You may be thinking in this economy at this time about how to save money. That is an excellent thing to do.  In this economically uncertain time it is critical you save every dime you can.  As I mentioned in a previous post, this year especially, I highly recommend that you spend much more time with family and less time shopping.  This year may very well be the year you talk about for the rest of your life.  If you’re old enough it may be your year that is similar to your grandparent’s stories of how bad it was back in the old country or how bad it was during the depression.  But this conversation isn’t about how bad your life is going to be. Its about enriching your family life.

This is a time to look within yourself and see what you can do for people who really have nothing for Thankgiving or the Holidays.  It doesn’t have to be allot.  It needs to be what you can do.  For instance, two of our boys work at the local supermarket and are given a couple of ten pound turkeys.  We are going to give them to the local food bank.  We are also going to look in our pantry for any old can of something we bought that no one is likely to use or may use but we really can afford to give it up.

If you can’t give anything or don’t want, donate some of your time to serve food at the local food bank. If you have never done something like this you don’t know what you are missing.  Giving to a cause that has no seeming benefit to you pays you back ten fold.  If you want to really have a great thankgiving just try giving.  It will make watching the football games or the Macy’s parade seem like the waste of time that it is.

For your family,  as you donate stuff or your time, bring your kids. Let your children see the bounty they themselves have.  As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, the key to solid relationships is the appreciation and acknowledgement of others in your life.  For those of you having difficulty communicating with your children donating or volunteering will give you and them a chance to step out of your rocky relationship and alter it.  What I mean by this is, in bad communications someone is usually breaking someone else’s rules.  An example of rule breaking could be your child breaking your rules by getting bad grades or not doing their chores or cleaning their room.  For the child, it may be they feel like you are going in their room without their permission.  What ensues after a rule break is an argument until the rules aren’t being percieved as being broken anymore.  What doing the donation does is take you guys out of that dynamic and puts you in a situation where you are on the same team, working together to help others.  What happens then is you get to see each other in a more positive, non confrontational situation with each other.  If your child refuses to go or doesn’t want to go…explain to them how we really need to help some people and thank the other volunteers for taking their time.  Often when you or your children see these other volunteers donating their time it calls us forward to participate.  Nothing but good can come from these moments.

When you feel like you have tried everything to get into better communication with your child realize there are always other avenues you haven’t come up with yet.  Donation and volunteering may be that avenue.  You can also try being a big brother or sister.  Years ago I was listening to an interview with Tony Robbins where someone was telling him how their business was bad and how he had tried everything to get his business moving.  Tony said “You tried everything”?  The man replied he had.  So Tony said ” ok, let me hear your top 30 marketing attempts or strategies that you have used”.  And the man replied he didn’t have that many.  Tony then said ” you haven’t tried everything, you just didn’t try the right one yet”.   So when you have reached your threshold with your children, always realize there are always other ideas to bridge that gap.

Take Back the Home Foundation is designed to help you with your family.  Don’t waste any time, contact us and see what we can do for you and your family.  Cheers, Dr. Robert.  come visit our site at www.takebackthehome.com

I am sitting here this morning and realizing how completely out of order , our nation and I suspect the world is.  I went to bring some turkeys to the local food bank last wednesday morning and they were so excited that I was bringing them.  I thought there would be lines of people getting ready to donate for the holidays.  As of 8:30 am no one had come.  They were so thankful to me for bringing them.  Of course I felt great but then they asked me what made me bring them.  I told them I thought this year would be extra hard so I wanted to do something.  I asked if a lot of people brought food and they said no.  They got a lot of calls but typically there isn’t a lot of follow through.  This really got me to thinking.

Many of us are waiting for the government to play their role to fix our problems. We are waiting for this miracle cure from them.  I sat in astonishment listening to people tell me how the republicans screwed everything up and how we needed a change and how Obama would be the face of that change.  I kept listening to how he was going to be doing things differently and now am watching him fill his cabinet with mostly Bill Clinton cabinet people.  This got me thinking on two things; the first being aren’t people pissed off that it is more of the same and the second being are people now back to apathy about what the government is doing except on whether they are losing their job.

The aim of this article is not to whine that Obama won.  It is to hopefully make people realize that these people who supposedly run our country were elected by us, and  because of no oversight or corruption in oversight both parties are screwing us.  We can’t come to any other conclusion except for our own family to take responsibility for most of our problems.  Government is the worst  reflection of us.  Their selling us out at every level it is a reflection of a lack of integrity that is pervasive in our society.  So if we are waiting for them to solve our problems  we can’t possibly recover.  People listen, government’s only job should be to protect us from evil entities like the leaders in Iran, Russia and Venezuela and to keep ethics high in business by writing good laws that protect consumers and prosecuting people who break those laws.  That includes people within the government.  They also need to stop reflecting the worst of us and start to reflect the best of us.

How do we get the government to reflect the best of us? Its a trick question.  They never will.  But, here’s the thing.  If we, in our own family, start to behave with a higher level of ethics society will reflect that.  The candidates who rise from a more ethical society will be a product of that better society and hence will be a better government.

How do we begin? If you’ve read some of the previous blogs on parenting or have taken some of our courses or heard a Dr. Robert lecture you will already have a framework with which to proceed.  Here, lets create some basic steps to live by.  Go to church, synagogue, temple, mosque on a frequent basis.  For you non g-d believing people (I don’t know why you would want to be but that’s your choice), you have a harder path to tread.  Notice, I say go to your place of worship frequently.  Why frequently?  Because you are who you hang out with.  If most people you know go you will go more and it will just be a part of your life.  When you go, focus on the higher power, not on socializing, not on how you have to save others.  This will go against what many of you believe.  But listen to this; G-d is all knowing, all powerful and we can’t know why he does what he does.  What we can definitely know is that G-d gave us teachings of how to live our lives, how to treat others and how to behave in society.  Find ways to find commonality with other groups, not divisive points.  People only follow by example, not by preaching.  You will know you are becoming this higher self by the people you find attracted to you.  I warn you though, going on the weekend to services and then having an affair, or gossiping about others or doing unethical things at work or watching others do unethical things during the week is at best 1 step forward, 1 step backwards endeavor.  Always remember, our kids our watching us.  We may not be able to affect how someone in the next city is behaving but we can always be a guiding light in our own family.  Be appreciative whenever the opportunity arises.  It arises constantly if you are looking for it.  Be giving.  Live with concept of abundance, not shortage.  Look for win-win not win-lose or compromising.  No one is happy with compromise. In short,

STEPS TO HIGHER ETHICS IN THE FAMILY

1) Be the beacon of light

2) Be appreciative

3) Acknowledge verbally and physically often

4) Find ways to find commonality and not differences

5) Don’t complain without first looking for an improvement

6) In a tough situation, think, what is the best thing I can do right now.

In closing, your family is the answer to the nation’s recovery so be part of the solution and not the problem.  On a regular basis, be the best you.  Vote for people who are the most ethical.  Be abundant.

Cheers, Dr. Robert    Come visit our site at www.takebackthehome.com