Teaching our daughters to curtsy: Thoughts on the power of a gesture in art

"Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" by John Singer Sargent

You might be as lucky as my wife and I have been to rear children in a day and age where the easy choice is to be cynical about culture and life in general. If you chose that path, who could blame you? There's evidence for a dumbed-down society all around you (especially if you look for it). I say "lucky" because the beautiful things in this world still shine brightly like flecks of gold in a gold pan amid the black sand. The thing is, you need to know where to go to find the beautiful things sometimes, just like when you are panning for gold.

Kelly and I were blessed with two sons and two daughters and I refer to myself as the luckiest guy in the world. Each personality different than the next, our kids developed their own likes and dislikes, chose their own friends, and learned to see the world through their own eyes. It is fascinating to watch their development into fully-functioning adults who end up asking if they can borrow the car.

As parents, she and I found that they are all hungry for information to handle life's social settings ... basically, they didn't want to mess up in public. We tried to teach them the good stuff that we were taught for such occasions, such as saying 'please' and 'thank you' (our parents' generation was taught to "mind your 'Ps' and 'Qs'").

YOU SHOULD TRY THIS! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS – Part 2

(Note: Dr. Stephen R. Covey was highly accomplished and also acknowledged those who came before that helped him become that way. I thought about the approach to gratitude that #Stephen R. Covey discussed in his training when I originally wrote about this ... another example of the shoulders of a giant upon whom thousands of people stand. Thank you, Stephen R. Covey.)


WRITE YOUR ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PAGE
This is an Acknowledgment as if I were already an author. (I am not yet but will be soon.) It is a list of people who I can look back upon and see a positive impact on me that helped to shape who I am. It would be a fascinating visual to see me and then all the influential people in my life standing behind me. That would be a large group, for sure.

(I highly recommend that you try this exercise for yourself! If you do, I would love to have you post it or send me an email with it.)