Steve the Owl's Blog

Hi, everyone. I hope you are enjoying this Christmas Day. As I write this, I spent some time with my wife and our pets (we have a dog named RJ and a cat named Leopard) today and enjoying some downtime. For our Christmas tradition, we eat a roast chicken we cook in our slow cooker, and my wife is currently putting the finishing touches on it. This is definitely a time where, regardless of one’s religious or cultural heritage, that people can get together with loved ones.

However, as a veteran, I have been thinking about other things this holiday season. My war, the Iraq War, is finally over after nearly nine years. At this time, I always think about the differences in times between the wars of today and the wars of yesteryear. This is because of a documentary that I have seen several times on the History Channel called The Christmas Truce. This is a documentary that talks about the famous cease fire between British and German forces in the first year of World War I, in 1914. Nearly 100 years ago, the great powers of Europe were engaged in a conflict that everyone called “the war to end all wars,” because they thought that the advanced and brutal weaponry of modern warfare would make the powers that be that much more reluctant to send (at the time) their men into war. However, at that time, they found out that modern warfare ended up causing the bulk of the war to be fought in the trenches, as the war largely stalemated and they had to hunker down for what would ultimately be four and a half years.

In this environment, several junior enlisted soldiers in the German Army lifted the white flag of truce and lobbed cakes over no man’s land and into the British trenches. The British soldiers worried that it was a trick, but they realized that the Germans were acting in earnest when they came out of the trenches and into No-Man’s Land (so named because it was the area between the trenches, and there were very few attempts to cross into this territory, because it often meant certain death) and started singing Christmas carols.

Amazingly, several junior enlisted British soldiers began to enter No-Man’s land as well. British and Germans (as best as they could given the language difference) began singing and exchanging stories with each other and enjoying some time off. Perhaps what was even more amazing about this truce is the way that it humanized those who were across no man’s land and in the trenches. This is something that we don’t think of any longer, but there was a time when war was seen as something much different than it is today. While it is true that people still died in wars before the First World War (for example: the war that to this day has the most American casualties was the Civil War in the 19th century), the warriors still saw each other as opponents rather than enemies. This truce was something that was a threat to the higher ranking brass, who worried that it would be difficult to resume fighting, and it never happened again, but I am nevertheless touched by that glimpse of humanity in the middle of a terrible situation.

It has been said that no one wants peace more than those of us who have been to war. There is something that happens in that time that serves to shake humanity, and it puts such a strain on families. However, the story of the Christmas Truce gives us hope for another way. I first heard this story in 2004, nine months after I left Iraq for good. The year before, just as most of us suspected, our Christmas began shortly after midnight as we were up late watching movies and playing games, and we heard mortar fire in the distance as we knew that this would be a day that we could enjoy as best we could, with officers and everyone at the platoon level or above (I was a sergeant, which meant that I was an assistant squad leader, or team leader) took over guard shifts for the rest of us as our Christmas present from them.

Still, what is so powerful about the message of the Christmas Truce is that it is possible, even in the worst conditions, to preserve our humanity. However, this can be a threat for those who want aggression to continue. May we all keep the spirit of the ChristmasTruce all year round!

How have you found humanity where it was least likely?

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Lord, grant us the serenity to accept the things that we cannot change, the courage to change the things that we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.- Reinhold Niebuhr

Hi, everyone. I hope you are enjoying this holiday season. The last two posts I’ve written on have focused on the nature of some of the criticism of the world of personal development. However, as I said recently, I am going somewhere with this criticism. So, if part of the criticism is the idea that everything is absolutely limitless turns into self-centered behavior or disappointment when things don’t go exactly how we think they will go, what will we do instead?

Well, I decided to wait to write this series (which I had been think about for some time) because I had a book in my reading queue that seemed perfect to address this question: The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Change– and When to Let Go by Eileen Flanagan.

Smart Personal Development

What I think is so great about this book is the way that it focuses on a way that we make a mistake when we think that we are the center of our own universe, and that trying to say that every single thing is in our control will lead to experiences that will ultimately humble us.

One of the big themes in the book is how that life has a funny way of not really moving in a straight line. This is something I can sympathize with, as someone who went to high school wanting to go to West Point, deciding instead (in part because of an inability to do the eight pull-ups necessary to pass the physical fitness test, peaking at two no matter how hard I tried) to go to a maritime college. Then, I realized that the world of the sea was not a world for me, and I thought that my path through life would be as a military chaplain. Then, I ended up going to the one college I swore I would never go to when I was younger (West Virginia University) and ended up finding a place that I absolutely loved and felt at home. I then went to a small town in the Ohio River Valley in western West Virginia and made an attempt at running for public office. Realizing that life was sending me in a different direction, I then moved to the main campus in the Philadelphia suburbs, and eventually to Philadelphia itself.

I don’t think that all of these things were predestined for me in any way. However, I do think that my life experiences helped inform each of these decisions. Ultimately, I came to realize that I was basing my decisions on my best judgment based on the information and the knowledge and awareness that I had at the time. This fits in part of the lessons that Eileen Flanagan teaches. She points out that we are limited in our understanding at the time, and that we can develop to do something better once we have humility.

A Fuller Picture

The other thing that I found so fascinating about this book was the way that we should think about what things we can and cannot do. In something that mirrors teaching in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The Wisdom to Know the Difference focuses on the way that taking a humble attitude and being open to life’s experience actually makes it possible for the things that we can change to expand rather than contract.

One example in my own life was when I decided to run for public office for the 2006 campaign. I knew that my efforts would be quixotic, but I thought that I could make a bid for Congress. Ultimately, talking to a friend of mine, I realized that this would be biting off way more than I could chew, s0 I should consider a smaller office instead. I realized that running for the state legislature meant that I could run in a geographically compact area and get a chance to talk to more people in my district.

I lost by a huge margin, but I did ultimately make an impact in policy. I made one of my key issues public transportation, which many thought was a waste of time for such a small state with no city having a population greater than 57,000 (the most recent census now says that West Virginia’s biggest city only has 51,000 people). However, there were others who were trying to make the same argument from bigger cities, and the fact that someone who lived halfway between the first- and third-largest city in the state wanted to see it happen made it a little more feasible. While people in my party thought it would never happen, and people in the other party thought it was ridiculous, ultimately, there was momentum behind the idea, and two years later, my opponent actually voted for a pilot program to bring public transportation back and forth to the two largest cities in the state as a pilot program. I’m not saying that this would’ve never happened without me, but there were definitely people who didn’t think about the idea before I ran, and those people eventually became believers.

How do you try to make an impact when you can make a difference?

If you like what you read, please leave your comments below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Hi, everyone! I hope today finds you well, and for you Seinfeld fans out there, I hope you are enjoying a Festivus for the rest of us. Yesterday, I started a series on answering some criticisms of the world of personal development, some of which I thought had a point. Many of the criticisms were against the efforts of those who preach a literal and hardcore version of the Law of Attraction, that in its strictest definition, argues that anyone can have anything in the world if they only want it badly enough. Part of the complaint about these works were the ways that they have a tendency to focus almost exclusively on personal things rather than societal things.

They Can’t Both Win

One of the questions that I have never seen answered in some of the works that focus more on this self-focused version of the Law of Attraction (which truly does seem to put the reader at the center of his/her Universe) is what happens if two people have equally valid and worthy things that they seek, and what happens if they seek something that is in conflict with each other.

Here is an example: for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it is now winter. However, here in Philadelphia, it has actually been above 50 degrees (10 degrees Celsius) each of the last three days. Currently, as I write this (past midnight), the temperature is still up, and it is raining rather than snowing. Many people who work outside are very content with the fact that, barring a huge shift in the next two days, that we will not have a White Christmas this year. However, people who are farmers in the West Coast rely heavily on snow melt to water their crops. Neither is a selfish desire. The outdoor workers know that they can’t work or feed their family if there is inclement weather. The farmers know that they can’t have crops if there is not.

It either has to snow or not snow. Which one should we root for? Each one has a worthy cause. If the Law of Attraction in its most literal sense, if it is to be believed this way, would say that it is the one who wants it more. Well, what if both want it the same? Where does the tiebreaker go?

These are just some thoughts as I move forward. Come back soon for the conclusion of this series, and you will find the solution to the question of what kind of personal development we should seek if we acknowledge the limits of the Law of Attraction, and if it really is as all-or-nothing as its strictest proponents claim it is.

If you like what you read, please leave your comments below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Hi, everyone! I hope today finds you doing well. Recently, I read the book Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich. The basic premise of her book (written after a bout with breast cancer when she described the way that she felt that her cancer was turned juvenile with the insistence on use of the color pink and that the instance on the survivor narrative removed all others) is that an emphasis on focusing purely on positive thinking and a literal understanding of the Law of Attraction means that people ignore the things that need to be fixed in society. With this in mind, I am beginning a three-part series examining the question of personal developments dark side.

A Note Before Beginning

I am not writing this note to say that I have completely given up on personal development. However, I think that it is very important that those of us who believe in personal development engage those who criticize the field and, when the critics have a point, refine our understanding of personal development. While personal development is not science per se, I feel that it should be capable of withstanding scrutiny.

Personal Development or Societal Development

One of the biggest criticisms that Ehrenreich offers (that I feel has merit) is that some works of personal development completely ignore the societal issues at stake. While I do believe in Jim Rohn’s belief that we focus on the set of our sails, I do think that we should also make a continued and persistent fight for justice. I have heard some personal development writers talk about how that we can become philanthropists when we become really wealthy (and I realize that sometimes they have a point that some things take a lot of money), but the simple truth is that people in the United States who make less than $50,000 a year give a much higher percentage of their money to charity (including religious organizations) than those who make more than $100,000 a year (4% vs. 2%). Some have said that efforts at improving the lot of others is futile, so why even bother?

Perhaps the absolute worst thing of all that I read excusing selfishness in the personal development world was in The Science of Getting Rich, where Wallace Wattles says that “true philanthropy” is building one’s own wealth so that there is one less person who is poor, and that donating to the poor should not be done because it not only makes things worse for the poor person, but it makes someone think about poverty, which makes it impossible to ever get rich in the first place. (This one paragraph alone was enough to tell me to keep looking this spring when deciding on the books for my eBook Giveaway.)

A Different Presentation

I am not defending the Wattles quote (because I feel that it is indefensible), but I think that there are some things that are written in the world of personal development that have good intentions, but are worded in a way that could be harmful for others. One of those is the idea that our outer world is the reflection of our inner world. With true atrocities like the Holocaust and, as someone who lives in Pennsylvania is painfully aware of with the scandals that have been revealed over the last two months, of people abusing their position of authority to harm children in a profound way, I think it is safe to say that these things are not their fault. Instead, I think that those works that talk about the response to events in the world around us have a much better message to convey to help those who have gone through some truly horrific things.

With the Law of Attraction being used by some as a way to turn the universe into a genie or a mail-order catalog, we should look to works of personal development that teach us to live a life of generosity, discipline, hard work, and thrift. I’m not saying that we should try to avoid success, or try to improve our situation in life (my businesses, my blog, and my investments clearly demonstrate that I do not believe that), but that we should continue to examine our reading in personal development and the kind of personal development that each presents. I am going somewhere with this, and I ask of you to continue to look back and join me on this effort.

How do you test your works of personal development?

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If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.

Hi, everyone. I thank those of you who’ve stopped by my blog while I was away for the last couple of weeks grading research papers, doing a research paper, and giving and grading finals for the semester. My first semester as a student teacher made me think a lot about the nature of effort, which was reinforced by a picture that my fourth grade teacher posted on Facebook a few months ago. It was a picture from our class play, Rampunzel (I grew up in Richwood, “The Ramp Capital of the World.” If you don’t know what ramps are, they are the onion’s wild, stinky cousin, and if you get too close to them, they will stain your hands a purplish black, almost like ink. I’ve never eaten ramps, because quite frankly, the smell alone made me sick to the point that I feel a little queasy thinking about them.), an adaptation of Rapunzel.

A Leading Man?

At the time of the play, I was 4’3, ten years old, and thanks to puberty, even most of the girls in my fourth grade class were taller than me. However, I’d developed a bit of a reputation from class sketches and Christmas plays in my hometown, mainly because I was really good at memorizing my lines. We were told that we could write down the three roles we wanted for the play, or if we didn’t want to act, we could opt to be a stage manager. I opted to audition for Spencer, the male lead; Sam, the second male lead; and one of the lumberjacks. The auditions for Spencer came first.

Our teacher, Ms. Barrett, gave us the script, and a one-day warning to read two pages of the script and learn our lines for one of the scenes. She read the lines off stage (there was no stage, per se, at this stage, so we stood in front of the class), and we were basically acting the scene out by ourselves. I was one of the last people to audition. However, when it came for my turn, I did something that absolutely no one else before me or after me did when it came time to audition, which I surely thought someone would would do.

I fell.

On purpose.

In a classroom with a very thin carpet and no padding.

Why would I do something like that? I did it because at the end of the scene, Spencer was supposed to climb a tree, but he fell trying to reach his lady love, the title character of the play. I pantomimed climbing, and when I got to the line, “If I could just get to the next step, the rest of the climb will be easy,” I fell like a rock. My best friend at the time, Eric, told me that he was amazed that I actually fell when the script said to. A lot of other people said the same thing. The next day, I found out that the part was mine.

I’m not saying that I necessarily won the part because I was the best actor, but because I was the one person completely committed to getting the lead role, to the point of falling flat when the script called for it. This audition taught me something that has served me very well over the last 21 1/2 years: you must always do your best. You might not be the best, or have the natural qualities that others do, but if you outwork someone, you will be surprised what you will accomplish.

How have you succeeded beyond expectations by giving your all?

If you like what you read, please leave your comments below and share with your friends using the buttons above.

If you would like to learn more about the principles of personal development that have stood the test of time, please fill out the form for my Seven Day eBook Giveaway in the upper right-hand corner of this page.