Back to school – New Beginnings

July 31, 2015July 31, 2015 wesleymwhiteLeave a comment

The Tri-State boot camp has been taking place over the last several days. This has brought about thoughts of New Beginnings. New beginnings are a great time to reflect and provide the opportunity to do something different. As we begin this new year there are many things that I am planning to do differently. I am excited to have some similarities to last year, so that I can make small changes to make things go better. The first thing that I have planned for the year is consistency. It is important to set patterns early in the beginning of the year. These things can be as simple as setting a schedule for the day that you do laundry, the time you go to the gym, or the time that you complete homework. These habits if carried through on can make us very successful!

Hope you have enjoyed the previous summer! Have a great time with the rest of summer and remember to make some important memories!

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Define Yourself…

May 4, 2015May 4, 2015 wesleymwhiteLeave a comment

Who are you?! This is a question that I have always dreaded. I remember college classes where the first question was, write down 10 things about yourself. At this point I had very little life experience that defined me, made me unique, or even feel like I should be standing out at all. There was one term that constantly came to mind… failure. Despite my accomplishments, I had the constant temptation to define myself by the things that I did not complete, the things I messed up, the things that prevented me from being successful. I never wanted to write this down, but it was how I was feeling inside. To this day this label still haunts me, and I have to reject it everyday. At times in my life this label has circled in my head so strongly that I have been unable to accomplish the things that I needed to accomplish, causing more failure. But there is power to refusing the label that we put on ourselves or someone else tries to put on us. But what label would be appropriate. Here are the labels that I chose for myself…

Learner

Husband

Servant

Leader

Teacher

Friend

Mentor

Sociologist

Philosopher

Technologist

Ideas to help you get started – breaking things down…

March 11, 2015March 11, 2015 wesleymwhiteLeave a comment

The hardest part to accomplishing any project is often the simple act of getting started. This is especially true when you find yourself in a place where you need to make a change in your life. In the RTC classroom, one of the ways we begin to make change is thinking about the building blocks of what it means to be successful. Boystown is not only one of the most successful behavior programs of all time, but also has Boystown Press, which has released hundreds of behavior skills broken down to the individual step. Breaking things down into individual parts allows us to see what is going wrong and correct it. For example, one of the breakdowns is disagreeing. The steps are – Look at the person, use a nice voice, tell how you feel, give a reason, and listen to the person. If we are facing challenges in our lives about disagreements, this creates some ideas to really consider where to start. Feel free to respond with a problem that you are having that could be broken down into steps.