Family Matters

This typically happens to parents with their children as they grow up. When babies are born, they can sleep for hours, make a mess, not answer your questions, look away when you talk, pee on you and cry loudly, no matter what you are trying to do at the time. And that is OK. In fact, whatever they do is great.

But if a toddler cries in the middle of the supermarket, the pressure is on. “I want you to stop crying right now! You’re embarrassing me in front of all these people. Just sit in the trolley and be quiet”.

About 10 years later, it becomes “Why won’t you talk to me? Why won’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”

Sometimes, when I give my business card to people, I get this odd question, “Are you always happy?”

It is a valid question and I think that people who ask it probably think this is the meaning of happiness, which makes me wonder why they do it to themselves. You see, some definitions of happiness are too tough, meaning it is hard to achieve them, and I would much rather have a definition of happiness that is easy to get.

Let me explain this by using food as an analogy. Who do you think is happier, someone who says “I’m only happy when I drink luxury wine from 1864, use spices from the jungles of the Amazon and cook my food for 22 hours, 16 minutes and 33 seconds precisely” or someone who says, “I’m happy when I eat”?

This weekend, we had some friends over for a barbeque with their kids. The place was full of lively conversation, food and games and time went by quickly.

Since the men had not seen one another for a few weeks, we did a round of updates and Wayne told us he was planning to change his line of work and become a financial planner. As soon as he mentioned the words “financial planner”, the rest of us changed facial expressions and posture and it was clear we all had strong feelings about this profession.

This was by no means personal, because we like Wayne a lot, but we had all been visited by a financial planner or two and had all chosen not to use them. From that starting point, we felt Wayne was starting “on the back foot” and was headed into difficult, unpleasant territory.

As we talked, some interesting points emerged, which I would like to share with you, because they can help you become your very own financial planner and stop looking for one, if you are.

When Gal was a working dad, he spent his time far away from lots of the things that happened at home. He was a working dad for over 16 years. Luckily for us, he was not the working late type of dad, more like a 9 to 5 version, but you know that unless your workplace is a 2-minute walk from home, commute becomes a big time waster too. If you add up rush-hour traffic, for the kids (and myself), Gal was away every day of the week from 7 to 5:30 (and I have to say that at work, he was the only one that said “no” to working late or going out for drinks, because he wanted to have dinner with the kids every night and put them to sleep).

Gal had to make a lot of efforts to come home in time for dinner. I think it was a constant struggle. Working in IT companies, where working until midnight and not having a life was the norm, keeping his family values was not easy.

You are probably asking yourself by now why I am writing this.

I am writing for all the dads reading this blog and also for all the moms in hope I can make a difference.

All too often, we ourselves having a bright idea, only to shoot it down a few seconds later with, “Yes, but what if ?” Since the idea was still fresh in our mind, even the smallest hesitation can sometimes bury it, never to be seen again.

Worries, stress and negative self doubt all your creativity and pretty much guarantee that even if there was a way to turn your idea into reality, you will not be able to see it if it bumped you on the nose.

And that is a pity. It really is.

So how do you overcome obstacles and turn your ideas into reality? You use your imagination.

Happiness is the ultimate desire. Whether you are happy with your relationships, happy with your social life, happy with your health, happy with your job/profession/career, happy with your financial freedom or just generally happy with yourself, you want to be happy!

Happiness is a measurement of fulfillment, achievement and success, yet although most of us think it is important, we dedicate more time to other things than we do to studying the art of being happy.

It is as simple as this:

“If you want to be happy, study happiness”

One of the greatest shifting activities we do with our clients is called “100 things that make me happy”. Focusing on the things that make us happy diverts our focus in life from what we do not have to what we have, from complaining to appreciation, from negative to positive and from sadness to happiness.

Human beings are formed united with the universe, unaware of dangers, evils or even simple discomforts. Then, the warm water is gone, there is a bright light, a blend of strong sounds, pulling and shaking. This is the beginning of realizing we may need to protect ourselves from what is outside of us, i.e. the rest of the world.

It is not that the world is necessarily bad, but there is a chance parts of it might be bad for us. It is not that we are uncomfortable all the time, but in-between comforts, we learn to fill our time with concerns about when the next pain or problem might hit us and what it might be.

So we find ourselves in a familiar enough situation – waiting in line at the bank, driving on the road, entering a busy car park or going to the doctor – and our protective mind kicks in and starts to imagine the worst case scenario.

Last week, When Gal wrote about the dark side of Quid Pro Quo, it made me think immediately of solutions to that effect.

You see, much like in Gal’s example of fighting with your husband, wife, kids, your own parents or just anybody else, life is full of little personal wars – you do something I think is hurtful, I do something to hurt you back.

Wars have become part of our life. I think that as we grow up, we shift from “living” to “surviving”. If we do not fight someone else, we fight ourselves, our desires and dreams, using norms and external rules of behavior.

The wars with others are loud and produce feelings of revenge and anger. The war inside echoes in our mind and produces regrets and low self esteem. But in wars, there are no winners, only those who lose more and those who lose less.

This reminds me of the story of the line. I think this story speaks for itself. Enjoy!

Last year, my 21-year-old daughter Eden started studying Psychology. She said she wanted to study Psychology since she was 10 years old. Having a mother and an aunt in Special Education, another aunt in psychology and Social Work and being inspired by our amazing psychologist friend probably all contributed to her desires to learn about the human mind.

Whenever I talk about Eden and her desire to study Psychology (by the way, at this stage, she still just wants to study and being a psychologist is not on her radar yet), it takes me back to a research project I did during my own studies, titled “Why do people choose to study Special Education?”

Besides finding out why people chose Special Education, I also discovered some interesting relationships between teachers, Special Education teachers, social workers and psychologists, which I now use as models for parenting styles.

Last week, I wrote about the notion of fairness and how it can be used to manipulate people to do what we want them to do. Today, I am going to cover “the dark side” of fairness, which makes us do things we later regret.

If you have ever broken up a fight between kids, you are familiar with the exclamation “He/she started it!”

Further investigation into who “really” started it usually yields a detailed list of escalation steps, starting with something surprisingly small, even trivial, like “He stepped on my dragon” (little rubber toy dragon, that is) or “She made a face at me”.

But it is not just kids, is it? Any “married couple” (any couple sharing a life together for long enough, really) can tell stories of fights that started from nothing and ended up in days of angry silence, only to be resolved later when the original issue was finally addressed on its own.

So why is it we can be pulled into bad cycles with little things and get into big trouble “all of a sudden”?