Tag Archives: motivation

Why they don’t finish college.

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School classroom

School.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

The prize does not always go to the fastest, the best, or the brightest.

Recently there has been some pressure on the college system, especially the community colleges, to account for the large number of students who start college but do not finish and of those that do frequently take far longer than the recommended number of years to finish up that degree.

This pressure makes sense when we think of what it takes to run an institution of higher learning. The public resents subsidizing students who want to keep going to school and yet never finish and start working. The objective of the community college among other things is to help people learn skills that will lead to employment so students who just keep on going but never graduate seems like an abuse of the system.

Having been one of those students and then having had the opportunity to return a few decades later to teach some classes, let me try to explain what is going on here.

So let me tell you a story. This is a story about an athletic scholarship but the principle would be the same regardless of the student’s goal. And since you may remember that I am a story-teller at heart forgive me for any inadvertent embellishment.

There was this kid, Jess was his name or so they tell me, that lived up in the mountains. He liked to go out along the trail that led down to the old country store. He liked the hill so much he would find almost any excuse to run down that hill to that store. Jess would run every chance he got just for the pure pleasure of it. Every day people would see Jess running, there goes that fool boy running again they would mutter, and off he would go.

Running up and down those hills was the best thing in Jesse’s life. He did not try to run real fast, no point in that, cause he just like being out there in the woods on the trails. But he was getting stronger and stronger. Real strong runner the people in town would say.

Now down in the valley, there were these bunch of people and a whole parcel of schools. One school, in particular, they had this great big fancy running track. They had some track club run there almost every weekend. This kid’s name of Arnold, Arnold T. Spingate, his dad took him there all the time. Arnold’s dad was a runner and he wanted his son to be one also.

So starting at age 5 Arnold T Spingate, his father signed him up for a running club. By six he was running in competitions most everywhere. And was that boy fast. He won most times he ran. Only one problem Arnold did not like to run, he only did it cause his dad pushed him. The more dad pushed the harder Arnold ran and the harder he ran the more he won. You would have thought that this would make dad proud, but no matter how much Arnold won dad pushed him some more.

Now on the other side of town lived a kid name Lee, you were expecting the poor side weren’t you? Well, they weren’t exactly poor, not poor like Jess up in the mountains but they did not have the money like Arnold’s family. But one thing Lee had, was parents that loved him, and that encouraged him. He also had an elementary school P. E. teacher that told him the way to be something someday was to go to college and the way to do that was to get a scholarship, an athletic scholarship if you could.

So Lee decided in one of the early grades he was gonna win a scholarship to a college. He wasn’t real big, no good at football and not real strong like the wrestlers, but he was passable at running and so day after day, week after week, while all the rest of the school did them team sports Lee just kept on running. He was not for sure the fastest but that did not stop him he just kept running.

So you can see where this is going, can’t you? This big fancy college down at the end of the valley, they had them some leftover athletic scholarships so they set up this race and they invite the runners from anywhere about that want to come to try out. Their plan was to find the best runner and offer them a scholarship to come run track for their school.

Now the week before the big race, last-minute like Jess hears about this race while hanging out at the country store. He gets some teasing bout how he was always running so he decides to give it a shot and signs up for this big race.

Arnold never had a say in it. His dad had the application all filled out and ready to sign before Arnold T. Spingate ever saw it. Arnold does not want to race, getting tired of this. His friends are all going to a party the night before the big race and he wants to go. His dad wants him to race.  So they strike a deal. Arnold can go to the party he just needs to be home by ten P. M. so he can rest up for the race.

Now Lee hears about this big race from his school coach. This is what he has been waiting for. He keeps on training as hard as he can. Lee’s family didn’t have much money so he doesn’t even ask them for help, but Lee does mow a couple of lawns to earn that bus fare to the school where the big race will be.

Well, the day of the race Jess shows up in a pickup driven by his uncle who bright him down from the mountain. Lee rides the bus and gets there just in the nick of time. And Arnold, he shows up in his dad’s fancy new car. Arnold does bring along this great big hangover to keep him company. His dad is of course furious.

Seems Arnold was so used to winning, the way he figured it, he could stay out as late as he wanted and on this occasion, he tried drinking like his buddies. Arnold has won so many races he figures he will win hangover or no.

So who do you like to win this race? The kid whose father has had him running and winning since he could walk? Or the kid who runs day and night all over the hills, who does it for the fun of it. Or that kid who no one thought had any talent, including him but he has stuck with it for all these years working and practicing for this shot.

So if you were thinking at this point that I picked those names, Arnold and Lee and Jess because of some big-name politicians, why you would be wrong. If you were figuring these were their real names, well you’d be wrong about that too.

What I hope you got is that the people who finish college are not the smart ones, they usually get sidetracked and start partying. We know F students drink twice as much as A students. The ones who go because they like to learn, they don’t always finish school either. They get bored with all those required subjects and many times they don’t know how smart they are cause they have never been told they could do anything and so they quit before long. The ones who finish college, why those are the ones that just keep going class after class till they get it done.

Who won the race you ask? How would I know? I never did hear that. You will need to figure that one out for yourself. But keep asking yourself how many others never got to race. Cause if college is only for the winners how do we know who should get the chance to race?

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Has our diet of self-esteem spoiled?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Low Self-esteem

Low Self-esteem.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Is self-esteem making us sick?

We have reached the point, in much of this world, where everyone needs to be above average. What this means for us and for our future is yet to be determined. But it is possible that this constantly forced diet of having more self-esteem is starting to make us all sick.

First, we need to figure out what above average means. Average used to be a mathematical concept, take scores, add them up and divide by the number of people. We also had mathematic concepts for the most common score and the score in the middle.

I have never heard any individual referred to as being a “modal” or “median” person. But lots of people get referred to as “average” and this is customarily used in a derogatory manner as if being average was somehow to be less than acceptable.

There are some huge consequences of this “everyone needs to be above average” theorem.

First, we need to lower the standards until at least half of us can get above that score. So it has become common practice for some years now that everyone in a class needs to get an A. Anyone who did not get an A is now considered a failure. That requirement for perfection has resulted in a culture of giving out lots of A’s. Everyone gets an A now.

Now when I was in school a perfect GPA was a 4.0. If anyone was getting a grade better than that, they never told us. Yes, some really smart kids when over to the college for a few classes the last year in High school but they might get a B or even a C in that college class and we will all very impressed that they were taking college classes.

Today I hear that kids are taking AP classes in high school. This has been going on for a while now. So the good colleges now will not look at a student with a 4.0 GPA which used to be a perfect score. Now you need a 4.2 or 4.3 to get considered.

The result, more kids get A’s but the “average” kid can’t read or write and they get their education from watching television.

We are in fact distorting things so that reality is no longer real. Everyone is above average and anyone who is not perfect is a failure. Life has become a virtual adventure. Homes include virtual pets and virtual parents.

Thank god for prisons. Because the prisons are our great housing project for people who are not above average. Many prison inmates are in fact illiterate. So we are close to making being below average a qualification for being a permanent member of the incarcerated class.

Now if you are above average always, even if they have had to lower the bar so you can always be above it, you might come to think of yourself as better than average, superior, even entitled. We used to call this narcissistic. We have stopped thinking of people who feel superior as narcissistic and we now evaluate them as either “average” or a political candidate. Those who have refined narcissism to a science get to lose other people’s money on Wall Street.

Now if you are above average, and everyone is above average and to be below average means you are a worthless failure, what do you do when you fail to be above average at something.

Why you get angry, very, very angry. You blame the test, the teacher and the whole school system. And if no one agrees with us that being less than average is not fair then we could sue or get violent.

This whole need to be better than others to be OK is at the root of a lot of this world’s problem. My religion needs to be more correct than yours otherwise I may be wrong and less right than you and that would mean that I am defective somehow. So if you do not believe like I do I need to kill you to make me more religiously correct. See how this whole need to always be better than others and more correct can be a rabbit hole down which society may disappear to never be seen again.

Mr. Ellis liked to remind us, I kind of miss that guy these days, that the problem was not low self-esteem. The problem is this whole notion of rating ourselves as if our whole life were some sort of televised bowl game and we needed to die with the highest score.

Rather than this whole truckload of self-esteem and how we need to be better than everyone else, we need to be talking about how to be more accepting, of ourselves and those who are different from us in so many ways.

Higher levels of compassion are desperately needed and the place that most needs an increase in compassion is right in our own homes. Start by having more compassion for yourself and those around you and then when you have some excesses of compassion spread that around. Unlike self-esteem where you dare not give it away or you will run out, compassion has a much better flow rate. You can spread compassion around and it seems to go on forever.

Want a healthier world? Switch from a high self-esteem diet to a high compassion diet.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Making friends by calling them names.

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Friendship

Friendship
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Does criticizing people get them to like you?

There seems to be a widely held belief that the way to get people to like and respect you is to criticize them and tell them what they are doing wrong.

Intuitively most people understand that if upon meeting someone for the first time, you began to upbraid them, called them names, and told them how worthless they are, this would not be likely to lead to having a large number of friends. We know this but we often do it anyway.

You would expect that each of us would be striving to treat ourselves well and yet we frequently call ourselves names that we would never, ever, dare call a friend.

Ever call yourself “stupid’ or “dumb?” Think for a moment about saying that to a friend. Not once, when they made an unusually poor choice, but consistently day after day. We wouldn’t do that to a friend, but most of us, most of the time, repeatedly call ourselves names.

The danger of calling yourself names is that you will start believing what you tell yourself.

Pictures of cute little puppies and little children inspire us to want to help. They can inspire us to kindness. It is easy to be kind to others. Most of us are afraid to be kind to ourselves.

Why is compassion reserved for other, unrelated people?

Somewhere we got the idea that it was acceptable to be kind to others but if we were to be nice or kind to ourselves then we would spoil ourselves and thereafter be worthless. So year after year we continue to beat ourselves up for one thing after another.

People, who truly spoil themselves, in a bad way, are not those who are kind and compassionate to themselves. The worst sort of spoilage occurs when we tell ourselves we are no good, worthless, or useless and then use that self-description as an excuse for behaving badly.

If you tell yourself you are a slob and then stop trying to clean up your living space because after all you are a slob and no one should expect a slob to clean. If you say you are stupid and then use that belief as an excuse to never attempt anything, expecting your family or society to take care of you. You are using your self-criticism to excuse poor behavior.

Some people tell themselves they are addicts, and what do you expect from an addict? Why of course I relapsed and used drugs again, I am an addict. But if you begin to tell yourself that I USED to be an addict, look at the possibilities that opens up.

One form of therapy is called “narrative therapy.” The way I understand this is that we tell ourselves and others stories, not untrue stories, just stories, and then as we tell them more and more we begin to believe our own fiction. So if you tell yourself you are dumb or worthless you become less and less able to accomplish anything.

People who say “I am an angry person,” stay angry and convince themselves they can’t change. If we can get them to start saying I USED to be an angry person, but I am changing, then amazingly they change.

Do you believe that the only way to get anybody to do things is to beat them? We find that this is a poor way to motivate either ourselves or others. Yet many people continue to beat themselves up, verbally, day after day.

One thing we tell parents as part of the basic parenting class is to catch their children doing something right. Small amounts of praise, judiciously used are great motivators. If the only way your children get your attention is to misbehave, they will misbehave for attention.

The parent who does nothing but criticizes their child finds that the child may give up. Consider the child who wants badly to please their parent; they study very hard for a big test. When the results come out the child has achieved a score of 99 out of 100 possible points.

What does this parent say? Why did you miss that one? You knew that! The result is that the child stops trying, convinced that no matter how hard they tried they will never be good enough.

Years later we find that person and many others still trying to motivate themselves by telling themselves that how they are is not good enough.

The risk here is that rather than motivate yourself to try harder, you will convince yourself that you are a failure and stop trying.

Ultimately you may become the person you say you are.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

You need to make more mistakes.

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Mistakes and errors

Mistakes.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Sometimes it’s good to make mistakes.

Inside our minds, left over from childhood, is that nagging voice telling us we made another mistake. Oh no I did that wrong. Why do I even try? It is hard to get that voice to shut up. Even when no one in our lives is telling us we are wrong we still need to beat ourselves up for every little error. I should have done that better; I should have gotten that right, we tell ourselves. NOT SO.

As humans, my guess is that almost everyone reading this is a human, we need to make mistakes (sorry bots.) Our brains are hard-wired to require mistakes. We need to make them, and lots of them if we are to learn. Let me explain why.

When we do something wrong, something dangerous or painful, our brains like to set that up in one of those big fat grooves in our brain. Painful and unpleasant memories are readily accessible to our brains. This is for a good reason, – survival.

Hanson describes this as the stick and carrot. The carrot is nice, we like to eat especially if we are hungry, but the stick, that can kill us. We need to remember that stick from the first time we got hit. Not remembering pain could result in getting hurt again. It could mean death.

But happiness as we discovered last time in the post – Where Happiness Hides – happiness takes effort to remember it and remembering it needs to be practiced.

So why should we make mistakes?

The only people who make no or few mistakes are those who don’t try. The famous, the highly productive, and the successful, make lots of mistakes. You don’t hit home runs unless you swing. A great baseball player gets a hit maybe once every three times at-bat. He misses a lot of times. Now if we let fear of failure keep us from trying we don’t accomplish much. You can’t sink a basket unless you put the ball up in the air.

But there is more.

All creativity starts out as so-called “mistakes.”

Let me illustrate. Let’s say we meet in the hallway at work one day. Every morning for years we have walked by each other. I say Hello. You respond with Hello. Everything is right in the world.

This day is different. I say Hello. You, for some unknown reason, say “How are you doing today.”

Oh my goodness! The world is about to end. What do I do now? I have to actually think of an answer. Not the usual answer, but something new, something original. We just might end up having to have a conversation.

Your “error” in asking how I am doing has resulted in you being creative and me having to learn a new skill.

So “mistakes, errors” are the source of much of the world’s creativity.

Errors and mistakes are not in and of themselves bad. They are “learning opportunities.” Some have called these items “improvement opportunities.” So if we move from an “I need to be perfect and never make a mistake” to “I need to try on new things, learn the things that work and don’t repeat the things that did not work” We become more productive and more competent.”

This learning from mistakes is true for individuals, businesses, and systems.

The important thing is to not keep making the same old mistakes. So if you keep trying new things, yes you will make some mistakes. That is fine. Just keep the size of the mistake down to something you can afford; do not try out something new that might get you or someone else killed or lose your life savings. Do try out new approaches to solving those same old problems.

Have you seen anyone trying to solve a problem in the same old way with the same old thinking?

Don’t we describe the approach of doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result as one form of insanity? So if your old method resulted in a problem, addiction or depression, or lack of productivity, do not keep trying the same thing over again because this is the “right” way to do it. Consider a new approach and learn from the trial.

An economics professor once told the class that if we decided as economists to make predictions make them early and often. Some of them are bound to come true. This approach works in lots of productivity and self-help areas. If you are the first to try something, like quitting smoking, even if you struggle, you are a hero when you succeed. If everyone you know has already quit you don’t get so much credit.

The more new things you try the more likely you are to get some of them right. Keep putting that ball in the air. Just do me a favor and before you blame me for any failures, try to make small mistakes and try to not keep making the same mistakes over and over.

Those who try – make mistakes – they are human, but the important thing is they learn from those mistakes.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel