Hi, I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins here to share with you
five powerful principles that every child should learn and master.
I'm glad you're watching this video. These principles can actually help to protect
children from risky behaviors that could get them into a whole lot of trouble. I'm going to share
these principles with you in the way that I share them with the kids so that you'll have the tools
to maybe share them with some of the children in your life. Here's a little context around that.
I spend a fair amount of my time providing training and service to a non-profit organization called
nova principles. Just as a quick summary of what nova principles is all about, we train and teach
police officers to go into the classroom and share a principle-based curriculum with the kids. You've
probably heard of programs that are about helping kids to stay away from alcohol and other drugs or
other risky behaviors. Well, nova principles is a more complete principle-based program. What I
believe as a professional psychologist is that we can tell kids all day long to avoid risky
behaviors or we can spend that time and energy helping kids to internalize principles that
will allow them to do effective principle-based decision-making and that's the context in which
these five principles have emerged. I want to share all five of them with you. The first of these five
principles is positivity. When we teach this to the kids we usually put a definition on it that
we expect them to memorize and in the program they can earn prizes or badges or awards for
correctly memorizing each of these five principles. So, let's help you to memorize the same principle.
Positivity is a concept that I teach all the time in my practice here on the channel, in our coaching
programs. The way we present it to the kids is this, when I choose positivity I experience success
and happiness. That's how we define the principle of positivity. The way we do that is through wicpiesah.
Now, you'll see an image on the screen of wicpiesah, she is the warrior princess of
positivity and the way we spell wicpiesah's name is w-i-c-p-i-e-s-a-h which stands for
when I choose positivity I experience success and happiness. Can you remember that as you
remember our positivity warrior princess wicpiesah. You know when I first came up
with this idea of remembering it I thought nobody's going to remember that, that's crazy.
We find that people remember it, that's crazy too. Wicpiesah when I choose positivity I
experience success and happiness. Principle number two is accountability. You probably already know
what you think about accountability. Here's how we help the kids to remember this principle. I own, now
do the actions with me, okay. Actually, move your hands, it makes a difference in how you
can remember it. I own and you grab it and pull it into you, okay. I own my thoughts, feelings, choices,
and actions. That's how we define accountability. I own my thoughts feelings choices and actions.
The thoughts are obvious. Feelings we usually experience kind of here in the core of our
body. So, I have the kids go to their head first to the to their core next. Choices, I can choose this,
I can choose that and so we move our hands back and forth like this to indicate choices and then
actions. I'm grabbing a steering wheel like in a car. I can drive this. I can take it wherever I go.
Those are my actions, I'm steering my life. So, once again, the definition do it with me,
"I own my thoughts, feelings, choices, and actions", are you liking this so far? What if all of our kids
could internalize the principles of positivity. When I choose positivity I experience success and
happiness and accountability, I own my thoughts, feelings, choices, and actions. Wow and we've
still got three to go. Before I get to the next three would you just take a moment to subscribe
to this channel and to the nova principles channel if you like those principles and
you would really value having the resources that particular channel provides. Our third principle is
knowledge, I used to define this as knowledge is power and you've probably heard that one before
and then we morphed from that into, "Well, knowledge isn't really power. Knowledge is potential power or
the application of knowledge brings power into your life", and here's what we finally settled on,
it's pretty simple it's just three words, knowledge creates opportunities, love it. What you do with
those opportunities is totally up to you. That's how we're going to define principle number three,
knowledge creates opportunities. Do you like that? Now, let's go to principle number four,
principle number four is work. In this image you see a pathway. In the nova principles
program we talk about my path to excellence and there's paths that can lead you to other
places too but where you want to go? How about excellence? Yes, and the motto of nova principles
is illuminating the path to excellence. So, in this image, you'll see the path and then you'll see
a recliner on one side and you'll see a hammer on the other side. Here's how we define work,
my path to excellence requires work, pretty simple. So, you get to choose. The recliner
obviously, represents relaxation or lounging or sitting around and the hammer represents hey, let's
let's actually put some work into this. My path to excellence requires work and that's why we put
that image there so you can choose one of those. Can you remember that one with that image in your
mind? Which brings us to number five our fifth core principle is respect. Defined as I respect myself,
others, and everything around me. Here's a quick and easy way to remember that or to teach it to your
kids. I respect myself, putting both hands on your own chest. Others, moving your hands out to indicate
other people in your world and then we're going to do a full circle, a full 360 as we
say end everything around me. So, the whole thing goes like this, do it with me. I respect myself
others and everything around me. When we hold our parent coaching sessions that Live on Purpose
Central, we talk about three rules for the home so that we don't have these big exhaustive rules of
everything that you can and can't do. It's simply three rules, respect yourself and others, respect
property, and respect authority. All three of the family rules come back to this one principle that
I just shared with you, I respect myself others and everything around me. Now, you've got all five,
positivity, accountability, knowledge, work, and respect. What happens to our world if we
and our children better internalize all five
of those core principles that I've shared with you here today. Hey, remember to check out our sponsor
for this episode which is nova principles. You can click over to their YouTube channel
and see some of the resources that they're putting there for you as a parent.