But this post is not about parties or being the life and soul of them. It is about managing emotions. Specifically, it is about getting rid of negative feelings that seem to haunt us and get us into trouble often.

As a partner, a parent and a person, it is likely you find yourself in familiar situations, feeling the same familiar feeling and wondering how you got there. It may be as you walk in the door after a long day at work. It may be when some misunderstanding with your partner or your (teenage) child quickly escalates to an unpleasant exchange of verbal blows. It may just be when you look in the mirror.

The book explains that all negative feelings are some form of fear and that fear is a defensive feeling aimed at protecting our self from being hurt. Some part of us recognizes certain words or behaviors as a form of attack raises the alert by creating this protective feeling.

The thing is, the "attack" pattern may have been saved in our mind when we were little and certainly in a particular context, both of which are longer in effect. However, our reaction is a subconscious one, which means there is no time for logic, but also that to get rid of this type of reaction we must "talk" directly with our subconscious (this is called Neurolinguistic Programming or NLP).

How to let go of a common negative emotion

1. Recall a common unpleasant feeling you would like to stop having
2. Think of a "thing", an object, an animal or even a natural phenomenon that this feeling would be if it had physical form. Imagine it right in front of you. What would this "thing" look like, sound like, taste like, smell like and feel like? Is it heavy? Is it light? Would you touch it?
3. Ask the "thing" what it is trying to protect you from and what its positive reason is for being with you so intensely for so long.
4. Let the "thing" reply. You may see, hear, taste, smell and/or feel the answer, so be patient and attentive to the answer.
5. Thank it. Give appreciation to the "thing" for being there with a positive intention.
6. Find some aspects of the "thing" that are appealing to you - its color, its voice, smell, taste, texture or movement.
7. Your "thing" may now change its shape and other attributes. If not, keep talking to the "thing". You can use any tools or imaginary aids you like to get closer to your "thing" and develop your mutual understanding. Continue in a playful way until your "thing" has changed its form into something pleasant or completely disappeared.
8. As this is in YOUR mind, any outcome that appeals to you is good. This process is complete when you feel comfortable returning to your daily life with the confidence that your original emotion has either gone away for good or become something you would like to keep.

I was so excited about this, I nearly exploded. Right away, I decided to work on the feeling most common for digital people - overwhelm.

First, I imagined my feeling of overwhelm as a very large octopus. I did not count the arms, but there were probably more than 8 there. It was big, it was dark, it had huge bulging eyes, it was frowning, it had a shoe box in each tentacle (which I knew was something I had to do) and it kept moving all the time. I felt very overwhelmed.

When I asked the big octopus for the good reason it was there, it became quite a bit shorter and its expression changed from menacing to compassionate. It said to me in a soft voice, "I'm desperately trying to keep track of all these things for you, so you can focus on doing one task at a time and doing it well. Have I not been doing a good job?"

Then it sort of deflated a bit, shrank to my own height and move closer to me, looking self conscious. "Would you like me to leave?" it asked timidly.

"No, it's OK", I said, "Why don't you just keep all this stuff somewhere else?"

"Sure", the octopus said happily and then turned around, grew roller skates on 2 tentacles and skated away into the darkness.

I felt great, knowing I was being watched over by my friend the octopus, who was keeping my to-do list tucked away for me. My body relaxed and I smiled to myself and ran to tell Ronit and Eden.

Being you, your "thing" may be completely different. Being you, your imaginary negotiation with the "thing" may be completely different. Either way, give it a try. You will feel great afterwards and your life will change forever.

Of course, once you get the hang of it, it will be nice of you to share it with your partner and with your kids (friends and family may come a bit later).

Kids have few inhibitions imagining things, but they already have things that bother them repeatedly. Unlike many areas, imagining can be easily done without words, so kids are even better at it than adults. However, kids may not be able to "spot the troublemaker" yet, which is where you can help them greatly.

Say one of your kids displays miserable behavior often or throws temper tantrums. You can suggest to them to play an imagination game with you, in which you guide them through the steps above. They do not have to tell you what they are experiencing, but if they do, would you please come back here and tell us about it?

Happy life,
Gal

You may want to read

• The Art of Misery (Advanced)
• Switch
• Make a List: My Fears

In this post, let me try to give you some explanation to this inflation in the diagnosis of ADHD. You are welcome to choose the one that you like most.

1. The first explanation of this overuse of ADHD I described a few weeks ago in The ADHD Myth. In short, the definition of ADHD is so broad that almost every person in the world can be described as having attention deficit disorder at a curtain stage in life.
2. ADHD is genetic. All people carry the gene and it is recessive (it does not manifest itself) until someone finds it too hard to handle you.
3. ADHD is contagious. It is transmitted from the people around you through their attitude, so watch who you hang with.
4. Is easier to handle people to if you give them a label and put them in a box and ADHD seems like a good label. It is even an acronym. Actually, it is even a 4-letter word.
5. It is easier to get funding from governments and organizations if you present a growing need.
6. ADHD is a business. There is a lot of money in ADHD for the pharmaceutical companies, so they have a great interest in promoting it.
7. Parents prefer a diagnosis because it helps them with guilt feelings. Many parents with kids that are different and do not follow the "normal" definition of behavior (oh, that horrible word, "normal") feel that they are blamed by society for "making" their kids like that. If someone diagnoses them as having ADHD, it takes the blame away.
8. Being diagnosed with ADHD has many benefits for the child. It can be used as a great excuse to misbehave, be irresponsible and unsuccessful. I know many people who are desperately looking for such a great excuse.
9. If you have had a chance to read about kids' communication styles, you know by now that there are 4 different kinds of kids - Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic and Digital. Many kinesthetic children need movement in order to think properly, and if their movement is limited, they will find unconventional ways to "move". Consider how kids are limited in their movement in daycare centers and schools and even at home. Just go to the playground at each school or kindergarten and hear what they say to the kids - "Don't run! Don’t jump, don't throw the ball". I sometimes wonder if people remember what a playground is for… Kids rock in their chairs, click their pens, fidget, talk to the person next to them and invent many other creative ways to keep their brains functioning. Along the way, they use up much of their energy and lose their concentration.As you can see from the length of this option, I believe that this is the main reason for the inflation in ADHD diagnoses.During my 22 years in education, each child I have ever worked with who was diagnosed with hyperactive behavior, ADD or ADHD was actually kinesthetic. I allowed them to move and in fact introduced them to activities that required them to move and, surprise, surprise, the problem disappeared. No medication, no brain surgery, no punishment and definitely not a feeling that something is wrong with them, so the "brain malfunction" disappeared.

   

   When I get kids for assessment with the suspicion of ADHD, I ask about their abilities in other areas. Brain malfunctions are consistent and affect the child in all areas. If a kid can concentrate one hour while doing something they love, but only 30 seconds doing something they hate, they do not have a concentration problem.

I would love to know what you think.
Please post your comments below.

You may want to read

• The War on ADHD
• From the Life Coaching Deck (3): Hyperactive Kids
• 11 Tips for Developing Healthy Eating Habits

Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality.
If you can dream, you can make it so

For many people, dreams are the fluffy clouds we see at night when we go to sleep (well, in fact, only the visual people imagine a picture while dreaming).

Another dream in daily use is the wish. We wish for things and by this we tell our subconscious that this is what we want.

Every special event in our life triggers dreams in peoples' mind. Birthdays, a new job, moving to a new house, a new year and every other new thing that has a feeling of a beginning, has the power to trigger such dreams. Funny, but we can, if we dare, dream every day of our life.

Every day is the first day of the rest of your life

In a post for the beginning of the year, I have recommended you to make a huge wish list. If you have not done this yet, take the time and do it. You will be surprise how many of your wishes will come true only because you have written them down.

Why do I believe in dreams?

Over 25 years ago, when I was at a course during my military service, I got an assignment to write what kind of kids I wanted to have. I remember us all arguing with the presenter that we are just 18 years old and have no plans to have kids in the near future and him saying it was just an assignment and the reason he chose kids was because it was very far from our life.

I wrote on a pink, lined paper about the kids I wanted to have without really knowing the meaning of parenthood. I envisioned my kids "rich in experiences, open to cultures, adventurous and flexible". This was hard. I could easily imagine characters I wrote about in my stories and other kids, but not my own. It was a strange feeling. The presenter talked about our ability to imagine things that were far away from our world and suggested to keep this note for years to come. I saved mine in my collection box. It was just an assignment.

Twenty years later, after going through Tony Robbins' program and doing my life coaching course, I was asked to do the same thing about happiness, family, health, wealth and remembered my pink, lined paper. One evening, after an intensive and exciting training day, I went to my collection box and took out the pink paper.

I had 3 kids, each born in a different country. I had travelled with them to 17 wondrous places around the world and lived in 7 of them, where 3 different languages were spoken…

Rich in experiences, open to cultures adventurous and flexible

I had the 3 amazing kids I had dreamed of long before they existed. They were certainly rich in experiences: I did many of the most exciting things in my life when I was a mother and they did them when they were young - riding horses, sailing, seeing the Great Wall of China, standing at the peak of Bryce Canyon, diving at the Great Barrier Reef, climbing Aires Rock and many other adventures.

They were certainly open to cultures, having lived and travelled in so many different culture and language environments. They were the kids that would try every new dish, that would be thrilled to travel to any new country. They spoke two languages fluently and asked to bring a teacher home to learn Spanish. They were the kind of kids that would be happy and excited to take part in any cultural celebration - Chinese New Year Carnival, African Event, Buddhist Festival, Ethiopian Celebration or Middle Eastern Dance. They had visited temples, synagogues, mosques and churches and went to school with students from 60 different countries.

My kids were also adventurous. They would travel to a remote place in Thailand where nobody understood them, without booking accommodation in advance and without being able to read the Thai language on a map. At the age of 6, they would hike 7 hours and be the first to get to the top of Mount Warning, leaving some panting grownups far behind. They would climb a Glacier. They were kids who slept in 5 stars hotels in the world, yet would cheer about sleeping in a tent.

I had 3 kids that were so flexible we managed to do all the things we wanted in life. They were so flexible that changing language is a challenge not a threat. They were so flexible, that changing countries, schools, houses (my 19 year-old lived in 16 houses in her life) was just part of life for them. They were so flexible that a few minutes after they got to a new school or a new group of friends, everyone thought they had been there all their life. They were so flexible with food, with sleep, with friends and with changes that I know many adults can learn from them.

I tried to remember the day I wrote it. I was just 18, kids were not planned at that stage and I was planning to study journalism. I lived in a small town, where most people grew up and died in the same town, no one around me travelled or dared to leave the country and higher education was not even an option. And I thought it was just an assignment...

The courage to dream is the first thing we need in order to get the life we want and deserve. Our subconscious latches onto our dreams and immediately plots a course in the right direction. I believe in dreams. Every day I look at my kids, I know I have designed them this way before I had them.

In parenting and in life, the first step is to create powerful, inspiring goals, to set us in motion and provide the framework for our journey.

Give yourself a gift - a dream. Dream of success, of love, of having the most wonderful kids on Earth and of a great, exciting life. Imagine a fairy with a magic wand who grants you 3 wishes. Make your wishes and send them to the universe to happen (or put them in a collection box). Your fairy will do the rest.

People need courage to dream. I wish you that courage.

Here is a song to inspire you.

Dare to Dream
– Paul Begaud/Vanessa Corish/Wayne Tester
(sung by Olivia Newton-John & John Farnham)

I am my own believer / In my heart the reason
I will follow the light from within
I'm not afraid of weakness / I'm gonna taste the sweetness
Of the power not to give in
Oh I will see it through / I believe this is my moment of truth

Dare to dream / Dare to fly
Dare to be the ever chosen one to touch the sky
Dare to reach / Dare to rise
Find the strength to set my spirit free
Dare to dream

I will go the distance / Embrace resistance
I will lay my soul on the line
When the wait is over / And the hunger has spoken
If I give my all, I will shine
Oh I will see it through / I believe, this is my moment of truth

Dare to dream...

And the heart will shine like the sun
A million voices together as one
I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe

Dare to dream...

You may want to read

• Make a list: My Lifetime
• Everyone Knows the Truth
• The Business Called "Life"

Most of our coaching clients ask us, “How come I keep getting all the things I don’t want to have in my life?” Oddly enough, the answer is hidden in the question. It’s all to do with … pink elephants.

Our brain is a very sophisticated machine, with its own way of interpreting the things around us. It turns out that one particular thing our brain can’t understand is negatives. Whenever we hear or use the words “no”, “not” or “don’t”, the brain simply ignores them and keeps the rest.

Let me demonstrate:

Please close your eyes and don’t think of a pink elephant … dancing … wearing a tutu. What happened? Could you not think of it? If you’re like everyone I know, you saw that very elephant you were supposed not to think about, even if for a brief moment. There’s no other way. We need to bring the elephant into out mind before we push it out.

And that’s exactly how our brain deals with all the negative expressions in our life. When we focus on what we don’t want, we actually bring that very thing and into being and then fight it.

“I don’t want to feel like that” translates into “I want to feel like that”.

“Don’t talk back to me” translates to “Talk back to me”.

One of my clients, a 37-year-old gorgeous-looking woman, who looked like a 20-year-old, was in search of a partner. “I don’t want those 25-year-old kids to look at me”, she said and, sure enough, all the men she attracted were around the age of 25. Frustrated, she asked, “Do I walk with a sign over my head saying ‘If you are 25, talk to me?’”. What do you think? If you understand pink elephants, you know she did. The things we don’t want in life are also the things we mostly focus on and by doing this, we bring them into our life, instead of avoiding them.

Parents often describe their children as doing exactly the opposite to what they tell them. Actually, they can’t help it. For example, when a parent says, “Don’t run in the house”, the child hears, “Run in the house”. Can we blame the child for running? Could you not think of a pink elephant?

Let’s consider some other things you will surely find familiar. What do you think your brain remembers every time you pass the highway sign that says, “Don’t drink and drive” or “Don’t speed”?

Think about it – “No smoking” is the best advertisement for smoking. It brings smoking to our attention, and keeps reinforcing it, because it’s everywhere.

What do you think of a nation using the expression “no worries” in response to almost everything? Are they really not worried at all?

A major modern “pink elephant” is the expression “fat free”. How do you explain the increase in the world’s obese population when everybody keeps promoting so many diets and “fat free” products? We focus on fat and then we fight it. People, who sell “weight loss” products, are actually promoting … weight. If you made so much money selling weight-loss products, wouldn’t you do that too?

Negative attitudes towards work, relationships, business, housekeeping, family, friends or enemies can be changed by changing focus.

Start by asking yourself, “What do I want?” As with any journey, we must first identify the place we are going to. This gives us direction and guides our daily focus and action.

Once our aim is set, the most magical thing happens – all of a sudden, we start noticing things we’ve never spotted before.

One of our clients wanted to have some time to himself in the busy life he was leading. “I just need 6 hours for myself”, he said. He took it on himself to record his time on an hourly basis for a week. To his amazement, he discovered he was already spending 16 (!) hours every week in personal activities.

Another client wanted to feel loved and appreciated by his wife, claiming she always wanted him to do things for her and then took his efforts for granted. He decided he would spend a whole week collecting evidence of his wife’s approval and affection. Do you think he found some? You bet he did, and lots of it!

By focusing on what you don’t want, you summon “pink elephants” into your thoughts and you’re in constant battle with life. And life, after all, is a fascinating journey into the self. On your back, you can carry flowers or pink elephants … dancing … wearing a tutu.

Happy life,
Ronit

You may want to read

• The Story of Mike
• What Are You Saying to Your Teens?
• How to Beat those Pink Elephants