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I have… large dreams. No, I don’t mean I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about elephants.

I want to build an army of highly effective people that improve the community around them. Given the current life expectancy in this country, I have forty years left to do it. My student’s have massive goals too.

🎻 Katie wants to be a Hip Hop violinist
✒️Jason is writing the great American novel
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Mr. Giampietro is successfully supporting and raising a family while remaining sane.

Now, at twenty-two I’ve accumulated a serious resume. I don’t really feel like I have done all that much in the past several years.

Unlike everyone else, I was there for all the less glamorous and more pathetic moments. I don’t want to know how many hours I’ve lost to stoking my anxiety and wondering, “do they really like me.” When I look back at the short list though:

🥾 I’m a moderately accomplished backpacker

🦅I became an Eagle Scout in 2015

👨‍🏫I spent several years tutoring Middle Grade students (often they spoke broken English)

🏕️There was that year that I worked as a Group Leader at Liberty lake.

🏺Oh, I also spent time studying Greek and being my professor’s faculty assistant

🧠 Oooooo I study Child Psych, Literature, & writing on top of that

🎞️There was that semester I learned to video edit.

🚘 I spent the last two years of college commuting every weekend—three hours each way—to teach Martial Arts and Learn Business.

🥊There was that year I accidentally became a summer camp director

😷 Then in 2020 I had to completely convert my Summer Camp to Virtual then a Socially distant Face to Face camp.

…

Okay, I’m going to stop bragging now.
It doesn’t feel like I’ve done a lot in those past six years. There wasn’t a massive shift in my life where I became successful. The only thing I did….
The only thing I’ve ever done…

…Is I make a point to move the needle in the positive direction every day. Stephen Covey called that “Sharpening the Saw” (7 Habits of Highly Effective People). I call it preventing the ever-encroaching pain of boredom.
I genuinely don’t try to make big changes in my life. When I try to make overwhelming change, it fails. After about a week I’m back to my old habits.

Whenever I change a little bit every day, I somehow manage to do something interesting. Even my whirlwind college road trips—sponsored by Calla Saunders, Albert Yu, and that other guy who lives in the attic—weren’t that sudden.

They were the result of my years of camping experience and my friend’s uncanny ability to build itineraries.

We Know New Year’s Resolutions Often Die
We all have seen people who crash within weeks after starting to move toward their goal.
Why not embrace the idea of small changes, one day at a time

I know that’s what I will be doing.

FYI, If you want to build yourself into a better person with my team Vist www.dinotokarate.com