If your child really is talented, save your energy

 I almost never post here any more because I've been crazy busy, running the Growing Math Project but today I was answering an email from a parent of a talented little athlete and I thought my ideas might be of interest to other parents and coaches as well.

Dear Parent, 

From loads of experience seeing many, many kids - she is nine years old and kids pick up on what their parents think is good, right up until they become teenagers and think you are out to ruin their lives. Most likely, your child is working hard at their sport because she believes you value it.

I used to think it was a negative to start early but I started in my very unscientific survey asking people I ran into who were world or Olympic gold or silver medalists and there was zero correlation with how young they started from age 3- 12.  Very, very few started after 14 but I ran into people who started at 3, 5, 7, 11, 12 - there didn't seem to be any advantage or disadvantage in starting earlier. 

My 7- or 8- or 9-year-old child is an extremely talented judo player / martial artist. What should I do?

My 5 pieces of advice

1. Kids can burn out and parents can, too. Save your time and money for when she really needs to travel for competitions and training. I would not be driving an hour away for a child at 9. Save your energy because if she is really good, by the time she is 14, you want to have some left. When Ronda was 14-16 I was taking her to 9 practices a week, and that was on top of her going to school and me working and having 3 other kids. 

2. For a child from 9-12, if they can stay in good condition doing anything, they will be ahead of the game at 13-14 because most kids aren't in very good shape. Ronda was a swimmer from age 5-10 and then decided she didn't want to do it any more and started judo. Julia (my youngest) was in judo from age 4-11 and switched to soccer. Whatever she likes to do that is good exercise, do that, whether it is running in the park, swimming, playing soccer. Put her in a sport that involves running or swimming. It doesn't matter whether it is gymnastics or basketball or water polo.

3. Make practice fun, even the boring parts. Ronda hated running and you need to have good conditioning for judo. She did not mind conditioning drills in judo where you sprint between partners and throw them, so we did more of that. We did a lot of games  like tug of war, that make you work hard and build the grip and muscles you need for judo but are still fun. 

4. When you go to training camps, seminars or tournaments, make sure there is fun afterwards - team dinners, going to the aquarium or amusement parks - something your child likes to do.

5. A very wise coach once said, "You can buy your child skills but you can't buy them talent." Driving your child two hours round-trip to practice at the best gym in town might give them more skills than the other child has, but it won't make them more talented. Judo is not gymnastics. They aren't going to peak at 13. If you and your child like that club and you have the time, and it doesn't take you away from your spouse, other children and things you want to do, go for it. 

In the end, your daughter may decide she'd rather switch to cross-country or soccer or ballet, or she may stick with judo / BJJ/ MMA to become a world champion. Either way, she'll have had a healthy, happy childhood and you won't be overly stressed. What more could one ask?

The Biggest Mistake I Made as a Judo Player

The biggest mistake I made as a judo player was not a technical one  ....

... and I did not realize I was making such a stupid mistake until I was in my fifties. For someone who has a reputation for being smart, that is a really long time to make the same mistake. Seriously, it is embarrassing to say this and I am writing this post to save some of you who might be making the same mistake now.

My biggest mistake may have led to a lot of my success, but I was wrong, in the end

So what was this, you might be wondering. It’s that I judged people simply based on how good they were at judo, how good of a competitor or how good of a coach. I never particularly cared if someone was a good referee, only if they were an honest one. My attitude about referees was “I will beat this person up and make you give me the win.”

That’s a story for another day.

Today’s story is about all the missed opportunities I had for getting to know amazing people better.

When I was competing, my biggest priority in life was winning. If I met someone who was a judo player who was also a physician, an engineer, an army Ranger or the mother of ten children, I was solely interested in how they could help me get better at judo. Yes, I had a job and I did my best to learn whatever language I was supposed to be programming in at the moment, but once I left the office my only focus was on winning.

You are studying how a new protein might reduce the prevalence of early onset Alzheimer’s ? That’s nice, can you help me improve my seoi nage? No? Next!

Dawn and I were great friends

If someone was a terrific judo player or coach, I spent as much time around them as possible so I could learn and improve. If they were just good or even so-so, I really didn’t spend much time with them because I was focused on winning.

Dawn Beers and I were great friends, but would that have still been the case if she was not a talented judo player and a great training partner?  Now, yes. Back then, I am embarrassed to say the answer is, "Probably not."

Maybe that laser focus on winning helped me be best in the world. Probably it did.

Then, I quit competing.

When you have children, they need to be your number one priority.

I thought about quitting when Maria, my oldest was born. I talked to my brother about it, who had children a little older than mine. He told me that if I quit at this point, I’d have to be almost inhuman to never, ever look at her and think ,

“If it wasn’t for you, I could have been world champion. I gave this up for YOU!”

That’s a pretty big burden to put on a tiny human.

Shortly after she was two, I won the world championships, retired from competition and went on to get a Ph.D. I had two more children, started a career as a professor, then founded a company, had another child (there were a couple of husbands in there, I still have one of them).. I would drop by the local judo club when I lived in Jamestown or do a clinic every once in a while. Except for few close friends, I never really talked to anyone from judo.

Then, my daughter, Ronda started judo

I knew how to help her win. I took her to different clubs that I thought could help her, where they had good competitors or good coaches. I really did not pay that attention to anything any of them did outside of judo, not the other competitors, parents or coaches. I tried to organize events and raise money for activities that would benefit our local teams, and later our national teams, because that’s what you do when you are the parent of an athlete in a sport. Certainly the camps and trips that I helped organize and fund benefited everyone who participated, not just Ronda.

Still, when I met people in judo, my focus was on how I could help her. You founded a company that made 9 jillion dollars? Good. Is your kid a really good athlete who can be Ronda’s training partner? No? He cries when he gets thrown but he’s super smart and got into MIT at 15. Really? That’s awesome. See ya around.

You would think that I would have gotten smarter over the years, but not so much

It wasn’t that I had a big mid-life crisis epiphany at 50 but more that I was not really doing anything with judo that focused on winning so much. Ronda was off in a different direction and I was coaching some great kids at Gompers Middle School. When we managed to raise a few thousand dollars, I would not use it to send one kid on our European tour but rather to take a dozen kids on a road trip to practice in Nevada and Utah, hike in the mountains and see a rodeo. I got to know Jose Gonzalez well, who is still a green belt because he won’t learn kata but who has been the heart of the Gompers Judo program since day one.

Teaching matwork at Gompers Judo's first gym

I met Brian Money, from Riverside Police Youth Judo club, speaking of heart, who also runs a special needs judo program.

I got to know Roy Hash better, who is a real Captain America army Ranger with an amazing history.

I heard Hal Sharp tell stories about how he talked his wife into marrying him, about being an accountant in post- World War II Japan.

I got to hear Jerry Hays and Joe Ciokon’s stories about the navy and Hayward Nishioka’s philosophy on life.

The list could go on and on. Sitting here, I am just shaking my head at all of the amazing people I met who I could have gotten to know better but didn’t because they weren’t ‘good enough at judo’.

That’s not everybody, of course. Some of you aren’t all that good at judo and you’re stupid assholes to boot. I’m glad I don’t know you better. You know who you are.

Here’s what I should have done differently

In all those hours-long sessions where I sat around with other players or coaches and talked about nothing but judo, I should have turned to some of those people on the sidelines. I should have asked at some point,

 “So, you have a life outside of practice, what is it?” 

“You’re studying orangutans in Madagascar? That sounds really cool. Tell me about it.”

If I’d had those conversations, I would be a smarter person now, have more friends and know things like whether or not there are actually orangutans in Madagascar

My Life: Not on Instagram

I lead the opposite of an Instagram life.

That’s not to say it’s boring because it’s not. So far this year, I’ve been in five countries, nine states and I’ve lost track of the number of cities. I’m also not opposed to Instagram. I do have an account and I post on it most days. No, what I mean is that while most people are posting things to make their life look more interesting than it is, I often forget or don’t have time to post because I’m too busy doing interesting things.

Been so many places, I couldn't remember where this was at first.
California, in the mountains.

Where I’ve been lately

Since the last blog post, a dozen of us from Gompers Judo attended Judo Con - which was GREAT. There were judo instructors and coaches from all over the country learning everything from teaching judo to children with special needs to jump roping for conditioning in martial arts to character development in youth sports. Every one of the presenters was my favorite.

I’ve gotten back to teaching at Gompers regularly. Thanks a million for the judo gi donations. It’s hard to believe that Gompers Judo has been in existence ten years now. We've had gis donated a couple of times previously but over a decade, things wear out.

It’s looking like Judo Con will be on the East Coast next year so next on my agenda is raising money for a dozen plane tickets to get some kids there.




I’ve also gone to Washington, D.C. twice because I was selected as an AARP Purpose Prize Fellow - which was also amazing.

 It is for people who have led a “purpose driven life” and have a noteworthy “second act”.  Many award winners founded charities, like The Pink Fund which pays the non-medical bills for women who have cancer (what do you do if you can’t work for 3 months?) , Starting Right Now which provides homes, counseling and academic support for homeless youth. I founded 7 Generation Games, which is not a charity but has helped 20,000 kids get better at math and English.

Along with that, I’ve been a speaker at the South Dakota Indian Education Association conference, National Indian Education Association Conference ...

Minneapolis: National Indian Education Association

Language and Learning Conference in Merritt, British Columbia, where I also had the opportunity to attend a joint workout of the Nicola Valley Muay Thai , then head to Vancouver to participate in a self-defense workshop offered by Protect Our People.

I put up another More Than Ordinary podcast, this one with author, long-time judo coach and budding YouTube celebrity, Steve Scott.

So, I have literally been coast to coast, from Boston, where I had a couple of meetings on our new Crossroads games and also got to see Julia play in her final season of soccer.

In case you haven’t been keeping up ...

This spring I was in Melbourne, Australia for a week and I started out the beginning of the year in Santiago, Chile.

There have also been a couple of short trips to Mexico.

Oh, and I did a month-long road trip with my husband.

Driving through South Dakota

Two big things I learned this year

Just say, “Yes”. 

From going to Melbourne to the Nicola Valley to teaching summer school at Spirit Lake, I did a lot of things this year that were only tangentially related to what could be considered our "core business" at 7 Generation Games. I did not regret a single one of them.

I've learned that life is far less predictable than we'd like to believe. I often think back to the fact that my husband died when he was seven years younger than I am now.  I absolutely guarantee you that if you went back to any of the teachers I had in junior high and high school and told them I was doing life in prison now none of them would be surprised. But I'm not. Not yet, anyway.

This isn't to say that you should spend your days lying on the beach or scrolling through Twitter on your phone because, "Life is unpredictable, why bother?"

What I mean is that you should not get so laser focused that you lose sight of opportunities that might not come again. That's why I went to Chile, why I started 7 Generation Games, why I do a lot of things.

Some people worry about dying without a full bank account. I think a bigger worry should be about dying full of regrets. 

NOTHING is more important than associating with good people. Nothing. 

 Explaining one of her business decisions, Carly Fiorina said,

"Once you sell your soul, no one can buy it back for you."

People make this mistake in judo, in other martial arts or sports and in business. Because someone has money to invest or donate, is good at a sport, is a successful coach, their character flaws are overlooked. Sure, I wouldn't trust Bob alone with my teenage daughter or my wallet, yes he is physically abusive to athletes and overly controlling but look at ....

I'm not looking at jack shit.

If Bob isn't a good person, if he isn't honest, trustworthy, brave - cut him out of your life. This lesson took me too long to learn and I am never, never going to forget it. I don't care if Bob's judo is so great he could defeat the entire U.S. Marine Corps single-handed. It doesn't matter how much money Bob has. Please don't make me vomit by asking me to think of how much good could be done for the athletes/ children/ investors with Bob's money.

Good people attract other good people. Bad people repel them.

If I know Bob is a lying, cheating douchebag and I see you hanging out with Bob, I'm less likely to have anything to do with you. If I don't know you from a hole in the wall and I see you with Bob and your cousin over there is hanging out with Sally B. Goode, I'm going to go see what Sally and your cousin are up to. Even if I DO know you, if I know that Sally is always doing something to help people, save the whales or find a solution to world hunger, I'm STILL going to go check out what Sally and Cousin Lou are up to.

When I started my first company, many years ago, I reached out to Bruce Toups for advice. I was still a young puppy and he was a successful businessman. He told me,

"Hire for character first. Everything else is secondary."

Apply that to everyone around you, not just hiring. It will improve your life.

Being Hyper-competitive is a mixed blessing

Few things are an unmixed blessing.

I’m a hyper-competitive person. That has helped me in many ways my whole life but it’s also cost me in ways I am just now coming to realize. I have beaten a lot of people who had superior technical skills because I trained harder and was willing to put up with more pain both in practice and in a match.

After seeing a demonstration at a clinic of a  technique that the coach said,

“This will be so painful, your opponent will turn over to avoid it,”

I went up to him and said,

“I’m sure that will work with a lot of people. For me, and for the people who really want to win, they won’t move to a position that’s a disadvantage for them. They’ll endure it and make you pay for it later. Those are the people you really need to figure out a way to beat.”

Being hyper-competitive has helped me in business, too.

I learned from sports that you don’t win long-term by cheating but rather by working harder and learning more than the competition. I’ve applied that to my career as well. That’s one reason I have four degrees. I always find time to learn new programming languages, new technologies, read up on the latest marketing trends, even if it’s only a few hours a week. I put in my hours on the job, travel more miles than our competition. My former teammates from judo know this because I only see them every year or so.

What could possibly be wrong with being hyper-competitive?

It took me a long time to learn this - if you are hyper-competitive, you look at almost everyone and everything through the lens of "Will this help me win or not?"

 I have far fewer friends in judo than most people who have been in the sport for almost 50 years. Whether it was for a spot on a team or as a member of a board promoting policies that I really believed would help grow the sport, I looked at most people as competitors or “team mates”. Competitors keep you from winning and team mates help you win. I never had a single friend who was in my division. There was one gold medal and I wanted it.

Now, there is nothing wrong with looking at a person as someone who helps you win, since it can go both ways. It’s the same as looking at someone as a customer. I get their money but they get software that helps them or their children learn and do better in school. They don’t have to fight about doing homework to learn fractions. The same with a team mate. I get a good work out, the other person gets a good work out and we both leave the gym better.

The point I missed is that I ONLY looked at most people as helping me win or keeping me from winning. If I met someone who knew a lot about teaching counters or organizing a tournament I tried to learn everything possible that would help me win. To be fair, I would make sure they got paid or show up at their next event or whatever I could do to pay them back. Hyper-competitive doesn’t mean you have to be a selfish jerk.

What I realized, sometimes years later, was that a lot of those people had qualities and life histories that were far more fascinating than just judo or business. Some of them had careers in special forces in the military (hello, Roy Hash) or had been doing stunts for decades (Gene Lebell) or where working in civil rights law (Karen Mackey).

I think it might be necessary when you are competing to only focus on winning if you really want to be number one. Some people are there for the experience and that is fine, but that was not me.

Confession:

That line about “In the Olympics, the important thing is not to win but taking part”

I never believed that for a minute. 

 

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed almost every minute of judo practice. I even liked the cross-training in running and weightlifting - except sprints. I hated sprints and I hated getting up in the morning to run them twice as much because morning was involved. Still, the important thing to me was winning.

When I was done competing, I had put so many other things on hold, I just switched from competing in judo to competing in my doctoral program, in my career.

If I hadn’t been so busy trying to be the smartest person in the room with the most degrees, most publications and highest salary, I probably would have made more friends in graduate school and early in my career, too.

Gradually, eventually, I learned that not everything was a competition. This may seem like I am a slow learner but I am writing this because I know plenty of people who are still competing every minute and need to hear this. They’re trying to be the one with the most money, most awards and frankly, it’s just silly.

You can have friends who are not fans or potential customers. They can just be interesting people who know things you don’t or who make you laugh until you fall out of your chair or who help the community in ways you admire . 

People can be customers or colleagues and still have  interesting lives outside of your business.

 I was going to go swimming in the hotel pool instead of walking in the game preserve because we all know that swimming is the best exercise.

I still work really hard. Recently, I’d been working so much that I forgot not what day or month it was but what season it was. I was driving through North Dakota and I thought, “That corn is really high for this time of year.” 

That’s when I realized that it was not late spring but early summer.

Going from a world championship run to a Ph.D. and starting businesses is kind a logical progression because if you don't know, academia is SUPER-competitive, especially the kind of grant-funded work I do.  Getting investor funds is a real marathon.

Here is something I learned, as my grandmother would say, "más tarde que nunca" or "better late than never".

Competition can be an important thing in your life without being the ONLY thing

HEY! Support my day job! Get Spirit Lake from the Microsoft Store for your computer. It's fun and you'll get smarter!

Mean people: One-third of the reason I'm not around judo much any more

Every now and then, I run into people from judo who say,

"Hey, we never see you around any more? Why is that? What happened to you?"

I wrote this years ago for a project on the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation, and our Country Manager for Strong Mind Studios, our company in Chile, came across it recently. (If you read Spanish, check it out.)

Nothing happened to me. I do run a practice or a clinic now and then, but it is true I am not nearly involved as much as I used to be.

There are actually three reasons I'm not around judo these days. One is that I choose to be more selective about the people I am around. My lovely daughter, Ronda, made this comment about earning quite a bit of money.

There are really only two things money can buy you that really matter to me.

One is the freedom to choose how you spend your time and the other is the freedom to choose who you spend it with."

While money may expand that freedom, I think most of us have more of those freedoms than we take advantage of. I've decided to make better choices. The post below gives one of the three reasons I'm not around judo organizations in particular.

By the way, if I haven't seen you lately, I may think that you, personally, are awesome. There are two other reasons I'm not around judo much lately, so, hopefully, I'll get a chance to post about those soon.

How do you say, "Mean People Suck in Dakota?"

Native Americans are noted for their generosity. People give feasts, presents, time and attention to one another. Once you become a board member, you will be giving of your time and talents to the community. Good for you! That is why you were elected or appointed. There is a reason it is called public service. I am going to assume that you are doing a fine, even an outstanding job. Unfortunately, I have seen people like you get burned out and discouraged by mean people. You can learn what to do through experience, your own or other people’s. Try to learn through other people’s experience whenever you can. It is less painful.

As a board member and consultant to boards, on and off reservations, I have had my experience with generosity, and with its opposite — meanness.
Most of us think of the common definition of “mean” as small-minded or not treating people decently. There is an older, related definition, though — stingy or selfish. You will come to learn as board member that your children are correct.

Mean people really do suck.

Avoid Mean People

For some people, no amount you give will ever be enough. For example, I had someone send me an email on Christmas — demanding an answer. His question wasn’t an emergency. He just wanted me to drop whatever I was doing on Christmas with my family and answer him because he wanted me to do it. What did I do? I made Christmas cookies with my daughters. (Well, actually they made them, but I ate them so that counts as a family activity, right?)

This person will probably speak out against me at the next board meeting and say that I am unresponsive. That’s okay. If people you serve as a board member don’t believe you should be able to have any time to yourself, not even on Christmas, then those people lack generosity and are probably not the type of people you want to associate with.

Other people demand 100% agreement. You can vote on the same side as them 99 times out of 100, but that 100th time, when you vote with the opposition, they are outraged and the next thing you know, they are trying to get you recalled.

Decisions about Mean People

 Sometimes mean people can sound almost reasonable. (Imagine this said in the most whiny voice possible … )

“I called you because you are on the board. People like you are supposed to be providing a public service. If you did not want to help people out why did you run for the board instead of letting somebody who is really committed have that seat?”

Notice the person doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that it is 11 p.m. on Saturday night.

You are on a board to serve your community but you don’t owe any one person or even the whole community your entire life. If this was a regular job, you would have holidays off, sick days and not be expected to work 24–7 . If you can, simply do the best you can and don’t give these people another thought. Turn off your cell phone after 10 p.m. and go back to baking Christmas cookies. Odds are, the majority of the people you serve appreciate your efforts and appreciate how generous you are with your time, and they, in return, are not overly selfish in their demands.

If you are in an organization or on a board that consists of mostly mean people, consider quitting and going somewhere else. Maybe that sounds like quitting — well, it is quitting, I just used that word, didn’t I? In the book, “Business as a game” one of the best chapters has the title, “Never play with a stacked deck.”

One way mean people take advantage of others is by playing on those very ethics, the generosity that motivates you to give of yourself, the perseverance that makes you unwilling to give up. If you find yourself the minority in a group of mean people, there is no win for you. They will keep demanding more and more from you than is reasonable to expect you to give. As Erich always says in his ethics courses, you can’t change other people, you can only change yourself.

Walk away. Left behind you will be a whole group of takers, each trying to get the others to do more for ME, to please ME, to agree with ME. Can that group ever succeed? No.

Does this mean that you are letting down people in the community who you could help? No, again. Someone with your willingness to give of yourself for the good of the community will be welcome many places. Find one of them and leave the mean people behind.

When I gave a very frustrated young man this advice, he protested,

“But, Dr. De Mars, that way, won’t the mean people win? And won’t I lose?”

I asked him,

“Do you really think so? What exactly do they win? What exactly do you lose?”

Think about it.

In case you were wondering, I was at Spirit Lake making Spirit Lake: The Game, where players learn how to solve multiplication, division and geometry through word problems set in the context of a stories based on the history and culture of the Dakota people. Save your tribe from attacks and a spreading epidemic by solving math problems while escaping rabid wolves and hunting buffalo.

You can get it in the Windows store for under  ten bucks.

You can download and play the demo version for free.

How to Have a Merry Christmas

I'm sitting here drinking peppermint mimosas with my lovely Julia and ruminating on how good life is. Christmas has almost always been a very happy time of year for me. There have been a couple of sad Christmases - the first one after my divorce, the first one after Ron died - but usually the holidays are the best time of the year.

Peppermint Mimosas - Look better than they taste, but still okay

I know that a lot of people have a hard time at Christmas. They don't get along with their families. Their families don't accept them because they are gay, married outside their religion/ race,  cut off all contact with an abusive relative or a million other stupid reasons.

How to have a Merry Christmas

Let go of the expectations. People are who they are. It is what it is. Either change your thinking or change your situation and then let it go. Ronda has the organizational skills of a hyperactive squirrel. She is generous, smart, funny and kind but she probably just remembered on Monday that the 25th was Christmas. Maria had already finished shopping on the day after Thanksgiving and I suspect Jennifer already has her calendar planned out through December 25, 2019. Julia is cleaning her room now so that it will be ready for her grandmother when she arrives in six hours. You may think six hours is ample time but that only means that you have never seen Julia's room.

I'm not particularly the warm and cuddly type.  I do hug people and tell them I love them, but not every other sentence, like some friends of mine do. Jenn was shocked to hear that I actually baked cookies yesterday, which I found a little insulting.

I could go on but my point is this - everyone has foibles, flaws and failings. Many family gatherings fall apart because you find it so inconsiderate that cousin Tina is 45 minutes late for the eleventh year in a row or that your dad never listens to you and bought you a sweater with a camel instead of a cashmere sweater. 

You know that prayer about accepting things you cannot change and changing the things you can? My secret to enjoying the holidays and life in general is something like that.

Let it go or let them go

The unhappiest people I know CHOOSE to be unhappy. Yes, you do. I could get offended by off-hand remarks but it's a waste of energy.

I'm Catholic. I have friends and family members who are atheist. Every now and then they will make remarks like, "I can't believe that you go to mass." Well, I do.Yes, I am aware of the child abuse that has gone on for decades, probably centuries, and it disturbs me greatly.  We actually had a reasonable discussion about this at Christmas. I don't take it as a personal affront that people don't believe what I do. I listen to their ideas and keep drinking my peppermint mimosa.

We have a very good rule in our family -

"If it happened over a year ago, you can't bring it up in an argument."  

This is a rule my children have used against me on occasion, but it's still a good rule. I see married couples, parents and adult children, adult siblings all arguing about that party someone wasn't invited to in 1998 or the graduation someone didn't attend five years ago.

If you catch yourself saying,

"But don't you think parents SHOULD attend their child's graduation/baptism/ bar mitzvah/ wedding and don't you think they SHOULD feel bad and apologize?"

I don't know anything about your situation but since you are the person reading my blog, I am going to side with you and say yes, you are correct. So what? seriously, the point is, they didn't do whatever it was and they didn't apologize and buy you a gift and a doughnut to make it up to you.

Speaking of doughnuts ...

Fish Lake is an adventure game that teaches about fractions.  You can canoe rapids, solve math problems and if you need help learning, there are activities explaining fractions using turtle eggs, riding between camps and yes, even chocolate doughnuts used as an illustration of mixed numbers. Buy it and support my day job! Runs on Mac and Windows computers.

 So, you didn't get the apology or the doughnut. You felt undervalued and underappreciated. Let it go. That person maybe is not going to be as close to you or understand you as well as you had expected. Maybe you are adding now, fuming,

"As much as I had a RIGHT to expect!" 

So what? They are probably not going to change so you can decide to let it go or not.

The other option is to just not spend time around people who make you so unhappy. There are (former)  friends and relatives I don't see any more.  I had a friend who made a series of bad career choices, in my opinion. Every time I saw her she railed against President Obama's policies and how he was ruining the country and that is why she had financial problems. The last time I saw her, you'd think she'd be happy but no, she still couldn't get a job because "They are only hiring black people. I'm too white to get a job."

That's the point where I decided I was done. Probably stupidity isn't contagious but why take that chance?

If you have a racist/ misogynist / homophobic uncle, you don't have to sit and listen to that person. If some relative gives you the creepy vibe and you don't feel comfortable with that person around your children, don't go anywhere they happen to be.

Guess what else? YOU get to decide. If you have a relative who is always putting you down, telling you that you don't make enough money, you are too fat, you should be married by now or whatever it is that makes you feel bad, don't see them. Are they at the same gathering as your grandparents who you really want to see? Then call up your grandparents and ask if you can come visit on a random weekend in February. Flights will be cheaper and your grandparents will be thrilled to have their grandchildren think of them more than one season of the year.

Problem solved.

Much of the family happiness comes about because we really wanted our past to be different. Some of it is because there are people in our lives at present that we need to cross off the Christmas card list.

Let it go or let them go.

It's never too late to start living your happily ever after.

Just who the fuck do I think I am ?

I may as well start with the swearing in the title because there is going to be  a lot of it in this post.

Recently, a friend of mine overheard a few people talking about my attitude. What terrible thing did I do? I said that I wasn't going to participate in  a bunch of pitch competitions and hackathons coming up because I could make more money doing work on the contracts I already have, so it wasn't worth my time.

One of the haters fumed,

"Just who the fuck does AnnMaria think she is?"

Another awful thing I had done, according to them,  was turn down three opportunities to speak at events. The fact is, I'm running a company, hiring people, meeting with customers, reviewing contracts, and yes, speaking at a lot of events. Hater number 2, chimed in with,

"Can you believe it? She said she gets asked to speak at 2 or 3 events a week? If people are still asking her to talk at her age, she should be grateful! Seriously, who does she think she is?"

My friend was appalled, but when I heard about this, and more, I found it highly amusing. First of all, I haven't met any of these people more than a couple of times and hadn't thought about them for a combined total of 30 minutes in my life. Second, everything they were complaining that I had said was true and in response to questions I had been asked. If you don't want me to give you a true answer, don't ask me. It's not like I'm on Reddit or on a street corner with a sign that says "Ask me anything."

The thing that makes it worth discussing, to me, is the apparent confusion between entitlement, gratitude and appreciation.

For example, if you are putting on a hackathon or a conference, if you run a start-up accelerator or anything else that is very hard work, I can appreciate that, defined by Webster as "to grasp the nature, worth, quality, or significance of".  Good for you, not spending all your money on cheap hookers and expensive whiskey. 

If someone is GRATEFUL on the other hand, they are "appreciative of benefits received".  Let me be clear, if I see your conference/ hackathon / accelerator / coffee-hair salon- ad agency or whatever it is as having exactly jackshit in terms of benefits to me, then, again, according to Webster,  I don't need to be grateful for it.

Yes, it's good you're not wasting your life, but if you want gratitude, to quote a friend of mine,

 "Call your mama, she probably still loves you."

I get offers all of the time from people who want me to fly to East Nowhere and think I should be grateful they are offering to let me attend the Lemon Festival for free, "and we can't afford to pay your plane fare but we'll put you up in a Motel 6".

You're not entitled to other people's time

 Entitlement: belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges 
  
Yes, I do get invited to speak at a lot of events. Sometimes, I'm grateful, because I know I will learn a lot, or it's in a lovely place I want to go or I expect to spend time with fascinating people, or all of the above. 

However, every two weeks, I need to make a payroll so that our artists, developers and administrators at 7 Generation Games keep coming to work. That means that I need to consider the schools and customers who are giving us money first, reaching them and providing services to them.

That's not the point, though. Even if I am not doing anything productive, if I'm just laying in bed drinking coffee and reading a book, that's perfectly fine.  You're not entitled to other people's time. 

I am, however, entitled to my own opinion and preferences. I'll be sixty next week. I've worked full-time for 45 years and taught judo as a volunteer for 47 years. I think I've done my fair share of contributing to society.  If you don't agree, oh well. If you get angry because you think I'm not appreciative enough of your event / program/ whatever to participate, oh well.

One thing I have learned for damn sure after all of these years is that time is not infinite. I have to make decisions and set priorities, and they will be my priorities, not yours, because I'll have to live with the consequences.

Here's why I think I really piss some people off

I have a sense of my own value and what I have earned,  defined as "to receive as return for effort and especially for work done or services rendered".  So, if you want me to come to your event, I'm not staying in a motel without heat and having ramen for breakfast because I don't want to do that any more and I have options to work with other people who don't expect me to do that.

I know that I am very good at a lot of things - software design, statistics, programming - and people will pay me well to do those things because there is a value to them, so I don't feel bad at all about refusing to do things that pay less. 

This, however, is the one thing that I think really, really makes people angry, and I find that very funny because I think it is one of the major keys to a happier life:

I refuse to be defined by other people's expectations.

 

Maybe you think I should not be doing another start-up in a new country at sixty years old. Maybe you think I should stay home and learn to knit. Maybe you think I should be grateful for the opportunity to spend 60 hours completing an application for $4,000 in funding that I may or may not get depending on some unpublished criteria. Maybe you think I should be more modest, quieter, less loud and proud about any accomplishments. You're entitled to your opinion. Just don't be surprised when I completely ignore it, because I've got shit to do.

Want to hear opinions from our entire family? 

For $2.99 you can get 72 pages selected from our years-long family group text.

Click here to get your ebook

The thing about moving is you bring yourself with you

Therapists have a name for it, "Going geographic".

That is, the tendency of some people to change locations to solve their problems.

The problem is, wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

and, as my friend Steve Scott, adds,

Sometimes that's the worst guy to bring.

I'll be honest. I moved half-way around the world, learned a new language and I'm still doing pretty much the same thing. Or, as I can hear my other friend (yes, I have more than one), Dr. Jake Flores saying,

"What? You mean you didn't turn into an entirely different person?"

Way too much of my day still involves answering email and, despite that, I still have thousands of unread emails, and that's not spam but people that I think I should get back to.

I still spend way more time than I would like in meetings and much less time than I'd like on coding and data analysis.

My best times are hiking in the woods and hanging out with my family, and I spend far less time doing either than I would like. A wise psychologist once told me,

The only time changing places solves your problems is when your problems are because of that place

So, if you are unemployed because you live in a town of 120 people with no jobs, then moving might solve your problem. If you are unemployed because you drink too much, miss work, have a fourth-grade reading level, can't get up early enough to get to work on time and fight with your coworkers, no matter where you go, you'll probably end up unemployed.

People don't change all at once, but "going geographic" has caused a change in trajectory for me 

 Looking back, I can see that I've changed in 4 ways as a result of living in Chile.

1. I take Saturdays off - I realize most people take Saturday AND Sunday off, but I never have. I'm often asked how I get so much done and one answer is I work 7 days a week, 9 or 10 hours a day.  When Ronda was visiting she asked me what I'd do if I retired. I told her that I had no idea because all I do is work. So, I've started taking a day off once a week. What do I do? Usually, I go hiking for an hour or two. When my children and grandchildren were here, I hung out with them and did stuff like go to the playground.

In the Santiago metro station

It's still weird to me to wake up and have nothing scheduled for that day, other than, say, meeting a friend for coffee. I've actually kept to my Saturday off schedule for over a month. When Dennis comes to visit, I'm planning on taking a couple of extra days off one week.  This is a big change for me.

2. I'm 5% less likely to tell people to fuck off, an impact of Chilean culture. People here don't get upset if there is no non-fat soy milk for their latte or if someone cuts them off in traffic or they have to wait an hour for an answer until someone gets back from lunch. In the U.S., it's common to hear people say,

"But I have a RIGHT to be upset if I come in three days in a row and they don't have the product advertised on the sign."

You may have the right but you also have the choice. Chileans choose not to be easily bothered. Maybe Bob is a terrible manager, but if you don't work with Bob, you don't really have to tell him that. Being more willing to let things ride can be a good thing, until it isn't. As I said, I'm only 5% more likely to let things go. If you are interested in the opinions Maria and I have on our travels and life in the window seat, you can read our Startup Diaries blog.

3. I appreciate every day things more now. I like good coffee and central heating, both of which are hard to find in Chile. I miss having my own office. I can read and write very well with relatively effort, in English. I never appreciated that before having to do business in Spanish. I miss libraries and bookstores that are full of books I can read easily. Oh my God, I miss living some place that doesn't have winter! Santiago isn't Sioux Falls or Fargo by any means but it has actual winter where it gets below 50 degrees for weeks on end. I hadn't lived somewhere with winter for 21 years and I don't intend to do it again after this. I didn't realize how much of a drag it was on me until the last two days when it was finally in the 70s. Ronda has been talking to me about building a tiny house for retirement. I was intrigued by the idea but now I know for sure that if it's anywhere that has winter, I'm out. Maybe a tiny summer house.

4. Really starting to re-evaluate the time I spend on things I don't want to do. I've been saying for 30 years I want to do more research. Yet, no matter whether I'm in Santa Monica or Santiago, my time gets eaten up by answering a thousand emails a week, meetings, presentations. Yes, I know that our games are helping students learn. I know that our teacher resources are a godsend for many teachers. However, I've been working 45 years. I started working full-time when I was 15 and I'll be 60 next week. I've taught judo as a volunteer for almost as long. I've given so many guest lectures and conference presentations and seminars that I've totally lost track. So, I've decided that if I want to take an hour off and go walk in the park, that's fine. I'm starting to evaluate my success based on the number of times I say, "No" to opportunities that would take up my time.

Like this blog? Help a sister out by downloading Making Camp: Premium . It's under two bucks, fun and educational! What's not to like? You can play it on your iPad, Android device or on the web on your computer. For kids and kids at heart.

Yes, You DO Have Time for It

There are several things in my life I don’t feel as if I have enough time to do:

• Learning more about programming
• Improving my Spanish
• Hiking
• Strategic planning for our company rather than putting out the latest fire
• Teaching judo
• Keeping up with people - answering email, returning phone calls, just checking in
• Data analysis and research

I’ll bet you have your own list. There might be some times, temporarily, when you have to put everything else on hold, but be careful of letting it become your lifestyle.

My guess is, if you are reading this blog, you and I may have a little bit in common. Speaking for myself, one of the tendencies I have is to go all in. That can be good. It led to a world championships, a Ph.D., a published book, a few companies founded. That can also be a bad thing.

I’m not one of those people who hate on Facebook. In fact, my friends’ list is regularly curated so I only see what I want, which is how my friends and family are doing and people who post interesting (to me) stuff. I admire those people who manage to always have time for their family and hobbies while simultaneously holding down a job that supports said families and hobbies .

However, I’m not talking about those people, I’m talking about me and the last few months have been simultaneously a disaster and an amazing success. The success part is that we hit a lot of deadlines with very good results for our company. I pitched at 3 Ed Tech events, including 2 in Spanish, which takes me seven times as long to write and practice because it’s my second language.

Me, at my day job

 I  did three presentations in Spanish, two live and one streamed to over 7,000 people. One of those live presentations was hosted by a ‘district’ seven hours south of Santiago, where I also visited two schools and discussed our latest games. I could go on, but you get the idea.

No greater success than seeing kids' interest in our games

Have you ever been like that? You have so much going on with your job or your sport that you exclude everything else?

Well, stop it. Like so many things else in life, my base in judo is helpful here. I won a whole bunch of gold medals while going to college, going to graduate school and working full time as an engineer. I also had a baby/ toddler the last two years. So, I know from personal experience you don’t have to spend 100% of your time on one goal to be a success. Maybe you do TEMPORARILY, like the two months leave I took from my job to compete and train in Europe and focus on my training in the US. However, if that two months turns into six,  you might want to start questioning how temporary this is.

So, what’s my answer? Well, you are reading it. Those deadlines I had to meet were really important but one thing I have finally managed to understand is that not everything is equally important. Event at U.S. Embassy with 20 very knowledgeable people on education in Chile - extremely important and can’t be put off.  Someone want to meet with me and talk about using our software in our schools on Monday - if they called me Friday afternoon, I DON’T have to spend all weekend preparing for it. In fact, if they are the kind of person who thinks I should jump at the opportunity to meet them at the last minute, maybe I don’t want to work with them.

(Proof I take my own advice, I'm back to doing the More Than Ordinary podcast with a new co-host)

Here’s a key point ... you’re making yourself crazy

Most likely, if I tell that Head of School, “Could we meet the next week instead? Here are three times that work for me, are you available any of those?”  They will be perfectly willing to meet with me later. They just threw out the first time that was available. (Go back and read my other post on not giving it more attention than it deserves.)

Now that I’ve gotten through the immutable deadlines, that’s what I’m doing. Because I’m me, it would be easy to get back into the same rat race of waking up, taking 10 minutes to shower, dress and dash out the door, a frantic day of meetings, then more work until I fall into bed, drink a glass of wine while reading my email and go to sleep exhausted.

What I have decided NOT to do is go back to this schedule by trying to do everything every day.

What I have been doing is started working on a couple of items on my list every day. In the morning, I just work on learning more Spanish or programming , sometimes both. That’s what I do the first hour that I’m up. More, if it’s a weekend . I started going to bed earlier,getting up an hour earlier and doing what I most wanted to catch up on first.

I turned the international plan back on for my phone and I’ve started calling a couple off people a day just to catch up.

One of those calls was to James Wall who mentioned the JudoCon in Kansas City, November 2nd and 3rd. I had thought of presenting at that and concluded I could not spend an extra week or so in the U.S. Again, it occurred to me, hey, if the people I am working with can’t accept that I’m going to be gone a few extra days, perhaps those aren’t the right people to be working with. I mean, it’s not as if I’m a slacker.

So, yeah, I’ll be in Kansas City in November, head home to southern Cal in time to vote and then, most likely, head back to Chile after doing my civic duty.

There’s your answer then - make the time. Start work an hour later. Take a vacation . The people around you most likely will be totally fine with that. If not, find new people .

AzTech: The Story Begins - Mr. Gonzalez history class loses an average of 2 students per year. What happens to them?  Find the answer while learning fractions, statistics and Latin American history .

If you play on an iPad, leave us a review on the app store. However you play, feel free to send me your comments/ suggestions at annmaria.demars at 7generationgames.com

I Need to Take My Own Advice, Or Stupid Things I Do and Maybe You Do, Too

Like Alice in Wonderland, I often give myself good advice but very seldom follow it. I've decided to get back to blogging and make this into a series: advice of my own I should take. Who says you can only make resolutions on New Year's? No one asked me about those rules.

I've decided to make July resolutions that will lead to me being happier, and you, too, if you follow along.

Don't give it more attention than it deserves.

I stole this line from Gary Butts and it's very good advice. Do you ever catch yourself worrying about something over and over? There was a misspelled word on my slide in that presentation. That person corrected me in a meeting and,  in fact, their correction was wrong, how disrespectful!

I left my keys in the office and had to go back for them. Is that an early sign of Alzheimer's?  I am getting old, after all.

The fact is that even things that seem SUPER-IMPORTANT at the time really aren't that big of a deal in the overall scheme of things. I like Facebook for seeing what kids I knew when they were in judo are doing now. That kid who was just devastated not to win the junior nationals at age11 and beat herself/ himself up about it is now a speech pathologist, married, with two kids and just bought a house. Really, was it that important that you got caught by a foot sweep?

I know I am a big hypocrite because I was always upset when I lost. Even today, if a sale to a school district doesn't go through or we don't get a grant funded or an investor decides to take a pass on us, I feel like a big failure. It's silly, I know, but I'm working on it.

At the end of the day - there's another day, because that's how time works.

There's a really big world out there

I've always been kind of like this my whole life, blowing things out of proportion. I think it comes from wanting to do everything perfectly, which sounds good on the surface but no one is perfect and trying to be is the key to always feeling like a failure.

When I look at people I know who are usually happy, they all have this in common
... they don't get upset by things that aren't all that important. For example, I went to pay the notary -everything in Chile requires a notary and you have to pay in cash ( - if you are interested in my life in Chile, check out the Start-up Diaries over on the 7 Generation Games site) and she said my 20,000 peso bill was fake. I tried to give her another and she said that was fake, too. If you don't have the Chilean peso exchange rate memorized it's about 20,000 pesos = $67.  I was pretty pissed off.  I had gotten that money from the ATM at the bank and you'd think that wouldn't give you fake money.

I thought of some of the happiest people I know, and channeled my inner Alice, asking:

"Is $68 really going to cause you to go bankrupt? Is it worth ruining your day over?"

The answer was,

"No."

I went to Santa Lucia Park, ate fresh strawberries I bought from a fruit stand on the street and wrote this blog sitting next to this giant piece of pre-Columbian art

Here are my next four or five posts in this series, coming up  (I say four  or five because I'll probably end up putting a couple together....

1. Your success in life and value as a human being are not decided on just one day (no, not even if it's the world championships or Olympics - maybe especially not then, since you must have done a hell of a lot to get to that point. )
2. Don't talk about other people. In fact, don't even think gossip about other people
3. You decide how happy you are
4. The secret to happiness: The absence of self-ruminative thoughts. 
5. Yes, you do so have time for it (see, that's why I'm back to writing this blog).
6. The other secret to  happiness: Focus on the good
7. Yet another secret to happiness: You don't need to be perfect and you don't have to know everything (yes, really)

Like this blog? Help a sister out by playing AzTech: The Story Begins . It's free!
You can play it on your iPad or on the web on your computer.

Email annmaria.demars@7generationgames.com  and let me know what you think.