17 Ways To Teach Your Kids To Be Financially Independent

Whether your child is just a toddler, a teenager, or a young adult in college, it’s difficult to even think of teaching your kids about personal finance, especially when sometimes you’re not even sure yourself. The best way to learn is by teaching. So here are the seventeen essential things you must convey to your kids in order to instill the idea of becoming financially independent. Who knows, by teaching these essential things, you might learn a thing or two yourself!

It might be difficult to say this to your kids if this is what you’ve been doing all your life, but times are changing and it’s becoming increasingly clear that we must learn to adapt and find multiple streams of income, and even embrace entrepreneurship. The traditional “one job till retirement” model is not working anymore, so get out of denial fast and let your kids learn about entrepreneurship.

This is just not true. There are so many ways to invest your money that are actually safer than buying a house. (Roth IRAs, index funds, lifecycle funds, high yield savings accounts, for example!) Educate yourself about the stock market and these forms of investment if you don’t know already, and prepare your kids to go down the correct path when it comes to investing.

Experts on personal finance will agree with me on this one, (including one of my favorites, Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You To Be Rich.) Automating your money and bills is one of the best ways to keep your finances in top shape, earn stellar credit, curb overspending, and–best of all–not stress out about paying bills on time. Automation means you siphon your income into various channels each month (or each week) such as into a high yield savings account, an investment account, a credit card, and finally all your bills. This method forces you to “pay yourself first” by saving and investing, and then pay all your bills on time–leaving you with your true budget amount to spend for other things. If you don’t do this already–start now. Why not learn by teaching your kids about it first?

Most Americans do credit cards the wrong way. The most important way to maintain good credit is to stop paying the minimum every month. Pay your balance back in full at the end of the month. If you can’t do this, it means you are living above your means, and that is no way to live. You can’t get financially independent by living above your means. Teach your kids how to use a credit card the right way, and tell them to think about paying it back in full at the end of the month whenever they want to pull out their credit cards to buy something. Credit cards, if used correctly, offer a tremendous amount of perks such a free flights, insurance, and even fee reductions, but only if your credit is in tip-top shape.

Don’t use the brick and mortar banks anymore. The key here is online banks. The lower overhead of not having physical buildings means that these online banks don’t have ATM fees and overdraft fees, and they certainly don’t charge you for a checking account–even if you don’t have direct deposit! These fees are such a scam. Stop paying useless fees to the banks. You can also start by setting up an online, free checking account for your kids (when it is the right time), and help them set up a high yield savings account online as well, so they can have fun watching their money grow. Contrary to popular belief, money does grow–if you let it. My favorite online checking account is the Charles Schwab Bank High Yield Investor Checking Account, and my favorite high yield savings account is American Express Personal Online Savings Account with a current steady yield of .85%.

What? You don’t know how the stock market works? Well, neither do most experts! If you don’t know how to invest yourself, you should learn. But don’t worry–it’s pretty easy. There is such a thing as automatic investing, and it’s not about picking stocks. It’s all about automatic diversification of stocks. You need to stop being afraid of investing. There are many great resources to learn about this now, so start. Even if you are not doing it, your kids should as soon as they are old enough. There are some very easy and safe ways to invest in the stock market. Life-cycle funds automatically diversify your investments between stocks and bonds based on your age, while index funds offer a bit more customization. It will take one weekend to learn more about all this, and then you can teach your kids.

Stop buying things you don’t need and accumulating crap. Kids learn by osmosis. If they see you doing something, they will copy. You need to show them what smart buying is all about. First of all, have a budget and stay within it. Your budget can include calculated indulgences, of course! The point here is: you can’t teach good personal finance if you don’t at least try to practice it yourself.

Encouraging your kids to learn useful skills is one of the best ways to secure their financial future. Professions that will be beneficial in the future are not what parents have traditionally thought fruitful, such as studying to become doctors and lawyers. It’s actually more beneficial these days to learn creative skills such as design, art, and computer programming (yes, programming is quite creative.) Creativity is not so easily outsourced. Start with online schools such as skillshare, code academy, skillcrush, and code.org.

It may not be 100% beneficial for the next generation of kids to all go to traditional colleges and get formal education. MOOCs (massive open online courses) are changing the way we view traditional education, and so is the abundance of student-loan debt enslaving the whole millennial generation. Your child’s generation doesn’t need to go through this. There are better ways!

Personal branding online these days is essential for creating wealth. Kids are well prepared for this if you teach them how to curate and edit what they say and how they say it. Remind them that their online persona cannot be erased, and they need to avoid embarrassing mistakes. Each person should have a message to the world–help them start developing it. They may only be telling it to their friends now, but in the future it will be to co-workers, clients, bosses, and investors. Teach them how to manage their public image instead of completely discouraging the use of social media. It will be a necessary tool for the development of their careers later in life.

Leadership capability is a pretty accurate indicator of success in an individual. Leadership skills include proactivity, responsibility, empathy, creativity, vision, and public speaking skills. Don’t underestimate the importance of teaching these types of skills, even if you believe your child is an introvert. Some of the best and most influential leaders are self-proclaimed introverts. Introversion doesn’t mean they won’t be natural leaders.

Someone once said average people think emotionally about money while rich people think logically–like a puzzle game. Talk to your kids about money–don’t make it a taboo subject. Show them how to think about it logically, and make their allowance and wealth accumulation into a game. For example, create a good incentive: “If you make ten dollars selling lemonade, I will double it or triple it.” Encourage working for money using creativity, so that it is not always associated with exchanging time for money but associated with creativity instead. Help them create something, and sell it. Don’t only teach them to sell, teach them to leverage their skills to create something of value. The lemonade stand lesson is so important. These days, it can also be done online (i.e. set up an online shop, help them create a blog.) Tell them to use their allowance to create more money, instead of spending it all away.

It is important to plant the seed of inspiration. Growing up with a vision–however small–is what differentiates the ones who make it big from the average ones. If your kids get inspired, they will want to create something of value and importance in the world as well. Kids are idealists of the best kind, with beautiful imaginations of endless possibilities. Don’t block this, enhance it by showing them the world of possibilities, not the world of fear, stability, security, and living only for yourself. Give them something to dream about, and someone to help.

Your kid loves games and movies? Well, that’s a really good thing! These industries are creative powerhouses. You can use this to your advantage. Kids love to see how things are made, the behind-the-scenes, how things are put together. Capitalize on their love of games and movies by showing them the processes behind how these creative projects get made. Show them documentaries about the sets, the teams, the artwork behind it all. Take them to studios or movie sets, find YouTube videos explaining how their favorite games are made, the technologies behind them, the budgets. Before you know it, they will be interested in the craft behind everything instead of just consuming things mindlessly. This will give them so much more to work with when deciding on what they want to do with their lives.

Your kid will probably need time to figure things out. But don’t assume you know best. Encourage their natural talents, interests and habits, and let them know it is OK to make money by doing what they love. This is how every successful person is doing it these days. Don’t judge them by your own measures of what it means to be successful. Take a good look at your own advice and life and see if 20 or 30 years ago you would have taken the same path. Maybe, maybe not. Figure out what their strengths are and help them craft their own path to riches–even if it goes against your fundamental beliefs about making money. The game changers of today’s business world are authentic creatives doing what they love. Don’t let you kids fall behind.

Don’t teach them to be afraid of accumulating money. Wealth can be used to do good in the world. We need more philanthropists and innovators in our world. There are so many important problems to solve and places to go. If everyone settled into living a safe life with a steady job, there would be no advancement. Don’t forget that safety is only an illusion and no amount of “job security” can keep your kids safe. They have a chance to learn from you now–not the hard way by losing a job or by being in massive debt.

The road to riches is paved with persistent, accumulated actions. Sometimes even mini-actions. Don’t tell your kids their dreams are too big. Don’t tell them the only way to do that is by winning the lotto. It’s simply not true. Help them take the first steps by having 100% faith in their wildest dreams and showing them ways to start on that path.

Some practical tips to save up your money: How Can I Save Money? 25 Tips on How to Save Money Fast

Featured photo credit: VividImageInc via Flickr

Jesicka Labud is co-founder and editor at Two Non-Techies, Empowering Non-Techies to Learn to Code and Build Awesome Start-ups. She tweets at @TwoNonTechies and is founder of Tipabl, a social giving platform. She is also a member of and former V.P. of Public Relations for Toastmasters International.

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Greed Is Good! How Financial Advice From Gordon Gekko and Vito Corleone Can Teach You About Credit Management

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How to Teach Your Children Mind-Mapping

Do you have children? Would you like to give them more fun in studying? Do you want to help them in ace-ing their tests at school? If so, you should definitely continue reading, as there are amazing things your child can learn from you! After reading this article, you will be a personal mind-mapping coach for your child.

Most people know about mind-mapping already. Do you use it yourself as well? I am sure most people use or have used the technique in one form or the other. The reason it works so well is because it makes use of both sides of your brain, taking the slightly more analytical left side and using words and relationships. It also benefits from the slightly more creative or colourful right side, using images and colours.

For adults this does wonders: We normally tend to use more of the ‘left’ side of our brains, using more words than images, more relationships than colours. Children, on the other hand, tend to work the other way around. For young children who have not been exposed to the adult way of thinking, drawing pictures still comes as natural. This is very important when you want to teach them mind-mapping.

I have to correct myself immediately when I write “teach them”, as we should not teach them mind-mapping: the moment we do that, we will only try to impose our rules and limitations onto their way of thinking. I believe we should help them explore this whole brain thinking on their own. The moment children learn mind-mapping or visual mapping techniques, they will have an advantage over the people who aren’t using these tools. They will be able to summarize books more quickly, create better notes, outline ideas and stories much more easily, etc. In short, their time in school becomes a lot more fun! They will enjoy studying and get better grades.

You are a coach, not a teacher. You are there to assist your child in finding out about different ways to outline ideas, thoughts and books, so don’t judge. Don’t impose ideas. Let them see where this journey will take them.

Great, now we have that out of our way, we can begin.

First, you make sure your child gets a big sheet of paper and a couple of different pens. You only tell your child that the next exercise is something they should be drawing; they can be as creative as possible.

Take a piece from one of their school books, or tell a story, making sure you use enough image words (words that are easily transformed into pictures). Image words could be those such as “tree”, “house”, “car”, or “power plant” no, I am just kidding… although, your child could probably create a really cool picture of that!).

While you tell the story or read from the book, let your child draw.

After you are done, and your child is done drawing, you ask them to tell the story again using their drawing. Can they do that? Is their story about the same as the one you told? If so, you and your child did a wonderful job. If not, what caused the difference? Were the images not powerful enough? Or perhaps did you not use enough image words? Investigate together.

When your child knows how to do this, you can even go one step further. Take a new sheet of paper, and divide it in a couple of areas (the same number as you have topics in your story). The process starts all over again. You talk, your child draws. Just make sure that each topic is drawn in a single section. You then ask your child to recall the story using the drawing, and give them a pen to draw a line from one part of the story to the other. This is your branch!

If there are parts in your story that you could add more sub branches to, ask your child to add more (small) images with even more pictures. In the end, your child creates something that is almost a real mind map (perhaps even better than any mind map you ever created before!). For the real overachieving parent, you can do one more thing: after you created the map, give your child a new piece of paper and let them re-create the entire map from memory. You can of course give hints about what to add when they are lost—you might be amazed how wonderful their memory is!

The final step is that you step away from your child, and you let them go through a book and create the images and story themselves.

This is the moment your child knows how to outline their ideas, thoughts, books, and much more in a visual map, without your assistance! The maps may not be what traditional mind mappers feel is right, but the map helps them achieve their goal and enjoy studying again.

Don’t worry if your child doesn’t create a perfect map—it isn’t about perfect maps, remember? This is all about your child handling information in a smarter, more efficient manner, and with more fun. The entire process of your child being able to do that depends on their age, interest in the topics, and perhaps even if it is wonderful weather outside. What I can say is that you usually can expect results quickly. Children love to draw, and this is completely in line with their way of thinking.

From now on, make sure you help your child when they are stuck or need motivation.

Action point 1: Be a supportive coach, not a parent who says what is right and wrong.

Action point 2: Use the step-by-step outline above to teach your child mind mapping.

Action point 3: Just sit back and smile when your child shows you their work (not much action, but a great feeling!)

Enjoy!

Mind map focuses on time management in general: How to Use a Mind Map to Organize Your Life

Featured photo credit: eelke dekker via Flickr

Arjen ter Hoeve is a coach, family guy, writer, friend who has a passion for creating balance in mind and information. When you are ready to make powerful changes in your working and studying habits, download his exclusive guide.

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Flip this lesson! A new way to teach with video from TED-Ed

Announcing a new way to use video to create customized lessons: the “Flip This Lesson” feature from TED-Ed, now in beta at ed.ted.com.

With this feature, educators can use, tweak, or completely redo any video lesson featured on TED-Ed, or create lessons from scratch based on a TEDTalk or any video from YouTube. How? Just plug the video in and start writing questions, comments, even quizzes — then save the lesson as a private link and share with your students. The site allows you to see who’s completed the lessons and track individual progress. It’s still in beta, but we’re so excited about this feature we had to share.

Watch the short video to learn how it works:

“Flip This Lesson” is an open platform — you can create a lesson from any video, whether from the TED-Ed library, from more than 1,000 TEDTalks, or from any video on YouTube. Read Chris Anderson’s blog post about why we built TED-Ed as an open platform. Read the full press announcement here. And explore a sample lesson Chris made as a proof-of-concept, based on a great new TED-Ed talk.

Then — go forth and write lessons of your own!

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New TED Book asks: can changing how we teach make our kids smarter, more creative?

Ten years ago, educator Sugata Mitra and his colleagues cracked open a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed a networked PC, and left it there for the local children to freely explore. What they quickly saw in their ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiment was that kids from one of the most desperately poor areas of the world could, without instruction, quickly learn how the PC operated. The children also freely collaborated, exploring the world of high-tech online connectivity with ease. The experiment (which provided the inspiration for the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire) was the dawning of Mitra’s introduction to self-organized learning, and it would shape the next decade of his research. Beyond the Hole in the Wall: Discover the Power of Self-Organized Learning is an important update to Mitra’s groundbreaking work, and offers new research and ideas that show how self-directed learning can make kids smarter and more creative. Mitra provides step-by-step instruction on how to integrate it into any classroom. and the book includes a foreword by Nicholas Negroponte, founder of both MIT’s Media Lab and the One Laptop per Child Association.. Beyond The Hole in the Wall offers important lessons that could reshape our schools and reinvigorate our educational system. We recently spoke with Mitra about his ideas.

What is self-organized learning?
In most schools, we measure children on what they know. By and large, they have to memorize the content of whatever test is coming up. Because measuring the results of rote learning is easy, rote prevails. What kids know is just not important in comparison with whether they can think.

Self-organized learning is a process where children in groups take on a topic or question which they then research using the Internet. While doing it, they have myriad discussions with each other that deepen their understanding of the answer. Along the way, there is no adult supervision or guidance of any sort.

How is this form of learning better?
Experiments show that children in unsupervised groups are capable of answering questions many years ahead of the material they’re learning in school. In fact, they seem to enjoy the absence of adult supervision, and they are very confident of finding the right answer. Ultimately, they retain the learning effortlessly and for years, much longer than what we see with rote memorization of facts and figures.

What are the barriers that stand in the way of its widespread adoption?
The existing Victorian system of education was created to mass-produce identical human beings, mainly to serve an aristocracy, and, in modern times, an industrial elite. Governments find it difficult to move away from this model, because it has worked. But in a tech-driven knowledge economy this method is not needed anymore, and it will not serve us. But too often we see that teachers and educational administrators feel threatened by self-organized learning. They, therefore, think it is not learning at all.

Does the idea of self-organized learning work better with today’s child, who is often highly wired and making a wide range of online choices each day?
Yes, it does. Right now, we have a generation of children 16 years old or younger who have never known a world without many of the connecting technologies that we take for granted and rely on heavily. How do these devices affect, and even improve, how we absorb information? Self-organized learning would not work at all without the Internet. Educationists have suggested this type of instruction as a method for years, but the resources were not there until recently. Now, with the Internet, we have the means and the capabilities to watch self-organized learning flourish. It’s a very exciting time.

Beyond the Hole in the Wall: Discover the Power of Self-Organized Learning is part of the TED Books series, which is available for the Kindle and Nook as well as on Apple’s iBookstore.

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Deadline extended to Monday, Dec. 5: Do you have a lesson to teach? Submit to TED2012: The Classroom

Deadline extended to submit your short video: Dec. 5! For our next conference — TED2012: Full Spectrum — we’re looking for 10 of the world’s best teachers to take the TED stage during a special session we’re calling The Classroom. We’re accepting video nominations to help track these people down. You can nominate yourself or a remarkable educator we should know about — who doesn’t have to be a teacher in the traditional sense.

How to nominate: Make a video or point us to an existing video, read the details below, and then nominate yourself or another person >>

After TED, talks from The Classroom will have a life online as part of TED-Ed, a new initiative we’re launching in 2012. With TED-Ed, we are creating a library of videos just for educators and students. The videos will be arranged using teacher-centric/learner-centric categories and tags, designed to help teachers quickly discover the perfect video for the lesson at hand. The videos will also be arranged into playlists to give students a multidisciplinary, immersive insight into a learning concept.

The talks we’re looking for will each:

+ be shorter than 10 minutes
+ contain informative material, not just inspiring messages
+ be delivered with a huge amount of passion for the topic
+ engage an audience from age 14 to adult
+ be something you might imagine a teacher using in the classroom as video to supplement a lesson.

We’re especially keen to include brilliant EXPLANATIONS, meaningful A-HA moments, powerful STORIES, indelible IMAGES.

Here are a few links to talks that fit the bill:

Vilayanur Ramachandran on mirror neurons

David Gallo shares underwater astonishments

This explanation of special relativity

Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different?

Now, a couple of notes about what we’re not looking for. For this session, we do not want talks about teaching methods, education reform or education in general. We are not looking for an inspiring, “go forth,” commencement-style talk. We do love those sometimes, but they’re not a fit for this session.

You must submit a short video to enter.

The deadline for nominations is December 5, 2011, at midnight Eastern. We’ll contact the speakers we’ve chosen with invitations (or more questions) by December 12, 2011.

TED2012 takes place February 27-March 2, 2012, in Long Beach, California. The Classroom session will take place on March 2. We’ll cover coach travel, good accommodations, and a pass to TED for those 10 amazing teachers who take the stage.

We hope you’ll share your best lessons (or teachers) with us. Good luck!

Nominate yourself or another person >>

Photo of David Gallo by Ryan Lash

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Do you have a lesson to teach? Seeking nominations for TED2012: The Classroom

For the upcoming TED conference — TED2012: Full Spectrum — we’re looking for 10 of the world’s best teachers to take the TED stage during a special session we’re calling The Classroom. We’re accepting nominations to help track these people down. You can nominate yourself or a remarkable educator we should know about — who doesn’t have to be a teacher in the traditional sense.

After TED, these talks will have a life online as part of TED-Ed, a new initiative we’re launching in 2012. With TED-Ed, we are creating a library of videos sepcifically for educators and students. The videos will be arranged using teacher-centric/learner-centric categories and tags, designed to help teachers quickly discover the perfect video for the lesson at hand. The videos will also be arranged into playlists to give students a multidisciplinary, immersive insight into a learning concept.

The talks we’re looking for will each:

+ be shorter than 10 minutes
+ contain informative material, not just inspiring messages
+ be delivered with a huge amount of passion for the topic
+ engage an audience from age 14 to adult
+ be something you might imagine a teacher using in the classroom as video to supplement a lesson.

We’re especially keen to include brilliant EXPLANATIONS, meaningful A-HA moments, powerful STORIES, indelible IMAGES.

Here are a few links to talks that fit the bill:

Vilayanur Ramachandran on mirror neurons

David Gallo shares underwater astonishments

This explanation of special relativity

Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different?

Now, a couple of notes about what we’re not looking for. For this session, we do not want talks about teaching methods, education reform or education in general. We are not looking for an inspiring, “go forth,” commencement-style talk. We do love those sometimes, but they’re not a fit for this session.

The deadline for nominations is November 30, 2011, at midnight Eastern, and we’ll contact the speakers we’ve chosen with invitations (or more questions) by December 12, 2011.

TED2012 takes place February 27-March 2, 2012, in Long Beach, California. The Classroom session will take place on March 2. We’ll cover coach travel, good accommodations, and a pass to TED for those 10 amazing teachers who take the stage.

We hope you’ll share your best lessons (or teachers) with us. Good luck!

Nominate yourself or another person >>

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What Dental Floss Can Teach Us About Time Management

Smile...you're managing your time better!

Flossing your teeth is one of the best examples of the principles of time management. Why?

Well, we all know it’s something you should do, yet probably don’t do.

After you see your dentist, you vow to do better this time, you stay on it for a few days, maybe, and then let it go again, until your next appointment. Why does this happen? Well, flossing is a hassle, and the payoff is in the distant future. If I told you I’d give you a million bucks if you flossed your teeth right now, you’d run out and get some floss and make it happen, right? Of course!

But that’s not your reality.

The reality is that if you spend a few minutes now before bed time, you will be less likely to get cavities, lose your teeth, or suffer gum disease in the future — perhaps in the distant future, decades from now. When you are 75, you will wish you had started flossing when you were 30, but by then it will be too late. Furthermore, research has shown that people who floss actually live longer then people who don’t. Think about that. When you are on death’s door decades from now, you will wish you had a few more healthy years in you, to see your grandkids, to share with your husband or wife, to continue your life’s work. That puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? You can give yourself that gift, but you will need to start flossing today.

So, how will you stay motivated today when the payoff won’t come for so many years? You know you should floss, but should is not enough. You need to create a visceral, emotional payoff that you can experience now, that will motivate you to keep going. Perhaps it’s as simple as a mantra you repeat to yourself as you pick up the floss each night: “I am giving myself the gift of a longer life,” or “I’m going to have a sexy smile when I’m 75!”

Or maybe you imagine smiling as your grandkids bounce on your knee, or as you walk your granddaughter down the aisle to get married, or play golf with your best friend, whatever has meaning for you. Is that worth a few minutes of hassle right now? Of course it is!

Now, perhaps you are motivated by avoiding pain. In that case imagine something awful, like having no teeth, not being able to enjoy a juicy apple or hearty steak, but you can avoid that with a few minutes of work right now. Worth it, right?

Maybe none of that is sufficient. The payoff is too far away, too abstract. Fair enough. If you have kids, or if you have ever worked with kids, you surely know that they can be motivated by immediate rewards. Floss your teeth, and get a gold star on the chart! Collect ten stars and you get a reward, like a favorite coffee drink or a trip to the movies. Yes, this is bribery, and every parent and teacher on this earth has resorted to it many times, because used well, it works! Find a reward that is motivating and use that to incentivize yourself to floss. Create a chart if you need to, or find an app.

When I was 10, my aunt told me she would give me five dollars if I finished my green beans. I choked them down in seconds. She thought it proved that I actually liked them. I didn’t, but I had a clear picture of the reward for doing something I didn’t want to do — which was the five dollars she promised.

The bottom line is you want to find a way to experience some satisfaction today, even though the benefit of flossing won’t be felt for years. Create this kind of reward for yourself, and not just flossing — but anything — becomes possible.

David Kaiser, PhD, is an Executive Coach who helps his clients make better use of their time, from productivity to living their life's mission. He is the CEO of Dark Matter Consulting (www.DarkMatterConsulting.com)

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What Pets Can Truly Teach Us Humans

Having been a dog owner since 1979, I can claim with absolute confidence that pets have an uncanny ability to teach us humans certain things better than any person can. If you are willing to allow pets to become part of your personal development team, here are some of the things that they can teach you.

Dogs are especially good at teaching us what unconditional love is. They love you no matter how much money you make, what kind of car you drive (or lack of one), how bad your hair is and what kind of day you’re having. When you come home, they are always glad to see you. They are always going to be with you no matter how rough life gets (in contrast to many humans unfortunately).

This is true unconditional love.

Even if you accidentally hurt them during a grooming or nail clipping section, they always forgive you. All they ask for in return is food, shelter and attention. Dogs in particular, give you tons of love back and personally, I think us humans get a pretty darn good deal out of this arrangement.

Pets in general are great teachers of responsibility, especially for children. When a new pet arrives at home, very soon the kids will learn that there is a huge responsibility in pet ownership. That cute puppy or kitten is not like a stuffed toy that can be left alone when you are finished with it. Instead, it makes noise, it pees, poos and barfs. It also rips things up and requires a lot of consistent training.

Failing to realize this responsibility has unfortunately resulted in many unwanted dogs and cats left abandoned at the animal shelters. This is a real tragedy. I personally think that all prospective pet owners should be educated on pet ownership before taking in a live pet.

The successful households with pets who do learn a lot about how to properly care for them will be immensely rewarded. The kids who actively help in the care of pets will likely grow up to be responsible adults too.

Interestingly enough, we also learn about compassion through our pets but unfortunately, it is always a very difficult lesson as it is taught near the end of our beloved friends’ lives. I learned this lesson especially hard with my first dog Pepper.

Pepper’s health was plunging pretty fast in his 15th year due to Cushing’s Syndrome. A specialist vet recommended against surgery because of Pepper’s age. Pepper soon became quite uncomfortable as he started to yelp on a frequent basis. I didn’t know what to do as I was confronted by this situation for the first time in my life. I was also too hesitant to put him to sleep as I thought that his discomfort would just be temporary.

In fact, my own reaction was so bad that I actually got mad at him for being so noisy. Then one morning when I got up, my other dog Max was waiting for me at my bedroom door. This was quite unusual as my two dogs were usually together somewhere. I found Pepper in another part of my home as he had passed away during the night.

Then I realized that my hesitation and delay in putting him to sleep, caused my precious friend unnecessary suffering. In fact, this is one of the very few regrets that I actually have in my life. I should have taken the right action as soon as Pepper was hurting.

This tough lesson of compassion enabled me never to make such a big mistake again. When it was time for Max to go, I listened to my vet. When he told me that Max was suffering, I didn’t hesitate this time. I did however, request that I be there.

During the euthanasia procedure, I held Max so that I was the last thing he saw, smelled, heard and felt. I wanted him to know that somebody who loves him was there to say goodbye rather than to leave him alone with strangers in a cold, clinical animal hospital setting.

This time, although extremely painful, I knew that I did the right thing out of compassion, thanks to the lesson Pepper taught me.

Henry Peter Smith (Chris's puppy)

So you see, unconditional love, responsibility and compassion are very precious lessons that pets can teach us. As an author, I dedicated my books to Pepper and Max for being the greatest teachers I’ve ever had. And now I carry the lessons they taught me over to my current dogs, Chester and Roxie, a high maintenance brother-sister team (but extremely rewarding).

I really believe that pet ownership can play a big part in our personal development. As long as we do the right thing by getting properly educated about the realities of caring for them, pets can be among the greatest teachers in your life.

I would love to get your thoughts on your own experiences with pets and how they have taught you as well. Please comment below.

Clint Cora is a motivational speaker, author & Karate World Champion based near Toronto, Canada. Get his FREE 3-part Personal Development Video Series on how to expand your comfort zone and finally conquer even your most daunting goals in life.

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Lessons Learned: What The Liquidation Of Borders Can Teach Us About Stagnation

Getty Images / Jeff Mitchell

If you haven’t heard the news about Borders shutting down its remaining retail stores, then Paid Content has got your back:

“Borders is closing its 399 remaining stores and 11,000 employees are being laid off. In a statement, Borders Group President Mike Edwards said, “We were all working hard towards a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, e-reader revolution, and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now.””

Being a past Borders’ customer this news sort of saddens me, especially when about 4 months ago they closed my local store. But to tell you the truth it really isn’t that surprising. Borders Group President Mr. Edwards is right about the “headwinds” and the “rapidly changing book industry” but this the exact cause of why Borders is going totally out of business.

The real reason is stagnation and the idea that “we are too big to fail”, not new unpredictable markets that just swooped in and took up all their business.

Years ago, Borders could have done something to counteract the adoption of the Kindle and by the time the iPad made its way to consumer’s hands, Borders was pretty much out of luck.

I’m a technologist and developer. Because of that, having a up-to-date skills and understanding of technology is something that I have to spend time and attention on. Without it, the “headwinds” of my industry will sweep me away and make me useless. Without spending considerable effort staying current my “changing industry” will eat me alive. Sounds familiar, huh?

So, instead of sitting back and being happy with where you are in your skills and understanding of your profession or industry, you should always be identifying opportunities to improve yourself by learning and gaining a better understanding of your work. If you aren’t doing that, then you are stagnating just as Borders has.

Via [Paid Content]

Chris is a developer, writer, tech enthusiast, and husband. He holds a degree in MIS and CMPSC from Penn State Behrend. Chris is also interested in personal productivity and creativity and how to utilize technology to get more things done. Check out his tech writing at androinica.com where he writes about Android.

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What Yoga Can Teach Us About Productivity

Earlier, I talked about how you can use meditation practices “in real time,” while you’re working on a task, to stay focused and motivated.  In this post, I’ll discuss how some forms of movement and breathing from yoga can help you find efficiency and ease in your work.

Usually, when we think about productivity, images of well-organized e-mail inboxes and color-coded folders come to mind.  But these things alone aren’t enough to make us efficient.  If our minds aren’t disciplined — our attention is scattered, or we feel sluggish or anxious — work will be a struggle, no matter how organized our workspace is.

How do we discipline our minds?  I’ve found the ancient practice of hatha yoga — the stretches and breathing we simply call “yoga” in the West — very helpful.  This may sound odd at first, but it makes sense if we look at why hatha yoga was created.  It’s designed to clear the mind to prepare for meditation. In the same way, when we use it at work, it helps us become serene and focused.

Although people tend to see yoga as a complex bunch of poses that require a mat and a lot of flexibility, there are simple forms of yogic breathing and movement we can do while seated. You can do the practices I’ll describe whenever you feel yourself losing attention or momentum at work.

When a student is in a yoga pose that’s bringing up a lot of discomfort, a yoga teacher will often tell the student to “breathe into” the uncomfortable spot in their body — meaning to breathe so that the tense part rises and falls with the breath. This helps the student relax into the pose.

If you pay close enough attention when you’re feeling stressed or anxious at work, I suspect you’ll notice that some part of your body is tensed up — whether it’s your jaw, neck, lower back, or somewhere else.  If you notice this, I invite you to try taking a few deep breaths into that tight place.

When you do this, I think you’ll find the tension dissipating, and the stress starting to fade.

Many of us spend our workdays hunched over a keyboard, and this can cause tension to build in the neck and shoulders.  When that tightness gets uncomfortable enough, it can disrupt our focus.  Here’s a great way to release some of this tension — again, without leaving your chair.

The pose I’ll describe is called “eagle arms.”  To do this, hold your forearms out in front of you, parallel to your body.  Cross your right arm in front of your left, and clasp your hands in front of your face so that your arms intertwine.  Holding this pose, breathe deeply a few times into your shoulders.  Repeat this with your left arm crossed over your right.

I think you’ll find this helps you let go of the tightness in your shoulders, and return your attention to your work.

When we’re feeling unmotivated at work, it’s helpful to connect with our desire to contribute to and serve others. The yoga technique of breathing into your heart is a wonderful way to do this.

According to yoga, there’s an energetic center in the heart area called the “heart chakra.”  When we “open” the heart chakra by breathing into it, we feel our sense of compassion for others, and our desire to give to the world.

To breathe into your heart, clasp your hands behind your back at the level of your heart, and stretch out your arms.  Then, breathe deeply so your upper chest rises and falls with the breath. Feel the warmth and openness in your heart, and notice any tension melting away.

According to yoga, there’s another energetic center at the base of the spine called the “root chakra.”  Breathing into the root chakra gives us a sense of groundedness and stability.  Doing this can be very useful when you’re feeling anxious at work.

To breathe into the root chakra, put your attention on the base of your spine, where the spine meets the pelvis.  If focusing on that area is difficult, place your hand on your lower back, and concentrate on the sensation of pressure there.  With your attention on the base of your spine, take a few deep breaths.

When you do this, you’ll likely feel a deep-seated sense of solidity, and that paralyzing worry will start to fade.

Chris Edgar helps professionals find focus, motivation and peace in their work. He is the author of Inner Productivity, which uses insights from mindfulness practice and psychology to help readers develop ease and efficiency in what they do. You can find out more about the book and Chris’s work at http://www.innerproductivity.com/.

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What Meditation Can Teach Us About Productivity

Most productivity writing is about tips for organizing our workspace — creative ways to arrange our e-mail inbox, write to-do lists, color-code folders, and so on.  These techniques can be useful, but they don’t deal with one of the biggest obstacles to getting our work done:  our own minds.

As I’ll bet you’ve experienced, if your attention is scattered, you feel sluggish and unmotivated, or you’re paralyzed with anxiety about what others will think of your work, it’s going to be tough to make the kind of progress you want, no matter how well-organized your e-mail is.

Meditation is the most powerful tool I’ve found for disciplining my mind.  Practicing sitting still and training my attention on something — whether it’s my breathing, an object I’m looking at, or something else — has had powerful effects on my focus and motivation at work.

What’s more, I’ve discovered that many of the ideas and techniques used in meditation can also be applied “in real time” — as I’m sitting at my desk working on a project.  Whenever I find myself getting scatterbrained or frustrated, I can use one of the tools I’ll describe in this post for restoring my concentration and peace of mind.

Meditators often concentrate on their breathing to stay alert, and keep their minds from drifting into memories of the past or concerns about the future.  I’ve found that this technique isn’t only helpful during meditation — it also works great whenever we find ourselves getting distracted at work.  We can focus on our breathing to bring our attention back to this moment, and to what we’re doing.

Many meditation teachers explain why this works by observing that, whenever we focus our attention on what’s happening in our bodies, our awareness naturally settles into the present.  If I ask you to pay attention to your breathing, you probably won’t start daydreaming about the way you used to breathe five years ago — you’ll focus on the act and experience of breathing right now.

When your attention comes back to the present, the memories and worries that may have been bothering you fade into the background, and you can easily return to your work.

In meditation, as in the rest of our lives, uncomfortable thoughts and sensations sometimes come up — perhaps anxiety, resentment, boredom, or something else.  Meditation teachers often invite us to just let these experiences be, rather than trying to push them away and think about something pleasant.  This approach isn’t just useful in meditation — it’s also helpful when we’re struggling with procrastination at work, as I think we all do from time to time.

When we start to feel bored or frustrated at work, most of us are in the habit of “taking the edge off” by turning to some distracting activity — checking e-mail, playing FreeCell, or something else.  The trouble is that, when we distract ourselves from sensations we don’t like, we also take our attention away from our work.

The next time difficult thoughts and sensations come up for you at work, I invite you to try fully allowing them.  Instead of running away from the uncomfortable experience, just keep breathing, relax your body, and let the feeling pass away on its own.

What I think you’ll notice, as you practice allowing that thought or sensation to be without resisting, is that it will pass away quickly — perhaps within a few seconds or minutes.  When it dissipates, you can gently return your attention to your work.

The more you practice this, the more comfortable and familiar that experience will become.  You’ll become able to make progress in a task at work, even when that discomfort is coming up.

This exercise, which is based on a meditation some Zen practitioners do, is very simple.  Pick an object in the room.  It doesn’t matter what it is — it could be, for instance, a spot on the wall, or a paper clip on your desk.  Now, for five minutes, simply hold your gaze on that object.

As you do this, I suspect, you’ll find your attention drifting off.  Maybe it will float away into thoughts about the past or future.  Perhaps you’ll find your eyes darting around the room, looking for something more interesting.  Whatever happens, when you notice your attention floating away, gently bring it back to the object you’re looking at.

I think you’ll begin to find, pretty soon after you start doing this exercise, that those moments of distraction — when your attention drifts away from what you’re looking at — will start to happen less and less often.  In other words, you’ll begin developing a longer attention span.

As you can probably see, this is a very useful thing to cultivate if you want to become able to sit at your desk and make a lot of progress on a project in one sitting.

Chris Edgar helps professionals find focus, motivation and peace in their work. He is the author of Inner Productivity, which uses insights from mindfulness practice and psychology to help readers develop ease and efficiency in what they do. You can find out more about the book and Chris’s work at http://www.innerproductivity.com/.

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