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Showing posts from May, 2010

Say Thanks Before It's Just a Memory

by Harvey Mackay, best selling business author Some time ago, the owner of a small but profitable business wrote columnist Ann Landers about his practice of giving annual bonuses to his employees. The amounts were based on time served and salary levels. He had been doing it for 16 years, and in all that time, only two employees had ever said thank you. Neither was still with the company. One passed away, and the other took early retirement. The owner vowed that he wasn’t going to give any more bonuses, and if anyone complained, the response would be: “There will be no bonuses this year because not one of our current employees has taken the time and trouble to say thank you.” In her answer, Ann Landers segued from that letter to the tons of letters she receives from others, parents and grandparents in particular, who wanted to know what to do about gifts that are not acknowledged. What happened? Did the poor thing lose the power of speech or the use of their writing hand? Did they fall

Protecting Our Children from Predators: Admitting the Problem

By: Aaron Welch, LMHC, NCC, CSOTS Jessica Lunsford…Caylee Anthony…Haleigh Cummings…Jessica Vargas…Trenton Duckett…and the list goes on. These are just a few of the names of children who have been killed or are missing here in the state of Florida, many of them in the Central Florida area. In the shadow of Disney World there are predators who would seduce and harm our children in ways we cannot imagine. As a test, I went to the sex offender and predator database for Florida and typed in the addresses of my home and of my work. Immediately hundreds of registered sex offenders popped onto the screen. It was startling and terrifying all at the same time. The Department of Justice estimates that, on average, there is one child molester per square mile in the United States. They also estimate that the average child molester victimizes between 50-150 children before he is arrested. Anna Salter, in her book “Predators”, cites research that says 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 6 boys will have se

American Idolaters: Aren’t We All?

By Aaron Welch, LMHC, NCC, CSOTS I know, I know…..my title might be a little offensive. After all, the word “idolater” doesn’t illicit reactions of joy or glee in most, especially those of us who understand how much God HATES idolatry. Yet, as I examine my own life and look at the lives of countless others, I have to stick to my guns. At some point in time, aren’t we all idolaters? Before you answer I should probably tell you that I believe idolatry to be when we put anything ahead of the Lord in our lives as far as priority. I know that’s a tough definition but the Word clearly teaches that our God is a jealous God and he expects to be #1, numero uno, absolutely FIRST priority in our lives. With that being said, almost anything can become an idol to us. It could be our spouse, our children, our career, money, popularity, our best friend, sleep, exercise, drugs, alcohol, sex, even ministry as a vocation. The frightening truth is that ANYTHING in this world can become an idol t

Dying for Connection

By Aaron Welch, LMHC, NCC, CSOTS You know, I’ve never been one of those people who reacted very much to safety tips. I realize that is not a flattering realization about me but it’s been pretty constant throughout my life. It could be a backlash from the fact that my mother was constantly reading and would often warn me about the potential dangers of so many common things. Seriously, my mom often sounded like the voice-over on those pharmaceutical commercials. You know the overly pleasant voice that calmly describes the potential side effects of taking ANYTHING. Seriously, the actors are playing happily together, holding hands, tossing a football while the soothing voice is telling you that this same drug may cause seizures, paralysis, sexual dysfunction, hives, a constriction of the throat, chronic diarrhea, leprosy, and the equivalent of a lobotomy……okay, so maybe I’m carried away here but not by much. Anyway, my mother would often sound like that to me. “Aaron, don’t crack

School Anxiety: Don’t Let Pressure Squeeze You Out

By Aaron Welch, LMHC, NCC, CSOTS Anxiety comes in many forms…especially in the school system. It lurks around as social phobias, it is ready to pounce in the form of test anxiety, it ambushes us in our fear that we won’t perform like we should. In this day and age, anxiety has become a harbinger of negativity to our kids, from the beginning days of elementary school all the way up to high school and beyond. Students who are charming, intelligent, funny, and totally competent somehow believe that they are ugly, boring, stupid, and incapable. Why? Why would a student who obviously has the ability to do well NOT do well? We can eliminate intellectual ability with most of the students I work with. I find that the students who struggle most with anxiety are kids whose IQ’s are above-average and even up to genius level. If it’s not intellectual functioning, what is it? More often than not, anxiety turns out to be a combination of the inability to identify and express accurate emotions combin

Strong Kid Strategy- How powerful after-school activities build young leaders

By: C. Dwight Bain, Nationally Certified Counselor & Certified Life Coach There is a lot of talk these days about cutting back on budgets and eliminating afterschool activities for kids. Cutting out sports, music, drama and journalism to send students home early, often to an empty house, is a bad plan for countless reasons. Greater temptations, peer pressure, gangs and just an overall sense of disconnection and loneliness for these latch key kids. Yet the greatest risk of eliminating afterschool programs is the tremendous loss of character and leadership development from being part of a team or sharing in activities that stretch their thinking and creativity. If you don’t think afterschool activities are a big deal, then let me challenge your thinking about the future. Picture it this way. Have you ever had a little experience that impacted you in a big way? Like the little things that build up and create immediate frustration, and maybe even ruin an otherwise good day. Traffic, yo

4 key factors to guide unmotivated students toward academic success

By Dwight Bain, Nationally Certified Counselor & Certified Life Coach Have you ever wondered why so many students get close to the ‘finish line’ of a semester or even graduation and then fail to finish? Parents, teachers, guidance counselors and tutors can be cheering for a student to push forward to finish strong and sometimes they just sit down and give up. You’ve probably seen it. A bright young person starts out with promise and potential and then halfway through a semester they literally run out of gas and ‘check out’ as it’s called because they completely lose the motivation to finish school. Academic Atomic Bombs When a student ‘checks out’ it isn’t because they don’t know what to do. You can tell them continually that they should be doing their homework, turning in class work, completing reports and playing by the rules to get good grades and move forward with their academic career. Yet they won’t do it. You can beg, you can plead, but basically they stop doing the right th

The Formula for Failure and Success

by Master Coach Jim Rohn Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. We do not fail overnight. Failure is the inevitable result of an accumulation of poor thinking and poor choices. To put it more simply, failure is nothing more than a few errors in judgment repeated every day. Now why would someone make an error in judgment and then be so foolish as to repeat it every day? The answer is because he or she does not think that it matters. On their own, our daily acts do not seem that important. A minor oversight, a poor decision, or a wasted hour generally doesn't result in an instant and measurable impact. More often than not, we escape from any immediate consequences of our deeds. If we have not bothered to read a single book in the past ninety days, this lack of discipline does not seem to have any immediate impact on our lives. And since nothing drastic happened to us after the first ninety days, we repeat this error in judgment for another ninety days, and on and on it goes. Why