Not by Accident

Scott Ruskin is a hero of the devastating and tragic central Texas floods of July 2025.  His story is inspiring but somewhat unexpected.  He helped save 165 victims in his first mission as a US Coast Guard rescue swimmer.  He volunteered to get out of the rescue heicopter so there would be more room for the crew to load survivors they would dramaticall rescue in the flood waters.  He found himself as the only rescuer to organize, triage, administer first aid, protect and coordinate the evacuation of scores of children from Camp Mystic.  In the chaos and hell of an unfathomable disaster, Petty Officer Ruskin was salvation to scores of children and adults.We need heros in our society.  Sometimes the work they do is not hanging from a cable connected to a helicopter.  Sometimes they swim through raging waters and sometimes they run into burning buildings.  But more often heroes quietly do less dramatic work or simply keep committments or consistently show up and bear heavy burdens that others walk away from.  Scott Ruskin was unknown before this event.  He was not hitting home runs or donating millions to a charity, on the front page of newspapers or a social media influencer.  He was quitely and thanklessly preparing, training and learning first aid and protocols for disaster response.  He, like teachers, parents and many obscure people was doing the hard work so that they might be ready to make a difference.  We have a mistaken idea that heroes wear capes, are super-human, win the super bowl or world cup for their teams.  No, some of the most amazing super people quietly do a hard, thankless job, or fight through chronic pain or are kind even when others are mean to them.  You can be a super hero but it demaands having character and doing some hard things, preparing yourself and making good decisions. Story told by Kagan Dunlap (Instragram site)

People like to win and to be associated with winning teams or efforts.  But the truth of life is that we will often fall short individually and as part of a team.  What happens when that team can't seem to come out on top?  What happens when one loss becomes two, then ten then fifty?  This is not uncommone either for the girls under 10 youth soccer team I coached or for the Detroit Lions of the NFL.  The point is, it can (and as I suggest, will) happen to many of us.  One important think to keep in mind is that there is a HUGE difference between losing and being a loser.  Our wins or losses don't need to become a reflection on us.  They definitley do not need to define us.  There are great things to be learned in the losses we encounter in life.  Loss is actually what makes us stronger, smarter and more committed to winning.  When trapped in a cycle of loss sometimes it takes a coach who sees in us what we may have forgotten.  Sometimes an individual player or participant can spark a change that impacts the entire organization.  YOU can be that spark.   Episode story taken from Joan W. Young's BYU Devotional speech, "Seeing as Far as Forever", June 24, 2003.

Education is one of the top 5 factors that not only transforms an individual's life (including their spouse, children and generations to come) but also to improve the world and mankind's condition.  As access to learning (education being the formal system to facilitate learning... at least that is the objective) swept across society like a wave with the invention of the printing press and other monumental changes that took place in the time period we generally know as "the enlightenment", life on earth began to change.  For the previous five or ten thousand years life was lived within 20 miles of your birtthplace; locomotion remained walking, running or domesticated animals and simple carts; technology was generally static; daily life consisted of subsistence, illness and death (of infants, children and what are now minor diseases).  Education changed all this.  I encourage education.  I run a college. I have no hesitation championing the virtues of education.  Even with all this, education has a dark side.  This is largely because human nature has a dark side.  Education is little more than a gun, knife or car.  All are tremendously valuable but can be wielded to great harm, opppression and brutality.  Too often educated people think they are better than the less educated.  They presume to have some moral superiority over those without letters (MD, Ph.D., MA, BS, Esq.) behind their names.  Thy trade education for arrogance among many other things.  This episode explores this tragic and dangerous propensity.  Education and learning should always lead to humility and compassion, especially for people of character..But like so many things, this does not happen by accident.

What is leadership and being a leader?  While it involves many things -knowledge, judgement, persistence, discipline, motivating others, humiliy- it is fundamentally about serving those you lead and being willing to do the hard work alongside the lowliest follower.  In fact, as a side note, one of the best ways to prepare to be a great leader is to be a great follower.  In so many aspects of life, experiencing the opposite informs and qualfies us.  Those who endure sadness and disappointment really comprehend joy and achievement.  Those who are once lonely become the best and most loyal friends. The most successful usually expereicned great failure. The best bosses are those who were at one time a regular employee and worked their way to the top from position to position.  So it is that great leaders spent much time  perfecting themselves as a follower  -learning the good and the bad from those who led them.Leadership is not in a title like manager, captain, vice-president, boss, oldest child; leadership is in behavior.  You don't need a title to lead, in fact you don't need your peer group or society to recognize you as a leader.  You just need to get your hands dirty doing the hard work, mix that with active concern for others (meaning actually setting your wants and comforts second to the needs of others) and you are well on your way to being a leader.  It may not happen right away and you may not have a title commonly associated with leaders, but true leaders don't need, in fact they don't care about a title.  They care about others.  This episode provides a couple examples of famous leaders and their behavior.

Valentines day, Veteran's day, the 4th of July, Presidents day and Martlin Luther King, Jr. day are all holidays where we celebrate the sacrifice and character of a person or a group of people whose lives illustrations of the things (virtues and actions) we honor in our society.  Unfortunately most of these days have devolved into recreation and leisure.  We don't really comprehend the courage and scarifices of those at the core of the holiday.  The word "holiday" itself has transformed  -and not in a good way- from its original meaning.  Fortunately it has not alltogether lost its meaning.  We can still hear the original:  holy day.  Holidays are supposed to be holy days where we recognize that which is sacred, of infinite value and the highest level of "special".   These days, the people after whom they are named, should not just be honored.  We would have fallen way short of the reason for holy days  if all we do is remember... we should be emulating, replicating and tying to be like them.  That is, making a study of their character, of their sacrifices and of their objectives.  We minimize and mock their amazing lives when Independence day is only about hotdogs, baseball and the beach or when Valentine's day becomes flowers, jewlery and sexual expressions.  Declarations of love and long weekend camp trips are clearly not bad things, I enjoy both, but if that is all holy days have become, it is not a great sign for our society.  What we do and give, important as it is, does not even compare to the critical question of who we have become: a person, a family, a community and a nation of courage, virture and character.

Sports and competition are universal across time, cultures and generations.  Since human's existed they have been playing (and creating) athletic competitions.  Sports teach us amazing lessons in a dynamic manner.  We learn as we do and sometimes we have to learn very quickly.  Discipline, teamwork, cooperation, persistence, humility, the necessity of physical, mental and intellectual prowess, overcoming adversity, short-term pain for long-term reward... all these are critical lessons of life that are directly taught by participation in sports.Many people mistakenly judge success in sports by the final outcome of the game or event.  In other words if we won.  This is a shortsighted, naive and dangerous way of measuring success.  Sports is so much more than winning.  The competition itself, if engaged with honor and full effort, is enobling and will benefit the participants regardless if they come out with a better score than their opponent.  THis episode includes a story shared by Michael Josephson (founder of Character Counts) of an Olympian who understood the higher purpose of competition and a portion of a talk given by Tom Brady, famed quarterback of the New Enland Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  Both provide a larger view and purpose of sports, winning and the essential element of losing.

There are several -many more than we can count actually- character flaws that are common to any "normal" human.  We are judgemental creatures who like to talk about the foibles and shortcomings of others.  We would rather take an easy route than the higher and more difficult path.  It is much easier and enjoyable to watch a movie or scroll mindlessly through social media posts than to engage in something productive like learning a musical instrument, writing a book or spending out time helping our neighbor fix their car.  Ranking high on this list of negative attributes and threatening every one of us is the practice of procrastination.  We put hard stuff off even if we know the day of reckoning will always eventually arrive.  Those who are able to overcome this tendency accompish more, bless the world with their contribution, feel better about themselves, are often rewarded and find their life situations better than those who never seem to get around to "it" or because of their delay produce something that is shotty and much less than they are capable.  The thing is, fixing procrastination is not rocket science.  It is simply having the discipline to do some of the hard work first, now.  The beauty is how this builds self-respect, confidence and very frequently is met with praise and reward, 

Everything we do or want has a price.  This is easy to see with products or physical items like a car, a purse or a trip to Hawaii.  The price for these is some amount of money.  But this truth extends beyond physical items to include things like a talent or non-tangible accomplishment.  To be an Olympian, a rock star or a mom with ten children (don't laugh, this was my mother's dream since she was a girl... and yes, she realized this goal) -all these come with a cost.  There is a price to pay for things we consider negative:  if we spend hours on end doing nothing but wathching social media, smoking marijuana or just wasting time with friends for hours on end... while these may be fun and may not infringe on anyone's freedoms, they also come with a price.  Countless adults who thought their college drinking habits only cost the money to buy the alcohol will tell you how much their drinking cost them in terms of jobs, marriages, and lost opportunities.  Their are sometimes steep prices to pay for the activities we decide to pursue.  The trick is a little forsight, some short-term sacrifices for long-term benefits, some conception of what is morally good and a healthy does of honest introspection....  all critical components of character.  The story of John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in the world, is both a warning that the price we pay for what we want may be too high as well as a reminder that it is never too late to change and make a difference in the world.  In both cases, the tragic and the redemptive, there are prices to pay.  The question is:  which result is worth our efforts and the price?

To take things for granted is human nature (especially from those we know the most).  To begin to expect things from others (becoming entitled) is likewise in our nature.  And both of those are ugly qualities that will harm and eventually kill relationships.  When is the last time you not only expressed gratitude for the person who makes your meals but heaped praise and compliments on them?  Mothers (sometimes fathers) will make you thousands of meals in your lifetime, will wash tons of clothes, drive you thousands of milles to places you want to go.  What is in it for them?  Usually a lot of complaints and attitude.... until they decide they don't want to do it any more and our lack of appreciation drives a wedge of resentment in the relationship.  But what if it was the opposite?  What if we returned every meal with genuine praise and, imagine this, some reciprocal gesture of care and affection (like cleaning up the kitchen or washing our own dishes without being asked)?   At minimum the meal maker would find motivation if not joy and pleasure in continuing to provide their service for an appreciative audience.  

What is the process by which we can become people of character?  Each person has the same 24 hours in each day.  In fact life is a series of cyclical events:  sun up to sundown happens every 24 hours.  Every 7 days is another week.  One revolution around the sun is a year... and we start some things over.  But hopefully we are not in the same place, we are not the same person every time the earth goes around the sun or even every 24 hours when the sun comes up and goes back down.  Hopefully we have gotten better over this series of cycles.To help recognize our growth, and likely to encourage our maturity as contributing members of society and people of character, almost every community has "rites of passage" to recognize siginficant times in life when a person transitions from one stage to the next.  Most often this is from childhood to being an adult.  Bar/Bat mitzvas, quinceanera, graduations, marriages and even retirement parties are examples of such rites.  These are public celebrations of individual accomplishments. An important question to ponder is where am I in my development through all these cycles (daily, monthly, yearly, etc.), particularly as it pertains to becoming a better person and developming character.  The passage of time is not the qualifier.  Plenty of people simply waste their time in a state of stagnation and ease.  Am I pushing my limits, growing, expaning my capacity even if it is uncomfortable.  Improvement always comes at a price and requires sacrifice.  This episode contains a story as related by Maria Baer and John Stonestreet on the BreakPoint podcast (aired on May 10, 2024).

Is joy in giving or receiving?  Where Christmas is concerned, children will definitely say it is in the receiving.  Adults and maturing teens will likely feel otherwise.  While this is evident at Christmas, it is more true, although more difficult, in our lives every day.  To give of ourselves, our talents and our time, to make another's life easier or to lift someone who is carrying a heavy burden; to set aside our own wants or needs and place others ahead of ourselves; to give... that is the secret of life.  In the end, we either take from life, we consume, we accumulate as much as we can OR we can have an experience like Gary from Long Island (in this experience from the Dennis Prager show).  

Children, teenagers and adults all spend time thinking and working toward "what they want to be when they grow up".  While being a good teacher, a good dentist, a good salesperson or a good business owner is important, it is infinitely more important to grow up and be good.  Society won't fall apart because we don't have a enough good accountants or actors but it will if we gon't have a critical mass of good people.  One challenge is that people are rarely naturally good, kind, generous, honorale... pick your virtue.  We have to practice these through deliberate choice and hard work.  In fact we have to identify some negative traits or character deficiencies and work at turning these weaknesses into their opposites.  A lazy person can become someone who tirelessly spends their time working on projects, improving themself or serving others.  It takes deliberate action and does not happen by accident.  This episode features a personal reflection by Dennis Prager (see www.Pragertopia.com) that he shared on the Dennis and Julie podcast.   

We've got it all wrong.  In a world of "likes", "followers" and fame, we falsely think the more people like or hear us, the more important we are.  We think meaning comes from the number of people who are paying attention to us.  And everything around us--from scientific studies to our own personal experience--says that relationships (the ones that matter) are made with individuals. We feel it and it resonates with us when one person takes time and gives 100% of their time and attention to us.  That communicates:  "you are more important to me than anything or anyone else, you matter, I care about YOU."   How many famous people feel utterly alone?  How many wealthy people would give all their money to have one person who deeply cares, listens and loves them?  We do not form connections with masses of distant, nameless cheering crowds or "followers".  Our most cherished, our deepest and the most meaning ful connections are with a handful of individuals.  Parents, spouse, brothers or sisters and children.  These are the individuals who take care of us; who would sacrifice everything for us.  These are the relationships that people hunger for.  Those who understhand the power of 1 on 1 connection and relationship can expand their influence to bless others. But in this busy world the two things more difficult and more valuable to give than money is our time and our undivided attention.  If you can master this quality, your influence can be limitless.

Being grateful--feeling and expressing gratitude--is a quality that has an impact on so many other virtues and the general wellbeing of your life.  There does not exist a happy, content and grounded person who is not grateful.  And it is not the amount of stuff, friends or comforts we possess that make a person grateful.  In fact those with much are often some of the most ungrateful people in the world while those with very little are the most grateful for what they have.  And therfore also the happiest.  I think we all know people who seem to have everything including wealth, fame, and things but who are miserable.  It sounds ironic but it is a sad truth about human nature.  Many of us have grown up since childhood enjoying life at the height of human civili\zation. We simply don't know any different and that is dangerous because it blinds us to the way life has been for most people for thousands of years and even today.  There are millions who will go to bed hungry and now know where there next meal will come.  There are other millions who will not sleep in a bed or in a home they can call their own.  Many young boys will have to work to help support their family and many girls are not even allowed to go to school and obtain an education.  So many of us have so much to be thankful for, and we don't even realize it.Story from the Dennis Prager Radio Show (www.Pragertopia.com) on Sept. 13, 2024

You are not going to win or succeed every time.  In fact, in life you, me and everyone will encounter more disappointments and failures that successes.  Simply accepting this reality actually makes life easier.  It takes some of the pressure off.  It gives us a better perspective when we don't succeed. We can shrug off the failure as a common feature of life rather than being devastated.  A healthy and realistic expectation also makes the failures sting less and avoid seeking someone or something to blame.  It also helps us avoid a victim mentality (that all the world, society and people are out to get us) which is devastating to our happiness and future success in life.  So knowing I'm going to have some setbacks, what is the key?  Keep going!  Failure is a temporary milemarker on the journey (the long, difficult, hot journey) to success.

There is no truly great person who is not fundamentally concerned about the needs of others. While it is important to focus on and work on improving ourselves, particularly developing positive qualities, our intellect, working hard to improve our place in life, so much of happiness, self-esteem and meaning comes from serving others.  In the end, life is not about "me".  It is about lifting, helping, serving and being attentive to the needs of others.  Something magical happens to our own problems, fears, trials and shortcomings...  they become smaller and feel less burdensome.  When we live outside ourselves we become a person of character (and coincidentally, more people like us).  Two stories of this kind of living are included:  Steve Young and Mother Theresa.  Every great person, famous or not, puts other people first and recognizes the seemingly ironic teaching by Jesus:  "whosoever would save his life will lost it, but whosoever loses his life for my sake will find it."  

In the training of character we sometimes work on single muscles but there are some qualities or virtues that are so profound and sophisticated that they are an entire muscle group.  Integrity is one of these.  Integrity includes responsiblity, honor/honesty and truthfulness.  This podcast explores the critical nature of telling the truth, always!  An otherwise accomplished life, full of hard work and sacrifice, can be ruined with one deviation from truth, with the telling of one lie.  Trust and integrity are hard fought victories but a single instance of lying can call it all into question.  When we lie we lose part of ourselves.  Integrity means "the state of being whole or undivided".  When we lie, things are based on a facade, a fabrication and the world, our world becomes unstable.  All lies are discovered, eventually.  The result is things fall apart  -careers fall apart, marriages fall apart, lives fall apart, trust crumbles.  That is a steep price to pay for not telling the truth.  Like so many things, telling the truth is like a muscle that grows stronger the more we use it.  It becomes reflexive and habitual.  Hence the need to tell the truth, always while we are young. The pressure to capitulate even a tiny bit becomes more intense as we grow older.  Those truth muscles need to be strong enough to hold together: integrity!

Conflict and opposition bring out the best (and the worst) in human nature.  War is the ultimate expression of conflict and is, unfortunately, a staple of the human experience.  War provides a line in the sand at which men and women say "this is what I believe and this is worth dying for."  We need people of character, conviction and courage to stand for the right.  We must fight injustice, oppression and those who will always try to inflict their will while denying the rights of others.  Stories and illustrations of great sacrifice and duty come out of war.  We need to know of these stories.  We need to celebrate them.  Why?  Because we need to emulate the qualities in peace time, in war time and in those in between times when humanity teeters in one direction or the other.  This episode contains the story of one man who gives us much to emulate and for which to strive.  Thanks to Jesse Kelly and The Jesse Kelly Show for the Medal of Honor citation.

Loyalty and devotion are critical components of character.  These are especially essential do demonstrate with family and friends.  As with any good virtues, these often demand sacrifice and only become meaningful when they are put into practice when there is a steep price to pay.  Many people walk away from responsibilities when that price becomes too high.  We live in a world of "what's in it for me?"  The truth is, standing up and fulfilling our obligations -especially when our obligations or repsonsibilities are to other people, particularly those who are relying on us and have no way of paying us back- is the purest form of love.  This story (thank you PBS and Story Corps) of a mother and a daughter with a rare, lifelong disease is unique, to be sure, but it illustrates the same truth that each of us can exhibit in a hundred ways unique to every person and their particular life situation. 

Ben Carson's life changed because of his mom and her decisions for her children.  Mr. Carson became a world renown neurosurgeon and was a previous candidate for president of the United States.  He shares the experience when his life turned around, all because his mom required him to do some very hard things (perhaps we will talk about the power of books in a future episode).  Of all the powerful forces in the world, moms may be the most dynamic.  This episode is both a reminder to listen to your mom but also an encouragement to moms -as tired as you are, as ill equipped as you may feel, your love (often in the form of tough love) and purposeful efforts in the lives of your children are beyond measure.  In their character training, you are the most powerful force!

Part of growing up is doing things we don't want to do.  Sometimes its inconvenient, sometimes its scarey, sometimes its uncomfortable.  Pushing beyond our own comfort zone is something most people, myself included, don't want to do and avoid at all costs.  But the truth of the matter is there is A LOT to be learned when we try new and hard things.  We may find something that we love and becomes a career... or perhaps we find something we hate.  Either way, we can learn critical lessons and develop qualities we would not otherwise have.   In this podcase we share an interview Mike Rowe (from his own podcast, "The Way I heard It") had with Kevin O'Conner who had just such an experience when he was a teenager.  

Yoda, Nike and Spencer Kimball all identified the great key to personal and character development so many of us struggle with, not because there is anything broken with us but because it is human nature.  We all have aspirations and intentions but so often we just need to "do it".  For Nike it is the tagline that has driven millions of dollars in earnings.  For Yoda, it is the key to making a Jedi:  "Do or do not. There is no try."  In this eqisode, Michael Josephson, founder of The Josephson Institute of Ethics and the nationwide program, Character Counts, shares a story that I adopted years ago and is a mantra in our family:  Five birds were sitting on a wire, two decided to fly south.  How many remained?   Enjoy!

When building character and the corresponding muscle groups--integrity, honor, kindness, patience, persistence, committment to truth, etc.-- you will encounter resistence.  All growth is a product of resistence.  This often happens in unexpected and unwanted ways.  Wilbur Wright is known for changing the world but we share a story of how the world changed him.  In fact, it appeared that the world turned on him in a cruel and undeserved way that derailed him from a promising future.... Or did it?  Did the very unfortunate events of his youth contribute to create a much better and qualified person to change the world of aviation and science than may have happened if he had not encountered these challenges.  Furthermore, his struggle and "setbacks" demonstrate the value of a "home gym".  He found strength and built muscles of character while being streched, fatiqued and broken down in the environment of his home and family -where those who most loved and cared for him could help him lift a heavy set of weights life dealt to him.  An excellent lesson for all of us who may be going through growing pains, training injuries, character rehabilitation or just becoming stronger, better people.  

Life will sometimes hand you difficult and undeserved challenges.  How we respond not only impacts our own happiness but can lift, inspire and strengthen others.  Choosing to be happy, which may be as heroic as any achievment even if done in the quiet and unknown walls of our own home, takes courage, sustained effort and a focus on others.  All these are critical elements of character and halmarks of a virtuous person.  These are illustrated by a painful real-life experience shared by, Dave, a caller to the Dennis Prager Radio show.

Character training session: Love. How is it manifest in dailey behaviors and what does it reveal about me?  Content borrowed from The Jesse Kelly show.