Ideas

Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

• Need willpower right now? Clench your fists, cross your arms, tense your muscles, and stand up straight. (Improving your posture can improve your self control.)

• Mental control is important too. A wandering mind is not a happy mind. Meditation can improve this. Just making too many decisions can leave you depleted and burned out. To reduce this, build good habits and automate behavior as much as possible.

• Want to eat less at a meal? Wear a tight shirt. Context is huge. Whether the friends eating with you are heavy, whether your waitress is heavy and how close food is to you all make a difference in how much you eat. On the other hand, going hungry will also reduce self-control because a lot of willpower is about sugar. Your mind plays all kinds of tricks on you when it comes to food. Skipping breakfast might lead to murder.

• All this willpower stuff feeling difficult? Lean back. Increasing willpower can be as easy as pretending you’re left-handed. Mere postponement can be the key to resisting temptation. Writing things down makes you more likely to do them.

• When we use bigger plates we almost inevitably eat more. When the color of the food contrasts with the color of the plate we almost always eat less. A mirror in the kitchen can help you eat less. The wider a variety of foods at a meal, the more we eat. Dining with friends makes you eat twice as much at restaurants.

• If you don’t want to eat that whole bag of chips or spend all that money, break the amount up into a number of smaller packages.

• Just a little bit of practice every day can increase your willpower. Saying “I’ll never do that again” makes you even more likely to do that again. Just monitoring your behavior can improve it. Penalizing yourself for bad behavior works. Think about the pride you’ll feel in conquering desire, not the shame that follows failure.

• Religion increases self-control but reduces ambition. Thinking about money can immediately increase self-control. Keep a reward in mind to resist temptation and stick to your goals.

• “Precommitment devices” are very powerful. So give a friend $500 and tell them to donate it to the Nazi party if you don’t follow through with your goals.

• Form “if-then” plans. Decide ahead of time how you will respond when willpower is taxed and you’ll be much more likely to default to that.

• We can lose control and overindulge when we think a good mood is fleeting or a bad mood will not go away. By focusing on why good feelings will last or why bad feelings will pass we can prevent poor decisions.

• “Consumers who respond to temptation with the words “I don’t” versus “I can’t” are more able to resist.” There are many good tricks to stop you from overspending while shopping.

• Know the secrets to achieving your goals, the things that really motivate us, and how to improve yourself. Know the three techniques the Army uses to instill mental toughness as well as the four methods the government used to increase Navy SEAL passing rates.

• Self-discipline is better than IQ at determining who will be successful. Exercising self-control in one area of life tends to improve all areas of life. Focus on greater self-compassion, not greater self-control to increase willpower. Friends that support you can be the key to radically changing your life. There are tricks to breaking bad habits forever.

• Don’t get cocky. Thinking you have great self-control leads to failure. Sometimes little temptations are harder to resist than bigger ones. (Email can be harder to resist than alcohol or cigarettes.)

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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"When we overcome one difficulty and one hardship, we can build on that when any other hardship comes along in life"

Answer by Eva Kor, Holocaust survivor and forgiveness advocate, on Quora.

I have faced some very tough times. When I was 10 years old, my twin sister and I were used in medical experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. He injected me with a deadly germ and a few days later he came to the sick barrack where I was sent. He never even examined me. He looked at my fever chart and declared, laughing sarcastically, “Too bad, she’s so young — she has only two weeks to live.” At that time I knew he was right — I was very ill. But I refused to die. I made a silent pledge: That I will prove Mengele wrong, that I will survive, and I will be reunited with Miriam.

For the next two weeks I was between life and death. I have only one memory — crawling on the barrack floor, because I no longer could walk. There was a faucet on the other end of the barrack. As I was crawling, I would fade in and out of consciousness. I just kept thinking, I must survive, I must survive. After two weeks, my fever broke and I immediately felt a lot stronger. It took me another 3 weeks before my fever chart showed normal and I was released from the barrack of the living dead and reunited with my twin sister Miriam. That event — surviving whatever I was injected with — serves to me as a very big source of strength.

When my son had cancer, I couldn’t get him to accept the fact that he had to fight for his life, that he had to make the choice to fight for his life. No one else could do it for him. I repeated to him the story of my survival in Auschwitz. He got mad at me and I just said, “Alex, when I was in Auschwitz, the doctors who were around me wanted me dead. I made the decision that I would live. Can you make that decision?” He got mad at me and hung up the phone — he wasn’t ready to deal with it. But he called me back two days later. Alex said, “Mom, I think I understand it. This is my Auschwitz. This is my struggle that I need to survive.” If the person who is suffering from cancer doesn’t even want to make the decision to live, no one can help them. My son is alive today.

The fact that I have overcome so much adversity in my life helps me to have hope during tough times. I believe if I could survive Auschwitz, if I could survive crawling on the barrack floor between life and death, I could probably survive anything. Basically that is the way we gain confidence in our ability. When we overcome one difficulty and one hardship, we can build on that when any other hardship comes along in life. I also like the fact that people who hear me speak can tune in and feel inspired. They see that I could do it, and they realize they can overcome whatever they are trying to overcome too. That is helpful to realize, that maybe each of us can help others overcome by sharing our stories.

You can also look for ideas on YouTube and the Internet for people who have overcome tough times. You will find a story that fits your situation. Then when you are inspired, DO something. Make a commitment to yourself. Make a promise and keep it close by. If you get off track, don’t feel guilty — we all do it. Just get right back on it.

This question originally appeared on Quora: What gives you hope during tough times?

Dax-Devlon Ross is a contributing writer for Next City Magazine.

For the first time, I feel like white people are not just sympathizing with black folks. They’re demanding racial justice

A lot’s already been written about what the Eric Garner and Michael Brown grand jury decisions reveal about America, and, admittedly, I haven’t read any of it. I’ve left the links unopened, scrolled past the headlines on my social media feeds, dodged Jon Stewart’s instant classic Daily Show (so I hear) rant along with Spike Lee’s Radio Raheem re-enactment. For the most part, I’ve been privately nursing a jarring exchange with a colleague.

“They’re not the same,” I assured my colleague shortly after the Garner grand jury decisions. “Different situations. Different parts of the country. Different grand jury proceedings. Race,” I proposed, “is just the most obvious explanation so we’re all jumping to that conclusion. It’s the easy target,” I announced. “I’d even venture to say there were more differences than similarities in the cases. Besides, we don’t know what evidence the jury heard in the Garner case.”

I thought I was being sensible and critical, not jumping to an emotion-driven conclusion or robotically conflating every incident involving race into the a racist incident. I asked my colleague if she agreed.

She didn’t blink. “No,” she said curtly. “They’re the same.”

I should probably point out here that my colleague is a 30-year-old white woman who grew up in a suburb on the East Coast and I’m a black man pushing 40 who’s faced the wrong end of more than one cop’s pistol and spent the past half-decade writing about racial bias and the law. Yet, curiously, in the moment, she was educating me on the realities of structural racism in America. It was… exhilarating.

One of the most inspiring aspects of the protests both in Ferguson and New York City has been the presence of white people. For the first time in my lifetime I’ve felt like white people—not just a few friends—really get it. They’re not just sympathizing with black folks and going on about their day (though, of course, many still are). They’re not deflecting the race issue in favor of class analysis. They’re not retreating into white guilt and shame. They’re not pointing to black people who’ve made it or the progress we’ve seen in the last 50 years. They’re demanding racial justice. They’re calling out white cops who walk for killing black men. They’re calling out cowardly prosecutors who game the system to avoid accountability. They’re using the privilege that white skin yields to protect black bodies. Most importantly, they’ve stopped making excuses for a justice system that, in all candor, has relied on their complicity to maintain its aura of legitimacy for so long in the first place.

So the question remains: Why was I reluctant to see the Garner and Brown grand jury decisions as one in the same? And, by extension, why did it take a white woman bluntly calling out what I was trying to avoid to remind me that the evidence of wrongdoing is as plain as day?

On my way home after the grand jury decision I arrived at a possible explanation. Fighting the good fight can be exhausting. After a while, witnessing the same tragic episodes on repeat leaves you feeling defeated. Eventually, you’re left with two options: accept that you can be strangled or shot in broad daylight with impunity or you reject this reality entirely. You develop coping mechanisms just to survive and continue functioning. Without realizing it, you stop believing that the system will ever change. You lower your prospects, narrow your dreams. You do what’s necessary to get your own foot in the door. You play by the rules. You distinguish yourself. You rise.

Pretty soon you find yourself wondering if there’s more than a kernel of truth in the stereotypes about black men. Maybe we are our own worst enemy.… Maybe we aren’t trying hard enough. You strive to become so special, so unique, that the rules that apply to other black men won’t apply to you. You become an esteemed professor, world-class athlete, President of the United States. You try like hell to purchase an exemption. Time passes and while you may not contract full blown Stockholm Syndrome, you start justifying the unjust. He must’ve done something to provoke the cop.… Why was he selling cigarettes anyway? … Why didn’t he just get down on the ground when that cop told him to? You start apportioning blame like an insurance agent. Maybe the cop was 80% in the wrong, but the victim was at least 20% in the wrong. You train your mind to look at situations where race is involved in an “objective” manner because you don’t want to be perceived as an overly sensitive minority who blames everything on race, because that undermines your credibility among your colleagues and peers and threatens the rational foundation you’ve built your life on.

Accepting that Eric Garner and Michael Brown are one in the same was too much for me. The implications were too distressing. If everything I’d built could be taken away at so little cost, then what was the point? Why did I bother? My only alternative was to diminish the role that race played, look for other explanations.

As trivial as it may seem, my colleague’s brusque rebuff nudged me out of my sense of futility. Sometimes things are exactly what they appear to be. Witnessing so many white allies protesting in the name of black lives has had a similarly uplifting impact on me. Of course, the thought has crossed my mind that, on some level, the presence of whites gives the protests an aura of legitimacy in the eyes of mainstream America. But, maybe, I’ve just waited all my life to see white people as fed up with racism as I am.

Dax-Devlon Ross is the author of five books, a contributing writer for Next City Magazine and a nonprofit education consultant. You can find him at daxdevlonross.com.

Victor Luckerson is a reporter-producer for the Money and Business sections of Time.com. He was the editor-in-chief of the University of Alabama's daily newspaper, The Crimson White, for two years and spent a summer interning at Sports Illustrated. Having spent his first 22 years in Alabama, he continues to carry The South in his heart.

A divergence in African American culture has made it easy for people to categorize "good" and "bad" blacks separately—and that's a huge problem

My parents sent me to an all-white elementary school when I was 4. I speak and think differently than them because of it. This is a small, common tragedy of black life that we don’t talk about: the best way for me to find success in my own country was to be immersed in a culture entirely different from my parents’ and adopt it as my own. But that experience taught me lessons that I now find intuitive–how to find common ground with different people, how to come off as non-threatening to others, how to chalk up racist statements to a misunderstanding. You could probably label me clean and articulate, like my President.

There are a lot of black people like me now who grew up straddling two different racial worlds. Blackish, the only comedy on broadcast TV featuring a prominent African American cast, is centered on this increasingly prevalent concept of black identity. I don’t want to paint my experience as some painful upbringing. I had a big, loving family and, eventually, great friends of all races. But I fear some people are learning the wrong lessons when they meet black people like me–that I am somehow more acceptable or less problematic than other black folks. That Mike Brown, Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin should have behaved exactly like me to avoid being killed.

This bifurcation of black people, particularly black men, into good and bad categories has been going on since the days of house and field slaves. Chris Rock articulated the modern version of it in a classic ‘90s standup bit that expressed some of the unsaid thoughts of the rising black middle class (Rock has since retired the rant because he thought it gave racists too much ammunition). What’s worrying now is that a lot of white people know and like just enough black people to absolve themselves of discriminatory thoughts or actions. No one “hates” black people anymore—just the “thugs” like Brown, Martin and Garner, who were not polite when a person with authority said they should be.

But here’s the thing: there’s not a black man alive who hasn’t been viewed as a “thug” at some point or another in his life. It can happen because you lost your temper. It can happen because you crossed a person with more power than you. It can happen because you were simply existing at the wrong place at the wrong time—like a time I tried to buy beer at a gas station by my college campus with a white friend and a cop on the scene berated me for dragging her through the store (that is, holding her hand). Another white friend had to vouch for me.

When people argue that Mike Brown being high and stealing cigarillos or Eric Garner arguing with the police led inevitably to their deaths, they’re creating a cultural threshold past which a black person’s life becomes less valuable. And when they do that, they are damning all of us.

Some people are reticent to show their frustration and anger over the Brown and Garner deaths because these victims, like all humans, have flaws. But it’s time to stop searching for martyrs or angels—just mourn for people whose lives intrinsically have value. That is reason enough to be upset about how these recent deaths have been handled by the justice system.

The older I get, the more I think about that decision to send me to a white school. How different would my life be if I had not learned to navigate that world at such an early age? For blacks who’ve grown up in communities segregated in the opposite way, it’s not as easy. Learning to deal well with white people can help you get far in life. But it shouldn’t be a requirement for holding onto your life. That is the era my parents grew up in, and I don’t want it to be mine too.

Salamishah Tillet is the co-founder of A Long Walk Home, a Chicago-based non-profit that uses art to end violence against girls and women.

When a teachable moment means robbing someone of the right to make her own disclosures and shape her own narrative

This past week, Janay Rice finally told her side of the story. In a highly orchestrated rollout with an interview published by ESPN’s Jemele Hill last Friday and a two-part interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show earlier this week, Janay consistently strove to distance herself from her image as the country’s latest poster child for domestic violence. She did so, however, by telling Lauer that her violent encounter with her husband, Ray Rice, was just an one-time act and that unlike a real domestic violence victim she would never remain “silent” and let that “just happen again.”

Janay’s assessment of domestic violence victims as passive and quietly enduring their trauma reveals a troubling logic: if not for the release of the elevator footage of Ray punching her and dragging her unconscious body out of the elevator, Janay might well have been another victim who endured that night in silence and been vulnerable to more violence.

Her reticence also reveals a major paradox. Over the last 40 years, the major gains of the domestic violence movement have been over matters of privacy and to insure that those who experience it are legally considered victims. But, because Janay was thrown into the spotlight as the face of domestic violence – against her own demands and desires – she reveals the limits of these gains in an era of 24-hours-news cycle and viral media.

Today, domestic violence is increasingly becoming more visible as a social problem. This is partly because advocates have made significant inroads in redefining domestic violence as a public crime and not as it was previously considered, a private family matters between a husband and his wife. Before, privacy laws were invoked to protect the assailant. Now domestic violence is illegal in every state, and more than 20 of those, including New Jersey, have mandated arrests.

While privacy was historically used to protect assailants, according to law professor Kimberly Bailey’s journal article “It’s Complicated: Privacy and Domestic Violence,” there is now “no role for privacy in the domestic violence context.” The result is that many victims, especially for victims of color, are less likely to come forward because they might be aware that might not be treated with the privileges of privacy or a sense of personhood or dignity by the criminal justice system or by consumers of social media. In the case of Janay, it also meant that few critiqued TMZ’s release of the video. Her assault was sold, widely circulated, and repeatedly watched, all under the premise of social good.

At the same time, as feminist activists were challenging legal definitions of privacy, there was a concerted effort to change the sexist image that women who experienced such violence must have deserved it. In order for domestic violence to be a crime, activists and prosecutors had to alter a discourse from victim-blaming to victimhood and create new narratives of individuals who were worthy of public sympathy and state protection.

And while the video of Janay is a testament to her vulnerability and victimhood for the larger public, her family considers it a stain, a breach of privacy that has changed their lives forever. The disconnect between being called a domestic violence victim and not considering oneself as one was on full display in that two-part interview with Lauer. For it was not only Janay who refused to see herself through that lens, but also her mother, Candy Palmer, father, Joe Palmer, and Ray himself.

Candy Palmer adamantly said she didn’t raise “a young woman to be an abused woman,” and Ray said that the public’s response to his hitting Janay made him understand how domestic violence was “a real issue in society” and that he was “truly sorry to the people that are really going through it.”

While this strategy might partially help rehabilitate her husband’s image as a perpetrator of domestic violence, and might rescue his career, it continues to stigmatize “real” domestic violence victims as people worthy of our concern but not respect, people who have the right to privacy, but not state or community protection.

For advocates and policymakers in the domestic violence movement, however, it’s a rare opportunity to insure that all victims of domestic violence have the chance to shape their own disclosures as well have a sense of privacy and personhood. And this might be the biggest irony of them all because respect and the right to make her own choices, tell her own story, and tell it on her terms is what it seems to be Janay Rice was craving all along.

What’s sad is that it came at the expense of the millions of men and women who experience these forms of violence every day – people who in fact are more like her than she would care to admit.

Salamishah Tillet is an associate professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and the co-founder of A Long Walk Home, a Chicago-based non-profit that uses art to end violence against girls and women.

Rev. Dr. Serene Jones is President of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York.

The collusion of police and capitalist structures has prevented meaningful criminal justice reform

If it wasn’t clear before, it is abundantly clear now. We are in the midst of a deeply sinful and systemically broken system, and the collusion of police and capitalist structures has prevented meaningful criminal justice reform from happening.

When the announcement came down in Ferguson that there would be no trial for Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot and killed black teenager Michael Brown, the police set up camp in a strip mall. Target, ironically, was safe. Thursday night in New York, hundreds of police lined the streets with barricades and batons not to protect the people protesting the non-indictment of the white police officer whose chokehold led to Eric Garner’s death, but to protect the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center–a phalanx standing guard over one of the high holy symbols of capitalism.

Christ is not with the tree. Christ is with the least and the lost. He is with the oppressed. He is with those walking down the street to visit their grandmothers and with those struggling to feed their families by selling cigarettes.

“I can’t breathe” could very well have been uttered by Jesus on the cross—Jesus Christ, an oppressed minority under the most powerful government on the planet who was legally put to death by the state.

But at least Jesus had a trial.

The impunity with which police officers can continue to kill some of the most vulnerable members of society, the latest being Garner, is terrifying. May this be our moment of repentance for a sin that has plagued our nation for over 400 years.

At its best, religion teaches us to recognize the humanity in each and every one of us. At its worst, we learn to see people as less than human—as objects or property.

In 1857, in a case first brought to court just a few miles from present-day Ferguson, United States Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney found that Dred Scott, as a black man, wasn’t a man at all. Blacks, he wrote, are legally “beings of an inferior order…and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

In his grand jury testimony, Wilson called Brown a “demon,” referring to him not as a “he” but as an “it.”

This can be a moment for the scales to fall from the eyes to expose the white idolatry, white privilege, and white brutality that holds our country captive, where white people—myself included—begin to see what people of color see all the time: a criminal justice system that views them not as people, but as objects to be beaten and bullied. And killed without consequence.

The highest ideals of our faith insist we never demonize anybody, much less kill that demonized other. We worship a God who made all people in God’s likeness and bestowed each human with the mark of the divine.

How far away are we from the steps of the courthouse that declared to Dred Scott and America that people of color are property and objects, not people?

We are startlingly close to that dreadful past. Michael Brown and Eric Garner are treated like objects while Christmas trees and Target stores are treated like human beings that need protections and rights. In today’s society it seems that corporations are people but people of color are not.

So now we march. Now is the time to build a sturdy and empowering infrastructure for a social movement.

The degradation and demeaning of black and brown life must stop.

Rev. Dr. Serene Jones is President of Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, where she also holds the Johnston Family Chair in Religion and Democracy. She is Vice President of the American Academy of Religion, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and author of Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World.

The letter that the Organ Donations Authorities deemed too “specific,” “identifiable," and “personal" -- here's what I would say to the recipients of my mom's donated organs if I were allowed

This story originally appeared on xoJane.com.

To whom it may concern:

Congratulations on your new organ!

As I write this, I realize that “congratulations” may come off as a slightly off-­putting greeting.

However, I truly mean it—congratulations. Please don’t take this as disingenuous.

You have overcome a great obstacle which I am sure seemed insurmountable at times. An new organ—be it a heart, lungs, a kidney, or a liver—breathes within you, and I want you to know that I recognize the battle you have fought to get here. For facing what you’ve faced, and overcoming what you’ve overcome, you deserve to be congratulated. You are alive and I hope you are well. Because that fresh, new, functioning organ that has reinvigorated the life your body so deeply craved, was once my mom’s.

Now, evidently I don’t know anything about you, and you know equally little about me. What I do know however, is that we have both participated in the cruel torture I like to refer to as the “Hospital Room Waiting Game.”

My waiting game consisted of paramedics, followed by nurses, followed by doctors, followed by surgeons—all delaying the inevitable. My waiting game ended in heartbreak and loss.

Your waiting game was a little bit different I’m sure; although much longer and no less emotionally ravaging. It is an odd comfort to me that yours ended on a better note than mine; because it was a gift my mom gave that allowed for that.

Over the past few months, you have crossed my mind often. I sometimes ponder how you made it through the waiting game. Perhaps you prayed, maybe to Jesus, or Allah, or Brahman. Or perhaps you meditated upon the wish you so deeply desired. Or perhaps you are not a spiritual person at all and you simply took a logical and systemic approach to the entire situation into which you were thrust.

In any case, whether you consider this new organ a blessing, a gift, a stroke of luck or purely the end result of a protocol­-based waiting list—I hope you make the most of it. Because before giving you new life; that fresh and healthy organ gave my mom life for 50 years.

In those short 50 years, my mom did a lot. She grew up surrounded by friends, family and an infamous dog named Skippy (with whom I’m sure she’s thrilled to be reunited). She had an outrageously wonderful set of parents who, together ­created the most uniquely charming blend of sweetness and sarcasm that I have ever witnessed. She matured, went to university, got married and had three children to whom she devoted her life. She became a mom like no other; and we became young adults, she turned into a friend like no other.

She saw her marriage break down and experienced heartbreak and devastation of proportions so monumental I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. She saw darkness and she felt pain; but then she rose from the ashes, coming out stronger than ever before. She laughed and she cried. She indulged in Pinot Grigio, coffee, and handbags. And in an incomparably beautifully courageous way, she forgave. And shortly thereafter, she fell in love again.

She was a friend, a sister, an aunt and a daughter. She was a partner, a lover, a partner ­in ­crime and a teacher. But more than anything—my mom was a mother.

You and I have more than the “Hospital Room Waiting Game” in common. We have both been blessed with the gift of life thanks to my mom (albeit, in a very different way). This is something that has been easy for me to take for granted throughout the 23 years of my life. However, now as I navigate the problematic and oftentimes seemingly impossible task of re­defining myself without the title of “daughter,” I can see how thoughtless this was of me. I hope that at the very least, we both can take this away as a lesson.

The day my mom died the sky was bright blue. It came as a literal breath of fresh air after the longest, coldest and snowiest winter in recent memory. My mom and I shared a cup of tea over breakfast before going our separate ways; placing the leftovers went in the fridge to be eaten at lunch. It was nearly a month before I brought myself to throw them away (and yes — the mold that had grown was ghastly).

Since that day, I have spent seven months thinking about what my mom would do, say or think about every little thing that occurs in the span of a day.

I wonder if she would like the sandwich I had at lunch. I wonder if she would enjoy the new song on the radio. I wonder if she would be proud of me in my new job, and if she would like the outfit I bought last weekend. I wonder what she would say about this, and I wonder what she would say about that.

The wondering is a relentless record spinning in my mind, never ceasing to play the same song on repeat.

However, as I move forward (but not on—I’ll never move on from my mom), I have realized that I don’t need to wonder so much. Sure, I may never know if she likes the boots I chose to wear to dinner last Friday, or if she agrees that my hair really needs a trim—but the important stuff—the values and beliefs and life lessons that she would want me to make the foundation of my life—well, that I already know. I know it because she taught me. Sometimes inadvertently, and sometimes intentionally. Either way; in the way parents should should, she left me with life lessons more valuable than any physically tangible inheritance. For that, I am grateful.

Now, I know I already stated that we really don’t know one another and because of this I realize it is far from my place to ask anything of you. However, if I may humbly do so, I ask that you might bear with me as I elaborate upon these guiding principles I believe my mom would want to be her lasting legacy. Whether you take them to heart or not is your choice and your choice alone. But for a reason which I cannot begin to put into words, it is important to me that you somehow know her; as impossible as that may sound. And since she is gone, the only way I can fathom for me to bring her to life and allow this to happen is through the written word.

1. My mom’s life was cut short at 50 years. And while those 50 years were full in many, many ways she had dreams and plans that were yet to be fulfilled. These were the dreams and plans that we talked about over dinner or a glass of wine; always laughing and imagining.

They were “someday,” “one day,” “far­away” dreams. In my mom’s passing, I know that she would not want anyone to procrastinate their plans.

Life is short. Embrace the cliché and seize the day.

2. My mom was never boring. Sure, at first glance she may have appeared to be the “typical mom,” but anyone who knew her will attest that that was far from the case. With a cackling laugh rivaled only by the Wicked Witch of the West, she had a wild way about her that made even the most monotonous of chores fun. She proved to everyone who crossed her path that even in the darkest days, there is light to be found.

Life is meant to be sweet. Find your bliss.

3. Oftentimes when someone passes it is all too easy to look back on your memories of them through a rose-­coloured lens. It seems to be human nature to idealize the past. While we often do this with our loved ones, for some reason I don’t find myself doing this with my mom. Maybe this is because she was never shy when it came to her flaws. She knew her faults and she accepted her imperfections. She laughed at herself and took advantage of opportunities to grow every day. She was not perfect and she was the first to admit it.

Nobody’s perfect, don’t dwell on your faults.

4. When we celebrated my mom’s life, the daughters of her best friend performed “Hands” by Jewel, one of my mom’s favorite songs. The refrain “In the end, only kindness matters” is repeated throughout the song. This is a lesson my mom unremittingly reminded me and my siblings throughout our lives; reminding us that when dusk falls ­as long as you can lay in bed at night and feel good about the kind of person you were that day, then you have achieved the most important thing of all.

The world can be cruel, don’t let it harden you. Kindness matters.

She was full of lessons from the very start. I know this “list” may come off as though I’m attempting to tell you how to live your life; and I apologize if that’s how you’ve taken it. More or less, I think the reason I am sharing these ideals with you is that I simply hope you are curious. Curious about the organ inside you and the person to whom it once belonged. Curious about the donor who gave you the gift of life.

The reality is that the mere thought of my mom’s heart continuing to pump and her lungs continuing to breathe is a simultaneously unnerving and beautiful idea. And as much as her organ donation may be a gift to you, truth be told, your acceptance of her organ is a gift to me.

Knowing that a piece of her lives on provides me with an odd sense of comfort that goes beyond conceivable expression.

At my mom’s funeral, I delivered the eulogy during which I spoke about you and your family. I looked around the church and noted the large crowd, saying that while we all may be mourning it is a striking thought to know that in her death, there are crowds just like us elsewhere across the country celebrating today. Celebrating because their loved one has been given the chance for life.

Celebrating because their prayers, meditations, wishes, hopes and dreams have come true. Celebrating because even in her death; my mom (in true “mom” fashion) gave life.

So once again, congratulations. I hope you live your life to the fullest. I wish you well.

Heather Varner is a writer living in Canada.

Terry O'Neill is the President of the National Organization for Women.

In his zeal to protect the shield, the commissioner lost sight of honesty, transparency, and concern for others’ welfare

Roger Goodell talks a lot—an awful lot—about “protecting the shield.” He considers it one of his top priorities to keep the league’s image pristine. But what is he protecting the NFL’s red, white and blue logo from? Recent events indicate that it’s law enforcement, personal responsibility, and the public.

The NFL’s response to domestic violence incidents shows that its priority has been to protect the league’s image above all else, and that zeal for protecting the league’s image is now backfiring–and deservedly so. Too often, the single-minded focus on image has meant blaming and silencing victims, manipulating law enforcement, and/or misleading the public. The Ray Rice case is a good example, but not the only one, of how this works.

Victim blaming and silencing: During an argument in a hotel elevator, Baltimore Ravens star Ray Rice punched his then-fiancée (now wife) Janay Palmer Rice in the head, knocking her unconscious. Yet Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti managed to blame Janay: In two press appearances Bisciotti emphasized that Janay had been drinking; he said she provoked Ray; he even suggested she knocked herself out by holding her head too close to the elevator wall. The Ravens proceeded to script the press conference where Janay apologized for her “role” in the incident. Other survivors report being urged to keep quiet about their abuse, so as not to embarrass the team or harm their partner’s career. Better to keep it all in-house, attend counseling, and try to make the relationship work.

Manipulation of law enforcement. Police and prosecutors in Atlantic City, N.J., where the Ray Rice incident occurred, were well aware of the horrific nature of the attack on Janay. Yet prosecutors allowed Rice to enter a lenient pre-trial intervention program, a move so unusual that New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney called for an investigation. Similar questions have been raised in a host of other cases where the cozy relationship between the NFL and local police have helped abusers avoid accountability, including Ray McDonald, Ben Roethlisberger, Adrian Peterson, and Ahmad Brooks.

Misleading the public: Keeping victims quiet and tamping down arrests and indictments for domestic violence are one way to create a false impression about the incidence and severity of domestic violence in the NFL. In the Ray Rice case, though, the two damning videos made any attempt at minimizing impossible. Goodell’s fallback strategy: deflect attention from the NFL’s policies by demonizing the individual player. Goodell claimed repeatedly that he didn’t understand the seriousness of Rice’s attack because Rice misled him. That wasn’t so. An arbitrator has now ruled that Rice truthfully described exactly what happened in the elevator that night.

The NFL can rebuild its reputation, but to do so it must look beyond the surface and get to the substance. It must develop a policy that recognizes fundamental facts about domestic violence. Not gauzy stereotypes about men’s and women’s role in society, but actual facts.

First, any shock to an abuser’s sense of security–like being summarily fired–creates a significant risk of elevated violence. So before imposing harsh punishments, the NFL must have protocols in place to guarantee the safety of the victim, her children, pets, etc.

Second, the most important factor in a victim’s ability to get back on her feet and regain control of her own life is independent economic security. NFL wives and girlfriends frequently give up their own jobs and careers to follow their partners from team to team, raise the children and manage the households. The NFL profits nicely from this unpaid labor. The least it can do is guarantee economic security to a woman whose sacrifice has left her stuck, without the means to escape the violence and get a fresh start.

Third, like Janay Rice, survivors of domestic violence are strong, competent and compassionate people. They should not be judged for being protective of their partners, even if they are also fearful. They have the right to make their own decisions about how to move forward, and the league’s default posture should be to support their decisions. Stop blaming and silencing them. Start trusting them.

In his zeal to protect what Grantland calls “Goodell’s mythical shield…that is every player’s Constitution, Holy Bible, and secret handshake,” Goodell lost sight of what real reputations are made of: honesty, transparency, concern for others’ welfare and respect for their rights.

Now that Goodell’s attempt to deceive has been exposed, it’s clearer than ever that he cannot earn back the public’s trust in “the integrity of the game.” He must step down. At this point, the NFL’s image is tarnished beyond recognition. That shield is not just cracked; it is shattered.

Terry O’Neill, a feminist attorney, professor and activist for social justice, has been the President of the National Organization for Women since 2009.

Eric Barker writes Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

• Studies have shown the traits that correlated most powerfully with CEO success as well as the most common failures of bad leaders. Avoid extremes of assertiveness or passivity. The best leaders are supportive, not controlling, even in the military. Find a balance between tough and nice. Your leadership style must adapt to the environment around you.

• Understand what things really motivate people. (No, not money.) What’s the #1 motivator? Progress. Definitely progress. Want your employees to perform better? It can be as easy as believing they are smarter than average and having high expectations. (Expecting people to be selfish can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.) Money and feedback work best as incentives when combined with acknowledgement of an employee’s accomplishments. You can give a quick boost to employee motvation by reminding people why their job is important. When all else fails, yes, nagging works.

• Teams are smart because of social skills, not IQ. The best predictor of team success in the workplace is how the team members feel about each other. The words your employees choose can tell you how they feel about the group. When it comes to team trust, it’s true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. (The reason most people leave their jobs is because of a lack of trust.) A historical narrative inspires team morale. Don’t be afraid to touch each other. Might want to learn some tricks to creating a place where people are kind to each other. A difficult initiation might not be a bad idea. Dave Packard (of Hewlett Packard) has some great tips on building a solid work environment.

• You have a vested interest in whether your employees are happy. Happy employees are more productive. (Happier employees bring companies better returns.) And your employees will be happier if you let them know their job has meaning. You can reduce employee stress by making clear what is expected of them.

• To be perceived as a leader, speak first and speak often. You can learn to be more charismatic. When you have to communicate bad news, monitor your body language. Face to face contact is important; communicating via email can turn you into a jerk. Saying “thank you” is vital. Don’t reprimand in public. You can learn a lot from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. You need to be positive for employees to be at their best.

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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