Here it is—the meme every kid needs to see.
Copy and forward this meme to the kids you love right now.
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By this time nearly everyone’s heard of Gary Chapman’s book, The 5 Love Languages. It’s sold over 11 million copies, it’s the 12th most popular book on Amazon (where it has more than 13,000 5-star reviews), and it’s been a New York Times Bestseller 8 years running.
This funny explanation by @Alonzo_Creed has been retweeted 52,000 times on Twitter:
1. Words of Affirmation: “This is a good burrito.”
2. Acts of Service: “I made you a burrito.”
3. Receiving Gifts: “Here’s a burrito.”
4. Quality time: “Let’s go get some burritos together.”
5. Physical touch: Arms around a person wrapped in a warm hug, like a burrito.
Are you wondering which one or two of The 5 Love Languages your teen, spouse, or other loved one is most wired to receive? Use the quick free 5 Love Languages assessment that author Gary Chapman offers on his website. You might also love Gary’s other book: The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers: The Secret to Loving Teens Effectively.
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Your child feels a lot of pressure to “get into a good college.” Starting in 8th grade—or even earlier, he’s had the lie pounded into his head: “If you don’t get into a good college, you won’t be able to get a good job when you graduate.”
This lie can cause unnecessary anxiety for your kid and for your family. It can cause feelings of deep shame when a kid doesn’t get into his or her “dream school.” And, worst of all, it can lead students to drastically underestimate themselves and their future potential.
Let’s nip this lie in the bud, right now.
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In their book Wellbeing, authors Tom Rath and Jim Harter outline what they call “the five essential elements of wellbeing.”
Think about your kids as you read this list:
Physical Wellbeing
Social Wellbeing
Community Wellbeing
Financial Wellbeing
Career Wellbeing
I think it’s fascinating to look at what happens in the spaces where two or more elements of wellbeing overlap. There’s great joy, for instance, in having a career—however humble—that gives you financial stability enough that you can give money away to help others who need help with their physical wellbeing.
And for teens and 20somethings, even if they temporarily have very limited money and zero career stability, they can still increase wellbeing by partnering with others around them (social) to do projects that help others (community).
According to Gallup research, this can actually be a faster route to happiness than going to an Ivy League university! (See the article I’ve written on this subject here.)
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On the surface, it seems as though multitasking would make a great productivity tool. After all, if you can book a plane ticket and quickly shoot off an email while you’re on a phone meeting at work, why not? Haven’t you just masterfully killed two birds with one stone? Shouldn’t you be congratulated for being a brilliant time manager?
Research says no.
Multitasking will drop your I.Q. faster than smoking pot.
One study showed that workers distracted by incoming email and text messages saw a whopping 10-point drop in their I.Q.s.
What’s the effect of a 10-point drop in I.Q.? It’s the same as losing an entire night’s sleep, and more than twice the effect of smoking marijuana.
Multitasking slashes your productivity by as much as 40%.
We delude and fool ourselves into believing that we’re getting more done by multitasking. In reality, a day of multitasking results in less accomplishment, less productivity, and at the end of the day, something perhaps worse than mere low productivity.
Multitasking skyrockets feelings of stress and anxiety, eating away at the enjoyment of free time.
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The last thing you want is for your child to make a series of expensive higher ed decisions, and then regret them later. How can you help your kids to avoid making regrettable higher ed decisions?
An Epidemic of Regret
Regret over higher ed decisions has reached epidemic proportions in the US. According to a June 2017 report from Gallup and Strada Education Network, 51 percent of Americans would change at least one of their education decisions if they could. This is an astounding, alarming, high number.
1/3 of People Wish They’d Studied in a Different Field
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In 2017, 12-year-old singing ventriloquist Darci Lynne Farmer wowed the audience and the judges on America’s Got Talent. Before the 7-minute video was over I laughed, and I cried. Real tears. I am not kidding.
And then I thought…
What if Darci Lynne had never practiced ventriloquism on her own at home? What if she’d just waited until age 18, signed up for ventriloquism classes, and then expected those classes to give her everything she needed to perform like a superstar?
Would Darci Lynne have ever gotten anywhere?
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Parents, you feel a lot of pressure to get your kids into a “good” college after high school. An “Ivy League” university would be ideal! But is all the work and stress really worth it?
Probably not, honestly.
William Deresiewicz, former Yale professor and author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and The Way to a Meaningful Life has a fascinating take on this question.
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Last year, I climbed a mountain in Zion National Park.
My husband, the avid hiker, gave me a set of hiking poles and these instructions: “When you start to feel exhausted,” he said, “just concentrate on your next step. Where’s the next, best place to put your foot? Carefully put your foot there, and before you know it you’ll be at the top.”
Many of us get through parenting in this exact same way.
Exhausted, we survive day-to-day by focusing on the bare minimum required next step in our parenting journey. Just getting through until bedtime, or until Saturday’s soccer game, or until the next school break. We limit our thinking to the immediate, the urgent, and the short-term—because that feels productive. It feels like we’re getting somewhere.
In truth, taking just 5 minutes to look at the long view can be exhilarating.
When I was climbing that mountain in Zion, the moments that took my breath away happened when I stopped, lifted my head, and looked out over miles of sheer cliffs and valleys, all the way to the misty distant horizon.
Taking 5 minutes to look toward the parenting horizon can be both exhilarating and transformative.
For 5 minutes right now, think, “What could we as a family do this year, that could impact our descendants 100 years from now?”
Is there something you could do now related to education, to money and debt, or to moral and spiritual development, that could pay off for generations to come?
Our culture is currently plagued and limited by a short-term thinking mindset. You don’t have to be.
Ari Wallach, in this powerful TED Talk, urges us all to transform our children’s and grandchildren’s futures by breaking free of the 3-5 year “short-termism” that, he says, “permeates every nook and cranny of our cultural reality.” Wallach calls us all to practice “longpath” thinking that asks this important question: “To what end?”
What is the purpose in what we’re doing? Where are we going with this?
How will these decisions we’re making today impact our family 100 years from now?
What could we do this year that could pay off in huge ways…for generations?
Carefully consider these words, which I consider to be the most important in Wallach’s TED Talk:
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Mary’s father entered the library through heavy glass doors and started looking through the stacks for his daughter. He finally found her, bleary-eyed and exhausted, surrounded by books, notebooks, a laptop, and a half cup of cold coffee. “Honey, it’s late,” he said gently. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yeah,” Mary said, sounding beaten and tired.
Mary put her head in her hands. Full days in the toughest classes at school followed by afternoons and evenings crammed with activities “designed to impress” pushed her studying into late hours most nights of the week. The pace was frantic and the pressure intense, but Mary kept at it because of the carrot at the end of the stick. If she could just keep up this brutal pace for a few more years, she’d be able to get into a “good school.” That would automatically lead to a “good job,” and the money from that “good job” would lead to happiness and success.
At least that’s how the plan was supposed to work.
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