personal development

…that’s what the numbers say anyway. Oh, and before I forget, they will also make history as the first generation with a lifespan that is projected to be shorter than that of their parents.

As a parent, it is hard enough to stay ahead of my children’s simmering resentment. If they get a clear grasp of the statistics behind my headline, I’ll never make up the lost ground.

Is It Really That Bad?
Obesity rates are at epidemic levels and increasing at a faster rate among the young. The misguided and corrupt advice on nutrition provided by corporate interests and those who serve as their surrogates (like the USDA) combined with the lack of access to resources and honest information on nutrition and food politics means there is little hope for change.

Recent studies show that the “emotional health” of college students is at a 25-year low. Anyone who really knows college students knows that the free trade at colleges in Adderall and Ritalin is only the tip of the iceberg. Academic and social pressure increase at an even faster rate than the number of students who enter college needing remediation. Depression is projected to be the 2nd leading cause of disability by the year 2020.

Job prospects are worse than at any time since the Great Depression. Eight million jobs have disappeared in the past three years with no sign that they will reappear as companies park their money on the sidelines and send whatever roles they can overseas. People continue to delude themselves that the charter school movement will fire the silver bullet that will make our kids competitive in an international marketplace. The tremendous increase in income disparity over just the last few years means that we have built an economic system that no longer values real economic contribution, talent, hard work, or entrepreneurialism.

Some kids may escape the trifecta – particularly when it comes to the “poor” part for the children of the Billionaire Boys Club (thank you, Joe D’Angelo for the reference!). This demographic also has the resources to pursue appropriate nutrition. It also helps that body image and shame are taught by their parents as part of the syllabus of entitlement. Now, the crazy part…. that’s a different story.

For Anyone Who Cares
I have a few humble suggestions for anyone who wants to lean into the wind and maybe salvage something in the coming years.  I’ve got a mixed audience so this is for young people and for those who care about them.  The points are kind of general but some people will get it and hey, I am around for anyone wanting to go more in depth.

Young people will first need to cultivate the quality of courage. This may have to be done “on the job.” It’s a quality that can be developed. The more you have in the bank, the more resilient you will be.

It really is true that “it’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you feel about what happens that matters.” Whether it’s growing muscles, getting a tan, developing callouses, or maintaining your integrity – stress should be welcomed. Don’t ask for things to be easier; seek to make yourself better and more skilled. Here are a few other suggestions:

• redefine success
• make yourself useful (see Robert Heinlein on the problem of specialization)
• get clear on your values
• look for ways to start and strengthen community; be open to looking for it in places where it might not normally exist
• develop a growth mindset (see the work of Carol Dweck)
• build your decision-making muscle
• decide what you will tolerate
• embrace this unique opportunity to be defined by your humanity instead of your role
• understand that biography is not destiny
• be careful who you allow to populate your private universe
• take responsibility for your physical health (I’ve been shocked at the lies and misinformation I discovered we are being told  about nutrition)
• Choose your focus carefully – even in the small things
• You determine the meaning of anything you focus on
• Be the proof that strangers do care
• Develop an entrepreneurial mindset even if you’re stuck in a cubicle
• Look for opportunities for growth in everything you do
• Seek connection
• Give yourself to something greater than yourself

Following this path won’t get you the private jet share, the $4 million house (notice I didn’t say “home”), the 2 or 3 luxury vehicles, or the fancy vacations.  You will: gain peace of mind, serve as a model for the next generation, attract a better class of people, live with integrity, have a clear conscience, be a leader, value simplicity, be closer to the Truth, live the way God intended for us to live.  In any event, it’s better than dying a quiet life of insignificance or, worse, selling out.

“Do not try to bend the spoon; that’s impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth: There is no spoon. Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.” – The Matrix

The Gift Of Irrationality
I can’t help myself. I love the Matrix. The quote talks about not trying to do the impossible and instead realizing the truth about who you are already – and that this is probably enough!

Most of us are not rational decision makers. We have a unique ability to ignore objective feedback. Thats why more information is never the best tactic for persuasion. On the face of it, this seems to be detrimental to growth. Used in the right way, this quality is actually a gift. In the first instance, it can protect us from fighting the wrong fight. We can avoid obsession with the impossible. Those who get stuck in this place know what they don’t want and are able to clearly articulate all the things they don’t want. Until you can have this same clarity with the things that you do want, you will never truly be awake.

Secondly, it is easy to be easy hijacked by “rational arguments” so that we do not take bold action in pursuit of the good. These arguments come from the rarefied air of expert analysts and enter our subconscious as the obvious. The path gets drawn for us by people who may not have our best interests at heart and their map becomes our territory.

We gain protection when we learn not to mistake knowledge for wisdom – when we understand that it is love and not knowledge that is the essential precursor to true wisdom.

Reclaiming Dominion
We were given dominion over earthly things by God. We screwed that up along the way. I believe that we have to reclaim dominion of our own special place. No one can tell you where/what this is. This place may be our community, our family, our job or it may exist completely inside of us. If we don’t reclaim dominion then we don’t really exist. The only other choice is to assume the role of victim. Once we reclaim our dominion we can then begin to work for the common good.

Finally, a confession…

I don’t know if any of the foregoing is true. I like what the controversial priest Richard Rohr says about the truth expressed in John 14:6 (“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”): “If Jesus is the Truth, then you probably aren’t.”

If you want to learn how to bend, go to the Services section of Boomer Ronin and find out how to hire us!

P.S. -Tweet this post! Thank you.

I have decided to join a conspiracy and I am writing to ask some of you to join me. This is also a brief explanation of the work our small, new company is doing. We felt the explanation was important because of how many spaces we are involved in.

Market Niche? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Market Niche!
Hans Hageman & Associates has jumped into a few areas. We have a few websites, one podcast, and at least one more on the way. These are vehicles to examine seemingly disparate areas of life – health & fitness, dating & relationships, leadership, diversity, and small business development. We are responding to our observations, life experiences, and dozens of conversations with people engaged in moving through a new world. We are also discovering that there are natural connections amongst all these areas. We also happen to believe that we can do well by doing some good in all of these areas.

The Bystander Effect
It’s sometimes really tempting to be a bystander. Isn’t that the easiest way to avoid all the pain out there? Other people/the government/people with more means are the ones who can/should handle things. But then reality leaps at you. For me, it was listening to two friends around my age detail all their serious health problems. It was finding out that students at the high school I had founded had received the news (after being told a different story for months) that their school was being closed and that those who were not graduating were going to be thrown back into the shark tank. It was seeing the movie, “Race To Nowhere” and having my knowledge confirmed of the deadly pressure faced by upper middle class high school students. This pressure is combined with the lessons for success that these children learn – rote memorization, cheating, and a weakening of family ties in favor of test performance and ticket punching extra-curricular activities. It was reading about the lies being told to law students so that their law schools can continue the habits of greed shared by the parasites of the financial industry (http://nyti.ms/fVe2Z4).

What Next?
What can anyone do? I don’t know but what Bernadette, Yaromil, Francis and I have decided to do is to find ways to help others alleviate and prevent their suffering. In doing so, we hope to alleviate and prevent our own. We live in a world where “pain is mandatory” but our struggle is to prove that suffering can be made optional. My team and I have redefined our own definitions of “ambition.”. We intend to remain on guard against the hubris that has the “experts” believe that they have “figured it out.” We do not suffer from what Wallace Stevens called “a blessed rage for order.” Life is messy and disordered and there a few scaleable solutions. We know that we will have more success helping people achieve balance than moral perfection

We bring who we are to our personal and work relationships. We can try to create alternate personas (as so many are forced to do) but things leak through – either our enlightened sides or our shadow selves. It is important to be able to look into that pool of water and shout with pride and pleasure at the reflection, “This really is me!”

Our merry band works with people who need to examine the structure that has been created for their lives. I believe that we each have a true Self and that conditioning has prevented us from living as that true Self. Intelligence, accomplishment, material possessions all provide camouflage as we seek to escape what we should be living.

Join The Conspiracy
Oh, and that conspiracy…

I will continue to join with others who are not only part of the Long Defeat but who are also part of the conspiracy to uncover the perfection that exists in each of us as a gift from God.

So come visit us here on http://HansHageman.com or at http://yaromil.foursquare.com, http://BoomerRonin.com, or http://BrownstoneFitness.com

The Challenges Ahead
My process for determining the voice for this blog is ongoing. I feel like that mosquito in the nudist colony – I know what to do; I’m just not sure where to start. In the past several days, news stories and studies (see Pew Trust) have come out about the clouds of regret and depression that hover over my fellow Baby Boomers. When we nervously look for renewal and hope from those younger than us, we are confronted by films like Race to Nowhere and news that students in college are suffering from mental health issues in shocking numbers.

The Talk
When I write here, I have tried to put past bitterness to the side and share lessons learned, in the hope that they may be of value to someone. I’ve done some things and been some places that might help provide some people perspective on their travels. The need for this perspective was brought home to me during a conversation with a young man worried about where the world is headed. He said…

“I’m worried about taking on the challenges of the 21st century.” This very general concern might annoy me in other contexts, however…

since this was my 9 year-old son, I put on my best listening skills as he continued…

“When you and Mommy are dead, I’m not sure how I’m going to know what to do about those challenges” (Ask someone who knows him. They’ll tell you it sounds like him). I didn’t have a lot of great advice at that moment but I was able to refrain from a lecture about Bentham’s Utilitarianism versus Pareto efficency and we instead discussed some of the qualities that I thought he needed to cultivate. We talked about things like courage, friendship, service, freedom, and responsibility.

I’m glad that he’s in a wonderful school that has allowed him to develop his natural gifts. It’s one of those places that understands that knowing the name of something doesn’t equal knowledge. Unfortunately,it only runs through 8th grade – well, there’s always homeschooling!

The Curriculum
My goal and desire for him is that he continues with his fascination for the natural world, continues to develop his physical skills to navigate through it, develops the physical and moral courage to confront the bullies who will inevitably invade his journey if he’s ding it the right way, learn sales (after all, so much of the life we live is transactional), and follows the “Heinlein curriculum” – “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

I want him to grow strong and I also want him to grow gently. I also want him to develop the practice of seeking and practicing good habits. Whether you’re 9 or 79, developing the right habits can help you grow into who you are supposed to be. The spiritual journey does not mean from “here” to “there.” The knowledge and enlightenment that we seek are no further from us than is the voice of God. We don’t need more names, knowledge, or skills – we only need access to the wisdom that we have always had. To begin or strengthen the process of unlearning, we need to develop good habits. And so I present…

Good Habits
When you have formed a good habit, not only will it become necessary to you, but the corresponding bad habit will no longer hold any appeal and will die a natural death. A new set of neural paths is thus formed while the old paths are gradually obliterated. Neuroscience says that forming a new, better habit is much more effective than trying to eliminate a bad habit. Good habits are like a group of lieutenants or executive assistants, working for us by relieving us of the need for conscious attention to an excess of details. Compare the efforts of a child learning to walk, or of a man learning to swim or ride a bicycle with a young child running through a playground or the expert swimmer or cyclist and you have a good example of what habit can accomplish. Our conscious mental processes — in the area of right-thinking – are often as ineffective as the efforts of the child learning to walk or the adult learning to swim or ride a bicycle.

Suppose we were forced to make the same effort in breathing that we do in any voluntary action, how laborious it would be. In the same way, controlled thinking is an effort at first, but stay with it long enough and it becomes a habit and almost automatic. When you make your habits your friend, you make your nervous system an ally. Just like bike riding or walking cease to be conscious processes, an expert thinker comes in time to balance his mind and control it in accordance with the laws of right-thinking. Little or no conscious attention is required for the body or for mental processes.

With most of us, wrong-thinking is habitual and automatic. When right-thinking becomes automatic and as unconscious as breathing, we shall have become truly our own friends. The heart beats and the lungs are inflated without conscious effort and those muscles are never tired, whereas voluntary action of the muscles soon fatigues. Athletes who persist too long in the development of any set of muscles become physically unbalanced. Too much conscious direction of thought produces a sort of mental paralysis – we become unbalanced mentally.

Reflection AND Action
Reflection must eventually find an outlet in action. It must find expression because of that intimate association of thought and the nervous system. If it does not, we become self-hypnotized by watching our own mental processes. Mere affirmations are not enough. One who goes no further than affirmations is like a would-be bicyclist who devotes the majority of her energy to affirming that she can ride, without ever getting on a bicycle to give his thought an outlet in action. Endeavor to give concrete expression to the truths you hold in mind, for only then do they come to life.

Kindness, consideration, cheerfulness, self- control may all become habits. They should in fact be designated as normal habits of a first-class mentality – the normal inheritance of the spiritually well-born. They are acquired, sometimes painfully and with much effort. Gradually, like the expert cyclist for whom bicycling has become a habit, we are relieved from conscious effort. We are balanced and able to enjoy the “scenery.”

When we find ourselves thinking thoughts of an undesirable nature, we must put the brakes on, stop the current of thoughts, and turn on to another road. If we have developed an alternate map of the territory and are clear about the values that inform our journey, we will be okay. Putting on the brakes and changing the path is where the Will comes in – the topic for a future post. Until then, remember that it’s easier to cultivate good habits than it is to try to bury bad ones. It’s also never too late to begin the process of growing gently.

P.S. If you find this of interest, sign up (in the box on the right, or wait for the fancy Pop-up) for my gentle emails on moving through the crap.

Whose Trance?
One of my recurring themes is that we are all in trance. Television, movies, music, unfair criticism, and social media, all play a role in the type and depth of our trance. We need to become self-hypnotists and continually work on the “suggestions” we give ourselves as we practice this trance. Keep the mind pure, free, and tranquil, let it be dominated by love and truth and the body will apparently take care of itself.

It’s All About Me
Another danger in our fast-moving, narcissistic society is the extreme self-centeredness that affects people across all generations. This fascination with self is always a precursor of mental and physical disharmony. People who end up in this sad state are like people who stick their fingers in their own eyes and then complain about the irritation. This is the negative type of self-hypnosis caused by the barrage of messages of entitlement and greed. The best way to leave this trance is to immerse ourselves in the joys and sorrows of others – to do good. When we take an active interest in helping someone else we are on the path to becoming our own best friends.

Habit
Like our physiology, our habits are inextricably bound with our nervous system. Just as we create trails by continually taking the same path through the woods, we also establish neural paths by fixed modes of thinking. Our feet seem to gravitate naturally to the old trails we hike. To create a new path seems to take too much effort. Neural paths have the same effect on the stream of consciousness of our everyday lives – it flows through the path of least resistance. The beaten path suggests to us that we follow it whereas taking a different route might never occur to us at all.

The foods we eat, the clothes we wear, the hand we brush our teeth with, how we control our thoughts, are all a matter of habit. Even if we drink or smoke – stop either for long enough and the taste for these things disappears. Whatever we do often, we incline to do more; whatever we desist from, we have, as time goes on, less and less inclination for. We have no better friends than good habits and no greater foes than our bad habits.

Bad Habits
When it comes to bad habits, the best way to overcome them is to starve out the roots that have been planted (by us or others) in our minds. Acquire the habit of ignoring them until they die for lack of recognition. Meanwhile, supplant the false idea with a true one by persistent cultivation. While this is easier said than done, it is a far easier method than the usual one of fighting against the false idea through willpower. In this area, when we fight, we are met with greater resistance. Correcting bad habits is more like a judo match than a boxing match.

The idea of non-resistance in this connection is good strategy and good psychology. Things have that power over us that we give them; they have no power in themselves. Their importance to us depends upon the attention we give them in our own consciousness. Do not fight with your disempowering habits; learn to ignore them by concentrating the attention on something more positive. To fight is to give them greater importance in consciousness and thus to increase their seeming power. Instead, minimize that power while asserting your superior self and cultivating true friends to take the place of false ones. Seek the angels and you don’t have to worry about the devils; but understand that you must cultivate the angels with all the persistence and devotion you once gave to the devils.

In the new year, we will be providing some free teleseminars and webinars that will teach specific skills to develop habits of excellence. Let me know if you’re interested in joining us.