“What’s my motivation?” That’s the question crossing our minds when the alarm goes off at 6:00 in the morning. That’s the question we pose to ourselves at the office when the clock rolls past 5:00 pm and there is still work needing to be done. At some point, all leaders must consciously face the “motive question”—Why am I doing what I am doing? Why do I want to lead, really? Why do I desire influence?

Experience has taught me that why we do something will ultimately determine what we do. Action flows from intention. For this reason, it’s imperative for us, as leaders, to regularly evaluate our primary motivations.

Our motives have as much to do with accomplishing our mission as do our gifts and talents. Bono, lead singer of U2, recalls a time when he and his bandmates asked, “Can we relax?” following their early commercial successes. In that moment, he pushed the group to continue its quest to be relevant. “If you’re judging where we are by [what we can afford to buy], it’s a dangerous measure. I judge where we are by how close I am to the melody I’m hearing in my head, and how close are we to what we can do as a band to realizing our potential.” U2′s long-running influence has perhaps been driven as much by the group’s passionate drive to reach its potential as by its musical genius.

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Why does arguing with your child give him power? When you engage in fights with your child, over time he will begin to believe that he is your peer and that he has the power to challenge you. This is a loaded situation because your child doesn’t realize that this empowerment he’s feeling isn’t real. The more powerful he thinks he is (and the more that defiant behavior gets him what he wants) the more he will use fighting as a way to solve his problems.
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As spring kicks into high gear, many parents struggle with the anxiety they associate with prom and graduation season. Parents of chronically misbehaved kids might wonder, “Does my child even deserve this privilege?” Other parents are nervous that their child might do drugs, drink, have sex—or all of the above. The high cost of prom and your child’s emotions around attending can cause power struggles and heated fights at home.
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Heads up all,

Time to order your official Otomi Martial Arts training t-shirt for the summer of 2013!

This years shirt is going to be way cool… best part is you can wear it every Wednesday and Thursday through the summer until school start.  Of course, you still have to wear your regular uniform on testing dates.

Things to consider:

1. Order by Wednesday 4-24 and Save $5

2. You can start wearing it as soon as they come in .

3. These will be the only T-shirts that are allowed during normal training classes!

See you on the mats!

Sizes

Youth Small Youth Medium Youth Larger Small Medium Large X Large 2X Large

We’ve all been there: Your child misbehaves at a family gathering, and you leapfrog ahead to the future, where you see him making exactly the same kinds of mistakes in his adult life—times 10. Or your preteen daughter seems unmotivated at school and fails Algebra, and you start wondering if she’ll be able to graduate high school, or even hold a job some day.
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None of us is perfect, and no one is a perfect parent. In fact, rather than talking about “good parents” versus “bad parents,” I like to think of it in terms of “the good enough parent.” “Good enough” parents provide for their children and try their best to keep their kids safe. They are trying to raise their children the best they can, even if their methods aren’t always effective. If you’re aiming to be a better parent and thinking about ways to improve in certain areas, that’s a big part of “good enough parenting.”
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Stop and think for a moment: When your child or teen is in the throes of a tantrum or an all-out rage, what is your initial reaction? Do you get angry yourself and start yelling, do you freeze and say nothing, or do you become frightened and give in? Maybe your answer is even, “All of the above, depending on the day!” You are not alone. Dealing with childhood anger and explosive rage is one of the toughest things we are faced with as parents.
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The new year gives us a chance to pause and ask ourselves the big questions:  “How am I doing? How can I improve?” If you’re a parent, perhaps you resolve to be a calmer one, a more consistent one, a stricter one, a more involved one. Maybe you’re thinking about the gap between the parent you are and the parent you want to be. Here are four steps for you to effect positive change in your family this year.
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Most couples have experienced this situation at one time or another—you think you should discipline your child a certain way, and your spouse wants to handle it differently. You each become entrenched in your position, and that’s when the fighting starts.
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If you’ve ever led people, you’ve come across followers who would rather act the part than do their part. Those people are pretenders, and while they can sometimes masquerade as players, there are ways to tell the two apart. It’s important to find all the pretenders within an organization, because otherwise, they will steal momentum [...]

Originally posted at: John Maxwell on Leadership
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Knowing the difference between players and pretenders

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