The National Parenting Center Expert Panel Review of Abundant Harvest for Teens

The National Parenting Center recently gathered its panel of some of the world’s most respected authorities in the field of child rearing and development to provide parents with a comprehensive and responsible review of recently released products.  The National Parenting Center’s expert panel  just released their review of Abundant Harvest for Teens.

We want to thank the expert panel for a very thorough and thoughtful review.  Their comments provide a great summary to guide parents and educators on the intent of Abundant Harvest for Teens.

Please see the link below for the complete review.

http://the-parenting-center.com/abundant-harvest-for-teens/

 

 

Character Creates Opportunity® – The Fork in the Road: Thursday, April 24, 2014

Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”  I think we all know what Yogi meant…:)

We are all familiar with times in our lives where we stood at that ‘fork in the road’ and needed to make a decision one way or the other.  The decisions span the spectrum from quick and easy to long and incredibly difficult.  The decisions we make and the actions we take to move down one path or another are very relevant opportunities to build and strengthen our character.

Success in various areas of our lives brings about a multitude of ‘fork in the road’ decisions.  If we have success in our careers, there are number of ‘climbing the ladder’ type decisions that need to be made.  If we reach a level of financial success, there are a number of decisions around managing wealth that need to be made.  If we have success in building strong relationships, there are a number of decisions that need to be made to maintain the commitments of lasting, healthy relationships.

In today’s blog, I would like to address the origin of many of our ‘fork in the road’ decisions as it can bring some insight to our efforts of building and strengthening our character.  History demonstrates that for most of us, we only learn and grow through pain, discomfort, and challenge compared to the times we are riding high on the wave of success.  Books are filled with examples of companies that have been blinded by success which eventually resulted in their downfall and examples of great “turnarounds” from the challenges of bankruptcy and potential insolvency.  In close relationships, we really only wake-up and prepare to learn and grow when our world is about to fall apart and our spouse’s bags are packed, compared to the relative calm of a quiet night at home when everyone is well fed, well rested, and the bills are paid.

Discontent and frustration over our current situation is an opportunity waiting to happen.  Discontent is the first step in any value creating endeavor.  The great medical discoveries were born out of frustration and near hopelessness in witnessing suffering and death from disease.  The great challenges of war brought about some of our greatest inventions.  The tremendous frustrations of a growing nation brought about incredible advances in transportation and communication in the most recent 100+ years of our nation’s history.

On a more personal note, when discontent and frustration hits us personally, our ‘inner voice’ that drives our thoughts, decisions, and actions spotlights our character.  When we are at the ‘fork in the road’ of a difficult personal situation, which direction do we turn?

When faced with the normal and unavoidable frustrations between a parent and a growing teenager, which direction do we take?

When faced with the inevitable frustrations between couples, which direction do we take?

When faced with a frustrating manager at work, which direction do we take?

When a teacher in school seems unreasonable and illogical, which direction do we take?

When a missed promotion seems so unfair and politically driven, which direction do we take?

In those difficult times, when discontent accompanies us at the fork in the road, if our thoughts, decisions, and actions are based on principles like courage, honesty, responsibility, and understanding, we build and strengthen our character as we head down the most effective path.  If we let our thoughts, decisions, and actions be guided by anger, apathy, and the death-nail of relationships, contempt, we weaken our character and head down the least effective path.

In the same way that discontent and frustration is the first step in incredible innovation in our world, personal discontent and frustration with the state of a relationship can be the fork in the road where there is a path of opportunity to build and strengthen the relationship and a path to destroying it.  We are responsible for the path we take.

Since there will probably be only a few of us leading the next great wave of global innovation to alleviate the suffering of the masses, the rest of us would be wise to focus most of our effort on choices to build and strengthen our relationships.  When those relationship frustrations occur and we are reminded that we are at that fork in the road, choosing to move down the path of opportunity vs contempt is a choice that will build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity® to improve our relationships and expand our impact.

Harvest Time Partners Announces Major Product Award

National Parenting Center Seal of ApprovalAbundant Harvest® and Face to Face™ Receive Awards from The National Parenting Center

Harvest Time Partners, Inc., an industry leading personal and professional development company, continues to create relevant and practical tools to support and encourage individuals, families, and organizations to reach their full potential. One specific initiative, Character Creates Opportunity®, is a portfolio of resources designed to support the character development of children, adolescents, and adults. Abundant Harvest® and Face to Face™ are a series of conversation games under the Character Creates Opportunity® initiative.

Abundant Harvest® for Kids, Abundant Harvest® for Teens & Adults, Face to Face™ Kids Edition and Face to Face™ Teen Edition are all recent winners of The National Parenting Center’s “Seal of Approval.”  The games are designed to open the door to more effective communication, encourage decision making based on principles such as honesty, loyalty, and commitment with the intent of reinforcing the Law of the Harvest, simply “you reap what you sow.” The games help to foster effective conversation around real world issues and help to develop the critical life skill of face to face communication in a world that has gone digital.

Created in 1990, The National Parenting Center’s Seal of Approval program identifies the finest products and services being marketed to the parent/child audience. This award signifies to other parents that their peers have acknowledged a product’s quality and desirability based on a wide variety of determining factors. It is the sole intention of The National Parenting Center to advise, support and guide parents with sound, responsible advice.

David Esposito, managing partner of Harvest Time Partners, said, “We are absolutely thrilled with receiving the Seal of Approval from The National Parenting Center. For more than 20 years, The National Parenting Center has gathered some of the world’s most respected authorities in the field of child rearing and development to provide the most comprehensive and responsible parenting advice to parents everywhere. Receiving the Seal of Approval for Abundant Harvest® and Face to Face™ is a tremendous honor.”

Harvest Time Partners continues to market Abundant Harvest® and Face to Face™ on major ecommerce sites such as Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Newegg.com, and others. In addition, a growing number of select specialty retailers around the United States are beginning to carry the Abundant Harvest® and Face to Face™ line of conversation games.

For more information or to discuss additional products and services from Harvest Time Partners, Inc., please visit the company website at https://www.harvesttimepartners.com, email David at david [at] harvesttimepartners.com, or call 877-786-4278.

About Harvest Time Partners, Inc.

Harvest Time Partners, Inc. was created almost 20 years ago to provide support to individuals, families, and organizations on a variety of topics and subjects encompassing personal and executive development, team building, leadership training, and building a strong marriage and family. Harvest Time Partners provides character-building seminars, workshops, and custom programs designed to increase personal effectiveness, enhance character development, and strengthen the bonds of marriage and family. For more information, visit https://www.harvesttimepartners.com

About The National Parenting Center

The National Parenting Center was founded in July of 1989 with the intention of providing the most comprehensive and responsible parenting advice to parents everywhere. The advice provided is furnished by some of the world’s most respected authorities in the field of child rearing and development. For more information, visit http://the-parenting-center.com/

Character Creates Opportunity® – Effort: Thursday, April 17, 2014

There is no denying that our world continues to grow in complexity, intensity, and uncertainty.  Given this reality, we have a tendency to think that ‘today is different’ and there is a new set of rules in order to reach our full potential.   History would tell us that there are always evolving techniques that can more effectively move us along the path to reaching our potential.  However, the principles that we can apply as the foundation to our path are timeliness and retain their value regardless of the ‘latest and greatest’ technique or changing environment.

One clear, timeless principle is that effort is the great equalizer in reaching our potential.

Some of us may have had a stronger start in a nurturing, supportive home.  Some of us may have received a better education.  Some of us had stronger relationships that added fuel to our hopes and dreams.  Some of us had mentors in the marketplace that helped us advance a few more steps in our career.  Regardless of these momentary advantages, effort, applied over time, is the great equalizer in reaching our full potential.  Along our journey of life, these momentary advantages seem to ‘seal the deal’ for individuals, but they are not sustaining.  Our effort, applied over time, can sustain us on our journey to reach our full potential.

Most of us hearing this message are leaning forward and giving it all we have in life.  What I want to highlight in this blog is one of the most important risks working against this principle of effort and its correlation to reaching our potential; the risk that derails our effort being the great equalizer to reaching our potential is a dilution of effort.

When academics and practical observers study people and organizations that succeed in reaching great heights, a common characteristic is a focus of effort.  Our greatest risk to the truth that effort is the great equalizer is lack of focus.  Despite how heroic we may think our personal capacity to work, love, and live is, we have limits.  If we dilute our effort across too many fronts, we run the risk of falling short of our potential and being stuck in the middle of the bell-shaped curve of life.  Even marginal effort has been proven to be a drain on our overall effectiveness to reach our full potential.

Here are just a few thoughts on avoiding the dilution of effort risk:

(1) Determine what is essential and make peace with saying “no” to the rest.  Sustaining our effort to reach our full potential is dependent on our discipline to say “yes” to the essential and a clear, unequivocal “no” to everything else.

(2) When we choose to take on another task, another project, another hobby, or invest in another deep relationship, we need to be disciplined to determine what will come off our plate.  The phrase “doing more with less,” popularized in the corporate downsizing trends of this recent recession, is a nice catch-phrase, but the reality is we need to say “no” to more in order to drive greater success on the important tasks.

(3) Let’s not kid ourselves.  The real easy choices are eliminating the simple, mindless time wasters we can all walk easily into from time to time.  Even minimal or “passive” activities are proven to be a drain on effectiveness.  The tough part is once those frivolous energy drainers are gone and we have to cut to the bone on real promising activities, that is when we know we are making solid progress in eliminating the risk of dilution.  One of the most effective questions I have found in assessing business plans and operating plans is “what are you not investing in?”  A business can go in a number of seemingly promising directions and can risk diluting their effort.  The most successful ones make disciplined choices on where they are not going just as much as determining where they are going.  The same question is a good first step for us as individuals to clarify what we are saying “no” to in order to maximize our effort on the things we say “yes” to.

In determining what is essential, here are a few thoughts across the personal and professional sides of life:  (1) No accomplishment in this world can compensate for a failure in the home.  (2) In building an organization, all the great strategic insight and brilliant execution do not produce sustained success when there is a lack of trust.  An honorable culture is critical to sustainability. (3) No individual can sustain a high level of accomplishment without a focus on his/her own character.

Making clear, intentional choices on where we apply our effort will help build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity® to reach our full potential.

Character Creates Opportunity® – Questions: Thursday, April 10, 2014

Some of the best insight we can gather on our journey to build and strengthen our character can come in the form of questions.  Throughout my own life’s journey, some of my greatest learnings were when someone asked me a question which allowed me to learn and grow as I attempted to respond.  Many times, the question helped to highlight a weakness or shortcoming that needed to be addressed.  On the contrary, when others just provide the ‘answer’ or tell us ‘what to do,’ they hinder growth and many times create a cycle of dependence on someone else providing the answer or showing us the way.  Questions enable growth and we should embrace them as opportunities instead of disruptions.

I can recall a particularly painful learning in my professional life when I was standing in front of a large group seeking funding for a new opportunity.  After the long presentation, the leader of the business asked me a critical question, “Is this consistent with our strategy?”  That one simple question revealed a great deal of insight and none of it was particularly flattering to me. Did I even know the strategy of our business?  Did I even know what strategy meant?  Did I think that this very successful business and the leader who built it have the wrong strategy?  I could go on, but I think you get the point.  Asking the right question can bring about a great deal of growth instead of just providing the answer.

On a more personal level, I think we all have experienced a moment when we heard something, read something, or observed something that was particularly meaningful to us.  The experience stirred in our hearts a desire to change or incorporate that learning into our lives.   Whether we gained some insight from a speaker, found something helpful in a book, received some relevant comments from a coworker, or a family member’s ‘tough love’ helped us to acknowledge some shortcoming we had not been willing to admit.  When we encounter truth in these experiences, many times we are moved to action.

When we encounter truth and our hearts are stirred to action, asking the right questions will help us to move further along on our journey to build and strengthen our character.   Upon hearing some insight and being moved to change, now is the time to ask two important questions:

(1)        What will I do differently as a result of this insight?

(2)        How will I hold myself accountable to deliver on it?

There are several ways to personalize our answers to these questions, but the basic intent is to clarify the learning, take action, and measure and monitor our progress.  We all have occasions where we knew we encountered truth and were momentarily moved to action, but it did not stick.  We let the ‘feel good’ moment pass and become just another missed opportunity to learn and grow.

Asking the right questions in order to move beyond the ‘feel good’ moment and take action will help build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity® to continue to learn and grow.  Let’s all keep asking the right questions.

 

Character Creates Opportunity® – Connections: Thursday, April 3, 2014

Technology continues to expand our ability to get “connected.” As a result, we have more opportunities to stay connected or get reconnected with friends, family, coworkers, and the larger world beyond our neighborhoods.  Staying connected with others meets a strong human need to “belong” in relationship with others.  Ironically, as today’s world gets more connected, we are actually battling greater levels of isolation which runs in a vicious cycle with addiction.

If you speak with someone who leads a Twelve Step program for addicts, a pastor or counselor dealing with similar issues in people who have not yet admitted their addiction, they all will tell you about a common theme in the cycle of addiction, it starts with isolation.  When we experience a period of loneliness or we make certain choices that drive us into isolation, we often reach for a soothing remedy that, if we are not careful, breeds an addiction and the cycle continues.  Our remedy may change, but the cycle continues.

We are all familiar with the addictions that grab the headlines like drugs, alcohol, porn, sex, greed etc.  There are a number of addictions that don’t make great headlines, but we will save them for another blog post.  The process of addiction is pretty much the same; we run into some kind of struggle like poor self-esteem, a broken or troubled relationship, stress when a dream becomes a nightmare, and we move into isolation.  With isolation comes our search for a remedy and when we find it, often it becomes an addiction to help us to avoid the root cause of the struggle.

Addictions fill the void of our need for human connection when we become isolated.  Addictions replace the healthy human bonding that results from face to face, authentic connections where tone of voice, body language, the spoken word, and touch bring warmth, caring, and concern.

Below are two points to consider as our connected world gives rise to isolation and addiction:

(1) Technology will not replace the human need for the healthy bonding that results from face to face connections.  Technology can help bridge the gap that comes with time and distance, but it cannot replace our basic need for the touch and feel of a face to face connection.  We must not let the ease of technology enabled connections lull us into thinking that is all we need.  Ask any grandparent about SKYPE.  It is a great tool to bridge the gap, but it will never replace the hug of a grandchild.  Ask any business traveler or their family at home about FACETIME.  It is a great tool to stay connected from some dark, cold hotel room, but it will never replace the feeling of spending an evening at home.  If we go too long without a face to face connection, the health of our relationships can be at risk.

(2) We need to be careful that the same technology that enables our world to be connected, does not become an enabler of “quick and easy” isolation which then opens the door to addiction.  The risk of this dynamic in the workplace is seen when leaders attempt to lead from email from the comfort of offices and fail to make the effective face to face connections around the office or in the field with sales and service teams.  The ease of communicating electronically can become an addiction that aids avoidance of the tough conversations that leaders need to have face to face in order to sustain a healthy organization.

The greater risk of technology becoming an enabler of “quick and easy” isolation is perhaps in the home. The technology and tools present in today’s homes enable isolation more than ever.  With multiple smart phones, tablets, computers, and “on demand” TV programing, most family members can easily retreat to their own corner of the house.  Despite how busy we all seem to find ourselves, academic research and our own honest assessment of time in our homes would inform us that we still manage to spend a great deal of time with our technology of choice.  It is important to remember during those times we let technology serve our individual desires, we are most likely missing out on improving a connection with a child, a spouse, or a parent.  When times are tough in our homes and relationships are in a real tailspin, the isolation that can come with technology is an easy, comfortable addiction to avoid the hard work of repairing a struggling relationship.

In today’s vernacular, my kids would say, YOLO (You Only Live Once) in addressing the complexities of our connected world.  From some experienced Twelve Step folks, I am sure they would recommend YANA (You Are Not Alone) to help us address the complexities of our connected world.  YANA is a strong reminder to help us minimize our periods of isolation that open the door to addiction.

When we put effort into maintaining healthy connections, we build and strengthen our character and Character Creates Opportunity® to stay connected with others and we build huge barriers to isolation and addiction.

Harvest Time Partners Expands Distribution of Conversation Games Through Partnership With New Day Christian Distributors

Educational Conversation Games Now More Widely Available

Portage, MI (April 3, 2014) — Harvest Time Partners, Inc., a personal and professional development company, is expanding its market penetration through a distribution agreement with New Day Christian Distributors. The arrangement will provide Harvest Time Partners with the capability to offer its full line of patented and award winning conversation games to a broad retail network.

David Esposito, a managing partner of Harvest Time Partners, said, “After the successful launch of our conversation games during the 2013 holiday season, we look forward to significantly expanding the presence of our games into the ‘brick and mortar’ retail market with our newly established relationship with New Day Christian Distributors.  New Day Christian Distributors has tremendous presence in the market and we see them as a great fit to reach our goal of further penetrating the large market for conversation games. We look forward to working with them as we expand our reach and make our conversation games available to more consumers in stores throughout the United States.”

New Day Christian Distributors will begin offering the revised and updated version of the  award-winning conversation game Abundant Harvest®, a one-of-a-kind board game designed to help families and educators open the door to more-productive dialogue and encourage decision making based on principles such as honesty, loyalty, and commitment. Reinforcing the law of the harvest, the game’s primary takeaway is that you will always reap what you sow.   Face to Face, the newest line of conversation games from Harvest Time Partners, will also be marketed by New Day Christian Distributors.  Face to Face games are designed to start great conversations on real-life issues, in real-time with friends and families. Face to Face is available in a Kids Edition, Teen Edition, and Dinner Party Edition.

Michael Turner of New Day Christian Distributors said, “We are excited to offer these innovative conversation games to our customers.  In addition, the fact that Harvest Time Partners, Inc. is a combat-veteran owned business and all products are “Made in USA” is of great value to New Day Christian Distributors and our customers.  We look forward to a successful relationship with Harvest Time Partners as they continue to bring innovative products to the market.”

For more information or to discuss additional products and services from Harvest Time Partners, Inc., please visit the company website at www.harvesttimepartners.com, email David at david@harvesttimepartners.com, or call 877-786-4278.

About Harvest Time Partners, Inc.

Harvest Time Partners, Inc. was created 20 years ago to provide support to individuals, companies, and organizations on a variety of topics and subjects encompassing personal and executive development, team building, leadership training, and building a strong marriage and family. Harvest Time Partners provides character-building seminars, workshops, and custom programs designed to increase personal effectiveness, enhance character development, and strengthen the bonds of marriage and family. Harvest Time Partners, Inc. created the award-winning conversation game Abundant Harvest that continues to be embraced by families, schools, and faith-based programs nationwide. For more information, visit www.harvesttimepartners.com.

About New Day Christian Distributors

Located just north of Nashville, Tennessee, New Day Christian Distributors ships to anywhere in the continental United States in three days or less.  Independently owned, New Day began servicing store’s music needs 33 years ago, and now provides retail stores with a wide variety of gifts, toys, books, Bibles and family-friendly DVDs, in addition to a growing roster of exclusive music.  Visit New Day on the web at www.newdaychristian.com  or call 1.800.251.3633 to place an order!