Letters to My Children: A Little Bit Goes a Long Way

Remember when you were young and colored a lot with crayons? You loved drawing maps with crayons. You'd color these beautiful make-believe worlds with forests and mountains and oceans. The colors were so bold and vibrant!

When you first started using crayons, when you wanted a dark, solid texture, you'd press down hard with the crayon and color once or twice across the paper. Sometimes you'd rip the paper from pressing so hard.

At some point you realized that instead of pressing down hard and coloring once or twice, you could press lightly, and color many times. After a bit, you would have the rich, vibrant color you wanted. You'd color a little bit a lot. The paper never tore when you colored this way.

A lot of life is much the same: if you do a little bit a lot, you end up with a large task done. A little bit goes a long way. And there are many, many ways this works, both good and bad.

I'm sure you remember my asking about your homework, "Did you start working on that project due next week?" You can do a great job if you do a small part of the project each day, instead of cramming all of it into two days (or even just the night!) before the due date. Studying is easier if you work a little bit each night instead of cramming the night before.

But there's more to life than just schoolwork.

If you slouch when you sit when you're little, you'll slouch as an adult, too. But if you sit up straight every time you catch yourself slouching, eventually you'll stop slouching. (Yes, sit up straight! I know you're slouching.)

If you want to want to be better at your chosen sport, don't wait until spring training to start working out. Head outside now and practice your moves. Sit and visualize your success at the sport. Practicing positive visualizations every day is one of the most underutilized sports techniques, yet one of the most powerful. But you need to do a little bit every day to see the effects.

You can clean up the house a little bit at a time. Start in a corner of a room and clean it. Then move to another place. Then to the table. Each part of the cleaning takes only minutes, but the end result is a big room cleaned. One down, move to the next room.

The same with losing weight, becoming stronger, developing wrinkles, or breaking a bad habit: do a little bit, and do it consistently. The effects are cumulative and monumental.

You've heard the story about carrying a bull to the top of the mountain right? No one can carry a bull up a mountain, that's crazy talk! Not only just the weight of the bull, either. It would wiggle around, making carrying impossible. But if you carry that bull up the mountain every day, from when the bull is but a newborn calf, as the bull gets bigger, you get stronger, and it gets used to you, not resisting the carrying. A little bit every day.

And speaking of that mountain, how would you move it? Yep. A little bit at a time.

You can train for a marathon by running a little bit. The next time you run, run a little bit more. The following week, run a bit more. Each time you add a little bit more, you're increasing your endurance. Each step helps. Just like when we hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and had to hike back up the next day. Each step wasn't much, but we made it to the top.

Just like each drop in the Colorado River. Each one wasn't much. But all the drops added up over all the years made that Grand Canyon. And that canyon is grand.

So, go ahead and do that little bit.

Written at the start of another business trip to Colorado, 12 January 2005

Letters to My Children: Find an Athletic Sport You Love

When you were a young child, you played just to play. When you were outside, you ran and ran and ran. You didn't run because you were worried about the size of your legs. You didn't run because you ate a second helping of dessert. You didn't run because you were worried about your heart, liver or lungs. You ran because it was fun. You ran because you were playing tag and it was fun. You ran because you were chasing the ball and it was fun. You ran because you wanted to kick the can first and it was fun. The childhood experience of the pure joy of just being active is lost by so many people.

Many people exercise to lose weight. They exercise to trim up, look good. They exercise because they are trying to achieve an ideal imposed upon them from the outside world, through marketing pressures and a continual bombardment of a unachiveable, impossible-to-define, completely elusive and nebulous idea of beauty. Exercising for those reasons will take you only so far, and will never take you where you want to go. You have to enjoy the process, or you'll never make it to the end.

An easier way to recapture the joy of moving, the wonder at what your body can do, is to never lose it in the first place. Finding an athletic sport you love is the easiest way to do just that.

Sports are simply groups of people, moving certain ways to achieve a well defined, immediate goal. Two of the biggest goals are winning and having fun (not necessarily in either order). I don't care if you like slow moving sports, fast moving sports, intense or leisure sports. I just want you to find an athletic sport you love.

Because when you find a sport you love, you'll want to play it. It'll be the most fun you can have. You'll be out moving around. You'll be playing again, feeling the joy you had a child. The joy of movement. The joy of discovery. The joy of using a skill you learned. Sure, there will be some winning. There will be some losing. There will be frustration as you learn a new skill. There will be disappointment when you can't do the things you used to be able to do. But there will always be the movement.

I want to tell you some things here about sports. You probably know these already, but I want to tell you again.

The first is that, you'll be frustrated when you learn a new technique, a new process, a new strategy or play. This is okay, my child. This is okay. Learning something new will take time. Sometimes it'll take less time. Sometimes more. And, with practice, you'll be able to learn more quickly. In the beginning, however, you'll be frustrated. It's part of learning, so embrace the process, don't fight it.

Another thing I want to tell you is that you may not find your sport until you've tried them all. You may not find it until much later in life. You mother didn't find her sport until she was 25! Can you believe that? And that's okay, because she found her sport. She's still playing that goofy flying disc sport, and loves every moment of it. Every moment. Because that movement, that joy, it's on the playing field, it's in the movement, and it's wonderful.

Now, a last thought about all of this sports stuff. Some people will call certain activities "sports." It's a broad term, applied to many things, but not all sports are created equally. Which is why I wrote to you, "find an athletic sport you love."

I probably should have written, "find an athletic sport you Love, and play it to your dying days," but the last have is assumed: if you find a sport you love, you'll want to play it to your dying days.

Just make sure it's one that has movement. If it doesn't have movement, keep looking, my child, because that movement is key to so many things: keeping you young, keeping you fit, helping you grow older, teaching good conduct, and teaching humility.

And most of all, that sport will remind you of the joy you had as a kid, the joy of just running, running, running. Because it was fun.

Written after three days of inactivity

Letters to My Children: Have a Short Term Memory

Okay, look, you're going to make mistakes. They're going to happen, they're a part of life. Mistakes are part of the learning process: you try something, it might work, it might not. When it works, you learn something. When it doesn't work, you learn something else. As the quote says, "If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying hard enough."

However, how you react to your mistakes, and what you learn from them, is more important than the mistake itself. Yes, yes, I know, this is the same theme you've heard before. I'm going to say it again.

Mistakes are going to happen, okay? When they do, and you've corrected the mistake as best you can, learned the lesson you're going to learn from the mistake, the best thing you can do is have a short term memory of that mistake.

Which is not to say, "forget the lesson." Instead, remember the lesson and forget the mistake.

So you missed that catch. Remember the lesson to watch the ball into your hands. Remember the lesson to position yourself in the line of trajectory so that you're facing the ball to minimize the difficulty of the catch. Remember the lesson to clench and secure the ball. Okay, okay, I'm kidding on that one, you know that part.

Once you've remembered your lessons, forget that missed catch, forget that mistake. Remembering that incomplete catch, replaying the miss over and over again in your head will not change the outcome. You won't suddenly catch the missed ball. What it might do, however, is imprint the incorrect actions for the next time. It may adversely affect the next catch.

Beating yourself up over with a mistake on infinite replay does nothing but waste energy and distract you from what is happening next. What good is that?

So, you made a mistake. Whatever. Short term memory: forget that mistake. You have another ball to catch.

Letters to My Children: Lose the "I can't"

I'm not sure where you picked up the phrase that annoys me more than, "Where's it at?" but I do know that I don't like it, and you need to stop saying it.

What am I talking about?

"I can't."

You started using that phrase a few months ago, and it is completely false. You're telling me that you have decided that you are not going to succeed when you say this to me. But, you say this before you have even tried.

Child, there is absolutely no way you have the knowledge or experience to decide beforehand if you are capable of the action I have requested you attempt. Allow me this moment to be the adult here. Allow me to impart my will upon you. And allow me to insist that you try anyway, even if you believe you can't.

Allow me to say, "You can."

When you're around me and I hear you say, "I can't," and then I insist you try anyway, what happens? Yes, you succeed. You managed to do what you say you cannot do. Sure, you may have to try several times. Sure, you may not completely succeed, but you manage far more when you try than when you don't.

But, you don't need my insisting you try.

For some reason, common to many victim-mentality people in today's blameless society, you have decided to give up before you started because things are "outside your control" or "too hard" or "not possible."

Yes, many things are outside your control. Your genetics? Outside. Who your biological family is? Outside. The color of the sky? Well, that one is debatable.

But choosing to attempt to do something is well within your control.

There will be many, many, many times in your life when someone else will tell you, "You can't." You can choose to believe them or not. There will be many times when the task at hand indeed looks impossible.

But if you give up before you've even started, it will be impossible.

So, listen to your mother, if only just this once.

Stop saying, "I can't."

It drives me nuts.

Letters to My Children: Pretend

Today was a little hard, watching as you struggled at the plate for the first baseball game of the season. We worked with you during the off-season, and you're definitely better: you stand taller, you swing more explosively, you step more fluidly. Each facet of your hitting is getting better and better.

You just don't believe it.

Your disbelief at your new abilities makes you like most people: your own worst enemy. You see yourself as you were, not as you have become, and it prevents you from moving forward.

Let me help you with this. Let me tell you a secret that most people don't learn until they are much, much older, and some never learn. That secret is simple: everyone is pretending. Pretending to be adults. Pretending to be happy. Pretending to be living perfect lives. Pretending to be immune to the bad things in life.

Worse, some are even pretending to be alive. Not in the physical sense, but pretending nonetheless.

When you were first learning to walk, you either imitated those giants talking around you, or you pretended you knew how to walk until you finally did. Sure, you fell down a lot, but you know it now, you can walk. How silly, you think, of course you know how to walk. You also know how to jump, and talk, and run, and drink milk from a straw. You didn't always know how to do these things. Imitating and pretending enabled you to learn how to do each of these actions that come so naturally to you now.

The ultimate job of pretending belongs to actors. If they do their job well, then you believe they really are the characters they are portraying. Very few good actors instantly knew how to act, they had to work at it. They had to work at pretending. They had to pretend at pretending.

But pretending is what I'm going to ask you to do. When you go out for your next swing, I want you to pretend you're the greatest baseball player who ever lived. Pretend you have no fear of missing. Pretend you know intimately how to smack that ball out of the park, if that's what you want to do. Or that you can hit the perfect bunt. Pretend you run like the wind and you sprint to first base.

Because as you pretend, your body will listen. Your mind will listen. Your fear will lessen. When you pretend, you give yourself permission to do what your head is limiting you from doing.

Soon, you'll discover you don't need to pretend. You'll be doing. You'll be what you've been imaging. You will become. You will be.

Until then, pretend.

Letters to My Children: That grass isn't always so green

The funny thing about grass is that it always seems greener on the other side of the fence. Yet, it isn't always so green.

Yes, kid, I know you won't believe me on this one. You rarely do, until the lesson smacks you upside the head. But know that I will never say I told you so.

I might smirk, though, so don't look.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. And I know you'll hear it again, if not another thousand times, but here they are again:

The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.

Yes, it may look greener. Yes, it may look more lush. It may look richer, happier, more fun, prettier, cleaner, newer, or snazzier. But looks can be deceiving, and reality on that side of the fence is remarkably similar to the reality on this side of the fence.

Green grass and all.

It's often difficult to see how things may be the same here and there, before and after, but think about the various points in your life so far when this has been true. The problems you have now will be the problems you will have on the other side of the fence unless you make the commitment, take the time and put forth the effort to fix the problems, rather than avoiding them or, worse, denying them.

Remember when you wanted to move in with your cousins, because they had a happy house, when you thought we didn't? Everything was supposed to be perfect there when it clearly wasn't perfect here. You returned home disappointed: not everything was as rosy as you thought it would be.

Remember when you sat at the table and listened to several of us discuss N's engagement? Do you recall how many of us were concerned about the marriage, as we questioned why N was so keen to marry someone she had expressed so many reservations about? She thought the grass was greener, and that marriage was going to fix the problems in her relationship with M. That by simply being married, all their problems would disappear.

They didn't, and you know that full story. The problems they had before their wedding were the same problems they had after the wedding; they were just many thousands of dollars less well-off.

It's very easy to think that the sitation the next person is in is better than the one you are in. It's natural to think if only this would happen you'll be happier. It's very tempting to think the next new thing will be better than the one you have.

Lots of very's there, but none guaranteed to be true.

I'm not saying don't strive for a better world, a better situation, a desired goal. What I am saying is look at what you have and know that the situation you're in, the life you have, the world you created may not be as bad as you think.

Indeed, it may be pretty darn good, if you stop to look at it.

And it may just be quite green.

Letters to My Children: Try Your Hardest, But Know You May Still Fail

One of the hardest things to accept is that the good guys do not always win. They don't always wear white, and they don't always win. In the same train of thought, you can try your hardest, you can give it your all until you have nothing left, and you still might fail.

You can have the biggest heart, the most passion, and the strongest desire.

And you still might fail.

A sad fact of life is that even when you try very hard, you may not always get the results you want. It's going to happen, my child. You will fail.

Aw, Mom, I hear you whining. Why are you such a downer? Why do you have to tell me this? You're supposed to cheer me on. You're supposed to always tell me to keep trying, never give up, try harder, better luck next time, chin up kiddo, I'll get them next time.

And I will. I'll keep telling you these things. I'll keep singing positive songs, cheering you on, encouraging you to be more than either I or your father could have imagined.

But I'll also tell you that the reality is you will fail over and over and over again.

What you do after you fail reflects more of who you really are than any victory could ever do.

Because this is the way it is, kid. Everyone fails at some point. Professional baseball players miss the ball 7 out of every 10 times they step up to the plate. And those are the good ones!

Professional (American) football players need 4 tries to move the ball 10 yards. 4 tries! With flags and penalties, they often get more. And even with those four tries, they will fail to score more times than they will succeed.

How many track runners are this close to being the best? This close? A lot. And you won't hear about them, because being this close is still not at the top. But they are still damn fine runners.

And those are just athletic performances. The same is true with academic trials or even affairs of the heart.

In any competition with a zero sum game, one with a winner and a loser, there will be one side that wanted that win just as much as the other side, but just didn't make it. Some of those wins will be heart-breakers. You can work for something for weeks, months, years, and, for whatever reason, still not achieve it.

It'll happen. But, here's the difference between the loser of that competition and a loser: how you view that competition afterwards. If you let that moment define who you are, if you believe that you are a failure, then all is lost. If, instead, you recognized you failed, and that it was the action and not the person, you can keep trying. You can keep going. You can become the success you are destined to be.

Don't let that one performance define who you are.

You are not a failure. You will fail, but you are not a failure.

Letters to My Children: Never Miss an Opportunity to Use the Restroom

You know how it goes: you're sitting on the airplane and you look at your watch and you think, "Hmmmmmm, 30 minutes until the plane lands. Do I need to use the restroom?" Now, you actually might need to go just an itsy bitsy teenie little bit. It's just a little bit, but not enough for you to undo your seatbelt, climb over the aisle-seat passenger, trudge up the aisle, wait in line at the bathroom, go to the bathroom, trudge back to your seat, climb over the aisle-seat passenger and sit back down. So you sit there. Eventually the return-to-your-seat-we're-preparing-to-land light comes on, and it's to late to use the restoom. You have to hold it.

But now you have to pee. Badly. And the plane is delayed on the tarmack. And you can't leave your seat yet.

Or, you're out at the mall and you pass by the restroom at the food court. You think you might have to go, but, eh, not yet. So, you head into the next store (a kitchen or cooking store if you're anything like your mother) and shop for a bit. Then you're off to the next store. By the time you're at the next store, you really have to use the bathroom, but have no idea where the nearest one is.

The big department stores all have restrooms, so you try the nearest one. Is it on the first floor? The second? Why, oh why, is it always hidden in the back of the store behind the big women's clothing, and labelled "Women's lounge?" Who lounges in these places? You make it there, but then there's a line. Your bladder is ska-reeming and when you finally get to pee, and actually peeing hurts like you wouldn't believe possible.

Fortunately, neither of those situations has happened to your mother. (Maybe I should label obvious lies in a different font. Of course, if they're so obvious no label would be needed, right?)

So, here is my advice to you in this letter: when presented with an opportunity to use the restroom, take it if there's any (any whatsoever) inkling you might need to go in the next hour. If you feel like your bladder has something in it, it does, so just go now.

Now, this doesn't mean head out to find a restroom when you might have an inkling to go. If you did that, you'd be looking for restrooms and doing little else with your life. And that, my child, might be a boring, panic filled life.

What it means is, if the opportunity is there, take it. Go. Seize the chance to purge the plumbing.

Because once you realize you need to pee, it'll be all you think about.

So, why this advice instead of the saying, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"? That saying is relatively generic. This is a specific case and concrete example of when that saying is perfectly applicable.

An extended suggestion in this letter of seizing the peeing opportunity, is "Always carry toliet paper or tissue paper with you." If you can learn to pee in the woods, or next to a building, or on the side of the road, or in the neighbors yard, all without being seen or caught (the key phase here is definitely, without being seen or caught), then the toliet paper or tissues will come in handy in said events.

I recommend tissues. They're easier on nose and more versatile.

Written on a flight from San Diego to Chicago, landing in a snowstorm.