Family Matters

As parents, one of the things we always worry about is what kind of a world we will leave for our kids. No matter how many times we vote and realize we can only cast one vote in millions into the box, we somehow still feel it is our responsibility to make sure that when our kids grow up, the world will be safe, clean and pleasant for them. It’s OK, it’s natural.

Holidays are not a luxury, they are essential. From time to time, we all need to stop cooking, washing and the cleaning, stop learning and working, stop watching the same TV programs or eating the same kind of food. From time to time, we all need a change in the way we dress, the climate, the landscape and the people around us.

For me, 16 was the sweetest thing there was. Life was divided into before and after - before my awakening and after it. Later on in life, there were many times when I wished I could send my 15-year-old self some wisdom to make her life easier.

Whether we like it or not, parents a human beings. What can we do?

So sometimes, we have bad days. Sometimes, we need something to be proud about, because otherwise, we would feel pretty bad about ourselves. Sometimes, we just need reassurance that things will get better, preferably thanks to us. This is why we have kids.

Here is how the reading marathon works: Kids go home with a form asking Mom and Dad to give them permission to participate in the marathon. The kids need to go to grownup friends and relative (grandparents are the best victims for this) and ask them to commit to paying a certain amount of money for every book they read. The kids then read as many books as they can. At the end of the marathon, they bring the signed sheet with the payment and the money goes to the school.

When I was training to be a life coach, our instructor said to us that our level of disappointment is related to the gap between two things - our expectations and the facts. Although this may sound simple in principle and you may be saying to yourself, “Well, of course”, stop and think about real-life situations where you find yourself disappointed and you will soon see the problem.

As you may know, I love quotes (and if you’ve had a chance to read my book or my life coaching website, you know). Since I was young, I believed that the quotes we choose to adopt help us plant thoughts in our mind. If we choose inspiring, motivating and encouraging quotes, we develop have an inspiring, motivating and encouraging mindset. If we choose sarcastic, pessimistic and disappointed quotes, we will have exactly what we bargained for.

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.

Children are born into a world that buys feelings. When they turn to you as if you were a bank, they are really trying to buy a feeling that they lack, a feeling that they think they can get from the thing they want you to buy for them. They are asking you for money as a symbol of your love.

Questions go straight to the subconscious, so even if your kids do not answer immediately, the questions stimulate their thinking. Get yourself familiar with all the types of questions to help you use positive, challenging and encouraging questions.