"Fear is the Mother of the Event", wrote Victor Frankl

3/25/2013

I am convinced that success in school (or business for that matter) is not a time issue; it is an attitude or meaningfulness issue.  Occasionally, I hear a parent lament that their son's grades are slipping, and he should not play a sport or participate in the band in the upcoming semester.  Even at Riverside where cadets do not have much weekday discretionary time, more discretionary time rarely translates into better grades.  As mentioned in my previous Blog, a positive attitude and a feeling of meaning in life correlate with success in the classroom and otherwise.  Previously, I wrote about the importance of out of the classroom activities as being valuable in bringing meaning to the cadets' life.  I suggest that being extremely busy is the antidote for many maladies.  In school or business, it is an active rather than a passive lifestyle that overcomes depression, anxiety, aggression, and a feeling of meaninglessness in life. 

Youth need to sense achievement and recognition from others someplace, and the associated self-esteem and change in attitude helps everything else.  "Hopin and Mopin" create fear and phobias that reinforce fear and phobias bringing on the very thing that is feared, which is often failure.  Thus, as Frankl wrote, "fear is the mother of the event."  With that as a backdrop, we must fill our cadets’ hours with meaning if we want them to stumble upon success and happiness.  More discretionary time is not the antidote to poor grades.  In my judgment, it merely complements the "mopin and hopin" attitude that accompanies the absence of meaning in life.