“I feel nervous when you cross the street.”
- Phrase what you want very carefully by making your position clear and personal.
Do not be afraid to use the ‘I’ word to start sentences: “I feel nervous when you run into the street. I know you’re getting older—I still want you to ask someone to cross you each time, please.” Starting with what you want works because you take it on yourself. You are not issuing demands, but asking to be heard.
Guerilla Tip: When you take it on yourself, what can they say, “No, you don’t feel nervous”? No way can they shoot back with “Are-too old enough. Am-so careful. Should-be allowed.”
- The Sufis tell tales of the humble sage Nasrudin. Because Mullah Nasrudin always speaks with naïve humor, he appears at first to be the sweetest fool, which he isn’t.
When a mother asks Nasrudin to advise her kid how to get off sugar, he takes a week before agreeing to help her. “What took you a week?” the mother asks impatiently. “I had to see if I could do it myself.” Gotta love it.
Guerilla Tip: See what you can do yourself before holding yourself up as a golden example.
- Ever want to scream at a kid or an adult because you are not getting through? Try looking at it more as a matter of your limitation than of theirs. Fortunately, you would also have easier access to address your limitation. Is it possible that if you rephrase yourself, you will make it clearer and they would understand better?
Guerilla Tip: “Sorry I don’t seem to be explaining this well. Let me try another way.”
Likewise, it is better to say “Sorry, misunderstanding,” than “You misunderstood me,” or “You don’t get it.”
- Within two weeks of Daniel’s entry into high school, he told me his teacher was touching him too much in class. My ears perked up: Where was the teacher doing this touching? Only shoulder, arm and other neutral places, but it was too much contact, unexplained, ‘freaky’ to Daniel.
An apology was in order, because the touching was completely explainable and entirely my fault. My point to the teacher the first day was that my son was coming from a small 8th grade class of six into a high-school class of 20 and could get lost in the shuffle. If he needed help staying on track, my suggestion was to get in his face, pat his shoulder and such. With this explanation—and my call to the teacher to call it off—it was clear the freakiness began at home, not from the teacher, and we both laughed. Sort of.
Guerilla Tip: There was no shame in admitting the error of my ways.
- When we were both single and in our 20’s, my brother Rachim asked about coming over for the weekend, and I leveled with him about being too tired for company. He said, “It means a lot to me that you can say no. Now I am sure you wanted me over all those other times for real.” He was happy for the honesty.
Guerilla Tip: Take a chance on honesty. Sometimes, an honest 'no' is more of a gift than a rejection.
- Shortly after my mother passed away, when my brother Mat and I were sitting in mourning, one of my father’s neighbors offered us this thought: “Now your father will be alone.” Yes, well that is what usually happens at the loss of a spouse. To make some lemonade out of that lemon, I said, “Introduce him to someone at the right time.” Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, my thought—grieving and still big with the suggestions.
Mat took me aside later and asked me—his older brother!—to cut such talk out, since he found my reply badly timed and in bad taste. To reduce stress all around, it was not hard for me to agree. “Hard for you to tell me how you felt?” “Yes, but I’m happy how you handled it.” “Then it’s good you told me you were uncomfortable. Thank you,” and we hugged.
Guerilla Tip: Since it is hard to say how we feel, be very accepting when you hear people out on their feelings.
- When Daniel was 14, I asked him to join me in synagogue for a portion of the Yom Kippur service. “You’re just guilting me. Why do you want me there? Do I have to dress up?” Having him attend for the sake of his salvation was not my concern, but having his company was. So I told him I simply wanted him for as many minutes as he felt comfortable, and he could wear anything that covered his private parts. He showed up nicely dressed in a suit and stayed peacefully for two hours.
Guerilla Tip: Speak from your own heart not society’s rulebook. Say it with respect and prepare yourself for the degree of awe-inspiring cooperation you get in return.
The Buddha said, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who said it, no matter if I said it, unless it agrees with your own reasoning.”
- There is a reason you can rely on your heart to guide you through your personal values: Your emotional heart has already consulted your sensible head. Your own values become the morality you teach your kids.
Guerilla Tip: Forget the cowardly nonsense that everything is equally legitimate and valid, and teach what you believe to be moral.
Should you want to conduct yourself in a way others would not approve, like teaching youngsters to gamble for money, I would be shocked—shocked I tell you. But it is your life and your family you have to lead, not mine. It is hard enough for me to run my own life without trying to run anyone else’s.
Guerilla Tip: As a parent, just do a little planning before you act.
- When you take things on yourself at home and on the job, you do not pick up a phone and challenge callers, “Who are you?” or “Who’s this?” You ask, “Who am I speaking with?” or, “Who may I say is calling?” If the call is for my 12-year-old, I get to know who is calling. If she were 16, I would go get her without screening the call.
- Whenever my kids needed practice driving, my lesson was to fit into traffic, not the other way around. Say you want to change highway lanes and see that no one is letting you in. Do you speed up to those cars, align your car to a safe gap there and ease in at their speed? Or do you whine while hoping for a fairy godmother’s lead? Curse the darkness or light a candle?
Guerilla Tip: Teach your kids not to wait for the world to change for them.
We don’t always have to fit into the norm—other than traffic—but neither should we ever be so frozen, so entitled that we expect our surroundings to accommodate us, the world to bend to our will. That is the way of the spoiled child, the prima donna adult. It is not pretty.
- After moving out of my parents’ house at 25, I shared an apartment for a year and a half. Kent V. of Williamsburg, Brooklyn and I stopped getting along at that point and he moved out, but it took me a whole year to see how I helped contribute to the demise of our relationship. When he came for dinner at the one-year mark, I told him I had come to better terms with our past by realizing how many ways I had added to the strain. What a burden it lifted from my shoulders!
The Buddha said, “Holding on to anger is like squeezing a hot coal for throwing at your enemy, but you are the one who gets burned.”
Taking more on myself and less blame on the other guy turned out to be very rewarding for me.
After all, if I was a great guy and was treated dishonestly, what could I look forward to in life but more frustration? But if I made some mistakes I could learn from, I was not doomed to repeat them again. Then I would have control over what my future relationships might be like. What a liberating relief!
Guerilla Tip: If you see yourself as a helpless victim, you can go from helpless to hopeless in one easy step. But if you give up on claiming victim status, you might be happier with the hope you reclaim. Your move. Be brave.
- Why should a parent admit she is wrong? Because it is honest. Doesn’t that weaken her position? No. As a parent, you will not always be right, but you will always be the parent. Since you will be forever fine tuning your system, don’t worry about making mistakes. You are going to say sorry and change your approach, right? Then you have nothing to worry about after all. No need to criticize yourself for not reaching perfection yet.
Guerilla Tip: Where is it written that we were created without the built-in mechanism to goof and then fix our own goofs? Nowhere, that’s where.
To empathize when someone lost a parent, I used to ask, “Were you close?” If they were, the loss seemed bigger to me. But as it turned out, if they were not close, that lack was a lifelong loss that can never improve—itself a big loss. Close or not, it was their only Mommy or Daddy, gone. So, whether sweet or rough, concerned or absent, age-appropriate or demanding, the parent holds a special place.
The parent’s words, too, hold special importance. Therefore, admitting a mistake and showing you are human will not topple you; you are setting a good example.
Guerilla Tip: Fix your mistakes. Don’t repeat them. Make other mistakes.
My interpretation of the expression “My country, right or wrong” is that my loyalty to my country when it is wrong is just as strong as when it is right. Instead of justifying it when it is wrong, my work is to move it in the right direction.
Guerilla Tip: My country, right or wrong, means having pride when it is right and correcting it when it is wrong. It is not a sign of weakness to address a mistake.
My understanding is never to mean, “My country, right or wrong, it is always right.”
- By contrast, my brother Rachim had a nasty teacher in the seventh grade. During a debate in the Talmud, one rabbi conceded the point to another rabbi, and my brother asked whether it was stupid to concede. Good question that gave the fine opportunity to teach that honoring another opinion is strength, not weakness.
Unfortunately, what the teacher actually said was, "You're stupid!" In just two words, he proved himself incapable both of explaining the sage’s maturity and of displaying the same maturity himself.
Guerilla Tip: As parent or teacher, be proud of the day’s work whenever you can model the grace you want to see in the kids.
Wouldn’t that be a beautiful teaching lesson for a student?
“Don’t run! Don’t run!” Do you find yourself screaming at your kid to no avail?
Your empty scolding is like an unsigned check. If someone paid you with one, would you pussyfoot around the subject or go get the signature? You can be extra polite and ask, “Signature?” but you need it, right? Without it, the check is incomplete and has no value. In the same way, repeated scolding is empty and has no value. And you know that you would not accept the unsigned check yourself.
You have two choices here:
A. Shut up.
Guerilla Tip: By nature, kids run.
Parents of old even used to tell their kids to run and play. If your kid were falling from running, he would figure it out and stop. If the situation is truly unsafe, stop screaming at them, get in there and stop them.
Guerilla Tip: If I told you once, I told you a hundred times, you are wasting your breath running after a train that left the station.
Let me point out that for all your insincere efforts, you are rewarded with a sore throat. Apparently, your kid is more sure-footed than you are sure-mouthed.
Guerilla Tip: For all you get from “Don’t run!” you might as well say “Do run,” followed by a chorus of “Da-DOO-run-run-run, da-DOO-run-run,” because singing is kinder on your voice.
Contrary to your expectations, you will get no results when you disempower your own self. You are not a kid, so step up and do the right thing. Far be it for me to criticize you as a whole, but your actions are another story. You have been mistaken, and you need to know it to do anything constructive.
Walk right over to your kid, bend down to his level and ask, “I just said something important—did you hear it?” If he says no, tell him how his running frightens you. If he says he heard it, ask him why he kept running. Then tell him how his running frightens you and he needs to stop.
B. Walk right over to your kid.
Bend down to his level and ask, “I just said something important—did you hear it?” If he says no, tell him how his running frightens you. If he says he heard it, ask him why he kept running. Listen and learn. Then tell him how his running frightens you and he needs to stop.
- Here is a spin on Teddy Roosevelt’s famous line, “Talk softly and carry a big stick.”
Guerilla Tip: If you talk softly, you probably carry a big stick. If you don’t talk softly, you carry no big stick and everybody knows it, too.
How you carry yourself reflects what you carry in your hand, along with how you believe in yourself. You carry many things—authority, street smarts, mercy, cooperation, a paring knife for peeling or for protection, things you can do or can withhold, life balance, money, self-awareness, your five senses.
Besides having all this personal power, you also have to own the feeling of having it. Then you are confident of your safety without flaunting your power. You need no show of it. It is just there. No desperation from a starvation diet, no poverty mentality.
Guerilla Tip: Strength is never screamed. Strength is simply displayed, and displayed simply. Bluster is broadcast at high volume, revealing its nature by protesting too much.
The screamer is not powerful, he is a jerk. When you feel powerful, you can well afford to be gentle, soft-styled and even talk that way. However, as either an earthling or a parent, when you are full of bluster, it is the bluster itself that advertises you have little power. Everybody around you sees it, too: If you had substantial power, you would not be exaggerating what you have and playing the bully. You could afford to be gracious.
- Secrets for New Dads
A pregnant woman will likely ask in private if she is still appealing. Or, she will tell the man that she is ugly, expecting him to be less interested in her physically. She feels that her distorted shape must look pretty funny, and not in a good way.
What women often do not know, and men badly need to put into words, is how much men like to see results. Especially, how proud and erotic it feels for the man to see the physical evidence of his activities showing on her body for all the world to see. There’s a fair amount of “Yeah, I did that” going on.
Guerilla Tip: Pride in your work just makes you want to do even better work in the future.
Even for big, grown men, a new baby who is quiet and at ease feels like a cuddly toy. Nobody tell you this, but they are like a little buddy all your own. Well, not exactly, but a little. And you will want to be around your new buddy a lot. What you have to do—your job—is to keep him safe, calm and engaged. Since they don’t break easily but always need to be protected, the safety part is something you will set up early. And since you will not always succeed in the calm and engaged part, there is nothing to worry about there. Babies are a mess.
Guerilla Tip: In case no one told you, you keep the baby safe by supervising. You keep him calm by washing and feeding. You keep him engaged by talking, playing, laughing, singing and reading to him early on. And loving him in every other way you come upon.
- We all have to stay true to our beliefs, or those beliefs are not much to write home about. Who among us would want to say we believe in the power of prayer and then have to admit we do no praying?
In a Simpson’s TV episode, a blowhard spokeswoman says her firm gives a percentage of profits to charity. When asked for the percentage, she announces, “Zero. Zero’s a percentage.” What makes for fresh cartoon dialogue might not be what we want for your role model.
Be honest with your own private self, for starters. You don’t want to say you believe in something if you then do not actually stand by it in action. Since avoiding everything you discover at anytime to be hogwash is a good idea, let’s try this idea in reverse.
Guerilla Tip: If you find you are not standing by a belief when it comes to acting on it, you can then stop repeating that you still believe in it. You don’t, and no one need judge you for being honest. Friends who judge are not friends you need.
My position is for being loving with my own kids. It is something we all have to do as parents.
- The Hasidic movement started in Eastern Europe and believed that the sheer delights of song and dance are as spiritual as scholarly study—serve the Lord with joy, a reading straight from the Psalms 100:2, Ivdu et Hashem besimcha.
The Hasidim, who lived the simple life, nonetheless had an aversion to overdoing the ascetic life or showing false piety. They saw the ascetic life as rejecting God’s gifts, and false piety as living a lie. Generally poor, though, they took pleasure in the little daily joys.
The Hasidim were all about authenticity, rather than the fashionable ‘Forgive everything, judge nothing’ that people spout and claim to do, but don’t come by it honestly.
Hasidic tale: Any rabbi in a teaching or leadership role is called a rebbe, a friendly term. One rebbe was asked why he was not like his father, the great former rebbe. The rebbe replied, “I am exactly like him. He would not imitate and neither do I.”
The new false piety is the same as the old piety: It’s all about my enlightenment, my humility, my detachment, me. I’m so good! This is nothing but the self-satisfied ascetic being holier than thou and humbled to tell you so.
Yiddish joke—usually a signal to brace yourself for heavy irony and gallows humor: A dying man is visited by his Rabbi, who describes how he will eulogize the man’s finest deeds: “Generosity, success, scholarship, kindness, patience, simplicity.” The man interrupts, “And about my humility, nothing?”
Recognizing false piety is a big accomplishment. Since false piety is so popular, you will have many chances to practice spotting it, all very good practice for spotting it in the mirror.
The Hasidim, including my father and his father, Saba, had this one nailed. Saba, an old-world rabbi who wore no beard save for a little soul patch, would say about ordinary guys who puff themselves up, “What’s he hiding behind that beard?” He could read where it applied, to those men who carried themselves like they’re saved because they’re righteous, but you will be going to hell.
Hasidic tale: A man who has made a career out of the holy-modest-humbleness of not eating except on the Sabbath Day visits a no-nonsense rebbe. The rebbe says, “You are worse than the charlatan who eats in secret. He only deceives others, but you deceive yourself.” Translation: Self-deception is the bigger evil. Being truly pious is admirable, being holier than thou is bad and a fake is the worst, as it dooms you to the spiritual freezer.
Guerilla Tip: Face yourself, embrace your humanity and don’t deceive yourself.
Hasidic tale: A rich man goes around wearing only a burlap sack. When a rebbe spots him, he says right off, “It’s Satan who tricked you into that sack.” Translation: In answer to the sack man’s claim, “Boy, is this humble or what?” the rebbe comments, “Not exactly humble, more like stupid.”
Guerilla Tip: Being hard on yourself is not necessarily to anyone’s benefit.
Hasidic tale: Inventing his own spiritual practice, a rich man in a small town is known for eating only thin soup and giving no charity. When the rebbe hears, he pays the man a visit: “A rich man needs to enrich his soup, enjoy it and eat chicken for the Sabbath.” Translation: The stingy way you eat lets you think the poor can get by on rocks. If you eat meat, at least you’ll give them soup.”
Guerilla Tip: Allow yourself some treats and be generous to your kids and others, too.
Hasidic tale: A rabbi who’s asked about this glorious piety people speak of, says, “I don’t know much about it, except that its threads are made of resentment, stitched with arrogance and closed up without reason or joy.”
Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz was asked, “How is it that there are people who are righteous, yet do horrible things?” Szasz answered, “Why do you say, ‘yet’? I start with the assumption that their posturing is a red flag.”
