The Laws of the Ring Read Online Free Page A

frankly. Without a moment’s hesitation, my mom butted into the conversation and corrected me. “Honey, you can dance. Any kid of mine can dance.” I had to take her word for it at the time, but now that I think about it, I definitely have been known to get down on the dance floor on occasion. Without my mom’s foresight and encouragement I might have had to stay sidelined on the dance floor, and my fight entrances might have had a little less bounce and energy when Tupac’s “California Love” starts bumping.
    We’re not going to settle the nature vs. nurture argument in this book, but I can say with certainty that the cumulative effect of growing up in an environment where those kinds of messages were always front and center has something to do with who I am today. The combination of an aggressively positive mother and a naturally positive father resulted in an upbringing where nobody ever told me I couldn’t do something. Mom taught me that anything was possible, and Pop taught me to shrug off misfortune and soldier on with a smile on my face. There were no barriers, no fears, no second thoughts.
    J ust because you haven’t done something doesn’t mean you can’t, so resist the urge to criticize . This is harder than it seems. There’s a difference between being a critical thinker and being a critic. A critical thinker comes up with constructive criticism after looking at a problem from all angles; a critic simply tosses out his or her caustic opinion with nothing substantive to back it up, and tends to lend mostly negative thoughts on any given topic. In pursuing your passion, accentuate the positive in yourself and other people, and never allow someone else’s critiques to stop you from tackling your dreams. Don’t confuse this with living in a fantasy world—remember, an umbrella can be used to protect you from the sun as well as the rain. So, to answer Will, there’s a chance the confident attitude I took into the fight with Jay Valencia had its roots on my mom’s refrigerator.

The 2nd Law of Power
    Enjoy What You Have
    M y brother and I spent a lot of time in the summers with our pop, who was always bouncing from one construction job to another. One year, Pop decided to buy a beat-up motor home for us to live in while he did his work rather than rent a house.
    Ryan and I were probably ten and eight years old, respectively, and in the summer Pop would park the motor home next to a creek or a pond somewhere close to his job of the moment and head to work while we were left to our own devices until he returned.
    You can debate the parenting aspects of this all you want— it’s probably not in any of Dr. Spock’s books—but some of the best times of my life happened that summer. Ryan and I would spend the day fishing, swimming, and exploring. This was before cell phones, of course, and before parents feared every moment for their children’s safety. We were on our own, all day, without television or computers, and we had no problem filling up our days. We couldn’t have asked for a better summer.
    When I think back to that summer, I’m amazed at how many life skills Ryan and I developed as a result of that freedom. We carried our parents’ values, but we grew confident in ourselves and our ability to handle our own problems without having constant parental intervention. We learned to be creative—without creativity, we would have grown bored quickly. We learned people skills; I won’t say Ryan and I never had disagreements that summer, but we learned to work out most of our problems and reach a consensus on what we were going to do and how we were going to do it.
    And there was nobody telling us that even our most harebrained schemes were too dangerous or impossible. Most of the time we got along great, but we had our typical sibling squabbles. We didn’t have many creature comforts—no television, for