Family Matters

It was one of those ads on the Internet that I thought was strange - a free invitation for an evening with Bob Proctor. You can imagine the excitement I felt. You see, Bob Proctor is one of the inspiring people I had chosen to learn from. At that stage, when the Internet invitation arrived, I did not know just how much I would learn from him.

Over the years, many people have said to me, “Just wait until you have teens, then you will really have a hard time”. I usually smile and say, “Thank you for the compliment”, because they think I look young, but I already have 2 teenagers - 19 and (nearly) 13 years old - and there was nothing horrible to wait for. Their teen years are just as pleasant and fulfilling for me as a parent as their early childhood, if not more.

In one of my parenting workshops, I had a discussion with one of the fathers about the use of negative words and we talked about the slogan “Australia says ‘no’ to violence against children”. I explained that the brain records “Australia says to violence against children”, omits the “no” and focuses on “Australia”, “violence” and “children”. Paul thought it was a great slogan (and he did not work for the copywriting company who came up with the slogan).

At that stage, all the other participants already understood that “no smoking” only promoted smoking by focusing on the smoking, so pretty quickly, there was a lively group interaction going on.
This week, I got a video made by a great organisation, which presented the answer we were looking for in our discussion at that parenting workshop. What would you want people to focus on? We want them to focus on creating a child-friendly environment for our kids. We want them to be happy, to feel safe and to have good relationships with others.

The answer to (the pink elephant) “Australia says no to violence against children” is now “Australia says yes to a child-friendly environment for our children” and I love this new focus.

Surprise, surprise, but saying “Thank you!” can change your life.

Do you remember Barney singing for the children “Remember please and thank you, ’cause they’re the magic words”? Well, apparently, Barney was right. A research described by Alvaro Fernandez in his post How “Saying Thanks” Will Make You Happier, has found that gratitude can change your health and general well-being.