Denny Strecker’s Blog

As you already know, discipline is an important part of our classes here at “Denny Strecker’s Karate.” We believe that it is critically important for our students to learn discipline in the classroom - so that they will have discipline in all areas of their lives. As we teach this important life skill, our students develop two types of discipline: External and Internal.

External discipline is the kind that is imposed on one person by another. Once I was at a ball game when I saw external discipline at its extreme - a mother was yelling at her son for spilling his soda… her veins were popping out of her neck, and the mean expression on her face was only intensified when she turned bright red.

This mom brought back memories of a teacher I once had, who was very strict, and always lost her temper. She was quick to yell and to take away fun things like recess, giving us instead lengthy assignments.

External discipline has one advantage - it gets immediate results. The recipients will quickly fall into line out of fear of punishment. However, the down side is that external discipline is often short term. Some psychologists even feel that external discipline will leave long-term scars!

Here at “Denny Strecker’s Karate,” we believe that all people, especially kids… deep down inside… want to do the right thing. It’s just that children sometimes get distracted, or become caught up in the moment, and forget to do what is right.

On the other hand, Self-Disciplined people, or people who have Internal discipline, always do the right thing - without someone else telling them what to do. A person with internal discipline can work by themselves without being supervised. This is a sign of positive character development.

So, how is self-discipline developed? We have figured out a way that, over time, works wonders!

The answer is so obvious… that it’s hard to see!

Picture a small group of kids sitting and listening to the karate teacher. One little boy begins to bother the kid next to him, poking him in the arm.

An external disciplinarian (like my old teacher) would quickly point at the child and say, in a sharp tone, “Stop that!”

There are two problems with this response. First, it focuses the attention of the entire group on a behavior that we don’t want. But even worse - it dashes the self-esteem of the misbehaving child - and in many cases, bad self-esteem is the cause of the misbehavior! Here, the teacher did get immediate results - but did nothing to impact the long-term behavior of the student.

Let’s look at another scenario. This time, instead of drawing attention to the misbehaving student, the teacher looks for a child who demonstrates good self- disciplined behavior and publicly praises the child, saying things like “You are a super listener!” The other students quickly “straighten up,” and the teacher compliments them as well, being sure to include the student who was misbehaving.

By drawing attention to the attentive child - and making an example of good behavior, the teacher improves that student’s self esteem - instead of taking the misbehaving student’s self esteem down a notch.

It works just as quickly, and is more effective than the external methods!
The only challenge is that it requires the teacher to be more patient, creative, and attentive.

And best of all, when done consistently, the misbehaving children are taught what to do (instead of what not to do). Their self esteem is improved, rather than dashed… and, over time, they become self disciplined - and that lasts a lifetime!

A self-disciplined person not only knows what to do… but does it.

Play along with me for a moment…

What would your reaction be if you just won $25,000 on a game show?

You’d probably say you felt thrilled, elated, or excited.

You would, huh? What if I told you more about the circumstances involved…

You were doing great and had progressed to the last round. You had already won $500,000, but you chose to risk that amount to go for the million dollar question. Unfortunately, you got it wrong and ended up with “only” $25,000.

Now how would you feel? Disappointed, mad at yourself, and just plain awful, right?

So why do you feel so bad if you are walking away with $25,000 more than you had before?

You feel awful because of how you interpret that event. If you focus on what might have been, you will feel very unhappy. But with conscious effort, you can choose to focus on the $25,000 you won rather than the $475,000 you lost.

Here is a great truth of life – what determines our happiness is not so much what happens to us as how we feel about it. Our reaction determines whether we interpret events as positive or negative.

People tend to naturally see the negative side of things because they are easier to find. I was speaking with a parent who was quite upset because she had just learned that she was loosing her job and she is the bread winner for the family.

When she told me the news I immediately responded, “Congratulations! That is great news!!”

She looked at me with a look of utter confusion and said, “Did you hear what I said? I am going to loose my job. This is terrible news.”

I replied, “You have hated your job for years and you said there was no chance of advancement any more so this is great news. Now you can look for something you will enjoy doing and that you will be able to advance in. Who knows? You might even find something that pays more than what you are earning now.”

You choose how to “feel” about events that happen to you. When something happens in your life, look at it from all sides and see where the positives are and focus on them.

A good way to see if you are a positive or a negative person is to look at your children. How do they deal with negative situations? They have learned how to cope from you, so if they are always negative, there is a good chance they learned that from you.

This is a dangerous time!

With summer in full swing, children have the tendency to get lazy. They want to sleep at all hours, lay on the couch, watch mind numbing TV, and declare, “I’m bored.”

If you allow this behavior to develop, you are sending the wrong message to your child. When was the last time you were able to take 2 months off of work, do nothing, and then just go back in the fall? The real world does not operate that way. It is our job as parents to prepare our children for real life.

I have a tool for you to use to help keep your child a goal for the summer - and even all year long!

It is a chore allowance system that you can use. The key is to have fun with it. Make up some easy rewards your child will be able to purchase. But, also create some wild and crazy ones. Go ahead and put that family trip to the Bahamas on there. It may cost $1,000,000 in allowance checks but SO WHAT!!!!

Click Here to Download your Allowance Chore Checks Program.

If you have any questions about how to use this program, please feel free to ask it in the comments section of this post and I will be happy to help you get started.

Many years ago, a martial arts student lived in a temple. One day, his teacher and the temple elders decided to send the student on a quest. Upon being summoned, the student was both elated and fearful as he appeared before the elders. They told the student that he must travel to a temple in a far-off foreign land to complete his training. When he arrived, the teachers there would share all their secrets with him.

The student’s travels were filled with many trials and tribulations; he battled many vagabonds, bullies and street thugs. He finally arrived at the distant temple, after walking for almost a year, tattered, weathered, but a different man. He was greeted as a champion and was led directly into the chamber of elders.

The elders handed him a beautiful, leather-bound book, The Book of Knowledge. The book had only one page, which was a mirror. Of course, the student/warrior only saw his reflection. He became frustrated and asked, “Is this a joke?” The elders said, “You are the only one besides us who has made the journey and survived. You are the living example; you can now take our place as the elder and run the temple, so we can leave.” The warrior threw the book to the ground, breaking the mirror. Loudly, he said, “I am happy to be able to have lived the lessons, but I will not waste my time in this jail when so many things are still to be learned.” He then left.

This story is a fine example of the quest for martial arts training. Today, students are not as patient as they once were and they do not realize that lessons are not always clear. The lessons are their experiences, failures, successes, bumps and bruises, frustrations, and their trust in their teachers.
Lessons are constantly presented to you, if you chose to learn. The road to success is paved in sweat, hard work and determination. A very wise man once told me, “The only thing of any worth is something you worked hard for.” Trust in your teacher, but work hard and live the lessons - train to live - live to train. Be the example - live the Black Belt, don’t just tie it around your waist.

Once again, a series of tragic events grabs the attention of parents everywhere.

Questions, such as, “What do we do to prevent this from happening again?” and “How do we protect our children?”, are on everybody’s minds.

Community leaders will be debating whether or not anything can be done.

I don’t know what the answer is to this national problem. However, on a very local level –within each of our homes, there is a lot we can do.

Move closer to your kids. If you are already close, move even closer. Developing and maintaining the rapport, communication, and honesty that prevents these tragedies takes a lot of work.

There is an age where children, particularly teens, try to pull away – and become a little harder to hold close than it was when they were young children. However, this is when your children need you the most!

There comes an age when it’s not “cool” to have Mom and Dad around. “Give us our independence!” the kids cry. They become very persuasive…but don’t give in.

It is a scary world out there for kids. And I believe that most kids, deep down, know that they really do need the close relationship they had with their parents. They need advice, correction, rules, and guidance to negotiate the very uncertain waters of their teen years.

Kids, all the way through high school, and well into young adulthood, can benefit from close relationships with parents.

So what is the key? Simple. Time. At exactly the same moment that both you and your kids are swamped with other activities; at the same moment when they tend to pull away…that’s when they need your time the most!

There is no substitute for time spent with you! In a short time, your kids will be out of the house, and on their own. I encourage you to make the best use of the remaining years.

Your children may resist. After all, they have to appear to be “cool.” But don’t give in. Pull them close. They will thank you for it. Someday!

Today’s article talks about being “present minded”. Too many times people worry about what might happen or dwell on what did happen and end up missing what IS happening. Read the story below and make sure you start focusing on the present, and more importantly, teach your children to focus on the now.

By Denis Waitley

What each of us is doing this minute is the most important event in history for us. We have decided to invest our resources in THIS opportunity rather than in any other.

It is helpful to remember this when we consider the passage of time. As I write this, my mother is in her eighties and I will never see fifty again. As the years pass, I am acutely aware that the bird of time is on the wing. At my fortieth high school reunion, I saw people who claimed to be my former classmates. We all had big name tags printed in capital letters so we wouldn’t have to squint with our reading glasses on trying to associate the name with each well-traveled face. It was only yesterday that I was really enjoying high school. What had happened to the four decades in between? Where had they flown?

To the side of the bandstand, where the big-band sound of the late 1940s and 50s blared our favorite top-ten hits, there was a poster with a printed verse for all of us to see. I read the words aloud: “There are two days in every week about which we should not worry, two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension.”

“One of these days is YESTERDAY, with its mistakes and cares, its faults and blunders, its aches and pains. Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control All the money in the world cannot bring back yesterday. We cannot undo a single act we performed or erase a single word we said. Yesterday is gone.”

“The other day we should not worry about is TOMORROW, with its possible adversities, its burdens, its large promise, and its poor performance. Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control.”

“This leaves only one day, TODAY. Anyone can fight the battles of just one day. It is only when you and I add the burdens of those two awful eternities - Yesterday and Tomorrow - that we break down.”

“It is not the experience of Today that drives us mad, it is remorse and bitterness for something which happened yesterday and the dread of what tomorrow may bring. Let us therefore… Live this one full TODAY.”

Malcolm Forbes believed the important thing is “never say die until you’re dead,” and he lived that example to the hilt. It is, as we realize when we suddenly attend our fortieth high school reunion, a short journey.

But it is difficult to be depressed and active at the same time. So get active! Live TODAY.

By Brian Tracy

According to psychologist Sidney Jourard, fully 85 percent of your happiness in life will come from your personal relationships. Your interactions and the time that you spend with the people you care about will be the major source of the pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction that you derive daily. The other 15 percent of your happiness will come from your accomplishments. Unfortunately, many people lose sight of what is truly important, and they allow the tail to wag the dog. They sacrifice their relationships, their major source of happiness, to accomplish more in their careers. But one’s career, at best, can be only a minor source and a temporary one, at that of the happiness and satisfaction that everyone wants.

There is no perfect answer to the key question of how to achieve balance in our lives, but there are a number of ideas that can help you to be and have and do more in the areas that are important to you. These ideas often require changes and modifications in the way you think and use your time, but the price is well worth it. You will find that by reorganizing your life in little ways, you can create an existence that gives you the highest quality and quantity of satisfaction overall. And this must be your guiding purpose.

The ancient Greeks had two famous sayings: “Man, know thyself” and “Moderation in all things.” Taken together, those two ideas are a good starting point for achieving the balance that you desire. With regard to knowing thyself, it is very important to give some serious thought to what you really value in life. All trade-offs and choices are based on your values, and all stress and unhappiness come from believing and valuing one thing and, yet, finding yourself doing another. Only when your values and your activities are congruent do you feel happy and at peace with yourself.

So knowing yourself means knowing what you really value, knowing what is really important to you. The superior man or woman decides what is right before he or she decides what is possible. The advanced human being organizes his or her life to assure that everything that he or she is doing is consistent with his or her true values. It is essential for you to organize your life around yourself, rather than to organize yourself around the demands of your external world.

The second quote, “Moderation in all things,” is a wonderful and important dictate for successful living. But, at the same time, you know that you can’t really be successful in any area by being moderate in that area. Peter Drucker once wrote, “Wherever you find something getting done, you find a monomaniac with a mission.” You know that single-minded concentration on a goal or objective is absolutely necessary for achievement of any kind in a competitive society.

So what’s the solution? Over the years, I have worked with tens of thousands of men and women who have spent a lot of time and effort struggling to achieve balance in their lives. I have found that there is a simple formula; it is simple in that it is easy to explain, but you need tremendous self-discipline and persistence to implement it in your life.

The formula revolves around a concept of time management, or what you might want to call life management. Time management is really a form of personal management in which you organize your 24 hours a day in such a way that they give you the greatest possible return of happiness and contentment.

The key to time management, after you have determined your values and the goals that are in harmony with those values, is to set both priorities and posteriorities. The importance of setting priorities is obvious. You make a list of all the things that you can possibly do and then select from that list the things that are most important to you based on everything you know about yourself, about others and about your responsibilities. The setting of posteriorities is often overlooked. It is when you carefully decide which things you are going to stop doing so that you will have enough time to start doing something else.

The greatest single shortage we experience in America today is that of time. We suffer from what has been called “time poverty.” Men and women everywhere feel that their biggest single challenge is that they simply do not have enough time to do all the things that they have to do or want to do. People today feel pressured from all sides and are under an inordinate amount of stress. They feel overworked, fatigued and incapable of fulfilling all the responsibilities that they have taken on.

The starting point to alleviate this time poverty is to stop and think. Most people are so busy rushing back and forth that they seldom take the time to think seriously about who they are and why they are doing what they are doing. They engage in frantic activity, instead of thoughtful analysis. They get so busy climbing the ladder of success that they lose sight of the fact that the ladder may be leaning against the wrong building.

When my wife, Barbara, and I started our family, we were faced with a common dilemma: how can we balance the demands of work and home with the finite amount of time we are all given?

Here’s the answer I discovered: The key to success in a busy society is to devote your time to only two areas during the period of time when your family needs you, when your children are between the ages of birth to about 18 to 20 years. During this period of time, you need to curtail virtually all of your outside activities. You need to focus on two major areas your family and your career as I have done over the years. You need to place your family’s needs above all else and then organize your work schedule so that you can satisfy those needs on a regular basis. Then, when you work, you must concentrate single-mindedly on doing an excellent job.

Most people are time wasters. They waste their own time, and they waste your time as well. To be successful and happy, you must discipline yourself to work all the time you work. The average employee works at about 50 percent of capacity. Fully 80 percent of people working today are underemployed in that their jobs do not really demand their full capacities. Only 5 percent of workers surveyed recently felt that they were working at the outside limits of their potentials.

But this is not for you. You must resolve to work all the time you work. You must decide that from the time you start in the morning until the time you finish in the evening, you will work 100 percent of the time. Even if no one is watching you, you should be aware that everyone is watching you. Everybody knows everything. In every company, everyone knows who is working and who is not. Your job must be to work all the time you work. If people come by and want to chat, you simply smile at them and say, “Could we talk about this later?” Tell them that you have to get back to work.

Have a written list, and work on your list every day. Write down everything as it comes up, and add it to your list. Set priorities on your time, and be certain that you are working on the things that are most important to your boss and to your company. Refuse to get drawn into the time-wasting activities of the people around you. Work all the time you work.

Remember that to be successful, you must become a monomaniac with a mission. This is true today, and it has always been true in our competitive society. To be successful at your job, you must work fast and efficiently and nonstop all the time you are on the payroll. You must become an expert at time management. You must become so efficient and effective that you get twice as much done as anyone else. In this way, you will advance your career at the fastest rate possible, and you will also be on top of your job most of the time, and it will be unnecessary for you to take work home for the evenings and weekends.

Then, when you have finished your work, you can devote your full attention to your family and to the other important people in your life. The Bible says, “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” One of the meanings of this is that if you are thinking about your work while you are with your family, or if you are thinking about your family when you are at work, you end up accomplishing far less in each area. However, if you are on top of your work, when you come home you can devote yourself single-mindedly again, like a monomaniac to your relationships and to enhancing the quality of your interactions with the most important people in your life.

The key to a happy family life is communication. And it is not quality of time but quantity of time that counts. Quality moments those little moments that are precious and important come unbidden and, usually, unexpectedly. They arise during the process of spending a large quantity of uninterrupted time with one or more people. You cannot dictate those moments in advance. You cannot decide to have quality time. You do not go to it. It comes to you.

There are a variety of ways to extract the greatest amount of quality and happiness from your relationships with the members of your family. Perhaps the most important is to spend unbroken time with your spouse on a daily basis. Of course, you should spend time together talking after the children have gone to bed, but you should also seek out and utilize small segments of time during the morning and early evening during which you can communicate and interact. One of the most important things that couples can do is spend the first 30 to 60 minutes after work debriefing each other and discussing the day’s activities.

Your children also have a tremendous need to communicate with you. In fact, in my research on how to raise super kids, I found that the one factor that was more important than any other was the amount of one-on-one time that the parents spent with the children. When parents don’t spend a lot of time with their children individually, they send a message to their children that they are not very valuable or important. Children then react by experiencing feelings of inferiority, lowered self-esteem, and negative self-images, and this is expressed in poor grades and behavioral problems. But when the parents take the time to sit down with their children and ask questions and listen to what is going on in their minds, the children tend to feel a deep sense of value and importance that is manifested in self-confidence, happiness, and good relationships with others.

The key is learning to use your time better. You cannot get more hours out of each day, but you can put more of yourself into each of those hours. Turn off the television and spend time talking with the members of your family. Never read newspaper of books when a member of your family wants to communicate with you. Put the reading material aside. Concentrate single-mindedly on the most important people in your world. Everything else can wait.

In regard to your work and family, continually ask yourself, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” Consider if what you are doing today will matter a week or a year from today. Sometimes, we become preoccupied with small things that are not really important in the long run. But what is important in the long run is the quality of our home life.

You don’t have to be a superman or superwoman to properly balance the demands of your work and the needs of your family. You must, however, be more thoughtful, be a better planner, use your time more effectively, and continually think of ways to enhance the quality of your life in both areas. If you set this as a goal and resolve to work toward it every day, you will gradually become far more efficient, far more effective, and a far happier human being. And that’s the most important thing of all.

About the Author:

Brian Tracy is the most listened to audio author on personal and business success in the world today. His fast-moving talks and seminars on leadership, sales, managerial effectiveness and business strategy are loaded with powerful, proven ideas and strategies that people can immediately apply to get better results in every area. For more information, please go to www.BrianTracy.com.

As you go through your day, you encounter thousands of opportunities to operate either efficiently or inefficiently.

Where you put your car keys when you come home at night. Which drawer you keep your coffee in. Which day you do your laundry. Which hand you pick the phone up with.

For example, when you are sitting at your desk, you might pick the phone up with your right hand. Because you are right handed, you will need to switch hands in order to take any notes or write anything down.

Why not just train yourself to pick up the phone with your left hand?

And, while you are thinking about it, where EXACTLY should your pen be?

I know. Sounds like picky, small time stuff. Until you realize that your day is made up of thousands of such activities…thousands of such choices.

Study your personal ergonomics. Resolve to live your day as skillfully as possible.

Once you have picked up this habit, make sure you start to show your children the same principals. Give them the benefit of your experience.

This story is over 2,000 years old. It is one of Aesop’s Fables. It talks about the importance of parents setting and enforcing rules to educate their child.

A young man had been caught in a daring act of theft and had been condemned to be executed for it. He expressed his desire to see his Mother, and to speak to her before he was led to execution. This final request was granted. When his Mother came to him he said,

“I want to whisper to you,” and when she brought her ear near him, he nearly bit it off.

All the bystanders were horrified, and asked him what he could mean by such brutal and inhuman conduct.

“It is to punish her!” he said. “When I was young I began with stealing little things, and brought them home to Mother. Instead of rebuking and punishing me, she laughed and said ‘It will not be noticed.’ It is because of her that I am her today.”

“He is right, woman.” said the crowd.

Moral: Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old he will not depart there from.

A popular person is one who is liked by many people. It’s nice to be popular…but the pursuit of popularity can lead to trouble!

Heather says, “I want to be popular no matter what. I’ll do whatever it takes!”

Monica says, “I’d like to be popular, of course…but not at any price. I insist on being myself!”

As parents, the thought expressed by “Heather” is bound to make us uneasy. Monica, of course, expresses a healthier perspective.

When popularity becomes TOO important to your child, problems arise.

• Sometimes children will do things they know they shouldn’t do…because they are afraid of losing popularity. They may “cave in” to peer pressure.

• Other times, children will feel that they aren’t popular with the “right” crowd. They don’t appreciate their current friends.

• Some kids believe that popularity is based on having the “right” clothes, or participating in the “right” activities. They lose their identity by following the crowd.
When these types of popularity are attained, they are shallow and short lasting. They last only until the next “popularity test” comes up.

Teach your child to be a person who does the right thing…no matter what other people think; and that loyalty, integrity, and kindness will lead to genuine popularity!

Teach them to treat all others, regardless of social status, with respect and courtesy.

Remind them not to be tricked into doing things they know are wrong, in order to gain popularity.

Above all, continually teach them about the value and the importance of your relationship to each other within your family. Teach them about your family history, and your family heritage.

A young person who has a strong sense of family pride won’t succumb to the pressure to be TOO popular.

Popularity will come to your child when people recognize her as a person with integrity!