Live Free, Laugh Hard

I grew up in Finland knowing a term that directly translates to "New Helpless" in English. This term was used to describe a phenomenon that was reported to be on the rise in Generation X. New helplessness referred to young adults who were moving out on their own just to discover that they were completely ill-equipped for "adulting." They lacked basic life skills, such as cleaning, cooking, and self-care because of either excessive pampering by their parents or simple laziness to learn. In today's world, we can add a third group of "new helpless" young adults - those raised by "new helpless" parents and thus lacking a role model for learning life skills. In my early teens, I heard a lot about the "new helpless" because my dad was a particularly harsh critic of these people he described as, "dummies whose parents did too much for them so they never learned anything and are now out there walking around with their t...

This morning, while training a client, I was reminded how language can mislead us or play tricks on our mental image of something we don't quite understand. As I was leading my client through stretches, I explained that the movements we were doing targeted our hip flexors and hamstrings and that ultimately the stretches could be used to gain flexibility to do the splits. She smiled and said, "Oh! I would love to learn how to do the splits" and I replied, "Well, these stretches are a great start. Just keep at it and do these several times a week." Her statement left me thinking about how often I hear people say, "I want to learn how to..." when the skill they are looking to learn isn't so much a matter of learning "how" but rather something that can only be gained by persistent training that develops the body.  Recently, at a consultation, a prospective student told me, "I want to learn how to do pull ups. I've tr...