his eyes. He was going for it again. He let go, turned and headed for me again. This time, to both of our amazement, he took six steps and fell into my lap. He made it. We both giggled and I praised him for walking for the first time. Same son, now thirteen years old and in middle school is scared to death to walk up and talk to a cute girl at school. Although he doesn’t know why he is afraid, the fear now controls his behavior to the extent he won’t take the initiative. What he fears is rejection. Somewhere along the way, during his developmental process he learned the concept of fear. When he was eight months old and took those first steps, he was fearless, despite falling after making a first attempt. Now he won’t make the attempt at all, out of fear of falling (being rejected). Fear is a learned behavior. I have been a police officer for the past twenty-three years and a SWAT member for fifteen of those years. Police work is a dangerous business and being on a tactical team (SWAT) 22

raises the danger level significantly. Anyone who tells you police officers are not afraid or don’t get scared is not telling you the truth. I have been scared more times than I can even recall over the course of my career. In some of those instances, I was very scared and could feel my body literally freezing up and not responding. I had to physically fight against my own body to move and respond to whatever threat I was facing. In my line of work, allowing fear to physically control you can cost you your life. Freezing and inaction is not an option. Police officers learn very quickly how to channel their fears and continue to perform in the face of those fears. To bring this topic to more of a direct point, I want to discuss how fear fits into our daily lives. Chances are many of us are not happy with ourselves or our situation. Perhaps we are unhappy with our entire life or just certain portions of our lives. The range of topics this could include is very broad from being unhappy in relationships, financially, professionally, or maybe we are unhappy with our appearance. The list of possibilities is endless. And the sad reality is many of us will do nothing to change any of this. Why? Mostly fear. Fear of rejection, failure or change. I speak to victims of domestic violence routinely and I always ask why they stay in abusive relationships. The answer always boils down to the same response, fear of change or the unknown. Being in an abusive relationship, although not good, is familiar and that brings a certain level of comfort, despite being abused. Getting out of that relationship exposes you to an entire world of unknown which creates fear. Fear of change causes them to stay in the abusive relationship. Obviously this issue is more complex than one paragraph but the premise is the fear prevents them from making change in their lives. The point is we all face fear. Fear is a normal and healthy emotion. Fear allows us to have a heightened state of awareness and allows us to be cautious in the right situations. However, allowing that fear to control us to the point of inaction is not healthy at all. We will never eliminate fear, not should we try to. We should however learn to acknowledge fear, channel it and move forward. There are only a few differences between successful people and non-successful people. One of those differences is the ability to control fear and to step forward into the face of danger; the unknown. Many people never attain the level of success they desire or find happiness because of fear. They are afraid to take a chance because they fear failure. Using my eight month old son as a metaphor for life, if he didn’t take those first few steps, despite the possibility of falling, he would have never learned to walk. And when he did fall, he stood back up, turned and walked again. Only, the second time he walked twice as far. Life presents itself in a similar way. We all face decisions and situations in our daily lives and there will always be a possibility of failure. But taking action and stepping forward is never a failure, even if it leads to temporary setbacks. The only real failure is taking no action. We can all attain success and happiness if we are willing to take chances, even in the face of fear. -RM

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Are We Bad Parenting When I was in my early twenties, there wasn’t a parenting situation that I came across in which I didn’t have a solution. Parenting seemed so easy and I had it all figured out, at least until I had children. When I became a parent I came to an epiphany. I was an idiot for thinking I had all the answers. Now that there was a real baby in my arms, I came to a new conclusion… I didn’t know shit about parenting. I quickly learned being a parent is undoubtedly the hardest and most important job ever. Why? We are influencing, shaping and molding the lives of others; our children. We are putting them on a particular path in life. When we become a parent, it’s no longer just about us. It’s now about creating value and instilling values in the lives of our children. Fast forward…today I am a forty-three years old and I have grown immensely as a parent. I often wonder what type of people my boys are going to become. What are their strengths and weaknesses going to be? Who and what are they going to develop in to? Our life experiences form us into the people we become. Our drive, our determination, our desires, our coping skills and our ability to maintain relationships are all predicated by our earlier experiences. So the question is raised. What experiences are you providing for your children? What environmental factors are they being subjected to that will dictate who they become in life? In addition to the problems society is creating, we as parents tend to muddy the waters by creating environments not healthy for our children. I see domestic disputes and it’s the same story each time. Mother and father screaming at each other and often there is violence. The children are always left crying after having witnessed these events. They are confused and scared and then the police arrive to potentially haul someone off to jail. The impact this has on children is devastating. (continued page 28)

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Are We Bad Parenting The parents recover from the fight soon thereafter, however children respond differently. When children see this type of behavior routinely, they begin to normalize it. They learn that this is what a relationship is supposed to look like. Children develop a sense of the world through watching us - the parents. We are teaching our children what kind of adults to become. We set the example for them to follow. What is the solution? We can’t change the world we live in and we can’t raise our children in a bottle. Society is just different today and we have to adapt. We can however control what we teach our children and the values we instill in them. We can teach them to be independent and give them problem solving skills. We have control over the environment we create for our children and we certainly have control over the model we provide them. We have the ability to put our children on the path to success or the path to failure. We may have never thought of ourselves as role models, but when we became parents we inherited that responsibility. We can put our children on a successful path by instilling good values in them and teaching them how to deal with life. Our children need to know the difference between right and wrong and that there are consequences for wrong. Our children need to learn that being last is not alright and that next time they need to try harder. Mere participation is not good enough and we expect their full effort.

It’s healthy to have expectations of our children. It’s the way life works. Children need to learn the concept of hard work and applying themselves and they need to be praised when they accomplish it. We need to teach our children that they will get knocked down at some point in life and that they need to get right back up and face another day. Teach them there are winners and losers and they can be either if they choose to be. Let them know they can accomplish anything they want but only if they put forth the effort. Nothing will be handed to them. Life is about choices. We must encourage our children to make good choices. There are no excuses in life and wherever our children end up will be by their choice. The greatest success we can achieve as a parent is to develop our children into good adults. Adults that are respectful, loving, healthy, productive, welladapted, self-sufficient, confident and happy. That is a tremendous amount of responsibility on our shoulders but it’s also the greatest gift we could ever give another person. We accomplish this by creating healthy environments that allow our children to grow into well-adjusted adults and by being good role models. -RM

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No Winners or Losers In 1886 the horse and carriage business was flourishing as one of this country’s most efficient means of personal transportation. In the early 1900’s, Durant-Dort Carriage Company (William C. Durant) was essentially put out of business by Henry Ford when he founded the Henry Ford Company, the first automobile manufacture. The Ford automobile eliminated the horse and carriage era and pushed this country into a new direction. In the spirit of competition (or capitalism in this case), William C. Durant responded by creating General Motors in 1908, the world’s second largest automobile manufacture, and the country changed forever. Being number one mattered and it empowered competition. Competition is what drives people to be better, to be smarter and to make a better product. Competition is what made this country great. Today however, we are shifting to a progressive concept wherein we are all put on an equal playing field. A concept where competition is no longer important because we are all winners and there are no losers. This concept is immersed into our school systems and our children are being taught that it doesn’t matter if they win or lose, as long as they participate. Children no longer receive awards for first, second and third place, they now all receive participation awards no matter how they perform. Youth sports are following suit by making sure all of the kids on the team have equal playing time, despite their skill or interest level. You no longer have to be good enough to make the team; you are automatically on the team if you show up. And during the game, if one team begins to outscore another by too big of a margin, we penalize the winning team and let the other team catch up. This ideology is creating a society of codling. We are so afraid of offending someone or hurting someone’s feelings or bruising their ego that now everyone is a winner. This is having a devastating effect on society and individuals alike. When you no longer have to try your hardest because you will automatically receive equal compensation or praise you create a society of individuals who are no longer able to help themselves - people who are no longer interested in thriving. There is no need to do better or give full effort because the end result is the same. We are creating people who won’t take control of their own destiny. These people expect to be carried along through life.

Sadly, the real world doesn’t work this way. There are winners in life and there are certainly losers. This is evidently clear if we take the time to look at the world around us. We are perpetuating the issues in society by creating an environment of coddling. People now believe it’s no longer their own responsibly to care for themselves or better themselves. They expect someone else to do it for them. They expect someone else to put them in a position of success and they expect someone else to help them find happiness. We must realize we are absolutely in control of our own destiny and if we fail or succeed in life it’s because we put ourselves in that position. There is no one to blame but ourselves. We must understand this for ourselves and we must instill these values in our children. It’s imperative we stop the vicious coddling cycle. There is one path to being successful in life. That is a path of hard work and perseverance. No one is going to make you successful except you. Creating a life of happiness and success is well within the realm for all of us. Sometimes creating that life requires an overhaul in the way we think. We often have to reprogram our brains to rid ourselves of some of the things we were taught earlier in life; like there are no winners and losers. The sooner we make this change in our thought process the sooner we will realize we can put our life on a completely different path. It just takes our full effort instead of waiting around for someone else to step in and make our lives better. General Colin Powell said it best, “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.” There are winners and losers in life and it’s your choice to be either. If you are successful, then there is no doubt you got there through hard work and perseverance. If you are not, then perhaps it’s time to change the way you think. It’s time to realize the way you were programmed to think early on was wrong and has set you up for failure. The good thing is it’s never too late to change the way you think. Competition has always inspired people to be great, to be better than the previous. Competition promotes greater thinking and new ideas and consequently new growth. This growth created a great nation of people, not because we were all winners, but because someone did what it took to become a winner. -RM

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