| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
What You Do With Your Nature
00:06:28
|
|
| Today's subject is your nature. | |
| Everyone has a nature. | |
| And no one has a nature without built-in flaws. | |
| It doesn't exist. | |
| By the way, no one has a nature without built-in gifts. | |
| It goes in both directions. | |
| I've never met anybody who had no gift. | |
| There may be such a person. | |
| So that's why, by the way, you have to ask, what do you do with your gifts? | |
| That's where the nature part is not the only thing at work. | |
| That's a conscious, volitional choice. | |
| So I'm curious what you've done with your nature. | |
| Do you know it? | |
| Do your kids know their natures? | |
| I was raised by a tough dad, and he constantly told me the flaws in my nature. | |
| And I think in the long run, it probably helped. | |
| It didn't feel good, but it also made me stronger. | |
| All right, let's see what you're doing here. | |
| Look at this. | |
| That's really something. | |
| How many people have realized they have negative stuff? | |
| Anyway, this is provocative. | |
| Woodstock, Georgia. | |
| Kenny, hello. | |
| Hello, Dennis. | |
| How are you? | |
| I'm well. | |
| Yeah, I'm in the same bowl as you. | |
| I'm from New Jersey. | |
| And I remember my gym coach, he said in front of the class during attendance, Kenny, you're a weird little SHI. Forgive me. | |
| Wait, wait, wait. | |
| I want to get this clear. | |
| He was the what? | |
| The coach? | |
| He was the gym coach. | |
| The gym coach. | |
| Did he say this in front of all the other kids? | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| See, I want young people should understand how uncoddled we were. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And everybody made fun of me the whole day, but I won the state championship in tennis that year. | |
| And because of that, I was just a big goofball, you know what I'm saying? | |
| But because of that behavior, I ended up becoming a tennis pro and teaching because I like little kids and I'm goofy. | |
| So I used it positively. | |
| I love it. | |
| I love it. | |
| I'm telling you, the harm that has been done... | |
| To two generations now by the coddling. | |
| You know, one of my teachers in eighth grade, he was a rabbi actually, because I was at a yeshiva. | |
| I was at a religious Jewish school, half the day Hebrew, half the day English. | |
| And I never took school very seriously. | |
| And I horsed around. | |
| I didn't do anything mean. | |
| But I horsed around in class. | |
| I talked to my kid next to me in the next desk. | |
| And he got tired of me one day. | |
| And put down his cigarette. | |
| Can you imagine that? | |
| The guy smoked in class. | |
| Eighth grade. | |
| It meant nothing to us. | |
| Anyway, he threw me over a desk. | |
| And I remember thinking, again, this is eighth grade. | |
| The other thing was a sophomore in high school. | |
| And I remember thinking, I deserved it. | |
| I also remember thinking, I'm bigger than him, and he threw me. | |
| That's impressive. | |
| He must have been really annoyed. | |
| So every time I, or nearly every time I have told this story, people have said to me, what did your parents say? | |
| What did your father say? | |
| And I said, what are you, nuts? | |
| You think I was going to tell my father the teacher threw me over a desk? | |
| My father would have thrown me over a desk. | |
| Because in those days the teacher was right. | |
| Today that teacher would be arrested. | |
| The cops would come and handcuff him. | |
| For the smoking, what a great point! | |
| Yeah, the guy killed all of us. | |
| Now I know that's it. | |
| I'm doomed. | |
| The secondhand smoke I endured from Rabbi Kushner. | |
| How about I think of it? | |
| Anyway, Rabbi Kushner died at 107 from smoking. | |
| No, smoking cigarettes is dangerous. | |
| I don't believe the secondhand smoke stuff, but that's separate. | |
| Okay. | |
| Carol in Mesa, Arizona. | |
| Hello, Carol. | |
| Hi. | |
| Hi, Dennis. | |
| Hi. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | |
| Hi. | |
| Angry growing up. | |
| I felt like I had so many reasons to be angry. | |
| And in my late 30s, I opened my journal to write something in it, and I realized what I had written before was in red ink. | |
| And so I reread it, and it was all angry. | |
| And I looked back in my journal, and everything that was written in red, I had something to complain about. | |
| Wait, you would write in different color inks? | |
| I didn't even know I would. | |
| Yes, that's fascinating. | |
| So you subconsciously chose red to express anger? | |
| Yes. | |
| And that was my aha moment, is when I looked at that and I thought, something's wrong. | |
| How old were you? | |
| I was probably 35 or 36. Wow. | |
| And I'm 58 now. | |
| So it took me a couple years to... | |
| Overcome that nature. | |
| Well, more than a couple. | |
| It took you like 38. Well, I've actually been happy for about 35. Nothing really gets to me anymore, and a lot of that has to do with the Happiness Hour. | |
| Really? | |
| You made my day. | |
| You see, well, that proves... | |