Events in our life shape our thinking, beliefs and overall attitude. When I ask people about the things that have shaped their life, they come up with big things, mainly traumatic events that were hard to ignore.

I can relate to this too, because when I worked on my own list, the first things that came up were the big things - moving house, changing city, changing country, the birth of my kids, loss and painful failures. I did have some positive, wonderful, exciting events too, like the birth of my kids and winning prizes and awards, but there were not as many of them as there were hits.

Focusing on the big things is natural. However, I believe that the small things, the ones we neglect to pay attention to, may contribute a lot to how we conduct ourselves in a way that we hardly recognize. The reason I am saying this is because very often, when my clients bring up their past and examine it, they talk about small incidents that were big for them at the time, even out of proportion.

For example, a woman put on tons of make up on her face, because "When I was 16, my father commented about me going out with my skin disease that creates different shades to the skin on my face". A friend told me, "For years, I couldn't speak out because when I was 13, I stood in front of many people and my voice sounded funny. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life". One of my clients felt rejected by her mother, because "When I was 12 (30 years ago), my mom said to my aunt she had not wanted to have another child and that I had been 'an accident'".

Boosters and Changers

Although we may be unaware of these "little" events, they have a great influence over us and switch us from one path to another. Think about it as if you were flying through an asteroid field. Every asteroid in your path (event in your life) affects you in one of three ways:

1. Has no impact, so you just keep going
2. Becomes part of who you are and increases your mass (energy, motivation), so you keep going in the same direction, but smaller obstacles no longer matter
3. Changes your direction

If you understand that every event in life falls under one of these categories, you will agree we tend to ignore the ones that have no impact on the direction we take and notice more of the other two - the ones that give us a boost and the ones that change our direction.

Happy and Unhappy Events

It is tempting to think that we get a boost from happy events and our direction changes from unhappy ones, but this is not necessary true. Sometimes, unhappy events help us move forward faster and do bolder things. A great example of an unhappy event that motivates many people is the event of getting really sick. This causes many to take charge of their life and finally do all the things they have only dreamed of before.

An example of a happy event (definitely one of my top happy events) that triggers a huge change is the birth of your first child and becoming a parent. I remember how in a split of a second, while hugging my daughter (now 20 years old - isn't she gorgeous?) and breastfeeding her, the whole world faded and my priorities changed dramatically.

I often say to my kids that having kids while studying is a big challenge, not because of money or having to go to work, but because of priorities. Before Eden was born, I was the best student - I did all my assignments, I passed all my exams with flying colors, I was an example student and did brilliantly. The second she was born, I stopped caring about my grades and did not have to be the best anymore. Luckily for me, I had finished most of my degree in the first 3 years, I only had 2 courses to complete after Eden was born and one of my courses was practical (and I was good at the practical side, so I did not have to put in a lot of extra effort).

I do not regret the change in my priorities and I do not regret that it took me on a different adventure, but this change was still caused by a happy event.

When you make the list of 100 events that have changed your life, you are writing a biography that is limited to 100 events from birth until today that were boosters or changers. It is important to recognize your perception of the events as happy or unhappy and also their rating of how strong they were for you at the time.

How to list 100 events that have shaped your life

1. Stick to meaningful events and avoid writing things like "I was born…".
2. Write events you believe have changed your life, NOT "my mom said it changed me" - this is about your own perception.
3. Going over events in a chronological order may help you uncover more details about your life. Go over memories from childhood. Try to remember things from as early as 3 years of age or even earlier. If you remember them, they were probably meaningful. Beware of memories that were given to you by others, like "this was the best day of your life" (even through you have no recollection of that day).
4. Think of special birthdays and find some that were meaningful for you. A birthday that has shaped your life, a gift you remember specifically, etc.
5. Think of family gatherings. Family gatherings can be awesome and change life. Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, etc.
6. Find meaningful times at school, awards, failures, horrible teachers, angel teacher that have helped you become who you are today. Remember school breaks, parties, exams, report cards, challenges. Start from Grade 1 and go all the way up beyond higher education if necessary.
7. Recall friends you have had over the years and what you got from each of them. Go over 2-3 friends in preschool (only if you remember), 2-3 in primary school, 2-3 in high school, etc. Friends have a great way of shaping our life. I believe that friends we have over the years are there to teach us the best lessons of our lives. If you come up with a list of 20 good friends over your life and think of what each of them has given you and under what circumstance, you will be on track towards your 100 list.
8. Trips that have changed your life. The one you took with your family, with school, with friends or with your club. One trip we took as a family with my uncle, aunt and their kids was so meaningful we took other trips years after, but they were not the same. This particular trip was magical and stayed in my memory as the trip that made me fall in love with the idea of travelling to new places and being with people I love.
9. Birth of siblings seems to be a popular event that many people feel has changed their life. Unfortunately, for most people this event is not a happy one, but it does not have to be like that. I think my daughter would write that the birth of her brother was an event that has shaped her life in the most positive way, because she had to wait for him for too long.
10. Changing school/house/country. I can tell you for sure that my move to Thailand has changed me dramatically (it has even inspired some of the writing for my upcoming book, "Reflections").
11. Something good someone has done for you. A good word, an expression of trust, a loving statement, help, support, an act of kindness that you appreciate and store in your memory and has changed the way you think or your attitude.
12. Something unpleasant someone has done to you. Notice this is a perception - at the time of the event, you thought it was a bad thing and acted on it. Do not beat yourself over your perception in the past. It is only natural. When I was a kid, I had a different perception and many things people did, I perceived as nasty, but in from perspective of 30 years later, I realized they were probably limited to what I knew or understood back then. Remember, the reason we are doing this is not because we can change the past, but because understanding how events affect us can teach us a lot about ourselves.
13. A fight you have had with someone. Conflicts, fights, arguments at different times of our lives can be boosters or changers. I remember many years ago, after reading Illusions by Richard Bach, I decided to stay away from negative people and a fight I had with someone boosted me to limit the time I have spent with this person since.
14. Books you have read that have changed your life. I do not know about you, but I have read books that have changed me totally. I have a feeling sometimes that when I go to the library, the books I need jump at me and tell me to pick them up because there is a lesson in them I need to take. Richard Bach has changed me, Wayne Dyer has changed my life and Karl Rogers has changed my life. I am who I am thanks to them.
15. Places you have visited. After visiting Bryce Canyon and seeing all its glorious beauty, I became a different person. Living in Thailand, the "land of smiles", where people are happy despite their poor conditions, has shaped my life big time. I do not think it was a booster, it was a changer. Life could not go back to where they were before. I was on a totally different track. For example, I finally understood why I needed more patience.
16. Traumas that have changed your life. I am sure there is no need to expand on this one.
17. Successes and victories that have changed your life. Many times, successes are great boosters and help us build motivation to move forward towards the desired destination. The kid in this photo is one of my greatest victories in life.
18. Failures that have changed your life. Again, they may fall in the category of traumatic events, but they can just be things you have not succeeded at and have de-motivated or frustrated you in a way that has changed you.
19. Unexpected events that have changed your life. Surprises and things you had never thought would happen to you.
20. People you have met during your life that have changed your path and shaped your life. When I think of this section of my events list, I have plenty of people that have made a difference in my life and I carry some part of them with me. Gal is a person I have met who has shaped my life greatly.

I wish you a very enlightened biography of the events that have shaped your life. Remember, when writing each of them down, think if it has boosted you or changed your direction and how. It is a good way to find out how the mechanism of this machine called "you" works.

Join me next week for the list of 100 ways to be kind.

Happy and empowering discoveries,
Ronit

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Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines
- Robert Schuller

When I write about life lessons, I think that every experience in life can be somehow written as a lesson. It is almost as if everything that happens to us is meant to teach us a lesson that will guide us on our way forward.

The word "lesson" makes most people see themselves sitting in a class with a teacher talking at the front. Many times, it brings up extra homework and fear about being tested on subjects learned. What a shame, because life is a long lesson, with lots of work (at home and outside of home) and daily tests!

Believe it or not, about 20 years ago, I managed to get a group of kids (1½ to 4 years old) to think that life can become a great lesson if only we ask the right question. For them, there were no failures in life, only opportunities to learn. They were so young and uncorrupted by life's heartaches, I could convince them to think whatever I wanted, so I did!

Later on, I traveled around the world with my program and realized that our perception of life depends on our definition of happiness, knowledge, curiosity, success and failure.

What have I learned today?

If you want to know how those kids felt, look at every experience as fun and learning. Instead of asking "How was it?" ask "What have I learned from it?" Try this every day before going to sleep and allow your mind to extract the learning from the events, thoughts and emotions of the day.

We learn many things all day, every day. Writing down your learnings is a good way to remember them better. Keep a notepad next to your bed and write down your answers to the question "What have I learned today?"

Today, I want to share with you (some of) my notes from this month. I wrote them on notepads not only next to my bed but in the car, in my bag and in my diary. I hope my notes contain some useful learnings for you too:

1. Every time my son (Tsoof) performed, every time he wrote music, every time he played his guitar or practiced for his big audition, I learned that pride and satisfaction are my rewards for waiting such a long time for him to be born.
2. When I went to give a talk at the festival my daughter (Eden) helped organize, everyone came to me and told me "You have the most wonderful daughter in the world". I learned that, although I did not need other people to tell me that, it made me feel so proud!
3. When I went this month to meet the teacher of my youngest daughter (Noff), I discovered her class would not have enough time to cover all the required material for the national exam and I learned (again) that the responsibility for my kids' education was, is and will always be mine.
4. At the same meeting, the teacher asked me if we were coming to see Noff dancing with all the year level and I said "Of course!" She said she wanted to make sure, because Noff would receive a special dance award. I learned that she asked it because many parents just don't come. We would have gone anyway.
5. After discovering my husband (Gal) had a skin cancer and having a stressful month, I learned (again) the importance of emotional strength and good attitude. I learned (again) that life throws many tests at us and we are much stronger than we think we are. Every time we get up in the morning, we have passed that test.

   

6. During the surgery, time in the hospital, doctors and more doctors, I learned to appreciate the value of health insurance. Thank God money was not an item on our worries list.
7. While Gal was recovering from his surgery and friends came over, I learned how important it is to have friends and how valuable they are in times of joy, but also times of trouble.
8. Every second I worked with "Together for Humanity" to promote living in harmony, I learned how much I love being around kids. I learned they give me strength and I love them so much, I probably get from them more than I give them.
9. This month, we met a new family. They came over for dinner and we had a wonderful time together. I learned that I love meeting new people. I had a chance to meet so many new people this year, it has made me very happy.
10. Both of my sisters were pregnant. One was in hospital for more than 8 weeks, counting hours and days to keep her precious pregnancy and avoid having a premature baby. The other was suffering pain and sleepless nights and considered herself lucky. I learned that when I see someone going through bad things, it makes it easier to pass my own tests.
11. I learned that worrying about my sisters from far away makes me feel helpless and I am not very good with feeling helpless. How can I help if I feel so helpless? I need help myself!
12. In over two months of worrying about my sisters, I learned that my own scars never disappear. I could feel the tension building up in me and all the demons ran loose again. I needed to meditate a lot!
13. I learned that being on Skype two to three times a day with my sisters makes me miss them badly and questions (again) my decision to live on the other side of the world from them.
14. After a year of not using our Jacuzzi, we wrote the yearly goals with the kids and Eden wrote she would love to fix the Jacuzzi and use it more often. With her encouragement, we did! We used it move than 10 times in the last 2 months. Now, every time we do this, Tsoof brings his guitar and plays and we sing and we are so happy, so I learned that asking the kids to share their goals and desires with us contributes a lot to our relationship as a family.
15. This month, Gal and I decided to buy Tsoof a music editing program and to hide it from him until we got it from overseas. I learned that it is very hard for me to keep a secret, but it was well worth it just to see his reaction when we showed him our gift.
16. It took me over 3 weeks to organize a professional development training day, but it was very, very successful so I learned that I'm really good at this!
17. I did a presentation about acceptance and stereotyping at the Ideas Festival in Brisbane for 220 kids with two of my team members. The kids were so cooperative I learned that my work helps me live my purpose of making a difference every day. I learned (again) that education is a great way to make a making difference.
18. I managed to tell jokes on stage at the Ideas Festival and I hoped my kids could hear me. They think (and I agree) that I am not funny at all. I learned that I can be.
19. I received a notice about fees for my kids' activities at school. I compared what I needed to pay to how happy my kids were at those activities and I learned that I am lucky and happy to be able to allow them to experience so many wonderful programs at school.
20. My laptop is now one year old. This month, I discovered it cannot burn CDs (though it should be able too), but since I had never tried, I did not know how long it had been like that. I learned that, I need to use all the functions of everything I buy in the first month.
21. Just planning our camping for the school break made me so happy I have learned that looking forward to something fun can be a great motivator.
22. Every time I get into the laundry room and look at the shelf unit we have built, which makes the room look so clean and organized, I am happy and proud. From the long quest to organize the laundry room, including attempts to paint the doors, bring in another closet and use a screen wall, I learned that trying one more time and then one more time is the right way to find solutions.
23. When I sat next to a group of people talking about the hassles of having the kids at home during school break, I learned that, although there are challenges to working at home, it provides the huge advantage of looking forward to spending time differently with your kids during the holidays.
24. We watched our kids' videos from 11 and 19 years ago, which showed the kids themselves, as well as their little sister, what they were like as young kids. I learned (again) the importance of making videos of your kids. The memories of every smart thing they did and their first words do fade and videos are a great way to bring them back to life. I also learned that it was an awesome experience for 7-year-old Noff to see her siblings, who are 7 and 12 years old older than her, in diapers, taking their first walking steps.
25. One of my sisters' friends, who is 38 years old, decided to have a baby without a partner. Her family is not talking to her and her siblings and mom keep minimal contact with her for fear of her dad's anger. She asked her mom to come and help her after the birth and her baby, but her mom said she could not come. When my mom heard this, she called my sister's friend and told her she would come for the first few days and help her out. I learned that my mom, who is 70 years old, has a heart of gold (and I am so happy).
26. This month, I finished writing my best book yet, called "Reflections". It is a book I have been writing for over 25 years. When I signed it with a sense of achievement and accomplishment, I learned the importance of allowing myself time to grow and evolve. I learned that some of my lifelong projects require purpose and persistence and that in hindsight, everything that happened to me, good or bad, contributes to my life story.
27. From reading the many supporting comments on "Family Matters", I learned that making an effort to write and share every day is certainly worth it!

My learning list for this month was as big as the one from last month and I learned that my learnings are the result of the challenges, successes and joys I experience. To survive a challenge, I ask myself "What can I learn from this?" To maintain and leverage success, I ask myself "What can I learn from this?"

Not everything in life is beautiful and easy, but everything holds a lesson - a message of encouragement or a warning. When circumstances speak, all you have to do is listen.

Until next time, I wish you great, empowering lessons.

Be happy,
Ronit

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• Are they right if I can predict the outcome properly (we are good fortune tellers)?
• Are they right if they make my mom and dad happy?
• Are they right if it stops someone putting pressure on me?
• Are they right if I can take more options into consideration?
• Are they right if the outcomes last longer?

As a kid, I asked myself these questions many times. I remember the strongest feeling I had from what my parents thought about the right decisions was that decisions were always a matter of life and death. Everything seemed to be a choice between life and death. I imagined God going over each choice I was making and sentencing me to life or death. If I made the right choice, I earned a bit more time in life, but if I chose wrongly, I was given the death sentence.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one
- Elbert Hubbard

Just like my parents believed it is critical to make "the right choice", many people are trapped by a fear of making mistakes. For them too, it is a question of life and death.

This fear is even greater for kids who grow up in such an environment. They fear making a mistake, as they perceive it, may end in disaster, in something they cannot change or fix, a death sentence for every small mistake they make. For some kids, it only takes a few unsuccessful choices until they give up on their ability to make the right choice. Most times, their unsuccessful choices could not have been avoided, at least not without psychic vision (fortune telling), simply because they lacked the understanding, the experience or the ability.

This can mean that by their teens, they have completely given up on their quest for the "right decision". Because they have no faith in the outcomes of their decisions, they give up on the idea and start thinking only about how they feel in the here and now – "The right decision is what makes me feel good right now". It is for this reason that many teens seem self-centered, emotional or short sighted.

It is not their lack of experience and knowledge that brings them to this situation but their frustration and fear of the death sentence that leads them there. Then, they try to color their life with small successes of feeling good in the hope of postponing the harsh sentence that awaits them. Finally, they grow up to be adults whose motto in life is "Never make mistakes!" This is unhealthy thinking and cannot be sustained for long without consequences.

In truth, we do not make mistakes. We only make choices that time, circumstances and other people's choices can turn into right or wrong decisions. What is right for one person may be wrong for another, because nothing in life is absolute.

If you ask kids about the right choices, they will often go with what mom, dad or any other source of authority or pressure would have them choose, and when they do, they often become frustrated and confused. It is true that parents want the best for their kids, but their decisions are made based on 30 to 40 years of their own fears and may not necessarily be in tune with what their kids are experiencing.

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn. Whatever steps we take, they are necessary to reach the places we have chosen to go
- Richard Bach

We can change the way our kids perceive mistakes if we teach them about the many choices they have in every aspect of their life. We can change behavioral problems if we chant this motto to our kids:

If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down
- Mary Pickford

Mistakes are merely choices we make that do not work to our advantage, or at least have not done so yet! Sometimes, we find that what seemed like the biggest mistake of our life is the very same thing that has brought us great learning.

In a world that is full of depression, sickness and a high (and rising) suicide rate for children, it is our responsibility, as the adults in their lives, to rise above our upbringing and define "right" and "wrong" in a way that will empower our children. Rather than implying that a "wrong decision" can result in something horrible, we need to help them identify the learning tied to their decisions and ensure that the only sentence they will encounter as a result of any choice they make is a sentence to life.

Happy parents = Happy kids,
Ronit

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Often, when he talks to other people, he uses sarcasm. For example, one day he was contacted by a large company, which I was not familiar with. He got excited about it, but wanted to seem like he was keeping his cool, so as not to get disappointed if he did not get an order from them later on. So he said to me, "Gal, I just got off the phone with company XYZ".

"What is this company?", I asked.

"Oh, it's just a small company nobody knows", he said in a seemingly casual tone.

Knowing him all too well, I insisted, until he finally admitted, "They're the largest processed food manufacturer in our area and their inquiry is very large".  He had been trying not to get his hopes up before, so he used sarcasm.

However, on many occasions, I have seen other people take his words literally, not knowing any better, and the rest of their conversation with him got more and more confused, each side assuming the other one was acting strange.

Think back on any sarcastic expression you have ever heard and ask yourself, "What is the feeling associated with sarcasm?"

The answer is helplessness and lack of control. Sarcasm is the weapon of disempowered people, who use information to regain some of their missing feeling of control.

Kids are innocent creatures and sarcasm goes straight over their little heads. When they respond to what they heard literally and get a strange reaction, telling them they have misunderstood, they get confused. Over time, using sarcasm in communication with a child is nothing short of verbal abuse, leaving the child's self-esteem damaged and giving the child a deepening sense of inadequacy.

Here is a typical situation that may happen in a typical home: money is tight, but the kids are not aware of this. One of the kids comes to Mom, possibly while she is busy with the latest bills, and says, "Mom, can I please get a Wii? My friends have them and they are really cool!"

"Sure", says the mother, "Right after we come back from the luxury cruise to Alaska".

[I think you know what is now happening in the child's mind. He is getting really excited, having just heard he is going on a dream holiday, the pictures of which he has probably seen before in ads and TV commercials]

"Wow!", he says, "When are we going?"

"What are you talking about?", says the frustrated mother, trying desperately to figure out how to make ends meet, "We're not going anywhere, now go away and let me finish with these bills".

Of course, not being able to afford good stuff for your kids is damaging to one's own self-esteem and may cause you to use sarcasm as a way of venting a bit and seemingly putting some humour into the situation. But the result is that your pressure and frustration are passed on to an innocent bystander, who quietly takes on the bad feelings, having developed false hopes not once, but twice, only to realize neither of them would come true. To make matters worse, this also gives him a sense of failure to communicate and even a feeling he may have made his mother feel bad.

If you have not done this already, freeze this scene in your mind's eye, associate yourself with the child for a minute, then gently float out of the child and associate yourself with the mother, working away on those bills, suddenly grasping what she has done.

Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say!

To find out when you are using sarcasm in your life and overcome it, here are some things you can do:

• Ask the people around you (mainly your partner)
• When you talk to someone, pay attention to puzzled looks
• Recall any "bitching sessions" you may have had lately and examine the type of interaction you have with the people who attended them, because misery loves company and sarcasm is the weapon of the helpless
• Make a list of your frustrations and imagine yourself in those situations. What are you saying?
• For each of your frustrations, ask yourself, "What is at least one thing I can do to make this situation acceptable?"
• Ask yourself if your expectations of each situation are realistic. Are you seeing the other people's point of view, for example?
• Whenever you feel helpless, stop and ask yourself if this is really the case and take some action or adjust your expectations immediately

Feel the power over your life coming back into your own hands!

Share you thoughts and successes with me via the comment box below.

Powerful times,
Gal

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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!

Since the Be Happy in LIFE program and the Garden of Eden program are based on promoting Emotional Intelligence, I have been asked many times to explain the main idea behind them.

Although Emotional Intelligence (EQ – Emotional Quotient) became popular after the publication of Daniel Goleman's Book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, in 1995, it was researched and developed during the 70's and 80's. It was psychologist Howard Gardner's book Frames of Mind, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which began the development of EQ.

For a long time before this publication, knowledge was the centre of attention, so Gardner and later Goleman and many other emotional intelligence gurus were very brave to go against the mainstream.

My first encounter with EQ was 23 years ago, during my special education studies, long before Goleman's book went to print. Luckily, I had the most inspiring mentors and teachers that were at that stage experts in Emotional Intelligence and helped me shape my educational philosophy and my educational career.

I remember back than, most of my special education mentors warning me about relying on IQ tests, because IQ was supposed to measure a person's maximum potential and to remain constant, no matter what that person learns.

For me, this creates a limiting belief. If I think that a kid has some predetermined potential, this can limit my work with them.

Moreover, I discovered over time that IQ was not constant at all. I knew kids who took an IQ test, worked on the skills measured by the test, and then took the test again and got higher scores! Now, if IQ is a measurement of our set potential and I can change the result with my work, what is the point of this measurement?

In my first program, the kids went through an assessment to check IQ in every term. All of them (yes, all of them) increased their IQ every term. The whole program was constant work on the kids' emotional state. The cognitive and academic achievements were side effects. Wouldn't you like having smart kids without teaching them literacy and numeracy?

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Years after Gardner, Peter Salovey and John Mayer defined EQ as made up of 5 elements. These qualities sit on a scale and determine how high or low a person's emotional intelligence is.

Emotional Intelligence is increasingly relevant to Education, organizations and businesses since it has been proven to help understand and assess people's behaviour. Many businesses now send their employers to professional development courses and in our Be Happy in LIFE program we have more and more business people and executives who realise that their emotional state greatly contributes to their performance.

Emotional Intelligence measurement is very helpful in learning. It serves as an important tool in areas like learning style, communication, management style, attitude, interpersonal skills and potential.

At the beginning, EQ professionals argued that IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests, the traditional method for measuring intelligence, failed to predict success, while EQ tests were more accurate. They also argued that "emphasising cognitive skills does not contribute to people's well-being", while "emphasising EQ increases productivity, reduces stress for individuals and organizations, decreases conflict, improves relationships and understanding and increases stability, continuity and harmony".

In my experience with gifted children, I have found that very smart children with high IQ (high cognitive skills) did not necessary possess the right emotional strength necessary for surviving school. If at all, the high IQ kids had emotional challenges that were more difficult than other kids their age, and positioned them in the "special education" sector. My work with such kids was aimed at bridging the gap between their IQ and EQ, which was higher than that of average kids.

Optimism is Better than Knowledge

One big factor of Emotional Intelligence is optimism. During the 1980s, Martin Seligman researched optimism and its effects on people's performance. One of his greatest discoveries was presented in his research of insurance sales people. Seligman convinced an insurance company to hire people who passed the optimism test but failed the standard IQ test. He compared their sales to those of sales people who were hired based on standard tests only. In the first year, Seligman's group's sales were 21% higher than the others. In the second year, their sales reached 57% more than the others! The conclusion of his research was that optimistic people handle rejection better than others and are therefore more likely to succeed.

If you take Seligman's discovery and implement it in education, you will find exactly the same results. Optimistic kids are able to tackle new learning in a better way, better than kid with high IQ.

Learning a new thing contains the risk of not achieving, at least in the first attempts. Optimism and pessimism play a major role in determining the success of each learning experience. Pessimists take every unsuccessful event as a failure and are convinced it will repeat in the next attempt. Optimists consider unsuccessful events as single events and the source of new knowledge.

Possibly the greatest optimist in history was Thomas Edison. He went through 1,500 attempts to come up with the right wire to light his bulb. He never thought that each attempt will repeat because he was not the same person after that attempt. The Thomas Edison preparing for his 1,500^th attempt knew something that the Thomas Edison preparing for his 1,499^th attempt did not know.

In one of my Garden of Eden programs (in Singapore), 3 year olds sat in groups of 4 and successfully worked together on 240-piece puzzles. Long before we could measure those kids' IQ in a formal way, we could set their mindset to believe they could. For them, nothing was a failure. Every visitor to the centre was shocked to see such tiny kids mastering an activity that some grown-ups do not have the patience to do.

Optimism can be taught at a very early age, when young kids are still easy to influence and manipulate (I know that manipulate sounds like a harsh word, but as parents and educators, we manipulate all the time, whether we are aware of it or not, and, of course, building optimism is a good thing). Unfortunately, schools and parents spend much time, money and energy for kids to learn more Math and read better but not nearly the same effort to teach emotional skills.

I am very optimistic that we can change this!

You may want to read

• Self Esteem Mini-Course (2): How School Promotes Low Self Esteem
• To Teach Is To Touch a Life Forever
• Diagnosing Learning Difficulties and Gifted Children in the Early Years

Courage and fear are like day and night.
You cannot appreciate one without the other
- Ronit Baras

We all like watching "Heroes" on TV and reading books about strong or creative people who have done things others did not expect them to do. Hearing, reading about or meeting such people is very motivating. Heroism is the courage to face fears, therefore fear and heroes go together.

Fear is a basic human emotion that works like a survival instinct. In a sense, fear helps protect us from danger, though it has reached a point where we see danger even in places where it does not exist.

People have fears of speaking, fears of learning, fears of small insects or other people and the most famous one of all, fear of failure. Unlike the fear instinct, which is programmed in people to keep them alive with the "fight or flight" response, none of these fears represent a survival mechanism - no one has ever died from speaking in public, or broken their tongue by learning a new language, huge spiders exist only in movies, mice are terrified of people, even when they stand on a chair, and failure is just an expression of strong disappointment. Heroes are not those who do not fear, but those who conquer their fears.

Heroes everywhere

Heroes are a great inspiration. How many heroes surround you? If you are thinking of someone who has climbed Mount Everest, someone who has made millions of dollars, someone who has won a special prize or someone who has led a country to victory, you will not find too many of them.

If heroes are those who conquer their fears, everyone is a hero and YOU are a hero too.

When you go for a job interview, you are a hero, boldly facing your prospective employer. When you study something new, you are a hero, bravely struggling with challenging knowledge. When you say what you think, you are a hero, courageously standing up to your peers. When you love someone, you are a hero, laying your heart on the line. Because interviews, learning, self expression and romance all come with uncertainty.

If you are a parent, you are a real hero, because you are in a continuous test. You learn, you express yourself and you show your love every day of your life and with it comes a great, great fear of the unknown. Children see their parents as great heroes most of their lives. They are strong, they know a lot and they save their kids time after time from pain and failure.

Adolescence is not an easy time, because this is when we have to come to terms with the fact that our heroes have fears and sometimes fail too. Growing up is realising we have to face our own fears and no external source can do it for us, which means that growing up requires great courage.

Even heroes have the right to bleed
And it's not easy to be me
- from Superman by Five for Fighting

The greatest heroes of all are the heroes that are true to themselves. My book Be Special, Be Yourself for Teenagers is a tribute to such heroes in my life - parents and kids, teachers and friends who have motivated me and many others to succeed in life and conquer our fears.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

In this wonderful quote, Emerson set the bar for heroism, one that can be much higher than climbing a physical mountain. We can all stay true to ourselves even if it means others will be disappointed, even if it means it will take time and even if it means we will be different.

There's a hero
If you look inside your heart
You don't have to be afraid
Of what you are
- from Hero by Mariah Carey

Just like fears keep us alive, they can become stepping stones to climb up. You can conquer them by doing just a little bit more or surrounding yourself with heroes, including the one in the mirror.

And then a hero comes along
With the strength to carry on
And you cast your fears aside
And you know you can survive
So when you feel like hope is gone
Look inside you and be strong
And you'll finally see the truth
That a hero lies in you
- from Hero by Mariah Carey

Life is a journey to an unknown destination. We all take a path we have never taken and uncertainty is an integral part of going forward. You can chase all of your fears, but first you have to know them. Start with a list of fears and set your mind to conquering them one at a time. You can!

If you need some guidance or support with your fears, contact us.

If you have succeeded, tell us about it.

If you liked this article - stumble us.

If you like songs, listen to Mariah Carey's song, Hero.

Read this post by Tim Brownson.

And please forward this article to any person that you think needs some motivation.

Happy 2008,
Ronit Baras

Check Out My Book "Be Special, Be Yourself for Teenagers"

You may want to read

• Exploring Happiness
• The Hunger Games
• Make a List: My Fears

The overnight success factor works very well on people who are not successful. It really helps sell stuff. Look at some of the best overnight success promotions:

• Lose 14 kilos in 14 days!
• How to make $250,000 from property without using your own money!
• Use this drink and be blond and beautiful in just 4 days!
  (OK, so I made this one up myself ;) )

I bet overnight success was invented by unsuccessful people to help them feel better about their lack of success.

“What was that single most important thing that brought you your success?”, rich and famous people get asked a lot. I do not like this question at all. There is no single thing that makes people successful, though I have always wanted so much to find one. Every step along the way, in every day of my life, both my achievements and my "failures", contributed to my success.

Success is a ladder with an important rule: you cannot skip any step to get to the top. To succeed, you must understand this rule and not try to take any shortcuts.

Successful people work hard to be successful. None of them ever got up in the morning and realised they were great successes in relationship, in their professions or in their finances. None of them ever went to bed thinking they would go to bed and get up in the morning with the right attitude and mindset to get to the top without climbing.

Though successful people use the word "luck" a lot, luck has nothing to do with their success. What they used were vision, determination and persistence to keep moving forward in spite the setbacks. Successful people fail the same as unsuccessful people, but they get up more times.

Successful people do not believe in the overnight success lie, because they have worked too hard to achieve it.

No one makes money from property without putting money aside to start their investments.

No one becomes a famous author without investing the time to write and daring to stand the criticism.

No one loses weight without giving up some food or TV time.

No one became a wonderful partner without putting relationship on top of their value list (and sacrificing other important things).

No one becomes a singer selling millions of records without practicing a lot, practicing some more, singing in pubs and knocking on doors.

No one becomes wealthy without taking any risks.

No one gets to the top without climbing.

If you read a promotion that sells you the “overnight success”, beware! Someone thinks you are not successful enough to sell it to you that way, because only unsuccessful people would buy from them.

If you are looking for overnight success, remember it is only an illusion, the greatest lie of our impatient modern time. A real "success story" would never ever say this about their own life.

If you want to succeed, nothing outside of you is going to make you successful - not tablets, not some program, not someone else, not a book, not even money. Only you can make yourself successful.

Start climbing!

You may want to read

• Optimism or "What’s the big fuss about Emotional Intelligence (Emotional Quotient)?"
• Work-Life Imbalance
• Happily Wealthy Family (4): The Magic Money Jar

Sickness is our body’s way of talking to us. When we are sick, the level of poison in our body has reached a warning level. Having been very sick during childhood, I was shocked to discover when I was just 16 that my thoughts were pure poison. I had bad thoughts about myself, my abilities and my talents. I had bad thoughts about others around me and, of course, I never took any responsibility over my life. Not that I didn’t want to, but I do not think I knew what it meant.

Well, what do you know? As soon as I realised this, I fought my way back to school (after failing too many subjects and being kicked), I started going out with a boy, I got an excellence scholarship and was sent with the first-ever Israeli youth delegation to Egypt, to help establish new relationships just after the peace agreement was signed between the two countries. You can certainly say this was one of the best “sick and tired” points of my life.

Sometimes I tell my clients that being unhappy is a good thing because unhappiness means we are noticing the poison in our body. If you want to understand the effect of thoughts on your body, think of the best moment in your life and notice your physical reaction. The best example is thinking about sex... This is the best way to notice how thoughts effects our physical body.

All negative thoughts effect our physical existence and this is why we must change our thoughts if we want to make any changes in our world. If we have positive thoughts, we nourish ourselves. If we have negative thoughts, we poison ourselves.

If someone has done something that hurt you and you keep thinking about it for a long time afterwards and remain upset about it, you are hurting yourself more than the actual thing that was done to you. Saying or doing unpleasant things to others is poisoning, but who do you think is poisoning you more, the other person or you, thinking about it for days, weeks and sometimes years later? When you realise that some people may trigger bad thoughts in you, but you have the power to stop them from spreading in your mind, you gain responsibility and control over your life.

Here are seven simple steps to detoxify you life:

1. Treat every day as the first day of the rest of your life

If you tell yourself "I should have done this", "If only I had done that" and think a lot about mistakes in the past, these thoughts will hold you back and prevent you from moving forward.

Tomorrow is a wonderful day. It holds so many hopes and is, after all, the first day of the rest of your life. Negative thoughts about the past create doubt, doubt is poison and beats hope and confidence. In the past, you did the best thing you could. You are always OK!

2. Stick to thoughts that make you feel good

We have many thoughts, some good for us and some very demanding, based on beliefs we have accumulated during our life.

Pick a list of good feelings and thoughts you want to have and find ways to experience them every day. Make a list of the things that make you happy and go over that list every day, to count your blessings.

3. Hang around positive people

There is a great proverb, which says “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are” . Watch who you hang out with. We have a tendency to build rapport with the people around us. We do it automatically, without consciously thinking about it.

Spend time with positive people. After a while, you will adopt their attitude. Positive people have a good feeling around them. They are more accepting and welcoming and less judgmental. They will make you think good things about yourself.

At the same time, stay away from negative people, even if they are your friends and family. Negative people criticize a lot, complain a lot and blame others for their problems. If you stay away from them or limit your time with them, you guarantee not to adopt their attitude.

4. Learn the art of NEXTing

Many things in the past stay with us for a long time. This way, we keep holding on to the things we are not happy about. Some people carry hard feelings about people from the past, parents, friends, siblings or partners. Holding on to those bad feelings is not going to change the past or change the other person. In this sense, we become “carrier” of poison for years to come. Learn to put this behind you.

There is a beautiful prayer, which says:

God, grant me  the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference

So when someone or something upsets you, ask yourself if it is important enough to hold on to. If it is, do something about it until you feel better. If not, imagine yourself sitting at a reception counter and pressing a big button that says "NEXT!", then put it behind you and move on.

5. Treat yourself with respect be true and honest to your uniqueness

Many people are preoccupied with what others think about them. It is hard to blame anyone who thinks like this, because as children we are so dependent on what our parents, teachers and others say about us that we accept it as "a fact of life". Sometimes, a sentence they have said is programmed in our mind and determines what we think about ourselves for years.

Learn to separate who you are from what others think about you. What you think is your story, and what they think is their story. You cannot control theirs, they cannot control yours. If you ever ask others to write on a piece of paper what they think about you, you will discover that you cannot possibly be all these different people at once, because each of them only recognizes certain things in you. Define who you are regardless of what others think about you.

It is a big enough challenge to be who YOU think you should be. Let the others deal with their own expectations by themselves.

6. Failures are opportunities in disguise

One of the most fatal poisons is fear. We have many fears. One of the “famous” fears is a fear of failure. People want so many things in life, but are afraid to go out and get them because they are afraid to fail. The more you think of failing, the more poison you have in your life. Anxiety is a fear of something that has not happened and may never happen, yet it cripples many people. Fearing something does not guarantee it will not happen.

If I stay home and worry about my daughter driving back home late at night, there is no way for me to make sure a drunk driver will not hit her. But it is a certain guarantee I will not sleep until she comes home…

If things do not happen the way you want them to happen, treat them as opportunities to learn, change and grow. If any fear creeps into your mind, shake it off and tell yourself

Everything is going to be OK in the end.
If it is not OK, it is not the End

7. Treat your body as a temple

Your body is the vehicle with which you experience the world. Treat it like a precious thing. Happy thoughts will help you maintain your body and keep it for years to come.

Challenges are a good way to keep your mind sharp. Physical activity helps keep your mind, body and soul in good shape. Find an activity you enjoy. Make sure you enjoy it. If you do it without pleasure and every time you run or go to the gym you swear inside your head, you spread poison in your system.

Eat food that makes you feel good. Remember, there is no such a thing as “healthy” food, only “healthy” thoughts. Stay away from traps like “organic” or “natural”. I tell people that snake poison is organic and natural. Remember, what you think about your food is more important than what you eat. Food is a friend, not an enemy. Treat it with love.

Get a good night sleep. This is why it is called “Beauty sleep”. Sleep is a need, when we do not sleep enough our physical body deteriorate. Tired people can not focus and it negatively affects their thinking. If you doing other things instead of taking your time off to sleep, you are stealing this time from yourself.

Use your feelings to detox and remember, you can choose your thoughts and stop every negative things from poisoning your system, yes, you are right, sometimes it hits you hard and you haven’t notice till it was late, but… nothing is ever too late, if it did hit you , notice it and get it out of your system as soon as possible.

You may want to read

• Anorexia: How to stop worrying
• Nothing wrong with feeling bad
• Irrational Rules of Living – Discomfort and pain