There are about 46 million abortions worldwide every year.

There are about 126,000 abortions worldwide every day.

On a worldwide average, each woman will go through at least 1 abortion in her lifetime.

Only 22% of abortions take place in developed countries.

Only 26 million (56.5% of the 46 million a year) are legal.

In the USA, 52% of the women that have abortions are younger than 25.

Black women are 3 times more likely than white women to have an abortion.

Unmarried women account for 64% of abortions.

Only 1% of abortions occur because of rape, only 6% occur because there is a health risk to the mother or the baby. 93% of abortions take place for social reasons.

Use the comment box below to share more details about your feelings about abortions and any solution you can suggest.

Thank you for taking part in our poll.

Come back again to see what other people think about abortions.

Happy family,
Ronit

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When I was 16, I brought home my first prescription glasses. I was very happy. For a long time, I checked what the world looked like with and without my glasses, and I was a bit disappointed that the optometrist had told me to wear them only when I needed to watch TV, movies or to sit far away from the board in class.

Surprise, surprise, once I had my glasses, I got to be one of the top kids in my class in 11^th Grade, after having been kicked out of school in 10^th Grade for having failed too many subject. It was as if the glasses had helped me to see my homework better.

I did not think too much of the glasses until, at the age of 20, I went to work at a filter factory. It was the most boring job ever. We would sit at a table, a group of 20 girls, and glue filters. To make it less boring, they would change what we did every hour. During those weeks, I looked at every filter and imagined in what creative ways I could use them. I felt a bit different to most of the girls around me. I had just finished my military service and all the other girls had not. I had an advantage, but I still felt different. There were not many topics I felt we could talk about. Some of the girls were mothers already and talked about their husbands and kids, but they were mostly quiet. I guess repeating the same thing for 8 hours every day numbs the brain.

One day, we sat in the cafeteria for lunch and one of the confident girls said to me:

"You are not like us."

"What do you mean?", I asked her.

She looked at all the other girls and asked them, "She is different, isn't she?"

"You look smarter than us," one of the other girls said. I thought they had said that because they knew that I had graduated from high school and they had not.

"Why do you think I am smarter than you?", I asked, and there was quiet. Then one of them said, "Because of your glasses."

They all looked at each other as if they were happy they had figured something out. The glasses! Yes, that was another thing that made us different. I was the only person with glasses in the whole place.

"What about the glasses?", I asked, very surprised.

"People with glasses are smarter", they declared.

For years after this, I thought about what the girls had said. It did not matter if it was right or not. The only thing that mattered was that people actually believed that glasses make you smarter, and let me tell you, people still think that.

At the age of 20, after working with the girls for a week, I did not think glasses were cool. I did all that I could to buy contact lenses. It was not easy, because they were expensive, it was a pain to wear them, and it was not very healthy, but still, I tried very hard. I was very happy with my contacts and was willing to put in the effort every morning to put them on (I do not know about you, but for me it was a 15-minute ritual). Then, I for my Special Education studies and was invited for an assessment day. I looked at the agenda for the day and freaked out. We had over 4 hours of written tests and about 4 hours of character testing, all done in a group of 30 people. In the morning, I got up early for my daily ritual of burning eyes and tears, and then I remembered the girls from the filter factory saying, "Smart people wear glasses".

"But I want to look my best", I thought.

"No way, glasses are not cool."

"I am not going with glasses. No one can see my make-up when I have my glasses on. Besides, I have not worn them for such a long time, they look awful on me, and maybe only girls working in a factory think like that."

I was talking to myself like this for a while. However, after everything I said to myself, I still heard their words in my head, "Smart people wear glasses…”

Later that day, feeling like the most uncool girl ever, I entered the big hall. There were hundreds of people there, registering for their assessments. I went to the Special Education section and looked around. Most of the group was made up of girls. They all looked beautiful, with pretty hair and make up, and only 2 of them were wearing glasses. They did not seem to me to be smarter than the others.

At 6pm, we were all exhausted from a very long day of written tests with 10 special education teachers watching our every step. Just before we went home, the teachers gave each girl a piece of paper on which to write the name of the girl that each one thought was the most impressive in the entire group. The 10 teachers were then asked to write the 5 names of the girls that they thought were the most impressive and that would do well in their special education studies.

"As you all know, we can only have 15 people out of the 30 that we have here in front of us. Thank you all for coming today. We will read what you have written on your voting papers and determine the top 15 by those who got the most votes", said the coordinator. I thought it was cruel but I knew it would be better to know than to wish.

I chose a tall girl with the most beautiful curly hair, who did not wear glasses. Much to my surprise, I received 39 votes, and I am sure it was because of the glasses!

This month, I read about a new research that claims, "Wearing glasses does not mean you are a nerd, but it could be a sign that you are more intelligent".

Yet, this issue could be a chicken and egg situation.

Does wearing glasses make you smart?

Or

Does being smart make you wear glasses?

What do you think? Post your opinion below.

Ronit

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A journey I just don't have a map for
– Darren Hayes

As you all know by now, I love quotes. In one of his songs, Darren Hayes (Savage Garden) sings about “a journey I just don’t have a map for”. I realized that I also talk about “the journey” and about finding the map to navigate through it. I think this phrase describes the way most people feel about life and what they believe about themselves – confused, like they are on a journey without a map, with circumstances that control their lives, without the ability to choose their path.

Every person in the universe is searching for happiness. Our thoughts about ourselves, our self esteem, are part of that one “map” that everyone is looking for, the one we think fits us all. But we all have different experiences and mindsets. Therefore, we each use a different map to guide us to our own happiness.

On our journey toward happiness, we take roads, stop at stop lights, drive through dirt roads and encounter round-a-bouts. Some roads are longer than others, some are shorter. In some, we face junctions, some in which we get stuck at, not knowing what is stopping us.

Our internal map is made up of things that happen to us during our lifetime. This is why there are as many maps as there are people on Earth. Our beliefs are the roads on this map. Our beliefs about ourselves are highways. If I believe that “people can’t be trusted”, then I will ignore the road called “people are doing the best they can” and never set foot on it. If I believe that “I have wonderful children”, I will ignore the road called “my daughter wasn’t nice to my son”, even if I cross it many times. People like to take the roads they know, even if they are slow, long or even painful. And the more they take a particular road, the more they ignore other roads.

We each start drawing our maps from childhood. We draw both nice and not-so-nice roads, long and short roads and we use our beliefs as the pencil. We draw roads and signs to allow us to navigate our lives in the future. It is the certainty we draw, the same confidence you have when you hold a map and try to find a friends house in an unknown city. How do we actually form our beliefs?

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in determination
– Tommy Lasdora

There are 5 sources we take our beliefs from: Education, Environment, Media, Past Outcome and Creative Thinking. Our highways – The thick, fast roads of our self-esteem are formed the same way.

Education

Mum, dad or a teacher said something when we were young and thought they were 'gods', so we created a belief – a road or a highway. The more they said it, the more defined the road became. “You are a very responsible child”, they said and, sure enough, whenever we had to choose between being responsible or not, we took the highway of “responsibility”. If they said “you’re forgetful”, many years later, the highway of forgetting would be the fast road we would take it, without stopping to really choose. It just seemed like the only one there.

Environment

We look at the people around us, the way they dress or do their hair and we create roads like “only girls have long hair”. We eliminate any trace of “long hair looks good on guys too”. We grow up in a certain type of neighborhood, where the houses are made of timber, and learn to believe that it’s like that everywhere, not ever being able to imagine tall buildings made of bricks and concrete. We hear a certain language spoken by everyone and expect strangers to be speaking the same language when we meet them.

Media

TV and newspapers have the ability to shape many of our beliefs. Millions of people take roads they only see on TV, like drinking roads or smoking roads, some of them are highways. Do you know how many women around the world take the road “If I use Revlon’s moisturizer, I’m going to look as pretty as the model on TV”? Other roads like “all moisturizers just add water to the surface and a $3 moisturizer can do the same” are ignored, since the companies selling the $3 product do not advertise on TV (If they did, their product would not cost $3, would it?). Media has a huge effect on our belief systems. We are taken on certain roads so many times that, after a while, these roads become familiar and comfortable to us. Remember, all the roads about your beliefs about yourself are highways, once you set foot on them, you go 100 kilometers an hour.

Past Outcomes

Past outcome is one source of beliefs that goes straight to our highways and shapes our self esteem significantly. If we went through positive experiences we will have high self-esteem, if we went through negative experiences we will have low self-esteem. During our life, we experience many things ourselves and draw conclusions from them. We smile at people and they smile back, so we decide “if I smile at somebody, they will smile back at me”. We say some nasty things to our sister and get chased around the house and finally caught and we decide “it hurts to be nasty to big sisters”. In much the same way we form beliefs about what we are good at, what we can and cannot do, how others respond to things we do and so on. Unfortunately, most of our experiences are singular events and are not an indication they will happen again, but we still hold them tight and choose to use those roads or highways again.

Creative Thinking

Our goals for example, come from our creative thinking. This is a source where we create the beliefs in our own minds. We imagine it will happen and force our subconscious in that direction. Many athletes successfully use this technique in their training. Since the brain cannot distinguish 100% between imagination and reality, we use our imagination to pretend it is a road that is possible to take. Unfortunately, feelings of anxiety also come from our creative mind. For example, we have never gone to an interview like the one we are faced with (in the company or with the same exact knowledge) but we are afraid we won't make it. The thought itself can kill our self-esteem and shrink it long before we sit down before our interviewer.

The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants in life is often merely the will to try it and the faith to believe that it’s possible
– David Viscott

We form many of the beliefs without being aware of having formed them. We adopt them from our parents, teachers, circumstances, observations and imagination. If we look into them and the time when we adopted them, we’ll find that at the time we were young, with a different mindset, in different circumstances and with less knowledge. It may have been in a different culture or a different financial situation.

The circumstances may not be the same now, but that is irrelevant, because every belief we make, we keep until we choose to change it. For example, when I was young and it rained, it was cold and I formed the belief that it is always cold when it rains. Now that I live in Brisbane, it is hot when it rains and yet I still dress warmly. (The first time it happened to me, I was in Texas, coming out of a Walmart store, when and it started raining. I was wearing a short skirt and a singlet and my body was confused).

Some of our beliefs are so strong that we do not notice other roads, which could set us free. To explain what I mean, I will tell you a story (I love telling stories):

The Little Elephant

One day, a boy went to the circus with his father and saw a huge elephant tied to a tiny stake with a rope.

“Daddy”, asked the boy, “This Elephant is so big and strong and the stake is so small and short, he could set himself free just by taking two steps to the side. Why doesn’t he do it?”

And his father said, “My son, when this elephant was very small, just a baby, he did try to break away from this stake, but he wasn’t strong enough. He tried and tried for months, until he finally gave up, believing that it is impossible to break free. Now, he doesn’t try anymore, because he doesn’t believe it’s possible. We are the same, my son. Many things happen to us at childhood, which we try to change, but then stop trying. Many of us are still tied with ropes to tiny stakes, just like this big elephant”.

I’m sure you are asking yourself, “Well, does it mean we have to try again and again? When do we learn that certain things are simply impossible and shift our energy to other things?” The answer to that is “Never! As long as something is important to you, it’s possible and you should try to get it again and again”.

You see, Thomas Edison tried 1,500 different types of wire to use on the light bulb. 1,500! Do you understand that if Edison thought like us, we would never have light? In a sense, if we do not think like Edison, we stay in the dark.

Success is determined by those who prove the impossible possible
– James W. Pence

In coaching, we learn to examine our belief systems and mainly focus on our highways and sort out our self esteem. High self esteem is thick, solid, modern, fast highways, that get us fast from one place to another. Low self-esteem is when our highways are wide roads that we take but it has many obstacles, it is old, has deep many cracks and a major traffic jam. Low self-esteem is a highway in peak hours all day long.

If we want to improve our self esteem we need to review our beliefs and leave only the ones that are good for us to have. We need to revise them to suit our new age, culture, role, circumstances and mindset. In other words, we bring our beliefs up to date. To have high self esteem we need to choose the roads of acceptance, love and motivation, highways that are easy to navigate, where happiness is part of our daily life. We choose roads full of light!

May the light shine on you and may you find your way even in the darkest moments.

Even the sky is NOT the limit
– Ronit Baras

You may want to read

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Today, the single-sex schools are popular among religious populations and even more during high school.

Supporters of single-sex schools believe they help kids concentrate on their academic work and avoid the sexual distractions of adolescence. Critics believe that some social skills relating to the opposite sex reaches its peak development during teenage and that if teens do not have enough practice, this limit their social skills and their ability to relate later on.

Supporters believe that putting boys and girls together makes the kids more violent and exposes them to sexual relationships too early. Critics believe that in single-sex schools there is more violence (weak boys or girls become victims very easily) and the difficulty kids have in connecting with the other sex only pushes them to have sex earlier.

The big argument against single-sex schools is that they do not prepare the kids for life. When they grow up, they will have to communicate with the other sex at home, university and work and their success in this communication greatly depends on their practice in the formative years. How many workplaces do you know, which employ only females or only males? Besides, everyone looks for a partner at some stage.

Researches during the 80s found that:

• There were no differences in the level of violence (physical or verbal) between single-sex and mixed (co-educational) schools
• Boys in mixed schools performed better academically
• Boys stated that mix schools were more comfortable to learn
• When comparing the school atmospheres, mixed schools had a significant advantage over single-sex schools. The research checked what boys, girls, parents and teachers thought about the atmosphere and found out that all of these groups thought the same (the research compared boys with boys, girls with girls, parents with parents and teachers with teachers from both schools)
• In boys' schools, the boys' attitude towards girls was significantly more stereotypical ("All girls are/do…") than in mixed schools
• One research in girls' schools found that girls had an academic advantage in single-sex school. This research was criticized a lot for not checking the girls' socioeconomic background, the quality of the teachers and the quality of the social connections. The point that appeared again in many of the criticisms were that the girls' schools were all private schools and the research did not include public girls' schools to compare "Apples to Apples"
• A research in Australia in 1991 stated that "there is no scientific evidence to the belief that single-sex schools are better than the alternative in areas of confidence or any academic advantage, including math, science or technology" (Judith Gil, University of South Australia)

Choosing a mixed or a single-sex school for your kids is mostly an "Emotional" choice (How many people do you know that have actually read all the research about it before making the choice?).

Debating advantages and disadvantages of single-sex schools is similar to debating what is most important between academics and social skills. The answer lies in the reasons parents prefer single-sex schools.

Parents have many different reasons to send their kids to single-sex schools:

1. The parents were in single-sex school and they were happy with the result
2. Entering a single-sex school is an indication of status
3. Families in their social circle and/or neighbourhood send their kids to single-sex schools
4. The parents are worried about the other sex's presence and are afraid it will distract their kid
5. A particular single-sex school has an academic advantage that is very important to the parents
6. The kids wan to go to a particular school just because a good friend is going

To make sure the debate regarding single-sex vs. mixed schools will be less academic and more relevant to your own kids, it is very good to examine the reasons before registering to any school. Both single-sex and mixed schools today are different to what they were many years ago (for good and for bad) though we base many of the choices we make on our past experience, which that is not relevant anymore.

When we examine the reasons WE are thinking about a school, it is wise to remember that the schools needs to fulfil the kids' needs and not their friends', not your parents and not even ours, the parents. The main question is "What will be the most beneficial for my child in the future?"

So is it good to send kids to a single-sex school?

Good question, which only you can answer if you know the answer to WHY.

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Since our self-esteem is based on our perception of ourselves and school is the place we spend most of our time between the ages of 6 and 12, every school experience either increases or decreases our self-esteem.

Low self-esteem can be seen by these behaviors:

1. Living by other people's rules
2. Perfectionism
3. Worrying about what other people think
4. Constant need for external approval
5. Feeling guilty and worthless
6. Constantly apologizing
7. Constant fear of failure

If you go over these behaviors, you will see that the school system is structured in a way that promotes many of them and thereby encourages low self-esteem.

Living by other people's rules

At school, the rules are set by external sources. The rules are not for the kids' sake, but for the system to function easily.

For example, kids are put in classes (or "year levels" or "grades") based on their age, not on their abilities. The difference between the older kid and the younger kids in each class can be up to 12 months, which is longer in many cases than the age difference between them and kids in the adjoining year levels. It is very important to realize that as parents, we compromise on the rules of the school, because we cannot open a class for every family.

Uniform is another example of rules that we follow not because we think it is the right thing to do (I am sure your kids do not wear uniform at home and they are still as respectful as they are at school). It happens to us many times as parents that things at school are not exactly the way we want them to be, but we are forced to live by other people's rules.

Therefore, sending our kids to school is only going to promote low self-esteem by teaching our kids to obey and not to question the system.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism is a disease. It is a feeling of inadequacy that people have in some area(s) of their life. Did you grow up in a house, where if you came home with a 80% or 90% mark, someone would ask, "Why not 100%?" You probably feel sorry for those kids. I remember a friend who came home with a 98% score and his dad telling him this was disappointing. I also remember conversations with such parents, who believed they were doing the right thing. "If I want my kids to achieve", they said", "I need to be honest with them and tell them when it is not good enough".

"Good enough" is exactly the feeling that is missing in the perfectionist's mind. The problem with perfectionists is that their standards are so high, they never get to feel the joy of achievement.

Unfortunately, schools encourage perfectionism by constantly giving kids tests and educating them to aim for perfect scores. Yes, yes, we do tell them that getting a B is good, but inside we deeply want them to get an A. Tests are presented to kids as the measurement of their understanding and achievement, when in reality, they measure how well the teachers explain the subject. If the teacher is good, we expect them to get an A, but if the teacher is awful, we still expect them to get an A. If they are 11 months younger than the oldest child in their class is, we still expect them to get an A. In some year levels, the school tests are not enough, so they introduce state-wide tests, based on … the year level. Kids are very unhappy with tests, because they put an unnecessary pressure on them to perform regardless of their age, style, preferences, home environment or emotional state.

As long as the test will set a standard that kids need to fulfill, we are teaching them perfectionism and with it low self-esteem.

Worrying about what other people think

Worrying about what other people think is not a genetic character trait. When kids are young and we tell them that what others say about them determines who they are, it is very hard to ask them to think for themselves.

During school days, what your kids' teachers think about them is going to be important in determining what kind of people they are going to be. If they happen to be the teacher's favorites, they will have a great experience and increase their self-esteem, while kids that the teacher does not like keep decreasing their self-esteem.

It is very important for you as a parent to know that teachers are human. They have likes and dislikes and they treat kids differently, the same as you treat people at work differently and even your own family members differently. Teachers have feelings towards kids and sometimes they are not so good, because of personal preferences or because they require more effort.

I remember one of my college courses, "The emotional hygiene of the special education teacher", in which we all went into a work experience class and after a few days had to come up with the list of kids we liked and the kids we did not like. The kids, of course, were just kids. They did nothing special, they were just there. We did not even know them well, but we all had our preferences. Some of us liked the "smart" kids, some of us had a soft spot for the "weak" kids, some of us liked the "good looking" kids and others liked the "different" kids. You might like to know that those kids got more attention from us, only because we liked them. It is hard to admit, but favoritism is done subconsciously and our kids' self-esteem is greatly subjected to their teacher's preferences.

Constant need for external approval

From the second we are born, we seek for approval. While this is a good way to become part of society, it can be, if we become dependent on it, unhealthy and disempowering.

School is a set place that requires everyone to follow exactly the same rules. If you follow the rules, you get approval, and if you do not follow the rules, you get punishment. Waving carrots and sticks in front of kids is a version of taming. If you can imagine a lion caged with his master holding a whip and a piece of meat, I want you to know that your kids feel exactly the same at school.

In grade 12, my daughter had a spelling test every week on Friday and her teacher gave the kids that got all the 20 new words right lollies (candy). 12^th grade, big kids in senior jerseys, getting lollies as approval! I was so unhappy (and, of course, took the opportunity to talk to my daughter about my values and beliefs regarding food rewards). We used to joke about it and instead of talking about the spelling test, we only talked about the lollies. Until now, when my daughter wants to say she succeeded at something she say in jokingly, "I got lollies!"

Yes, I understand that some order is required, but all rewards need to be gradually replaced by self-appraisal and I believe this is missing in schools.

Feeling guilty or worthless

Guilt feelings or self-blaming thoughts are in contradiction to self-acceptance. Guilt is a poison that kills self-esteem and functions as a reminder of doing the wrong thing. "The teacher was upset with me", they think, when in fact, she was upset because she did not get enough sleep last night.

When things goes wrong for them, kids have the tendency to take the blame on themselves. This is why, when parents go through separation of divorce, kids find it hard to cope. They believe it must have been something they have done (this is why you see grown-ups doing all they can to bring their parents back together).

Because self-worth is not taught at school, every time a child experiences something negative, they take the blame on themselves and only decrease their self=worth.

If you talk to a kid about some unhappy experience at school, they will be defensive, feeling un-loved and unworthy.

Kids who learn to appreciate their abilities and accept their uniqueness will have high self-esteem. It is our responsibility to teach them that.

Constant fear of failure

If you examine our entire society, you will find that fear of failure is the greatest fear of all. When kids are young, this fear is nowhere near what it is in the teen years or worse, in adult life.

A research in emotional intelligence checked this component in kids and found out that the younger the kids are, the more persistent they are. Kids at different ages were given an impossible task. The 5-year-olds reached 17 attempts before giving up and the number of attempts was lower and lower with age, reaching zero attempts at the age of 15. You see, kids at the age of 5 are not afraid to make mistakes. They believe that effort is the name of the game and therefore are more open to trying new things.

I have to say that over the years, I have noticed that the gap between the 5-year-olds and the 6-year-olds was huge. In one of my "Creative Thinking" project classes, I asked the kids to scribble on a piece of paper with as many colors as they could (I needed a page full of color scribbles to teach them a lesson about proportion). They were just 6 years old and did not understand what I meant. Some of them drew a house and a tree and made an X on it. For them, scribbling was "erasing" and "destroying" their work. Only when I took a sheet of paper and scribbled on it did they do it, albeit hesitantly. At the end of their drawing, I asked them to sign. "Every artist signs their art," I told them and they thought I was crazy. They were only 6 years old, but already had set ideas about what is "right" and what is "wrong" in drawings.

School communicates to kids what is success and what is failure, what is accepted and what is rejected, what is right and what is wrong and it does so during a period of their life when they are vulnerable and do not have the ability to come up with their own beliefs about themselves and decide that they are successful, accepted and right, only because they are different.

Go over the list you made last week of your beliefs regarding yourself (what you do not like or appreciate about yourself) and ask yourself at what age and where you adopted each one of them. You may find that most of them were formed when you were still a child and that you got them from the grown-ups around you.

Join me next week in a discussion about the other sources of our beliefs regarding ourselves.

You may want to read

• How to Study For Tests (1): The Basics
• Optimism or "What’s the big fuss about Emotional Intelligence (Emotional Quotient)?"
• To Teach Is To Touch a Life Forever

Self-esteem is a reflection of a person's overall appraisal of their own worth. In other words, self-esteem is the score each person gives their abilities and skills.

Our self-esteem is made from our beliefs regarding our physical, mental and emotional capabilities. If we have positive beliefs about ourselves, we say that we have high self-esteem, and if we have negative beliefs about ourselves, we say that we have low self-esteem.

If we want to increase our self-esteem, we need to identify the areas we do not appreciate about ourselves and our beliefs about what we cannot do and change them.

Our self-esteem is part of our identity. Some people base their self-esteem on what they see as a set of unchanging character traits that they have inherited genetically from their parents. They say things like "I'm no good with people (or computers or cooking)", "Some people are more confident than others" and a variety of other similar statements.

In reality, our self-esteem changes with our experiences and can be easily built up with the right guidance and support. Imagine that your esteem is like a barometer, which goes up whenever you get positive results (success) and down when you get negative results (failure).

Our self-esteem is easily influenced by our society, which unfortunately gives society too much power over our own beliefs and emotions. When determining whether an experience is good or bad, we consider pressure, our need to be loved and accepted, our need for approval and many other factors that will be discussed in the next chapters. External communication can make a big difference to us and sometimes completely change how we rate our results and therefore ourselves.

For instance, I have found that in some schools, high self-esteem was considered arrogant, pushy or selfish. Kids who demonstrated their skills in front of their peers were given negative feedback. On the other hand, shy and withdrawing kids were continually encouraged as modest and considerate, and failing students get attention from the teacher's aide.

Similarly, many parents, whose kids have low self-esteem, keep focusing on the kids challenges and problems, thinking that they need to "fix" their kids in order to increase their self-esteem.

However, the focus on low self-esteem is like driving a car by looking in the rearview mirror. The more we turn our head to look backwards, the more accidents we are likely to have. Instead, it would be better to look forward and aim the car toward where we want to be.

I believe we dedicate too much energy to finding the reasons for the problems in life, rather than dedicating our energy to finding solutions. Reasons are of the past, solutions are of the future.

We have many coaching clients who came to us after working on their emotions with a therapist, which gave them explanations as to why they behave the way they do, but without the power to move forward.

One couple came to me after a very long counseling period. The husband had a gambling problem and said "It was great to understand why I had the urge to spend my money, but it didn't help me stop it. Understanding is good, but not good enough without a way to move forward."

To make the most out of this self-esteem mini-course, make a list of things you think about yourself by next week. Put them in two different lists, the good list and the "not so good" list. Aim for 50 things on each list. To help you, here are the headings for each list:

50 things I like, appreciate and enjoy about myself

50 things I don't like, don't appreciate and suffer about myself

Come again next week and we'll continue.

You may want to read

• Self Esteem Mini-Course (2): How School Promotes Low Self Esteem
• I’m OK, You’re OK!
• Happiness!

The author, who has kids with ADHD, agreed with some of my points, but did not agree with others. Others made some strong comments, describing their own experience as hyperactive individuals or their relatives.

I believe that awareness is very important and we need to discuss our agreements and disagreements regarding ADHD in order to find a solution for us all – kids, parents and teachers.

Let me make myself absolutely clear: I am against the use of labels and medication to "cure" concentration problems and hyperactive behaviour. In 22 years of professional work, I have met plenty of people with these challenges, and there were ALWAYS other ways to make them perform better and feel better. Always!

What I have written will be threatening for many people. This is natural if they have spent much of their life with their label and it is now part of their identity. This is the same as a person fighting for their religion or nationality, which are two other very common labels.

But I am not here to criticize. What I want to do is offer alternatives to the labels and the medication. Please take a look at my post The ADHD Myth for my very detailed analysis and (very) possible solutions to inattention disorders.

I welcome your questions or concerns, so please post them in the comments box below and I will answer them in a subsequent comment or post. Let us work TOGETHER to make ADHD history.

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Did you know that fish will grow to the size that will be supported by their surroundings?

If you put a fish in a small bowl, it will grow to fit the size of the bowl. If you take the same fish into a small pond, it will grow bigger. If you move it to a lake, the same fish can grow to be big, really big.

Kids also have this fishy characteristic. For them, life is a fish bowl and they depend on the grown ups in their life to find a good size bowl to call home. They also depend on the grown ups in their life to "clean the water" and supply them with "food".

Kids need some things to live safely and happily in their fish bowl.

For kids, love, caring, motivation and encouragement are the basic emotional food and they need plenty of it. The younger the kids are, he more they need this food. Give it to them!

In any bowl, fish need other fish for company. Kids are the same. They need to be with others like them. Help your kids socialise with other kids, teach them to get along with others, encourage sharing and caring so any size bowl can be a happy place for many fish.

For kids to be happy, they need to have boundaries. In the fish bowl, the fish cannot swim past the glass. Tiny fish prefer small, familiar, friendly bowls because they feel safer in them. No matter how many times they bang their heads against the glass, it still makes them feel safe, because it keeps the water around them and potential threats away from them.

Kids need to know they are safe in their fish bowl. A bowl with no boundaries is a bowl with holes. You never know when you will find yourself out of the water.

Whether you choose to raise your kids in a small fish bowl (that is, have strict rules) or a large one, make sure it is safe and without holes (that is, be consistent and enforce your rules).

Many parents are afraid that limits and boundaries make their parenting strict and cruel and doubt their right to set those limits. When in fact without boundaries kids get confused and feel exposed and in constant danger. Some parents prefer smaller bowls, some prefer bigger ones, but both sizes are better than a bowl with holes or no bowl at all.

So practice the art of creating a safe place for your kids and increase the size of their "fish bowl" gradually, to allow your children to grow more. Remember: as kids grow, parents grow too.

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Two hundred years ago, collecting information was the name of the game. The world was ruled by those who mastered the skills of information gathering. Knowledge was power.

In today's world, the TV world, the world of live broadcasts, of information at your fingertips, a fast track world loaded with information, the advantage changed sides. Today, the world belongs to those who master the regulation of the flow of information. Today, it's not how much you know but how effective you are at finding what you need in the overwhelming rush of new facts coming straight at you from all around.

When I started my teaching journey, believing that all the people around the world were gifted, I faced a dilemma. As a person who brought information collection to a level of art, I was actually giving my students the greatest disadvantage of the 21^st century. I was guiding them to where "they couldn't see the forest for the trees."

After I realised this, I spent years looking for the balance between collecting and regulating. Everything around us encourages collecting. At school, we learn how to gather and process information for our assignments, but not how to handle the enormous stream of information we absorb anyway.

Imagine that your brain is an office, where every piece of information is like the people seeking your service or incoming messages requiring your processing and filing.

Most of the processing happens while you are a sleep. The more information you receive, the more time it takes you to process it. Have you noticed that when you are stressed you feel tired? Have you noticed that kids sleep much more than adults do? That is because the load of information they need to process is greater - almost everything is new.

Because the world moved into "fast forward," we receive information that is much greater than twenty years ago. To realise this, think about kids. Their knowledge nowadays is diverse and they know much more than what their parents knew at the same age. Gifted children, for example, have very superior collection channels. They can collect a lot of information at any given time.

Unfortunately, not long after, the child will have loads of information without the time to process and the "clerk" in the "office" will scream, "That's it. Too much input. I can't handle this any more," and the child will feel overload and pressure. A simple thing like walking in the street stimulates a lot of incoming mail. The colours, the faces, the conversation of the couple you've just seen, the traffic jam and the smell and taste of the apples you bought in the supermarket. All this input is processed and stored for later use. When you are absorbing all this, seemingly without an effort, you brain is working overtime to process and you might feel stressed without being able to pinpoint the reason.

A lot has been said about the ways to regulate this overload. Stress management actually tackles this from different angles. One way to handle stress is to try to divert our attention from the thing we consider the problem, where in fact we do not have any idea which information is sorted while we are asleep. The clerk processes the information as he sees fit without us having the conscious ability to control it. An example of diverting the attention for the supposedly a stress source, is the attempt to divert kids' attention from academic stimulants and encourage them to move into sports, art or music. This attempt only oils their superior machine and, instead of filtering out information, they open new channels of input as if the clerk now opened new doors to his office.

Another method to overcome stress is to avoid dealing with some of the issues. Some people prefer the ostrich approach but are not aware of the fact that the office is open to the public as long as they are awake. Every minute you are not asleep, your office is receiving input. Sleep is just the way your clerk is working quietly with no disturbance. Has it happened to you that you wanted to stay at work after hours, when no one was around, so you can do the job without disturbance.

Meditation is one of the best ways to regulate the incoming flow of information. In our model, meditation is like hanging a sign on the door, which says, "Away from the office. Back in 20 minutes." During this time, we allow our clerk to file the information without letting any new information to come in. Mediation research shows that it's being neither asleep nor awake. It's a state between the two, in which the brain is very calm, yet very sharp.

My first encounter with meditation was when my inspiring sister, 16 years old at the time, went to study Transcendental Mediation. I remember her taking time off, closing her eyes and sitting still for a while. She looked a bit ridiculous, but she was brilliant at every thing she did.

My first meditation experience happened when Gal and I went to study all kinds of meditation - affirmation, light, sound, eating, dancing, walking, mantra and visualisation. It was fun! I remember coming back home dead tired from meditation class, remembering that our instructor said, "Your body knows exactly what it needs. Listen to it. You probably need to sleep."

Some time afterwards, I was working in Texas with a group of 2-year-old toddlers that used to wreak havoc during sleep time, so the centre had to reorganise the place and bring 10 adults to put them to sleep. The grownups sat there tapping the kids' backs and patting their heads for an hour and a half, until the last one fell asleep. In our staff meeting, I suggested to introduce visualisation. Familiar? "Close your eyes and imagine you are on a soft cloud, like cotton." We decided to try it for a month and reassess. On the first day, the last staff member left after 45 minutes. On the third day, they left after 10 minutes. The kids were still fully awake, relaxed, but with their eyes closed. At that time, we introduced soft meditation music in the background for an hour and a half. After a successful week, we felt we were ready to hand control over to the kids (remember, they were only two years old). We put the music on, "floated" for 3 minutes on our soft cotton cloud and then we asked them to take a deep breath and count one, two, three, one two, three. This way, within two weeks, we had 15 meditating toddlers, relaxed and saving the expensive resources of 10 extra staff members. You can imagine how happy the centre management, the parents and the teachers were.

When we moved to Melbourne, Gal and I registered for a Transcendental Mediation course. Our instructor suggested we bring the kids along. It sounded funny, because they were only 4 and 10 years old. I remember her asking us what kind of improvements we would like to see in the kids. We looked at each other, not knowing what to answer. They were perfect kids - friendly, flexible, curious, smart, loving and understanding. We went there every evening for a week, watched some videos and learned to mediate. After 4 days, Gal got really sick, so Marg, our instructor, gave him 3 tea bags and told him to drink them during the day. She told him his body was adjusting. Like magic, he got up the day after, healthy and alert. About a month later, our perfect little son started drumming on everything. We had to look all around town to find someone who was willing to teach percussions to a 4-year-old. Ivan, bless his soul, taught him only because he himself started learning at the age of 4. After 4 weeks, Tsoof was so advanced that we had to send Gal with him, so he could help him at home with his practice. Within a year, he had 4 different drum teachers teaching him different styles and he started playing with adults, because there wasn't any children group at his level. We believe the mediation was the main reason for this.

So now in our house, every health issue is solved in this order:

1. Drink plenty of water
2. Take vitamin C
3. Meditate
4. Sleep

And you know what? This works for most things.

In Transcendental Mediation, people meditate with a mantra. Children until the age of 10 can mediate for 5 minutes with their eyes open any time they wish. From the age of 10, they start meditating for the number of minutes equal to their age, until they turn 20. They just hang up the sign "I'm on break. Back in 10 minutes," twice a day. Every mediation session is considered equivalent to two hours of sleep and there you have it - people full of energy and focused who efficiently use another 4 hours of collecting information. Six years after our kids started meditating, we can tell by their behaviour whether they hanged the "on break" sign this week or not. Meditation does not prevent the information from entering. It only regulates the incoming flow to allow more information to come in.

In a world full of information, a world of many words, many people, loads of feelings, lots of noise and visions, the name of the game is quiet.

In coaching, we encourage our clients to mediate, because it helps them regulate their feelings, their relations, their health, their finances and their work.

Many people are afraid they do not do it well because they still think of things while meditating. Remember, the goal in mediation is not to clear the brain from thought but to prevent new input from entering your office. Thinking during mediation is natural. In time, you feel much more relaxed, focused, energetic and happy.

If two hundred years ago all we wanted was more knowledge, then today our best asset is a sign, which says on one side "on break" to allow cleaning the head and on its other side, for when we've restored our energy, "open to public!"

Be happy!

Ronit

[Thanks to Gai Hetzroni for the use of his photo above]

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What makes us accept or reject the messages we receive from others?

We understood from last week's article that what people say to us has a major influence on our identity. But how is it that not all things peoples say to us mean as much. Some messages we accept and make them part of our self concept and others we reject and they fly high above our heads.

Unfortunately, we are not programmed to ignore the negatives and embrace the positives (though in our Be Happy in LIFE program, we teach our clients to program themselves to do just that).

In a research done in 1971 by Gergen, he found that there are four things that need to happen for us to accept a message:

1. Authority: The person who is giving the message needs to be in a position to do that - knowledgeable, experienced, in power
2. Familiarity: The person who is giving the message is presented as someone close to us who knows us well - family, friend…
3. Reinforcement: The person who is giving the message says something we already believe about ourselves. This person is only supporting a belief we already have about our self concept and identity
4. Repetition: We receive a number of similar messages from that person or from different people within a short timeframe

If the message comes from people who fit into one or more of the categories, we are more likely to embrace this message, even if the message is negative.

Truth is relative. If someone said I was lazy and he was knowledgeable, he was someone close to me, I already thought I was lazy or I had heard it more than once, I would become lazy! Laziness will be part of my identity, part of my self concept. Unfortunately, we do not doubt the truthfulness of those messages and allow them to enter our system freely.

During coaching, many clients say they do not believe everything people say to them. Yes, I know, it is hard to admit we are so easily influenced. A recent research done on what people think is the truth found that people believed what they heard to be true if they heard it 3 times from one person or from 3 different sources, even if the massage was not true.

If this is the truth and we naturally think something is true just because we have heard it 3 times, let's explore how can we use it to our advantage.

1. Family is a great source of our identity. Most of our early beliefs we get from our family. Stick to family members that have a good self concept and are mainly positive.
2. Friends are another source of beliefs. Find friends that help you to be the person you want to be and make sure they have a good attitude. It is contagious.
3. Teachers and educators fall into the category of knowledgeable people in your life, and sometimes they also act like they know you well, so if you can, choose your teachers. At school, it is typically not your choice. But when you have the opportunity, choose empowering, positive and inspiring teachers. If you have kids, do it for them. It is invaluable
4. Media is a major source for our self concept. It can be severely damaging or rewarding, depending on what you are exposed to. If you watch ads saying (3 times) that you must eat some food or buy some product, be careful! The message might still be negative (after watching some kid show, my 6-year-old daughter already says she "must have" Baby Born…). Not everything you see on TV or Cinema is real and it does not matter how many times we say that it does not influence us. It does!
5. People at work also contribute to what we think about ourselves. Choose your work place wisely. Competitive work places are not healthy for your self concept. Find a workplace where people respect, appreciate and support each other. It will do you wonders

Truth is a concept we have in our mind. It can be erased or embraced. What others believe to be their "truth" has an easy path into our mind. The more meaningful those people to us, the faster we will embrace their messages, even if the messages are damaging and limiting.

It is a process and takes time to master, but until then, make sure you have a guard in place, checking each message and deciding whether to erase of embrace.

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