ORSFTA: 2014

Introduction Lessons: (rough draft)

So why are we here?

Why in this human form?

Why on this planet?

Those are tough questions. It’s fun to think about, they’re two of my favorite questions to ponder, but they’re a bit tough to answer.

Lets make that question a bit more specific.

Why are we here in this Integrated Arts School?

Now this is easy to answer.

I love teaching and, over the past 10 years, I’ve had the privilege of working with students from China, to Vietnam, to Arizona and California and, every year, amazing breakthroughs have taken place. Students grow in ways they’ve never before grown. And every year, I hear that these teachings need to be spread. So, here we are, sharing the lessons with students, worldwide.

Intro Lesson #1- Why do you go to school?

I got a question for you... why do you go to school?

Why do you spend about 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, from the age about 5 to 20- and maybe even until 25 or 30- at this place that we call school.

Why do you spend so much time, during what are arguably the most important years of your life, in school. There's has to be a really good reason why... I want you to think about this, come up with the best answer you can that explains why you spend so much time, over so many years, at this place that we call school?

EXPLAIN WHAT YOU THINK, THE REALLY GOOD REASON IS, WHY WE GO TO SCHOOL:

So one of the first answers students always give, is because we have to. Which, although it legally is true, it’s a horrible reason to spend so much time doing something. If you do something just because you have to, its tough to try your hardest, to do your best, and to truly enjoy yourself. There’s got to be a better reason behind our schooling than, “because we have to.”

So the other immediate response I typically get is that we go to school to learn. Which is true at the surface level but “to learn” is such a vague term. Do we go to school to learn how to train a dog, or to knit a sweater? For most of us, the answer to that question is definitely no. So, what do we go to school to learn?

Again, why do we spend so many hours, during the most critical years of our life, in this place that we call school? What do you think we go to school to learn?

WRITE A PARAGRAPH EXPLAINING WHAT YOU THINK WE GO TO SCHOOL TO LEARN:

So most students usually start off listing the subjects, math, history, science, reading and writing. Then many move into the extra-curricular activities as they write art, foreign language, physical education and music. But what else do we learn at school? Lets take this deeper. Did you write anything about the social skills you acquire at school? What about motivation or work ethic? Listening and focus... These are the learning’s that will stay with you for the extent of your lifetime.

There are all these other elements of life that we’re continually experiencing and learning at school. It’s pretty incredible to think about how much can be learned in a single day at school.

But we still haven’t figured out why? What’s the reason behind it all? Why do you spend so much time in school? To l learn…yes, but, it’s more than that.

As I stated above, you’re learning social skills, motivation, listening skills, work ethic, and all the life skills that you’re going to need throughout your educational career.

So, back to the question at hand, why are we learning these things? I want you take all the things I’ve mentioned and synthesize them into one, all consuming sentence, that explains why you go to school...

IN ONE SENTENCE, EXPLAIN WHY YOU GO TO SCHOOL

So, the best sentence I’ve been able to come up with is:

You go to school to prepare yourself to live the greatest life that you can possibly live.

Now what your greatest possible life is, varies from student to student... yet, no matter what your greatest possible life is, your going to need a certain set of skills in order to live that life.

We’ll talk more about that next week. For now, i challenge you to pay attention during school this week and keep track of all the times that you did something that helped prepare you for your future. Try to come up with at least ten different experiences that helped prepare you, to live the best life that you can possibly live.

While doing so, I hope that you begin to see the beauty of school as you enjoy, learn, and grow to be the best individual that you can be.

I hope that you enjoyed this lesson as much as I did and can now take pieces of it with you as you continue your growth.

Intro Lesson #2 – Observations of School on Your Life

Last week we talked about why we go to school and, by the end of the lesson, we had come to the conclusion that the purpose of school is to prepare us to live the best life that we can possibly live. I then challenged you to observe school through this lens for the week, noticing the occurrences that helped prepare you to live your best life.

I’d now like you to take a few minutes to record the observations you made on school since last time. Try to list at least 10 different ways that school has helped you grown towards becoming the best person that you can be, since last time we talked.

LIST THE WEEKS OCCURENCES THAT HELPED PREPARE YOU TO LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE:

Although you probably experienced about a hundred occurrences this week that helped progress you towards living your perfect life, they may have been hard to notice because we have yet to define what your best life is.

I’d like to now work on defining this.

What’s the best life that you can live?

I want you to close your eyes and imagine yourself at 30 or 40 years old…

Seriously, close your eyes and picture yourself as an adult.

Are you happy? Do you have friends? What about a family?

Do you have a job that you enjoy?

Are you healthy?

Spend a few minutes painting this scene in your mind. Paint a picture of your perfect future self. Then, when you’ve got a beautiful picture of who you want to be, I’d like you to use your best descriptive writing skills to create a master painting of words describing your perfect future self.

USING YOUR DESCRIPTIVE WRITING SKILS, PAINT A PICTURE OF YOUR PERFECT FUTURE SELF.

Now this image is important, if the vision you created is not one that you’re interested in, I recommend taking some time to think about your perfect future self. I’ve found that students who have some ideas, goals, and interests for their future are more likely to be motivated throughout their teenage years.

It’s also important because having an idea of who you want to be helps you to understand the skills that you need to develop in order to become that person.

The neat thing is, there are certain skills that we all need to acquire, if we wish to co-exist within the worlds current society. It doesn’t matter if you want to be a traveler, a mountain man, a businessman, or a surfer, there has to be a certain set of skills that we all need.

I’d now like you to think about all the skills that you will need to live your perfect life. Try to come up with about 20 of the skills that you need to acquire if you’re going to succeed in living your perfect life.

MAKE A LIST: List the skills you need to live your perfect life.

So I’ve taken all the different skills that students list, intelligence, respect, work ethic, happiness and the list goes on and on, and I’ve broken them down into three major categories, academic skills, social skills, and emotional skills.

If you can master these three categories of skills, I can almost guarantee that you will succeed in creating your perfect life.

This is what we go to school to learn. This is the key to creating your perfect future self.

Mastering academic skills, social skills, and emotional skills.

The first of these big three is academic skills.

Academic skills

Social skills

Emotional skills

If you can master these three categories of skill sets, your well on your way to living the greatest life you can possibly live.

Your challenge for the week is to pay attention to the social and emotional skills sets. We all know that we learn academic skills in school. Every day you go home and tell your parents all about what you learned academically. But your learning just as much socially and emotionally. Pay attention to these two skill sets this week.

Intro Lesson #3 - Motivation (time line lesson)

Last time we were together, we talked about going to school to prepare ourselves to live the best life that we can possibly live. Now, in order to achieve our best life we learned that a certain level of academic, social and emotional skills are necessary. Last time we were here I challenged you to pay attention to the social and emotional skills you are learning and mastering at school. Before we start talking about the other major skill necessary to live your best life, I want you to take a few minutes to write down a few of the social skills and a few of the emotional skills that you practiced and improved since last time I saw you.

DESCRIBE YOUR SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL SKILLS

So, there’s one last major component to living the best life that we can possibly live.

So far we’ve discussed intelligence, academic skills, family and friends, social skills, and peace and happiness, emotional skills…

Take quickly take three guesses to try to come up with the other necessary piece of this puzzle.

(MAKE 3 GUESSES)

Motivation, work ethic and perseverance are the 3 we were looking for. This could be considered the most important of all the skills we’ve discussed. I continually have students with below average intelligence living remarkable lives because of their work ethic and motivation. Think of something incredible that’s happened in the world without effort. A lot of students always want to be professional athletes, I played some college sports and I fully get the desire, but what most people don’t think about is the fact that most professional athletes will work for 15-20 years before they make it to the pro’s. Gandhi fought the British rule in India for over 50 years and on 4 different occasions he was placed in jail. Did he quit? No, because doing amazing things takes motivation and dedication.

There’s going to be times in school where you’ll get frustrated. There might even be times when you’ll want to quit. What I’ve found is that students who have something that motivates them continue to work on through the struggles, growing to be stronger, more incredible people than they previously were.

The beautiful thing is, it doesn’t matter what your motivation is. You can be motivated by most anything, as long as it motivates you.

For me, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. More specifically, I wanted to play on the high school baseball and football teams and, in order to be on the teams, I knew that I had to do well I school. I knew that if I didn’t do well in school I couldn’t get into a college and, most professional athletes go to college. Sports were my motivation.

Some students I have know that they want a good job and, in order to get most “good jobs” you need to go to college and to get into most colleges, especially “good colleges” you need to do well in school.

Some students just want to keep their parents happy and that motivates them, while others are motivated by their friends and they desire to be accepted.

It doesn’t matter what your motivation is as long as you are motivated to try and care about how you do in school.

I’ve never met a student who doesn’t want to live a great life.

I can’t think of a better motivation than this.

In order to live a great life, you need to care and try. It’s that straight forward.

I don’t see how anyone could have ever lived the best life possible without caring or trying.

With this said, lets now take a few minutes to explain what it is that motivates you.

WRITE ABOUT THE THINGS THAT MOTIVATE YOU

As the week goes on, keep this motivation in your thoughts. When things get tough, thinking about persevering, fighting, and continue to try and to care. It doesn’t mean that things will always be easy. it just means that you wont give up when they get tough.

With the vision on your perfect future self now implanted in your mind, and a newly declared motivation, I hope that you have a great week of care, and effort, trying your hardest in everything that you do.

Intro Lesson #4 - Character traits

What traits do you like in yourself?

What traits do you like in others?

Up until now, we’ve been talking about some big picture topics, why we go to school, social, emotional and academic skills, and motivation. Today we’re going to start getting a bit more specific.

Today I want to talk about character traits.

What are character traits?

The traits that create the character…

What are the character traits of Winnie the Pooh?

He’s happy, curious, loyal, peaceful, simple

Tigger:

Energetic, playful, friendly

Eeyore:

Negative,

Now these are all fictional characters who were created with very strong character traits. Although human beings don’t usually have traits as obvious as the characters of Winnie the Pooh, our character is still defined by the traits that we demonstrate.

Think of a few people who you look up to, people who you’d like to be like. Maybe your mom or dad, a grandparent, maybe you have an incredible aunt or uncle or family friend who you admire. Maybe you learned about a historical figure who fascinated you or have a teacher who inspires you.

After you think of three of three of these people who you look up to, try to figure out the traits they possess that make them so likable.

So pick three people who we look up to or who we’d like to be like and come up with at least three traits for each of them that you admire and would like to have yourself.

NAME 3 PEOPLE & THE 3 TRAITS YOU ADMIRE ABOUT THEM

So we usually go around the room and share all these traits compiling a list of positive character traits. But, since your over there and I’m over here, I decided to go ahead and do it for you.

The most popular answers are

These are the traits that we like in people. We want to be around people who demonstrate these traits.

So think about this list, and think about yourself.

Which of these traits are you best at?

Which of these traits are you most lacking?

I want you to pick three of these traits that are your strongest and write them down, we’ll call these your strengths.

Then, pick three of these traits that you’ve not yet obtained, but you’d like to. Traits that you’d like to have in yourself.

Lets take a minute and write these down.

WRITE YOUR 3 STRENGTH TRAITS and YOUR 3 WEAKNESS TRAITS

Now that’s the positive side of things.

But, there’s the other side as well, the traits that we dislike. Traits that push people away and create problems.

Lets go ahead and create a list of 5-10 traits we dislike in people.

WRITE 5-10 TRAITS YOU DISLIKE IN PEOPLE

Again, I’d typically go around the room creating a class list of traits that we don’t like others to display but, like I said before, your over there and I’m over here so, I went ahead and put a list together for us. The neat thing about these lists is that over the years of teaching these lessons, I’ve learned that the lists are almost exactly the same for students of all grades, in all states and areas. There’s certain traits that human beings like and certain traits that we don’t like. The key is maximizing our positive character traits, and minimizing our negative character traits.

Lets go ahead and look at this list.

Again, lets pick three traits on this list that we see in ourselves. Which of these traits do you have that you’d like to minimize.

WRITE DOWN 3 TRAITS THAT YOU HAVE AND WANT TO MINIMIZE

The thing to understand about character traits is that we all have traits we like, and we all have traits that we could work on. It’s about letting the positive traits shine and shutting the negative traits up. Maximize your positive traits and minimize your negative traits. I want you to spend the week focusing on this.

Work to add those three positive traits we listed a few minutes ago and work to eliminate the negative traits that you’re still working on.

Good luck with this.

Intro Lesson #5 – ENJOYMENT AND HAPPINESS

So, what is the meaning of life? Wow, tough one, huh.

Although there are a few people who claim to know the answer to this question, there are certain elements of the answer that we can all agree upon.

I want to talk about one of these answers today. A simple answer to the most difficult of questions we have. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Well, I think that one of the biggest reasons is to enjoy ourselves while we are living. We’re here to have fun.

Now don’t get me wrong, most people I know do have fun. I just don’t think that they often have as much fun, and enjoy themselves as often as they could.

I want to help you enjoy yourself to the fullest.

So, lets start off by defining happiness. What does happiness mean to you? What is enjoyment? Lets go ahead and write a few sentences defining happiness and enjoyment.

Hopefully you were able to acknowledge that happiness and enjoyment are as simple as feeling good. When we do something that makes us feel good we enjoy doing it and, when we’re feeling good, we’re happy... we enjoy ourselves. When we enjoy ourselves life becomes fun.

So how do we enjoy ourselves? The problem is that this is different for everyone so, the best we can do is figure out what we enjoy. What makes us happy? I want you to go ahead now and make a list of 10-20 things that you enjoy to do.

Now that we’ve got this list I want you to think about how often you partake in the items that are on it. How often do you think you should be doing them? Every month? Every week? What about every day? Why not do them as often as possible? We should continually be doing the things that we enjoy doing. As the saying goes, find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Why not strive to do nothing but the things that we enjoy?

Now, there’s some catches with this. One, there’s a certain amount of things we “need” to do. Although in the moment we may not want to do our math homework, its going to make us much happier in the long run. This brings us back to our timeline lesson where we saw that the more education we receive the more options we have. Options make us feel good.

But there’s another side to happiness. I guess we could call it being unhappy. Even if we do something that we said makes us happy, but have recently done something wrong, the feeling of negativity will over power the feeling we enjoy.

So, what is it that could cause these negative feelings. I’d like you now to think about this question while making a list of items or occurrences that make us feel unhappy.

Now look back on this list. How many of these things do we have control over (probably all of them)?

Which leads to the point that I’d like to make.

We are in complete control of our happiness. We control the things that we do, both positive and negative and, depending on which choice we make, we will either be happy, or unhappy.

I want you to pay attention to the choices you make this week. Try to feel if each choice was a positive choice or a negative choice. Did it make you feel good or did it make you feel bad. When we can master this skill and begin to make nothing but positive choices life continues to grow better and better.

Intro Lesson #6: Friendship

So in our last few lessons we’ve focused on our character traits and happiness. These two elements of our self-understanding are critical for the topic I want to discuss today.

It’s one of the biggest aspects of the growth and development we experience throughout our educational careers. And, for many students, it often dominates their focus, becoming a bigger priority than most anything else in their life... even school.

The topic I’m referring to is friendship. So, lets start at the root of friendship, where all friendships begin...The Self.

Before we can have a positive, healthy relationship with another, we need to have a positive healthy relationship with our self. We need to know how we can contribute to a friendship. We need to know how to be a friend before we can have a friend.

So to start off, lets make a list of 5-10 ways that we can contribute to a friendship.

Write about what can you do, to be a good friend?

That’s a good start. Now, the biggest point I want to make on friendships is that they must be positive. Friendships should always add to our quality of life, never take away from it. In my 10 years of teaching middle school students I don’t think I’ve ever met a student who’s got into much trouble or problems on their own. I find that students, and even adults, are not only naturally “good”, but naturally we want to do good. More so, individuals don’t want to do bad things on their own, it always happens in a group. The group gives them a sense of safety. It’s similar to dogs. Individually, they might be the most loyal, loving creatures on the planet. But in a pack, they become deadly. I’ve never pedaled my bike as fast as i did when being chased by a dog pack in New Orleans. Individually, I’m sure they were nice dogs, but once they created that pack mentality they were no longer being positive... nor nice, nor intelligent. They lost the ability to make positive decisions and just started following the group.

I’ve seen this same thing happen with middle school students.

If you’ve been getting in trouble, doing bad things, or not feeling too good, take a look at your friends. What effect are they having on your life? Are they contributing to it and improving your quality of life or are they hindering your existence and getting in the way of your natural greatness.

If your friends are in any way causing you problems, you might want to re-evaluate your friendships.

Now, on the other hand, friendships can help us and have a very positive effect on our life. Human beings are social beings who enjoy, and even thrive on, our interactions with others. Friendships are definitely good for us, I could even go as far as to say that they’re a necessity in life. So why is this? Why are friendships so important for us? I’d like you to now make a list of reasons why friendships are good for us. How can they help us? What’s good about them? Try to come up with a list of around 10 reasons why friendships are important.

There’s a long list of answers to this question but some of the big ones that I hope you hit are that friendships are fun, they make us feel good, they give us someone to do things with, they can help push us to be better, they can help us make good decisions, they help us through tough times, and they help us to understand ourselves better.

So the first key to friendship is finding these people. People who are good to us and help to improve our quality of life. After we find these people we need to be able to do the same for them. We can’t just find people who are good friends to us, we need to be a good friend to others. The question is, how do we do this?

Take a few minutes and write a little paragraph explaining what you need to do to be a good friend to another.

Intro Lesson #7: DUALITY - PERSPECTIVE

I hope you’re all enjoying yourselves and are excited for todays lesson on one of my favorite earthly concepts. To best introduce this concept I will explain that for up, we have down, for in there is out, for hot we have cold, for light there is dark... this list never ends. There are two sides to everything on our planet. We call this the concept of duality. There are two sides to everything.

To best explain this “law” of the universe I’d like to use the story, “the farmers luck” from one of my favorite books, “Zen Shorts”.

(read the story)

Now before continuing I’d like you to write what you took away from that story. What could you learn from it? What do you think about it? Lets write a paragraph, not explaining what the story was about, but what the story meant to us... explain how you could relate it to your life.

We work hard to achieve an education and to get a “good” job and to have a family, and granted, these things often do contribute to our happiness, but they are typically not the things that make us feel totally happy.

What do you enjoy doing? What makes you happy?

Intro Lesson #8: ADVERSITY

There’s going to be times in school where you’ll get frustrated. You might even want to quit. Michael Jordan, who’s widely considered the greatest basketball player of all time, was cut from his varsity basketball team. So did he quit playing basketball? No way, he practiced more and worked harder and the following year he made the team. So did he stop working? No, he worked even harder and received a full scholarship to the University of North Carolina. How did he become the greatest basketball player and arguably one of the greatest athletes of all-time. He did it through hard work.

Now, I want you to think about something that you worked incredibly hard at, something that forced you to face some adversity. Maybe something that you even wanted to quit but didn’t. Think about a time when you persevered through something tough. Maybe it was a school project, a performance, an art piece, a musical instrument, whatever it may be. After you get one, I want you to think about the feeling you got the first time you really experienced success with.

Now, take a few minutes to explain this experience. What was it that your fought your way through and how did you feel after experiencing success.

WRITE ABOUT ONE OF YOUR GREATEST SUCCESSES AT SCHOOL

School is going to get tough. You’re going to have challenges and your going to get nocked down. But, as the saying goes, its not how many times you get knocked down, its how many times you get back up.

We all face tough times. Many of you already have, many of you soon will. What I’ve learned is that every time we face read adversity, whether it be a really hard class, a fight with parents or friends, a divorce, the death of a family member, we can either curl up and hide from it, or face it, head on, and learn from it, and grow from it, and become an even greater individual than we previously were.

How does it feel to tie your shoes?

It probably doesn’t feel like much anymore, but, when you were 4 years old, it was pretty awesome. That’s because it was still a challenge.

Intro Lesson #9: Choices - Decision Making skills

So my question for you today, is what causes you to make the decision that you make? I want to talk about our decision making today, our choices... because one of the beauties of our life in human form is the freedom that we have been given over the choices that we make.

You have a choice in most all aspects of your life.

You choose how you treat people, you choose your friends, how hard you try in school, what you do for fun... you truly choose the majority of your life.

So what is it that causes you to make the decisions that you make? I want you to think about the decisions that you’ve made over the past few weeks, then think about the big decisions that you’ve made over the past year or so, and figure out what it was that caused you to make the decisions that you made? Once you create your answer go ahead and write a paragraph explaining why you believe you make the decisions that you make.

WRITE ABOUT 1 BIG DECISION YOU HAVE MADE

So there’s two different major categories of decision making- the decisions that we think about and make consciously, and the unconscious decisions that we make out of reactions. I’d first like to talk about our reactionary decisions, the decisions we make without thinking. Younger individuals in their elementary, middle school, and even up into their high school years often make a lot of reactionary decisions based on impulse. They get an idea and they do it, without thinking about the effects their actions could have. I had a student once get frustrated while trying to hammer in a nail. His frustration caused him to throw the hammer without thinking. Luckily the hammer landed about 2 feet to the side of another students head, otherwise, this could have been a potentially deadly decision. He reacted without thinking.

This is actually fairly common in younger individuals. When something looks fun, or exciting, they often go for it without thinking about it. An example of this would be a kid climbing up a tree. It’s really fun, and kind of easy, to climb up. So they climb up as high as they can and then yell down to their parents to see how high they are. While yelling down to the parents they realize that their now really high off the ground and its going to be crazy tough to get back down. If they had thought about it first they probably wouldn’t have climbed so high, or maybe not even climbed up the tree at all. But they did, and now they’re stuck, needing help to get down.

When we act out of impulse, reacting to situations, we often put ourselves in less than desirable situations.

I’d now like you to think back on your last few weeks, or depending on how your memory is, think back on you’re past few months, and create a list of decisions that you made without fully thinking. Things that you just did out of reaction or impulse.

Come up with at least 10 of these choices that you made without fully thinking.

These reactionary decisions are the ones we want to work on eliminating. When someone does something that you don’t like, instead of getting upset and maybe being mean back, ask yourself why you’re upset, and more importantly, what would be the best way to respond. Instead of reacting, think about the situation.

Think about the situation and consciously decide how you want to respond. This is so much more powerful than reacting.

Things rarely go wrong when we think before we act. Human beings are incredibly intelligent. Our skills of intuition, understanding, they blow my mind. We are so ridiculously smart. We almost always know what’s right. If we think about it first, we can almost always make the right decision. We almost always know right from wrong.

Imagine how incredible life would be if you always made the right decision. If you decided the right answer on every test you ever took you could probably have any job you want. If you made the right decision always you’d probably never get hurt, emotionally or physically. You’d never get yourself into a bad situation and never get into any kind of trouble.

Life would be clear sailing, easy, pleasant, enjoyable and with no problems.

The key is making conscious decisions where we think first. And not doing this sometimes, but always. Think before you get upset, and even before you get excited. Think why is it that I’m excited over this? Is it worth being excited over? If we’re asking this question about being excited the answer will typically be yes, its good to be excited. But when you ask yourself, is this worth being upset over, we’ll then the answer will most likely be no.

With this said, I want you to now think back over your past decisions again. You could even refer back to the earlier list that you made. When thinking about these decisions, come up with at least 5 of them that you made without thinking, decisions that you could have made differently if you thought first. Explain what the original decision was, and what a better decision could have been.

Now, there’s a little bit more that goes into the decisions we make that I’d like to talk about next week. For now, I want you to pay attention to how many decisions you make on a daily basis. You decide how to dress yourself, how you interact with your parents, who you talk to, what you think about, how hard you try, what you do, how you feel... the list is never ending. Start paying attention to these decisions. See how many decisions you can count in a single day. I read one study that said the average adult in the USA makes around 35 thousand decisions a day, but then read another that said the average person makes around 600 decisions a day. So lets go with the low end and say that you make about 600 decisions a day. How many of them do you think about? How often do you think before you act? How many of these decisions are you aware of? Spend the week paying attention to the decision that you make, then as you begin to become aware of every time you make a decision, start working on thinking before the decision is made. If you can learn to make nothing but good decisions, life will become an incredibly pleasant journey.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this lesson as much as I did, and can now take pieces of it with you from the computer, out into your everyday life.

Begin to notice when your making decisions, and then, start striving to make nothing but positive ones.

Intro Lesson #10: Priorities

So last week we talked about the decisions that we make and, at the end of the lesson, I challenged you to pay attention to the choices that you make on a daily basis. In doing so I asked you to work on growing conscious of when your making decisions so that you may begin striving to make nothing but positive ones. Before we move into today’s lesson I’d like you to write a paragraph explaining how you did with this challenge. Were you able to begin noticing when you were making decisions and think before you acted? Did you improve in your ability to make positive decisions? Or was this a really tough challenge for you to apply to your life? Was it hard to notice when you were making decision and difficult to think before you acted.

Write a paragraph explaining your experience with the decision challenge.

I’m hoping that you had a positive experience with that challenge and are now beginning to improve in your ability to think before you act. As you do so, you’ll begin to notice that another component comes into play when you’re making decisions.

But, before we get into this aspect of decision-making I want to ask you a question.

Of all the different things that are important to you in life, what is it that is most important to you?

Of all the things you care about, all the things you like and think about- what is the most important? As you think about this question do your best to create a list, of the 10 most important things in your life.

WRITE A LIST OF THE 10 MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN YOUR LIFE

So this is an important list. We have these things in life called morals and values. Values are the things that are important to us. The things that are valuable to you are your values. This list that you just created is a list of your values. Now, there are certain elements of life that most everyone values and end up on almost every list. The first of these is family. Right up towards the top of most all lists we typically see family. Family is important to us and we value family.

The other items that appear on most all lists are religion and friends, and then just behind them, is typically education. After these items we’ll see an array of different answers ranging from hobbies like baseball or guitar all the way up through emotional answers like being nice or being a good person.

Now a nice thing about this list is the fact that there are no right or wrong answers. What you value is based on the personal beliefs that you’ve developed. Granted, as you mature and develop your values can change but they should always remain true to yourself.

An element of these lists that I always enjoy is that very few people say they value material items. I’ll see “my phone” on the list sometimes, and occasionally a gaming system or musical instrument, but for the most part, the things that we care the most about and place the biggest value are not material items. I think that’s kind of cool.

The other thing I’d like to point out is that a lot of us truly do value being a good person, being nice, making good decisions, smiling and enjoying ourselves, these things are incredibly important to most people yet, these kind of items don’t always come to our mind when we think about what’s important to us (these items don’t end up on too many lists).

Then there’s the other items that we often take for granted until their gone, things like our health. When we’re healthy its easy to forget how important it is to have our health, but when we lose our health, we quickly remember how important health is.

So, now that we’ve talked a little bit about this list, about some of the most common answers and some of the more often overlooked answers, i want you to go back to the original list that you made and see if there are any changes that you’d like to make. Change it around as much as you’d like until you get a list you like that accurately demonstrate what the 10 most important things to you are, the 10 things that you most value, at this point in your life.

MAKE A LIST OF THE 10 MOST VALUED THINGS IN YOUR LIFE

Now that we got this list created lets talk about how it ties in with the decision making concept we discussed last week.

See, when you have a tough decision to make, as you often do, you naturally refer back to this list. You constantly place a value upon options deciding which option is more valuable to you. Lets say that you have important plans with your family, but your friend really wants you to hang out. You think about the two options and decide that the plan with your family is more important than hanging out with your friend. But, if you don’t know what you value, making these kind of decision can become extremely difficult. If we forget how much we value our family we might choose to hang out with the friend in that situation.

Another way to think about it, is the things that are higher up on your list, the things that you most value and are most important, should probably get the most of your time. Let me state that concept again, the things that are highest up on your list are the things that are most important to you, so, if these are the most important things in your life you should probably put the most time and effort into these items. When I mention this concept to students we always get into a neat conversation about television and video games, because although not many students put these items up towards the top of their list, they often dedicate a ton of time to them. After some conversation we come to the understanding that television, computer and video games often give us enjoyment and enjoyment is an item that works its way up towards the top of our lists.

With this said, I’d now like you to think about how much time you dedicate to the items that are up towards the top of your list. Do you spend the most time on the items that are most important to you? At the same time, reflect upon some of those tough choices you make. When you have to decide between two different options do you typically choose the one that is most important to you? Think about these questions then go ahead and write a few sentences, explaining how much time you spend on the items towards the top of your list in comparison to the items towards the bottom of your list and which choice you typically make when forced to decide between different items of importance.

WRITE ABOUT THE THINGS ON TOP OF YOUR LIST

Hopefully reflecting upon those questions helped you understand what you most value at this point in your life. When you have tough decisions to make refer back to this lesson and think about your values. What is most valuable to you?

Now the last point I’d like to make is that like always, we need to keep the timeline lesson in our head, keep a little eye on the future. If you value having a great life, which I hope every one of you will do, you need to keep that concept in your mind when you’re making tough decisions. Will doing this help me become a great person? Will this option help me to live a great life? Hopefully all the things that you value will help you become a great person and live a great life.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson and can now take pieces of it with you to help with your future decision making skills. I challenge you to refer to this lesson with every tough decision you have this week. Consciously decide which option is more valuable instead of just deciding out of instinct.

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