Hal Urban - The Power of Good News: Feeding Your Mind with Whats Good for Your Heart

THE POWER OF GOOD NEWS

OTHER WORKS BY HAL URBAN

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The 10 Commandments of Common Sense

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Lessons from the Classroom

20 Things Good Teachers Do

20 Gifts of Life

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7 Great Lessons on Being a Good Person

The Power of Good News

Copyright 2021 by Hal Urban

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First Edition

Hardcover print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-9278-9

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9279-6

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-9280-2

Digital audio ISBN 978-1-5230-9281-9

2021-1

Produced by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services

Copyediting: Nancy Evans | Text design: Nancy Koerner

Cover design: Susan Malikowski, DesignLeaf Studio

Dedicated, with much love and thankfulness, to my Alpha Delta Gamma brothers and to two honorary sisters at the University of San Francisco, for sixty-plus years of friendship, support, laughsand good news.

There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.

Thomas Aquinas (12251274)

With every news alert or breaking story, our world seems to be pushed further and further into crisis. It is taking a serious toll on our environment but also on our mental health.

Alexandra Pattillo
CNN health reporter

Being exposed to positive information benefits us emotionally, physically, and mentally. It can contribute in a meaningful way to a happier and healthier life.

Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD
Harvard psychologist

Were going to spend quite a bit of time together in these pages, so you should know a few things about me. It will help if you know what influenced me growing up and what changed me later.

I grew up in a small town in Northern California. My dad was a good man in many ways. He was conscientious, worked hard, and was generous with his time, building talents, and money. But, like all of us, he had some flaws. I think they stemmed from his grueling childhood. Born in 1910, the son of two recent immigrants from Lithuania, he grew up as the oldest of eight children on a farm in Oregon. Because he went to work on the farm at age five and was also responsible for helping with his younger siblings, he had little time for an education. He left the farm as a young man and moved to San Francisco to become an ironworker.

Unfortunately, my dad was negative, angry, loud, confrontational, and he swore a lot. Most men of his generation didnt communicate well and rarely talked about their feelings or expressed affection. My dad never told me he loved me or was proud of me. I never had even one meaningful conversation with him. This was the environment I was raised in. The angry words and lack of affectionate words left their mark on me. It took a long time to recover. For the record, my dad did love me and was proud of mehe just couldnt tell me. He did a lot of things for me later that proved it, and I will appreciate those acts forever.

You may be wondering about the role of my mom. In the 1940s and 50s when I was growing up, she, like most women, played a traditional role. She stayed home with the kids, cleaned the house, did laundry, shopped, cooked, and played a subservient role to the man of the house. My mom was actually one of the sweetest, kindest, and most giving persons Ive ever known. She had a great influence on me, but not until later.

Things began to improve when I got to high school, where, for the first time, I had good male role models. My best teachers in both high school and college were positive, caring, and supportive. They helped me learn to forgive my dad and realize my potential for a better life. I wanted to be like them, guiding young people in the right direction. I wanted to be a teacher.

Dr. Tom McSweeney, a wonderful education professor, said, The first thing successful teachers do is form good relationships with their students. If you can reach em, you can teach em. That became my career mantra. He added what has become an educational proverb: Kids dont care how much you know until they know how much you care.

During all thirty-six years of my teaching in high school and university, I devoted the first few classes to connectinggetting to know my students and helping them get to know me and one another. As corny as it may sound, my first goal was to turn my classroom into a caring community. I learned early on that good teaching involves more than academics. Its also a highly personal and social endeavor.