Thursday, August 29, 2013

Lessons for Students Going Into High School

Note: Thanks to LeeAnn Berry for convincing me to share the outline for a speech that I gave to a group of middle school graduates a few years ago. Always a teacher, LeeAnn also convinced me to add another lesson to the list.


1. Be involved. Jump into high school life: academics, clubs, sports, work, and friends. The pace you set now will help guide the pace of the rest of your life. The world can be incredible and exciting, but only if you're willing to get up off the couch and participate in it.

2. Learn to fail. Don't be afraid to push yourself in school, athletics, and other activities to the point that you fail. It's the only way to improve yourself. When you do fail, confront your failure, learn from it and move on. In the words of leadership expert Zig Ziglar, "Remember that failure is an event, not a person."

3. Be nice to people. You are going to have some very real regrets from your high school years, but you'll never wish that you were meaner to someone. Your harsh words and actions will haunt you for years. Do your best to minimize them, so you don't have to carry that baggage around.

4. Be careful who you hang out with. Bad things happen more often to people who hang out with people who do bad things. You can lose opportunities or worse by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

5. Don't listen to people who tell you you can't achieve your dreams. There will be a lot of adults who tell you that you can't achieve your dreams. They aren't qualified to tell you that. The world is complex and changing everyday, no one can tell you with certainty that a dream is out of your reach.

6. Be humble. Humility is essential to success. Without it, you won't be able to judge how hard a task is and whether you need help to accomplish it. Every truly significant task requires a team to help complete it. Without humility, you won't have the support of friends, family, and colleagues when you need them. Arrogant people don't have a lot of supporters.

7. Identify your interests and talents. Finding out your personal interests and talents should be your major career-building objectives over the next four years. Those interests and talents will point the way to your future.Because of the broad nature of high school academics, you'll probably have a clearer view of your talents and interests now than you will again until you're in your mid-thirties. Don't waste this opportunity to understand yourself. You may discover some of your interests and talents in school, but many of them can only be fully explored outside of the classroom.

8. Continue working in the areas that you're not good at. It's okay to focus on your strengths, but you can't totally avoid the subjects and tasks that you're not good at. You'll have to be well-rounded in order to achieve your goals. For instance, it's hard to imagine a job that makes a living wage that doesn't require basic knowledge of higher math. Make sure you take at least one more year of math than you have to.

9. Realize that you live in an incredible and exotic place. No where else in the world is exactly like the place that you live in now. The people, culture, landscape, activities and shops are different in every place and community. Do your best to cut through teenage cynicism to enjoy the best of where you're growing up. You only get one chance to experience life as a teenager. Don't waste it wishing you were somewhere else.

10. Volunteer. I work in a nonprofit and I'm often amazed about how much good a single person can do for an organization. It may not be easy to find an organization that both has a cause that you care about and needs the skills that you can offer, but you will find something if you ask around. Volunteering is a great way to make difference in your community while building up valuable work experience that will help you in the future.

11. Take good care of your brain. Neuroscientists are just beginning to figure out the mysteries of the brain. If you do damage to your brain either by ingesting drugs, high levels of alcohol or through physical trauma; there is no guarantee that it will ever be the same again. I know that taking risks is part of growing up, but be careful. Everyone's brain is different. Some of the coolest brains are the most easily damaged.

12. Explore your faith and beliefs. The transition of a person's spiritual life in the teenage years is an incredible thing. Listen to your parents and spiritual leaders, but don't be afraid to question them or to look for the answers on your own. If you're not able to answer those critical questions or get comfortable with a certain level of doubt, your faith will not be there to support and guide you through the challenges of adulthood.

13. Give yourself a break. The world is a tough place, especially when your a teenager. Problems can seem huge and unresolvable. They almost never are. If life gets too overwhelming, slow down and let things settle out. You'll be amazed at how often they do.

____________________


Please support the fight against mental illness by donating to Montana’s NAMIWalk. You can make a donation at my Walk page at http://namiwalks.nami.org/mattkuntz. Thanks for supporting this critical cause!

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

When to Stop Pushing: Life Lesson from a Macebell

NOTE: The Macebell can be very dangerous without proper instruction. Do not attempt it without guidance from a fitness professional that can assure you're doing it safely.


In February of 2008, I received a Macebell for Valentine's Day. I try not to care to much about material things, but workout gear and sporting goods are my weakness. I'd been doing kettlebell-style workouts for about five years and the Macebell, a steel pipe with a massive weighted ball on the end, seemed like the obvious next step.

UPS dropped the Macebell off at the law firm. I carried it home through downtown Helena that night with a huge grin on my face, not bothered by the fact that I looked like Captain Caveman in a sports jacket. (A side benefit of living in the town that you grew up in is that no matter what you're doing, people have almost always seen you do something more ridiculous.)

[In case you haven't seen a Macebell, here's a video of professional wrestling legend Karl Gotch doing Macebell 360's.]



I went in the back yard that night and attacked my workout with the fervor of a lab rat running from an electric shock. I swung the Macebell up, down, and around. I spun it over my head and smashed it into the snow-covered ground. Sweat dripped and my muscles burned. There was only one problem: I couldn't do the signature Macebell exercise, the 360.

In the 360, the exerciser starts with the weighted ball vertical over their head, then swings it behind their back in a pendulum motion, and finishes by raising it back to vertical. I tried it over and over again. Cranking the weight down behind me and then heaving it back up again, but I couldn't get it to rise above my shoulders.

I dove back into Youtube research. I might have been a little overambitious in the size of Macebell I chose, but it was clear that I should have enough strength to complete the 360. There were some beasts slinging Macebells around on Youtube, but they weren't all beasts. The weirdest part was that the other exercisers didn't appear to be struggling at the part where I kept hitting the wall. The helpful realization that I should be able to do the 360 didn't translate into my workouts.

It wasn't for lack of trying. Each week, I completed a full-session of intervals with Macebell lifts combined with jumping rope.  I attempted the 360 after my warm-up while I was still fresh. I'd crank the weight downward behind my back and then heave it back up, but it would stop just before clearing the height of my shoulder. Then I would try it again, and again, and again...

A year passed. I switched jobs, built a house, became a father, published a book, but still couldn't complete a 360.It was becoming my nemesis.

One afternoon, I made another 360 attempt at the end of my workout. I was exhausted, but obsessed. I lifted the weighted bar high over my head and began to swing it behind my back. This time I was too tired to push the weight downward. I just let it flow under its own power and trajectory. The Macebell swung past the point where it usually stopped.The pull over gravity loading it up automatically for the final movement.

I was so surprised that I wasn't ready to make the final heave over my shoulder, but the next time I did. I completed it in one direction and then back the other way. Repetition after repetition. Over and over.

I never had another problem with that exercise. The simple, but essential trick was realizing that I had to let the weight work for itself. My efforts to increase momentum through the downward movement were only slowing the weight. I had to control it, but not force it. It was counter instinctive, but obviously true. No wonder the other exercisers weren't straining at that point, they were letting the Macebell rotate through the lift.

I learn the same lesson in life over and over again. When I am stuck with an impassable problem, it's often because it's not my turn to shoulder the burden. It's time to leave it to God, the goodness in other people, or to time to resolve. No amount of force, effort, or worrying on my part will make it any better. In fact, it often makes the situation worse.

Thomas Merton, the acclaimed Catholic mystic and author, spoke to this challenge. "It takes some doing, but if I do not insist on having everything exactly my own way, Our Lord will do most of the work. My biggest obstacle is my own tendency to decide beforehand how I want to serve Our Lord, instead of letting Him tell me what He wants."

Realizing the proper time to let go requires a careful balance of toil, observation, and prayer. It's a lot more difficult than swinging a Macebell. We'll never get our efforts aligned exactly right with the Divine will; but it's an essential part of our spiritual journey.



Note: Here's another Macebell video for the curious. Seriously, please be careful if you are going to try this lift. You really, really don't want to have that weight pendulum into your knee or torque your shoulder out of the socket.

Please also consider making a donation to Montana's NAMIWalk to help fight mental illness.  We're trying to raise $150,000 by Walk Day on September. You can donate at this link.  Thank you!








Friday, August 2, 2013

Running with the Current: Thomas Merton on Leaving Decisions to God

Another "Running with the Current" video.  A great lesson from the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton. I hope you like it.


Narrative - Letter from Thomas Merton to Abbot James Fox from 1950. Found in the book "Thomas Merton: School of Charity"

Background: Kootenai Creek near Stevensville, Montana

Read by Matt Kuntz