OK, I don’t have one of these vans yet…but these commercials are hilarious… You gotta see the Swaggar Wagon music video and then all the glimpses into the lives of mom and dad with the kids. http://www.youtube.com/user/Sienna

Arianna explains how to become a grandparent.
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Like kids and improv performers we can live life unscripted. The group “Improv Everywhere” creates fun scenes in real life. Recently, they added a 13-member handbell choir to a Salvation Army bell ringer on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. Joy and smiles followed.

Here’s a little more detail on the story.

If there’s one big thing that kids can teach us, it is to learn constantly. Children soak up information like sponges and have a thirst for learning new things. They’re always asking questions. As we age there is a tendency to start thinking that we know it all…especially after achieving advanced degrees. In every industry and occupation, learning more will make you more valuable as an employee. Learning more about relationships and life skills will contribute towards your overall happiness and success in life.

You’re never too old to learn. Pablo Casals, the great cellist was asked why at 85 years of age he continued to practice 5 hours a day. His response was “Because I think I’m getting better.” Life is a school. Think of each day in terms of what lessons you learned so that tomorrow can be better.

Here are some guiding principles for continual learning:
1. Approach learning with an open but discerning mind.
Do not fear to read books outside your experience. Thomas H Huxley said “Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion… or you shall learn nothing.”
“Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life.” — Dr. David M. Burns

2. Be content with not knowing everything. Admit that you never will.
For anyone who thinks they know it all. Here’s a lesson. You don’t. Unfortunately, “know it alls” are probably not reading this or listening to many other people, anyway. Are you lacking friends? The “know it all” attitude is one thing that really turns people off. Try listening for a change. Larry King said “I remind myself every morning: ‘Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So, if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening’.”

3. Overcome the fear of learning or being confused by new found facts.
If what you believe is truly the truth, no newly uncovered facts should present any issues to your beliefs. Winston Churchill is quoted as saying “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”

4. Choose your influencers, mentors, and teachers carefully.
A teacher asked Johnny if he knew his numbers. “Yes, My father taught me.” he said. “What comes after three?” she asked. “Four,” answered the boy. “What comes after six?” “Seven.” “Very good,” said the teacher. “Your dad did a great job. What comes after ten?” “A Jack,” said the child.

A father and son went fishing. Like most children, the boy was curious and asked lots of questions: “How does this boat float?” The father thought for a moment, and replied, “Don’t rightly know, son.”
Still curious, the boy asked, “How do fish breath under water?” Again, the father replied. “Don’t rightly know, son.”
Later the boy asked, “Why is the sky blue?” Again, the father replied. “Don’t rightly know, son.”
Worried that he was being annoying, the boy asked, “Dad, do you mind my asking you all these questions?”
“Of course not son. If you don’t ask questions, you’ll never learn anything!”

These two stories teach us an important lesson. Who we choose to learn from is very important. Look for reliable people that have wisdom built up through experience and education. Are they an expert in their field? Are they trustworthy? Are they living their life consistently with their values and what they teach?

Here are a few practical ideas for putting this valuable learning philosophy into practice:
* Budget for your education.
Are you already done with college? That’s fine. View school as an ongoing expense for your entire life. What are you spending your “tuition” money on this year? Books? DVDs? Taking a mentor out to dinner? Seminars? Online classes? You deserve it. Education is a valuable investment in your future.

* Intentionally learn about some subject you don’t know anything about, never cared about in the past, or that you know you are not good at.
You’ll surprise others and yourself with your newly gained knowledge. For example, I’m not that into cars. I pretty much view them as a necessity for getting from place to place. Yet I listen to the “Car Talk” podcast on a regular basis because it’s funny and educational. Click and Clack (brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi) are some of the funniest radio personalities around. Listeners call in with questions about their cars and get some pretty entertaining and accurate answers. One time a lady called in that said she was in love with her aging Jeep Liberty because it represented adventure and fun. In fact, she wanted to name her Jeep “Patrick Henry” after his words “Give me Liberty or give me death!”. They gave her good advice on what car would fit her needs into the future.

* Learn something about a new hobby or interest. Some examples here might be playing an instrument, learning a foreign language, etc. Research has show that keeping an active mind helps to prevent alzheimer’s disease. If you want to grow, you need the attempt things that you can’t do right now.

* Go to the library. That’s the big building with lots of books you can get for free and no cars in the parking lot.

* Watch less TV. A lot of what we see on TV is not very edifying. Spending the same amount of time doing so many other things will increase the quality of your life. Instead of watching other people doing life, live it yourself! Homer Simpson once said “It wasn’t easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but somehow I managed to fit in eight hours of TV a day.”

* Get an iPod and use it for podcasts or audio books in addition to your music. One of the best and most inexpensive ways of learning is listening to podcasts. Most podcasts are free! It’s something you can do to redeem time you spend in traffic on the way to work or while exercising with your iPod. My top recommendation here is Andy Stanley’s podcasts. Another great speaker to listen and learn from is Andy Andrews.

* Purchase a yearly subscription to Lynda.com or another online learning resource and use it. They are an incredible value. With discipline, you can learn more than you ever could with individual training classes on your own time.

“The more we learn, the more we find out how little we know.” – Tim Cimbura
“Commit yourself to lifelong learning. The most valuable asset you’ll ever have is your mind and what you put into it.” – Brian Tracy, best-selling author

An old prayer encourages us to ask God the following: Help me to be brave in facing new truth, diligent in searching out half truths, and humble enough to know that I don’t have all the truth.
Listen to advice and accept instruction and in the end you will be wise. — Proverbs 19:20

Recently, we found a fun bean bag chair from CordaRoys. This product is way better than the bean bag chairs I had as a kid. It’s not filled with thousands of Styrofoam beads that are impossible to clean up if the bag ever tears (or gets opened by a curious kid). Inside it’s got chunks of foam that are soft and resilient. The really cool part about this chair is that there is a bed inside! Unzip the bean bag cover and pull out the mattress for an extra sleep over bed.

If you ever need proof of the second law of thermodynamics, then you should live with children under the age of five. This law states that all things tend toward disorder naturally increasing entropy.

This is most evident after cleaning our home. Kids affect the “entropy” immediately. Any order created by putting things in their proper place, vacuuming, washing, etc. can be turned into a complete mess within seconds. Clean clothes are just waiting for a spill or to get unfolded. Yogurt covered hands will most certainly end with hand prints on the windows and mirrors. Eating Nutella or spaghetti are recipes for disaster. Toys get strewn about all over the house.

To help combat this issue, I now choose the toys I purchase for our kids by certain important qualities. I ask myself the following questions before making my choices:

1. Does it make any sort of noise? Play drum sets, flutes, whistles, and electronics with annoying buzzer sounds are out. Anyone giving my children these kinds of toys is no longer a friend of the family.

2. How many microscopic pieces are present or are there more than two parts to the toy? Arianna has some small princess dolls. Each individual doll has little plastic shoes, jewelry, a crown, clothes and accessories. These parts are constantly found throughout the home. In fact, the favorite activity of my daughters with regard to dolls seems to be to undress them and leave the clothes all over the home. I’ll find a bin full of naked princesses and later find their outfits under the couch, in the play oven, used as a bookmark, etc. Decks of cards and puzzle pieces stay ordered for approximately 45 seconds before they are bent, lost, or strewn about the home. Puzzles can be built once. Any subsequent attempt to put it together again will yield a minimum of 1 piece missing…kind of like Humpty Dumpty.

3. Does it require an infinite number of batteries? I’m convinced that kids toys and accessories that eat batteries were developed as a scam by Eveready or Duracell to sell more batteries. For a while we had a baby swing that required 20 Triple D cells for operation… the equivalent of a small nuclear power plant. Can we get wind generators for the toys?

4. Does it require an advanced degree to remove it from the box? I’m really glad I went to school for electrical engineering. Removing toys from boxes at Christmas is like diffusing a bomb. “Get me the wire cutters honey!”

If the toy fails any of these tests, it’s less of an option. OK…in reality…we do allow the kids to play quite a lot.

The other day, finger painting sounded like a good idea to keep the kids busy in a creative activity. About 20 minutes later my wife checked on the girls to find that they had completely covered themselves (instead of the paper) with finger paint. What fun! It was now finger…hand, hair, arm, leg, and face paint.
So my wife finally realized her dream of being a CIA agent as she said “Hands up in the air. Nobody move!” As we were cleaning them up I thought to myself “I wish I had taken a photo of that. Now I’ll have to stage the photo later.”

I’ve found that I need to resist the need to be clean all the time. Sometimes letting things be messy for a while helps them to get cleaned up better in the end. This is really a struggle for me. I’m kind of an organization and neat freak with tendencies toward perfectionism. I have a Dymo Letra Tag label maker that I hold in a holster. (Only use the plastic tape.) I build custom databases where every piece of information requires a place.

Life is about getting all messy and then cleaning up. As much as we desire to protect our kids and keep things neat, sometimes we have to let them make mistakes and get into messes on their own to learn a lesson.

Being around kids will sure help to CURE you of perfectionism…or drive you batty. I say get used to it. Life is messy. Be OK with it. You’ll have more fun.

Then one day your dream will come true like it just did a few minutes ago. My oldest daughter Arianna started cleaning up the house on her own. She said: “I want things to look shiny. If anything looks dirty, I’m going to clean it all up.” Then she proceeded to spray Windex into the DVD player. OK…two steps forward and one step back.

Sometimes we just need a break from our normal routine. One day recently at Central Train Station in Antwerp, Belgium something original happened.

How would you react if suddenly the world around you started singing and dancing? Hopefully you’d smile and enjoy it. I’m sure that’s what a kid would do. In fact, they might try to join in.

Hazel McCallion has been the mayor of Mississauga, Ontario Canada for 31 years…11 consecutive terms! She is still the mayor at 88 years old with a 91% approval rating! The city is debt free and even has $700 million in reserves banked. She’s an inspiration and true Child at Heart. See her video story here via the Rick Mercer Report…

Almost makes me want to move there…and take up hockey.

I often complete projects around the house. I like to think of myself as quite the handyman. I learned a lot growing up from my grandfathers about electricity, carpentry, plumbing, etc. The latest project was replacing of all the door handles to some nickel egg-shaped ones that are more trendy and stylish. Once complete, there was another pressing project. Replace all the door HINGES to match. I tend toward perfectionism and it really bothered me that they weren’t the same metal. There were somewhere around 60 hinges to replace on 20 doors…about 3-5 hours I estimated.

I’ve removed a door before by popping the pins on the hinges. It seemed pretty simple to replace the hinges the same way. So my first 5 doors went like this:
PROCESS 1
Requirements: 1 people, hammer, screwdriver, nail to help pop pin, drill (with screwdriver tip)
Time: 15 minutes/door
1. Pop the pins from the door.
2. Remove door.
3. Remove hinges from door and jamb.
4. Remove pins from new hinges.
5. Remove door and set to the side.
6. Install new hinges on the door and jamb.
7. Place door back up with the help of my wife.
8. Replace pins.

After a while, my wife got tired of helping so I thought of a way to do it on my own. Luckily, she was easily replaceable…by a folded newspaper that I slipped under the door to hold it up at the right height. (She is not replaceable by a newspaper in all circumstances.) I felt pretty smart about this process improvement. I also thought about the pin popping…maybe I didn’t need to do that either. So I eliminated one worker, some tools, and made the job simpler and faster:
PROCESS 2
Requirements: 1 person, drill, newspaper
Time: 10 min/door
1. Insert folded newspaper under door.
2. Remove 3 hinges from door and jamb.
3. Remove door and set to the side.
4. Install new hinges on the door.
5. Attach door hinges to jamb carefully while balancing on newspaper.
And so went the next 10 doors… I had a little helper during this period. Brielle would pick up the loose screws and place them into a little bag. It kept her busy.

Nearing the end of the job, my older daughter (4) Arianna showed up.
“Daddy, What are those?”
“They’re hinges.”
“Why are you taking off all the hinges?”
“Because I need to replace them all.”

Her question “Why?” is a common one for kids. It made me think for a moment. Why WAS I taking off ALL the hinges? Hmmm…Why not take off only one hinge…at a time? I tried it and it totally simplified the process:
PROCESS 3
Requirements: 1 person, drill
Time: 5 minutes/door
1. Remove one hinge
2. Replace the hinge
3. Repeat two more times.
You see, when you only remove one hinge at a time, the other two hinges hold the door in place! It was so simple and fast that I actually felt stupid at the end…that I had wasted my time doing almost all the other doors the hard way.

It required the outside perspective of my little girl to give me the new solution. I was so close to the problem and thinking about how I had done things in the past that it wasn’t obvious how to improve it. It wasn’t even that she exactly knew what the right solution was…but she did know what question to ask to make me think of it.

If you’re looking for creativity, it often helps to ask a child. If you can explain it to them then you must understand the problem pretty well. Defining the problem well is the first step. Then listen with an open mind to what solution they propose. It may lead you to the next big idea…a solution that could really help you.

The most valuable thing I did today was play with my two girls (2 and 4 years old) for 30 minutes. They were dressed for fun in their princess garb with bare feet. It was a simple game that combined elements of tag, hide and seek, capture, and a huge element of surprise. We made up the “rules” as we went.

Our basement is full of hiding places, dark corners (when the lights are off), and most importantly, a “loop” that kids require for running around and chasing each other in circles. It would start by saying “I’m going to get you!” and the chase began. I’d double back and surprise them on the other side of the loop. They would scream with delight and turn around to run the other direction immediately and without thought. Sometimes they wanted to get caught and then attempt escape from the couch and pillow fortress. They would hide and I’d search for them. Hearing their giggles as I walked by “unknowingly” made it easy to find them. I’d hide behind a couch or table and surprise them. A soft blanket provided another great hiding place as well as a furry “hug monster”.

Mostly, they just loved the surprise of never knowing where I’d show up next. I sure got my aerobics workout for the day, had fun, and built a memory for my kids at the same time. I know that TIME together speaks love to them. So, although, the game could seem pointless and non-productive, its results will last a lifetime as they remember the fun they had together with their dad.

Life is full of twists, turns, and surprises. There are many things we might never expect would happen to us like job loss, divorces, health issues, etc. All these things are CHANGE that we have to adapt to. It is our choice HOW we handle the change.

If we can delight as kids do in the change, embrace it, and immediately change our direction, plan, and attitude to deal with it we are so much better off. We may not understand WHY. Sometimes there aren’t good reasons. Life is just that way. So much is out of our control. When we accept and say “yes” to whatever the next thing is we can move on and even inspire others.

Ask yourself: What are the best things I can do TODAY to move forward? That’s all you can do. You can’t expect more from yourself. You can only work with what information you know right now. Ask trusted advisors for help when you don’t know what to do. Life will go on and you can go on with it.