Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘alcohol’

In the past month, I heard it a lot. I had client after client sitting on my “life coaching deck” and talking about being totally unhappy about some things in their life. They were unhappy about their relationship with their partner, their kids, their health, their job, their money or their social life, and they wanted it to stop.

When this happens, I tell them there is something good about being unhappy. They always look at me surprised, thinking I have fallen on my head, but gradually, they understand that being unhappy and going to see a life coach is a wonderful sign that your body is talking to you and you are listening and actually doing something about it.

Congratulations, you are unhappy!

If you are unhappy with something in your life, congratulations! You are aware of your best navigating compass – your feelings.

Some people think happiness is an airy-fairy thing that cannot be explained and understood, not to mention controlled. Many people say they want to control their feelings in fear that their feelings might take over and control them.

But feelings do not have a mind of their own. They are a compass that lets us know where we should or should not go, we just have to look at it from time to time and see the direction it is pointing to. It is very simple. If it says, “I am not happy”, change directions. If it says, “I am happy”, keep going the same way.

I think this realization has helped me lots in life. When some of my friends, who know I am a happiness coach, ask me, “Well, Ronit, What is your formula for happiness?” I answer, “Tune into your body and let your feelings guide you”.

Personal development is a good way to eliminate many problems in our society, because it goes through all the levels of change – developing awareness, making a decision to change, creating new habits and living the change. Changing a whole society of bullying is no different. We can move from a bullying society toward a caring, sharing and respectful society using the same personal development techniques.

In the last chapters of the bullying series, I gave tips for parents to stop the bullying in their life, whether to help themselves out of feeling like victims, to stop them bullying their families or to help them help their children. Since bullying is a never-ending cycle, any break in the cycle makes a huge difference to many people you are in contact with. Much like in the movie “Crash”, everything that happens to us touches the lives of the people around us directly or indirectly and we have the power to make a difference in the world by giving strength to our families, partners and children.

Good luck! Well, you do not really need luck. You need a conscious decision to work on yourself and be strong so you will never be picked on by a bully and never feel like a victim and try to gain that power back through your children.

Here are the next 5 tips for parents to work on their personal development and stop the bullying cycle.

When their physical life is in a mess, parents find it harder to cope with the challenges that are part of every day. This situation puts many parents into a reactive mode and makes them easy targets for bullies. You can help your kids by helping yourself be more in control of your life. Adopt a lifestyle that lets you control your circumstances more than they control you.

You can also teach your kids every tip here to make sure they will not be bullying victims and, of course, you need to be a good role model for them by “walking the talk” and showing them how to be in charge of your life.

Control over your life is a good way to build confidence. It does not mean you have 100% control of everything that happens to you in life (we wish!), but it definitely means that you will save your energy for situations that are truly out of your control. Unfortunately, there will always be situation like that, but if we are not too busy with an out-of-control lifestyle, we can handle the accident, the misunderstanding, the trauma, the health problem and the relationship issue better.

Here are the 5 more tips for parents to build their emotional strength and stop the bullying cycle.

We encourage our kids to have two parties a year – one at the beginning of the year to allow them to get have a great start for the school year and meet new friends in their new classes and one on their birthday. Every year, our kids have a great year.

Last month, our son Tsoof had his birthday party. Tsoof is 15 years old, but most of his friends are 16 or 17 and some of them have already started driving. When they come in the door, Tsoof’s friends always say they have been waiting for the party since the last one, because they always have a great time dressing up, playing games, singing and dancing.

This year, when he gave his friends invitations to his party one girl asked him, “Will you have drinks at your party?”

This week, I was at a conference and I had a talk about my book for teenagers with a woman named Jill. As often happens, our conversation turned into a “bitching session” about teenagers.

“Last night, I picked up my 15-year-old daughter from a party. I’m one of the rare parents who still come to pick their kids up. The rest takes a taxi”, she complained, “When I arrived, there were lots of police cars around”.

“Did anything bad happen?” I asked, worried.

“Oh, no, that’s usual. Every time she goes to a party, someone does silly things and the police arrive”.

My 20-year-old daughter and my 14-year-old son had never participated in a party where the police arrived, so I asked her, “What do you mean by ‘silly things’?”

Many people ask me about my great skin. I have heard it so many times that I am already convinced that I have great skin. I went to the shopping centre last week and stopped at a stall to get my make-up done, just for fun. The make up artist told me numerous times, “You have great skin” while she was putting creams and make-up on my face.

“What kind of moisturiser do you use?” she asked me.

When I told her it was just a simple moisturiser from the supermarket, she was very surprised.