One of the things I think we should all be prepared for is pressure. Pressure comes in a wide variety of shapes in our life - lack of sleep, hunger, a looming deadline at work, a baby screaming, physical pain, a growing debt, an accident, an illness, someone's death and so on. Each one of these presents a different challenge, but the common theme to all of them is that we are overwhelmed by emotion and all too often, reason goes out the window.

In a normal situation, when somebody cracks a joke at our expense, we may laugh along, but when we are under stress, we are more likely to lash out. Later, when we remember the situation, we may regret our outburst, but it is often too late to change its effects.

So how can we be prepared for times of stress?

First, we need to learn to pay attention, both to our internal universe and to how the world around us flows. Second, we should develop subconscious anchors that will help stop us before we do too much damage and allow us to remain productive even under pressure.

The Magician from the Judean Desert

This is an excellent book about an idealistic man who wanted to change the world when he was young and then married and lived an increasingly dull life, selling cosmetics for a living. He has a small apartment in the suburbs, two children and a cat. The mortgage weighs heavy and he falls asleep in front of the TV at night. The relationship with his wife has become mechanical and he has become short tempered…

An unexpected meeting with one of his childhood friends sets him off on a wonderful journey of personal growth and enlightenment. In the Judean Desert, he meets The Magician, a strange and spiritual sage who teaches him a simple way to achieve deep awareness and self-realization.

The Judean Desert Magician tells the man we go through life at top speed, but mostly on "autopilot", so we miss a lot of stuff, like what happens in our partner's and our kids' life. Have you ever found yourself driving for the 100^th time to a familiar place and noticing a part of the way for the first time? Have you ever noticed when you come in the door and your children rush to greet you, but you ask them to give you some space?

Our hero observes insects, hills, water and the wind, but also his own feelings, and learns to be aware of things he has long ignored. The Magician teaches him 5 steps:

1. Stop! Wake up! Remember! - instead of reacting automatically and out of habit, pay attention and remember you are on a journey to awareness. Do this as soon as you open your eyes in the morning, as well as whenever you catch yourself drifting. It would help to post these words where you can see them
2. Increase your sensitivity - observe those around you to practice being aware of their preferences and reactions. Spend some time every day watching people, both familiar and strange, and see how they behave and interact
3. Start things the right way - no matter what you begin, give it everything you have from the very start. Dress up in the morning, shave or put on makeup, make sure you have everything you need before leaving, arrange the room, check the lighting and do whatever it takes to set the scene for success
4. Watch the little things - gain perspective by observing nature and others in detail. Learn to appreciate what you have - size, strength, knowledge, skills, money, comfort, love, friends - by noticing how other creatures live without them. Focusing on the little things (like ants in the grass) is an excellent focusing and relaxing exercise. Just sit on the grass in a quiet spot, breath in the air and pay attention
5. See things from the present - instead of piling past experiences onto everything that happens to you, concentrate only on the present. To practice this, reject your first impressions and spend some time questioning them. Learn to bypass your programming, stop and re-evaluate
6. Reprogram - do things differently just to see what happens. Sleep on the other side of the bed, swap your knife and fork, wear unusual clothes, get up earlier, come to work late, take a day off in the middle of the week and see how your perspective changes

Integrate these steps into your life one at a time. Take as much time as you need to go through each of them and make it part of who you are. Gradually, you will start to respond to situations from the present and from your awareness of others, instead of reacting automatically.

Of course, as you get comfortable with these steps, why not involve your partner and your children too?

Personal power - hot vs. cold

In a charged emotional state, people first try to satisfy their immediate needs and act rashly. Unfortunately, this can be destructive. Little kids sometimes throw tantrums - they scream, jump up and down and fling their toys at the wall. In most cases, this should not change their parents' decision, but it may ruin a perfectly good toy.

Adults behave much the same, even if they express their frustrations in ways that are less physical. A snide remark may provide a temporary outlet, but the recipient may resent it, which would only escalate the pressure.

In most relationships, however, there are patterns of interaction and sources of stress that can be identified, predicted and prevented. For example, if you know you are cranky after only getting 4 hours of sleep, you can do something about it beforehand and save everyone from having a nasty morning. If you know one of your kids does not like spinach, you can prepare another healthy vegetable option for dinner.

Fundamentally, we should never assume our partner or our kids will be able to handle themselves well in "hot" situations and we should do some preparations while things are "cold" and everyone can see reason. Nor should we ever assume we will...

One excellent method with kids is to give them a 10-minute and a 5-minute warning before things are about to change - time for school, time for shower, time to go home from a friend, time to go to bed, etc.

With your partner, sensitive topics should be approached in privacy, when you are both relaxed and when there is enough time to work things out calmly.

But sometimes, things just happen when you do not expect them. For those times, it is a very good idea to agree while "cold" on a signal that reminds everyone to take a step back, collect their thoughts and separate the issue from the added pressure. This may be a phrase, like "Time out", a hand gesture, like the one students use in class to request permission to speak, a special effect, like ringing a bell, and even a hug. The sign must be known to everyone involved and practiced during mildly-stressful situations for a while.

Using the 6 awareness steps and finding ways to avoid and interrupt heated interactions are excellent preparations for what life throws at us from time to time.

Try them and let me know what you got.

Happy parenting,
Gal

You may want to read

• Disengage Your Autopilot
• How to Handle Pressure
• War and Peace are Personal

Both Ronit and I slept very badly that night and had very scary dreams.

In the movie, there are 12 districts full of poor workers who can barely get enough food to eat. Their life is mud (literally), they are dressed in light-blue working uniforms and live in fear. These districts are ruled by "the capitol", a magnificent and decadent city, where people spend their time dressing to impress and trying to find things to entertain themselves. There is police/army force, dressed in white, which swiftly handles any disruptions.

But the main instrument of power is TV and there is one particular show in TV everyone must watch to remember their place in this futuristic society - The Hunger Games. Each district sends a boy and a girl to fight for their life. The game ends when only one remains, giving the people of their district the temporary illusion that life may be better for them too some day.

There were many similarities between The Hunger Games and our life, which I wanted to share with you. This will be depressing, so after that, I will also share with you how you, me and other parents can make reality different, for us and for our kids.

Just like in the movie, our world is controlled by a small group of people with enough power to take away all of our retirement money, crash the property market, mobilize entire armies to a faraway country and occupy it, kill leaders, install new leaders, invade our privacy and use our tax money and bank fees to fund it all.

Just like in the movie, the people in power see life as a game. They pursue meaningless victories and possessions (one character is called Effie Trinket), consumed by their desire for control (the TV host is called Caesar Flickerman) and personal gains. Even when they pretend to be doing the best for "the people", there is a complete disconnect between the lavish way they live and the miserable way others do.

Just like in the movie, most of us are so focused on getting by, we feel isolated and scared, even in a big crowd. This way, we are very easy to control and are not likely to turn to our neighbors and work colleagues to form an army that will overthrow the current regime. Although we have little, we could lose it all, so we keep plowing ahead and thinking it is the best we can do.

Just like in the movie, we raise our children to survive and be safe and thus they become the next generation of us. We do our best to protect them and make them better than we ever were, but we still send them to school, where they are herded and taught to conform, and we still teach them that getting a good job is the best thing they can do for themselves. They see us following the crowd and feeling safe doing what "everybody else" is doing, and they grow up to follow the crowd too.

Just like in the movie, people are sent to fight and kill complete strangers just to satisfy the rules of some game that is forced upon everyone equally. Most Americans, English and Australians have never met an Iraqi or an Afghan and have no idea about the way they live or what they want out of life, but soldiers still go and fight them, sent by majority votes in democratic countries. These soldiers are backed by their families, who support killing anyone that will prevent them from coming back, even complete strangers who were first attacked by the soldiers.

Just like in the movie, the media is the weapon that subjects us to the tyranny. We are pumped day and night with hollow slogans, like "May the odds be ever in your favor", where the odds we would make it are 1 in 24 (in real life, they may even be lower, but the losers do not have to die).

Just like in the movie, our TV shows many hunger games: Big Brother, So You Think You Can Dance, American/Australian Idol, The Farmer Wants a Wife and, of course, Survivor. In all of these, the camera is everywhere, contestants work in groups while having conflicting personal interests and relationships (even love) are staged for the camera.

He is luring you in to make you easy prey. The more likable he is, the more deadly he is
- Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games

All of these shows are sponsored, just like the game in the film, and the sponsors are not interested in letting the best person win. They are interested in manipulating the audience into buying their products. The level of pressure in them is increased artificially through expressions like "elimination", "dancing for her life" and "let's see who will survive".

All of these "reality" shows are rigged, too. In the film, someone mentions that District 1 usually wins. In real life, we know someone who is a wonderful singer, but was not selected for Australia's Got Talent because her life story was not interesting enough for the show.

If we don't watch, they don't have a game
- Gale Hawthorne in The Hunger Games

Unlike the movie, we do not have to subject ourselves to this bombardment of manipulative messages in the media. We can stop reading the papers, switch our radio to a music channel or listen to recorded music, unsubscribe from "special deals" sites, stop reading glossy magazines at the supermarket checkout and ... turn the TV off.

Unlike the movie, we can choose to question the way we live and the lessons we teach our children. We can sit quietly and go over a day in our life, step by step, and ask the following questions about everything we do:

• Why do we do it?
• What is it really doing for us?
• What is it doing to us?
• What is it doing to our family members and our friends?
• What kind of society is it helping to create for us and for our kids?

You could ask this about getting up at 6:30am, about brushing your teeth, about the clothes you put on, about your choice of breakfast, about the way and means by which you travel to work, about taking your kids to school, about your job and about the way you related to people, especially to those you love the most. You could ask this about everything you buy, every place you buy it from, everything you sell and every way in which you sell it.

At first, you may not see the big deal. 30-40 years of habit make us good at seeing certain things and ignoring others. That is only natural. But once you find something that no longer seems right, even if it is your brand of toothpaste, this will show you the power of questioning and open the door to more revelations and more freedom.

Yes, freedom. Because we may have the illusion that we can do or say whatever we want, but unless we make conscious decisions about how to live and how to raise our kids, we are not free at all. We are just products of our upbringing.

When you have had some practice with these questions and you get used to changing your perception, play questioning games with your kids too. The questioning game. No, The Freedom Games!

Happy parenting,
Gal

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• Anybody Can Do It
• Living in a Dress Rehearsal
• From the Life Coaching Deck (5): Making Money Addiction

I have clients who are perfectionists and they know they are perfectionists. They have been to some form of counseling or have seen psychologists and they claim that things have become worse since they discovered their perfectionism. The label "Perfectionist" has allowed them to justify their behavior and that has increased the friction in their relationships even more.

Most of them came for life coaching when they reached rock bottom in their relationship due to their high demands when their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, friends, work colleagues or even boss said, "Get lost!" and kicked them out of the relationship or left them.

In the previous post on perfectionism, I wrote about ways to assess whether you or your children are perfectionists. In this chapter, I will give you some tips to help perfectionists. If you want to use them to help a child, remember that your goal is to plant those thoughts into your child's mind or create circumstances that will help them overcome the fear that is associated with things not happening exactly the way they want them to.

1. When they finish a puzzle, a block tower, a Lego building or anything that can be reassembled, make fun of wrecking it. It helps kids learn that Mom and Dad are not mad at them for it.
2. Allow your kids to make a mess. You can have a place for mess - a sandpit outside, a table for finger painting. Let your kids play with their food. do you know how much fun it is to eat Jelly with your fingers? If you are worried, have a plastic sheet underneath the mess. Remember, everything can be wiped or washed in the dishwasher or washing machine, so is not worth fussing about it. If you cannot handle the mess, let someone else do it at first, and get involved gradually.
3. When you need to be on time at school, a meeting or an appointment, be prepared and plan your time well. Do not talk about being late as the end of the world. If you are in panic mode when you are late, that gives your kids the message they must not be late and makes them fussy about being late and demanding towards others who are late. If you are going to be late, take a deep breath, let the other party know and just be there as quickly as you can.
4. Encourage kids to be involved in activities that are not competitive and are not graded or judged. Choose activities in which they are measured on progress relative to themselves or by working in a team and achieving something together. Better yet, choose activities that are all about fun, like going to the pool, exploring nature or playing at the playground.
5. Give kids challenges without comparing them to others. If you are travelling to France and you give your child the task of finding 10 things you can do in Paris, it is a challenge, but the child cannot fail and there is nobody to compare with.
6. Avoid using the word "should" like the plague. This gives a message that there is a right and a wrong way to say, do and be, and perfectionist children (and adults) add it to their vocabulary and fear every time they say, do, think or believe in something they "shouldn't". The word "should" implies there are some external, absolute standards they must obey, when the world is really about personal preferences.
7. For the same reason, avoid using the words "have to", "need to", "ought to" and "must". Instead, use "maybe you can", "how about", "can I suggest" or "it might be better to".
8. Teach your kids to start conversations with others. Go over "conversation starters" with them. A good way to start a conversation is by asking questions like "How was your holiday?", "What did you do on the weekend?", "I watched Harry Potter 7 on the weekend. Have you seen it?", "It's so hot today", "It's freezing cold today" and even "Would you like to play?"
   The main idea is to find something you have in common with the person you start the conversation with and invite them into the conversation in a kind way. It is scary but possible.
   I gave a group of kids at a leadership camp the task to gather personal information about others in the group (that they had met for first time) or the leaders of the camp so they could use it to start conversations with them. It is amazing how quickly you can teach kids to work up the courage to do it. It was easier for me because they did it in a group, everyone knew everyone else was having the same challenge and everybody could say, "Ronit told us". It might take you longer than two days, but it is possible.
9. Change the order of the furniture in the house from time to time. Make it sound like you are exploring different ways of positioning things. Ask the perfectionist child for their opinion to make it easy to manage the change. Get them to help move things around themselves too.
10. Create monitored surprises. Perfectionists do not like surprises, so work with them on it. First, tell them you want to make them a surprise a week before the surprise day. When things work well, tell them 5 days before, and slowly reduce the time to telling them a day before and eventually, surprise them totally. Gradual adjustment is the key.
11. Play the game of "Three funny mistakes". At dinnertime, every member of the family tells the rest of the family, in turn (do not start with the perfectionist), about three mistakes they have made during the day as a funny story.
12. Share your weaknesses with your children so that they learn it is safe to have them. Most perfectionists have suffered from exposing their weaknesses and therefore choose to hide them. They need to believe this will never be used by others to humiliate them. Make sure no one in the family makes fun of them or bullies them for their weaknesses - it will only make them hide these more and prevents you from knowing there is an issue that needs to be addressed.
13. When in competition, talk to your children about the losing kid or the losing team to make them realize that the losers have feelings too. Help them see that in most competitions, there are many more losers than winners, which makes them part of the majority.
14. When your kids express expectations that are too high (of themselves or of others), help them realize that it is not realistic. Ask, "Do you know someone who gets perfect scores on all of their exams?", "Do you think it's possible to always, always, always be on time?" Emphasize the words "perfect", "all" and "always" to help them recognize they expect the impossible.
15. Put their accomplishments on display. Make a diary of accomplishments for them to use if they have doubts about their successes. Teach them to measure small achievements like making dinner, helping their siblings or meeting a challenge, successes that are self-rated or that requires kindness and not being perfect (we call them "emotional stretches").
16. Help them express their feelings or attach a feeling to their successes and challenges. Teach them to rate their emotions. When they say, "I feel like a failure", ask, "On a scale of 1-10, how much?" At first, they will say 10, but after a while, they will understand they do not really feel the same and start noticing the difference in their feeling, which will help them recognize the fear that triggers their perfectionism.
17. Agree on a signal with your child that tells them they are being perfectionists and could relax their expectations a bit.
18. Celebrate with your children 90% or 80% scores on their exams, so they will not think that you expect them to score 100%.
19. When you use behavioral management, do not use 100% as a point when they get a reward. If they need to clean the room, it does not have to be spotless for the room to be considered clean.
20. Teach your kids to enjoy the process. If they are frustrated with achievements, help them realize they have achieved a lot on the way. 3 years ago, Tsoof participated in a competition that he had spent a lot of time practicing seriously for. He and his teachers were very frustrated he did not win anything in the competition, because all of them thought he played much better than those who won. In the week following the competition, we focused on how much better he was playing the marimba after two months of practice as the real achievement, which made it easier for him to move on.

Competitions, scores and awards are stepping-stones on the long and exciting journey of life

I hope these tips will help you help your perfectionist child and if you need the help yourself, translate them into adult vocabulary and your own circumstances and make perfectionism a period in your life, not a lifestyle.

Happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• The Perfect Child: Is your kid a perfectionist?
• More Control – Less Power
• Living in a Dress Rehearsal

The problem with pressure is that it also damages our ability to reason and function severely. It interferes with remembering things, with being creating and with our perception of what goes on around us. We see the world through narrow slits in a thick armor, we see everything tinted bright red, we hear everything pitchy and sharp and very little makes sense.

Intense pressure can even make us feel like there is no hope and nobody to help us. It is as if we are invisible.

A long time ago, I saw a movie, I think it was Ordinary People, where a mother walked over to her teenage son, touched him gently and said, "I see you". That line stuck with me and I have used the idea in it many times with the people I love.

In another movie, Dune, people fight with invisible shields, which are very effective at blocking quick, strong sword movements. When fighting a person using this type of shield, the only way to defeat them is with a slow moving movement, like sticking a knife in while distracting their attention.

I think the "I see you" method works well because the other person is using an invisible shield that is very effective at blocking direct methods, like advice, jokes and uninvited help. It works especially well with teenagers, who see many things as threats to their identity and independence.

When we see someone we care about under pressure, we often try to help by finding out about their problem and then offering a solution. Other times, there may be a conflict between what we need and what the other person needs, which makes us focus on getting what we need. Both of these methods generally fail when there is enough stress involved.

You see, albeit irrational, most people translate having a problem to "I'm not good enough". If you try to help them, it just means they were not good enough to solve their own problem. If you focus on yourself, that is yet another thing they have to deal with.

A better approach is to validate the person, to make them feel good about themselves despite what they might be dealing with and to reassure them that they are not alone.

When Ronit and I go to bed at night, no matter what happened during that day, no matter what I still have to do the following day (and maybe even later), no matter if we talk about our challenges and find solutions or not, I still get to cuddle with her and all my worries dissolve. My body just lets go of the pressure and I surrender to the softness and warmth of her embrace.

Unfortunately for our kids, they have nobody to cuddle with in bed. Unfortunately for all of us, our daily pressures build up so quickly sometimes that going 16 hours until we can feel accepted and validated again seems like a very long time.

So in-between, we can send little signs of affirmation to one another, particularly when we can see someone who is under pressure. We can let them know that we see them, that we are there for them and that we care about them even when they are hard on themselves.

Here are some ways to say, "I see you":

• Catch their eye and smile
• Blow them a kiss
• Walk over to them and put your hand on their shoulder for a while. According to Reiki, this is a way to give them positive energy, which their body will use as it needs. This is a gentle way of distracting them from their mental down-spiral and giving them something warm to focus on
• Give them a hug and hold on until you feel them relax (typically, they will take a deep breath just before). If the person is sitting down, try something else first, but if they are standing, a hug should be great. Offer the hug without words, if you can. Stretching your arms out should be obvious enough. If you need to say something, rather than saying, "Give me a hug", say, "How about a hug?" and wait for approval.
• If you know they like it, stroke their hair, massage their shoulders or hold their face in your hands. As you do, try to turn their gaze upwards. Our brain is wired so that negative thoughts are only possible when we look down and looking up is all about the future
• Pressure is a lot easier to handle when you have had enough sleep, enough water and enough food. Cater to their physical needs
• Give them space by keeping things quiet and by taking care of things that might add to their burden, like making dinner or washing the dishes. When Ronit is particularly busy, she really appreciates the person who takes care of dinner, because it is one less thing she needs to worry about
• Give them a little note saying, "I love you", "I'm here for you" or even "Bad day?" You can also put a flower down beside them as a symbolic note
• Tell them, "I see you", and explain what it means when you do it the first time. This can become part of your "secret code" with your children and your partner

Whatever you do, approach slowly and gently and focus on making the other person feel good overall.

If you can relate to any of this, you can also share it with the people who love you and let them know they can help you in times of stress in the same ways. Although they want to support you, they may not know how and this will make everybody feel better at the same time.

Handling pressure is a modern-day necessity. By learning how to relieve other people's pressure, including your kids, you will also model kind and powerful behavior to them and equip them with the skills to be happy in life.

Happy days,
Gal

You may want to read

• How to Manage Difficult People: A Holistic Approach
• How to Manage Difficult People Using "Why?" and "What?"
• How to Manage Difficult People: Helping a Difficult Person

As a life coach promoting happiness, I find myself talking a lot about perfectionism as an obstacle on the way to a happy life. After researching the science of happiness and seeing thousands of clients, including many parents and children, I can tell you that happiness and perfectionism cannot live in the same body. They are like the good and the bad wolves living in your body and when you feed one, the other one starves.

The problem with perfectionism is not only that perfectionists are not happy but also that those who are close to them are not happy either because of it.

Many grownup perfectionists started out as perfectionist kids. In my kids' assessments, I can tell if a child has a tendency towards perfectionism from age 3. Most people believe this cannot be helped. Some kids are born perfectionists and that is that, but I think this attitude makes our life much harder, because repeating this mantra guarantees there is nothing we can do about it.

Much like any other "disease", perfectionism can be cured and the best time to do it is during early childhood, before the child develops strong behavior patterns that are hard to change.

I also believe that the best people to cure child perfectionism are parents, because their love for their child will help them overcome the resistance.

The origin of perfectionism is fear. Perfectionists have a strong need to control life around them for some reason. Anything they, or other people, do that threatens that stability or control increases the fear and therefore increases the perfectionism.

Many parents react badly to a child who shows rigid thinking and reacts badly to changes. Unfortunately, that increases the fear and does not give a child the stability he or she is aching for. It is a cycle of bad reactions that helps nobody.

For parents to help, they need to be convinced that this behavior is going to be a huge obstacle to their child's good health and wellbeing, their relationships and their success in life.

If the parents are perfectionists themselves, they tend not to see the problem at all. Unfortunately, if this is the case, there is no cure. Perfectionist parents must first heal themselves before helping a child overcome perfectionism. After all, to cure perfectionism, there must be a desire to change.

Parents need to find if the child's behavior is a form of perfectionism, so I have compiled this list to help with that. If you want to assess yourself first, this will be very helpful for you too. To assess yourself, though, you need courage and honesty.

Please remember that for a person to be considered a perfectionist, he or she does not need to exhibit all of the behaviors on the list and does not have to exhibit them all the time, only most of them and more than once or twice.

Here is a list of perfectionist behaviors:

1. Perfectionists have high standards for themselves and others. They have high expectations, which are often unreasonable or impossible to achieve.
2. Perfectionists pay attention to details. This can be a good thing, but sometimes, after all the important things are covered, they keep focusing on little things.
3. Perfectionists have an "all or nothing" mentality. If they cannot do things perfectly, they do not see any point in doing them at all. Many times, people say they have lots of potential, which is true, but if they think they might not be able to achieve their high standard, they do not try.
4. Perfectionists procrastinate a lot, which goes together with their high expectations. If they think they will not be able to achieve something, they postpone doing it.
5. Perfectionists experience lots of anxiety. Their desire for things to follow their expectations is so high that anything that does not follow it creates anxiety.
6. Perfectionists are afraid to make mistakes, which contributes very much to their anxiety and avoidance.
7. Perfectionists have challenges with their relationships. They are very demanding, their behavior makes people avoid their company and in most of their relationships, the blame others and complain.
8. Perfectionists are highly competitive and constantly compare themselves to others. They define themselves in comparison to others. Not every competitive person is a perfectionist, so match this with other items on the list.
9. Perfectionists seem very unhappy and dissatisfied when good results, good scores and even very good achievements are not good enough. Since they are not perfect, they are no good.
10. Perfectionists are very critical.
11. Perfectionists show some compulsive behaviors, as they prefer things to be organized, predictable and stable. They need life around them to be consistent and adopt a lifestyle that consists of many routines.
12. Perfectionists do not take risks. Risks cannot be predicted by definition and they avoid doing things they cannot predict.
13. Perfectionists mainly focus on problems, difficulties and mistakes of themselves and others.
14. Perfectionists do a lot to hide their weakness. If someone knows something about a weakness they have, it is a sign for them they are not perfect, which they find hard to accept. They will hide it by having many justifications for their behavior and attitude.
15. Although perfectionists may tell others about their mistakes, they do not like it when others tell them about their mistakes and are very sensitive to criticism.
16. Perfectionists find it hard to be in the moment. Their mind is so future-oriented they find it hard to stop and enjoy the present.
17. Perfectionists are prone to depression.
18. Perfectionists consider love as conditional, so they find it hard to feel loved and often find it hard to express love.
19. Perfectionists consider their self-worth a result of their achievements. If the achievement is good, it is not enough. For them to be worthy, they need to be extremely high achievers.
20. Perfectionists consider things to be "right" or "wrong". They expect others to think the same and if they do not, they will invest a lot of energy to convince the others their way is the right way.
21. Because they have the "my way or the highway" mindset, they can often be seen as self-centered as they expect and demand those around them to fit in with their way of thinking.

Use this list as an assessment tool and measure the intensity of each behavior. Remember that the sooner you discover something, the sooner you can heal it.

Join me next time for how to help perfectionist kids.

Calm and happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• The Perfect Child: How to help perfectionist kids
• More Control – Less Power
• Living in a Dress Rehearsal

But maybe it does not have to be.

In the past few days, I have been reading an excellent book called Predictably Irrational by Professor Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at MIT. In one of the chapters, he describes experiments that show humans are so sensitive to loss they do everything they can to avoid losing even things they could have, but do not actually have. One of these things, he says, is options.

In his description, he give parents' decision-making about their children's development as an example of how irrationally expensive it is to keep our kids' options open. If you do the math, he says, you see that spreading the family resources over 4 different activities each week, say ballet, piano, art and karate, means your child makes 1 unit of progress in each of them every week, as opposed to choosing just one activity, say piano, which would allow the child to make 4 units of progress every week and become really good at it.

From a mathematical point of view, ¾ of your money is wasted and your child never reaches a level of competence that would make their chosen pursuit generate significant enough rewards. It is therefore irrational to pay for and drive your child to many afternoon activities and a more economical choice would be to pick a single "winner" and give it all you have got (or a couple of related/complementary "winners", perhaps).

Reading this, I was tempted to agree, and this post was almost about how much his point made sense, but then Eden and I went for our morning walk (it is so great she starts late on Wednesdays) and reviewed her life, the lives of Tsoof and Noff and those of other kids we know, and my view of this issue changed completely.

You see, the discussion of how valuable each extracurricular activity is depends on the chances of success you expect in each field, as well as what you value. Alas, in real life, there are only a handful of really great opera singers, world-class painters, immortal actors and champion martial artists. In any global competitive field, the likelihood your child will "make it big" is low, no matter how much time, effort and money you put into it.

This leaves a life of repetitive disappointment and unhappiness, which, if you think about it, is really the opposite of what you want for your children. No matter how we put it to the parents we meet (and we meet many), if they had to choose one thing to give their kids above all else, it would be happiness. That is their highest value as parents. Happiness.

Let's say you consider developing the artistic side of little Bobby. Subjecting him from his 3^rd year to 6 hours of painting classes a week may improve his painting technique beyond that of most other people, but can you already sense the pressure building up? Can you sense how little Bobby might feel imprisoned by his parents' choice for him? Can you imagine what teenage Bobby might choose to rebel against? Can you predict Bobby's life after his art receives lukewarm reviews from some people who matter in his field?

How will grownup Bobby do socially? Will he be able to mingle with athletes or musicians? Will he be able to enjoy a walk in the park, a movie or (gulp) a visit to an art gallery? Will he be able to carry on a casual conversation about any topic other than art and painting?

I doubt it. If Bobby accepts his parents' choice and pursues his art, he is more likely to be single-minded and unhappy that a loveable, outgoing and social butterfly. If Bobby rejects his parents' choice, then their investment of time, effort and money, as well as his entire childhood, have been a waste and he will have to start building his life from scratch.

On the other hand, kids who are exposed to a wide variety of activities and experiences, while they may not excel in any of them, develop their mental flexibility, learn to engage many kinds of people in many kinds of situations and build resilience. They gain emotional intelligence that will serve them well every day of their life, everywhere they go.

In the past week or so, our family has been watching a series of programs called "Music School". Out of thousands of children, the producers picked 16 kids, aged from 8 to 13, who want to be singers. Each program shows 8 of them preparing and performing a song, guided by a famous musician.

As you would expect, these young people are pretty amazing singers, but that is not the most important part. When they are interviewed, their level of expression is very high, most of them can speak more than one language, they have great relationships with their families, they quickly befriended one another, they connect to the lyrics of the songs they perform intensely and they "work the crowd" in a natural, effortless way.

Moreover, the ones who do best are those who can handle pressure, keep themselves positive and motivated and accept the challenges thrown at them by the panel of "music teachers".

It is not talent and success that create happiness. It is happiness that allows talent to be expressed and creates success.

As parents, rather than trying to find the area in which your kids will shine and frantically exposing them to activities in the hope of finding "that special talent" they have, let them experience many things for the sake of enjoyment, balanced development, priceless social practice and networking and the feeling that they can do anything they want once they put their mind to it.

Rather than subjecting your children to hours of drilling and endless pressure on the way to achievements that would one day make them happy, make them happy today and every day by accepting their choices, encouraging them and using your resources to help them achieve what they want to achieve, to experience life and to build their character in the process.

Happy parenting,
Gal

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While growing up, however, I found out this was not the case with everyone. There were many situations in which I knew the truth and witnessed people denying it or acting as if the opposite was the case.

When I talked to my mom about it, she told me, "Sometimes, people don't exactly lie, but they tell a 'white lie' to avoid complications or embarrassment". The world, it turned out, was not a courtroom drama, where it was "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth".

When I decommissioned one of our computers, which had Microsoft Office on it, I wanted to activate that same license on a new computer. When the online activation failed, I rang Microsoft and asked for their help.

"Have you uninstalled the software from your old computer?" the support person asked.

"No", I said, "That computer is no longer in use".

"I'm sorry, Sir, but you have to uninstall the software".

"Does that deactivate the license at your end?"

"No. So have you uninstalled it, Sir?"

I kept trying to explain the real situation a few times, after which the connection was suddenly cut off. I rang again and had a similarly frustrating conversation with another person, who also hung up on me.

I was furious!

Then I realized what was happening. I asked Eden to ring and inform them that the software has been successfully uninstalled. They activated the new installation in seconds.

So lies have been institutionalized and you cannot get very far without them anymore.

Some time ago, I attended what I thought would be a series of presentations on building great websites, but turned out to be a series of presentations on various topics, including personal philosophy, business, training and other things. One particular presentation was called "Do not lie" and it made me revisit the issue of living honestly from an adult and even a parent perspective.

Here is this 5-minute talk for your enjoyment. The speaker is from Austria, but the talk is in Australia, hence the funny references. I think the common image of German speakers being very direct and straight about everything also helps in delivering his messages.

Let's survey the room. Please raise your hand if you have even

1. Faked a headache
2. "Lost" your homework
3. "Had to be somewhere else" when you were asked to help or attend an event
4. Conveniently forgot about times when you were fired and glorified your professional achievements on a resume
5. Told someone how good they looked (or their work), but did not think so
6. Agreed to another person's political, philosophical or social comment just to make a good impression
7. Pretended to be someone else online or on the phone
8. Said everything was great when things were pretty chaotic in your life
9. Told your kids there is a tooth fairy
10. Used "chewing gum and sticky tape" to keep a product looking good during a presentation, because it was not ready yet for a real test

The truth?! You can't handle the truth!

As Patrick Klug says, lies are often used as a "social lubricant", a way to keep things smooth and avoid confrontation. But why would there be any friction in the first place if we were honest?

I believe the answer is related to our self-confidence.

You see, our view of the world makes us believe that other people are just like us. That way, when we are tired and feel like sleeping, instead of, um, doing "other things", we fear that our partner might feel rejected, because we would feel that way in their place. So we tell them we have a headache or provide some other explanation that would make us feel better.

If our parents cannot help with our homework, cannot afford our study materials or need us to help in the afternoons, we prefer to say our homework was lost, after we presumably did it, instead of sharing our family situation with our teacher and our classmates. Lacking confidence, we need their appreciation and acceptance more than we want their sympathy or their help.

So we go through life assuming other people "can't handle the truth" because we would not be able to handle it in their place.

Why be honest?

Basically, lying is too heavy to carry. When you lie, you sometimes have to continue weaving your false story later. This means that you have to keep track of your lies and that you stress over the risk of being discovered.

I have been through countless situations where people have told something other than the truth and it came to bite them later. As a very detail-oriented person, I can pick inconsistencies in a flash, and I am offended when I find that someone has lied to me. Unless you can be sure everybody will remain ignorant about the truth, you can lie safely, but how can you every be sure?

So lying is stressful.

Lying also influences your view of the world. When you lie about something over time, your version starts sounding like the truth to you. When you lie, you also always know that you are lying, which drops your self-esteem a little. If you lie enough, you may even start labeling yourself as a liar, and that is likely to prevent you from ever appreciating yourself fully.

So lying damages your self-esteem.

How to be honest

Being honest all the time and telling the truth about everything is not realistic. Kids, for example, cannot understand everything simply because they are too young and embellishing or watering down what we tell them may help them cope better than telling them brutal facts.

But we should all aspire to tell the truth as much as we can and make a conscious choice to be honest even in situations where it is not easiest. As long as our aim is to keep a good relationship and not to hurt anyone, honesty is generally a good idea.

So how to be honest? You can do it in a few steps, which are neither simple nor easy, but if you keep taking them, many things in your life will improve and you will start being honest as a matter of course.

1. Recognize all your feelings, including the bad ones. We are often so preoccupied with positivity, we forget that fear, sadness and anger are natural and that ignoring or suppressing them only makes them worse. Being afraid does not make you weak, it just makes you human. Recognizing and facing your fear is the best way to be free of it. Feelings of grief and loss appear in everybody's life and hurt a lot. Be aware of your feelings and give yourself time to recover.
2. Feel comfortable with yourself. Accept yourself the way you are right now. Stand alone in front of a big mirror, relax and look yourself over from head to toe. Notice when you are critical of one of your features and learn to accept it instead. Do this 5 minutes a day for a week. Then, start smiling at yourself for 5 minutes a day over a week.
3. When other people do or say things around you, recognize they are not doing or saying those things to you but for themselves. Look them over from head to toe and try to accept them too. Catch yourself when you start to feel defensive in other people's presence, take a couple of deep breaths and reframe what happens from the other person's point of view.
4. Make a list of situations in which you are dishonest. Notice the stress associated with each situation and discover what you really feel about it. Use your new acceptance of yourself and your new ability to interpret other people's behavior to find more honest ways to handle these stressful situations. This should help you relax greatly.

As your self-acceptance and self-confidence grow, you will be able to be gentle without lying, and that will increase your self-esteem even further. Once you reverse the cycle of lying and stress, your life will become easier and happier.

Honestly,
Gal

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And that is no way to live. It is not good for the parents and it is not good for the kids.

What happens in these situations is that the parents try to control their children. In fact, they try to control the fine details of what their children do, say and sometimes even feel. They tell themselves and anyone else who will listen how important it is to get all the answers on every assignment correctly. That is how they justify the hours of grilling their kids over homework. They explain the long-term impact of passing a basketball using the scientifically proven motion on their kids' sporting future. That is how they justify the yelling from the sidelines and the intensive drilling at home.

But how important are these things really?

Who are they really important to?

And what are the effects of this controlling behavior on the children, the parents and their relationships for the rest of their lives?

In parents' defense, I would say it is probably the way they were brought up themselves. I even think many are doing better than their parents did, considering the circumstances. They do not know another way (unless they have read enough of this blog).

In a strange way, by trying to control our children, we give them power over our levels of stress and our emotional wellbeing. By nagging, correcting and micromanaging them, we give THEM control over us. They simply use our obvious motivation to throw us to the mat and pin us down.

Ronit and I had a couple of good friends with a 5-year-old boy who refused to eat "good food". His mom begged, threatened and then offered a bribe. "If you eat your lunch/dinner/food, I'll buy you a big ice cream", she would promise. He would then say, "No, I want my ice cream first. I'll eat the food after". She would buy him the ice cream, he would eat it and then refuse to eat anything else. She would go absolutely nuts, but then do the same thing again the following day.

She was so eager to get him to eat some healthy food, she made a big deal out of it, so he leveraged it to get what he wanted every day and twice on Sundays (literally). She cared so much about how his eating habits reflected on her parenting quality, she put her little son in charge of her self-esteem.

This kind of situation is very scary for the child. It means the parent does not have a sense of priority and enough self-confidence to be in charge. Kids view their parents as almighty and being able to shake them so easily makes them unable to rely on the parents for their own security.

So what should parents do?

The secret to trading failure to control with real power involves developing a personal perspective, having clear priorities, focusing only on truly important things and assuming a coaching position.

How to develop a personal perspective in parenting

As always, start by finding a quiet time and place, then relax by taking a few long, deep, slow breaths. Once you are calm and your head is clear, imagine the last scene in which you tried to control your child and ended up pulling your hair out.

Freeze the scene, as if everyone in it suddenly turned into metal or stone (ice is too cold). Now, float out of your body and position yourself opposite the image of you. Take a good look at your face and your body language. It is very likely you will recognize a fear in yourself, which you have not been aware of, but seems to be the source of your pressure during the scene.

Ask yourself, "Why do I really want my child to do [whatever it was]? What was I afraid would happen if he/she didn't do it?"

In many interpersonal conflicts, at least one party considers their views universal and absolute. Often, by accepting them as personal preferences, the conflict goes away. In a struggle with your kids, it is important to realize that although you may believe you are doing what is best for them, you are always first and foremost serving your own interests. When you are afraid of something, you become defensive and uncompromising. That is just human.

Now ask yourself, "Realistically, if I said and did nothing that time, what is the worst thing that could happen?"

In our friend's case, her son would have become hungry over time without ice cream, which would have given her enormous power over him, because then he would have eaten anything she allowed him to eat. If only she overcame her fear for 30 minutes or so...

How to have clear parenting priorities

No matter how many times we ask parents this question and no matter how we present it to them, what parents want most for their children is happiness. They just want their kids to be happy. The rest is just ways to get there.

Now that you are calm and being honest with yourself, ask yourself, "Would my kids be happier if I taught them how to do everything right or if I let them experience life on their own?" Again, consider the most recent incident or perhaps the most common conflict with your kids for perspective.

As a minimum, children need to be healthy and safe. Beyond that, they need to be happy and learn how to stay healthy, safe and happy on their own. Anything we force them to do that serves another aim hurts everybody.

In our friend's case, the little boy became less and less secure and more and more defiant, searching for the point where his mother would finally provide a boundary for him. He was not happy, she was not happy and his father was not happy. A few years later, the couple split and the boy went to live with his dad.

How to assume a coaching position with your kids

Kids are just little people. They are people in the making. From the minute they are born, we need to treat them as individuals. They are not us. They are not part of us. They grow up in a different world and have different needs and different physical and psychological abilities and limitations.

If we deal with them to serve our own happiness, this will often result in conflict. They may not be able to explain it to us, but they can feel it.

But if we do our best to help THEM get what THEY want out of life (using age-appropriate methods, of course), there will be fewer conflicts, our kids will feel safe and supported and life will be good for everyone.

A split second before responding to anything your kids do or say, stop, breathe, look at the scene from a neutral position (do the scene freezing exercise above until you get the hang of this), find the response you believe will make everybody the happiest and then act.

If you do this for a while, your kids will learn to trust you. Then, when you need to stop them from doing something they shouldn't, they are likely to just follow your guidance, because you always look after their best interest. This belief in you, this trust, this confidence, is the real source of power in parenting.

So stop controlling your kids. Relax, focus, let go and be powerful.
Gal

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Nothing is worth more than this day
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Kids are little philosophers practicing the theories of the great philosopher of all times in real life. They live in the simplest stage show that is their life, without much sophistication and with no budget. This is ability smart, knowledgeable and experienced grownups need to learn from their children.

Kids do not have tomorrows. The younger they are, the more limited their understanding of time and the harder it is to explain to them what they will gain tomorrow if they just try a bit harder or wait a little bit longer today. One of parents' biggest frustrations is their inability to explain why to try harder today for some imaginary tomorrow. Kids, on the other hand, do not understand why they should try harder, because from their point of view, fun is the best way to navigate through life and "hard" and "fun" do not go together.

Fun as a Compass

Kids' attitude to fun as a compass is perceived by grownups as a limitation, a lack of perspective and experience. I wonder sometimes who is missing perspective. Kids, the artists of living in the now, whose present is full of fun, or their parents, the champions of living in the future, whose present is an endless cycle of anxiety?

Children invest all their energy in what they will achieve in the short term. Adults, convinced they need to delay their gratifications, exaggerate this and without meaning to, they have invented the opposite of enjoinment and fun and have turned their life into a dress rehearsal for the "real thing".

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things
- Henry Ward Beecher

If you are a parent doing everything you can to better tomorrows, if you are a parent telling your kids off for behaviors today that you are afraid they will keep doing tomorrow, if you believe that whatever happens today is a sign for what will happen in the future, if you think that pain today justifies potential gain tomorrow - you have just passed the most important audition of your life and have been accepted into The Big Dress Rehearsal, where you might spend the rest of your life.

Many parents fall in the trap of separating life into living in the show of life and rehearsing for it, as if they need to prepare all their lives for an imaginary future, when they will have everything they want, but they never take center stage and actually play in the show. The problem with living in a dress rehearsal is that you become very good at rehearsing and not at performing. Many parents invest in preparing their kids and become very good at preparing and not at implementing these preparations. In extreme cases, this imaginary future makes parents so anxious they torture their kids today and justify it by claiming they will be happy for it someday.

If you have ever had a conflict with your child that was very critical for you and you were worried they would take this to their future, while your child thought you were making a big thing out of nothing, you have been in the conflict between life as a rehearsal and life as a show.

A classic example of the life as a rehearsal and life as a show conflict is school. In my parenting workshops, when I ask parents about big conflicts with their kids, they say that most of their parenting energy is spent around school, homework, managing time, grades and teachers. Every argument over school starts with our belief as parents that the imaginary rewards of our kids' schooling in the future will justify their pain in the present. Not many parents ask themselves whether school today is really preparing their children for the show of life they will have to perform in their future.

Our kids do not go to school because they want to. We keep them there with our belief that their future will be better for it. In the cheapest format of schooling, we invest 13 years and tens of thousands of dollars on this school rehearsal and we do not stop to ask if we know for sure what will be the format of the show they will have to perform in the future and if it justifies the long preparation. What we can say for sure is that we have become so good at preparing that we have no clue on what kind of a stage our kids will have to perform in 15 years.

Parents differ from their kids in courage. Kids are not afraid of a show that is not perfect, a bit clumsy, without any status or experience, because what directs them is having fun right now. Their primitive compass, called "fun", has stood strong in the auditions of all times, in shows of all generations and on stages of all successes and challenging experiences. By following this primitive compass, many authors have written thousands of books kids have never read, producers have made movies kids have never seen and philosophers have described theories kids have never heard of.

Enjoy the journey, enjoy every moment and quit worrying about winning and losing
- Matt Biondi

Many parents, on the other hand, prefer the illusion of "the future". They prefer putting off the fun of now and invest lots in preparing for life, in hope that fun will come, later. Parents go to work and dedicate hours of being away from their partner and kids in order to make money and have fun with their partner and kids on a short yearly vacation that they end up spending on renovating the shower, "because it cannot be postponed any longer". They get into an endless cycle, where they do not know what started first, the chicken or the egg.

Kids live without too many conditions. As long as they have fun, with a little bit of company, not seeking a big crowd and not dedicating hours for rehearsing or putting on makeup, they will perform on a small stage or in a solo performance, holding a balloon and celebrating their total ignorance of the future. Parents, on the other hand, have endless conditions on the location of the show, who will be the stage manager, what the content will be, who the other players will be, the director, the salary, who will be invited and how hard they will need to clap. But so many conditions and fun do not go hand in hand.

We can learn from kids how to have the courage not to treat life as a dress rehearsal or an imaginary show that we constantly need to prepare for, but to live in a simple, magical, natural show that happens every day in every second of our imperfect, clumsy, fun life.

We should learn from kids about "performing" and having fun today, because there is a real danger that if we keep preparing, when the time of our show comes, if ever, when we are finally thin, rich, happy, pretty, successful, with a high social status and lots of the latest gadgets, it may be too late.

If we argue and worry about a show that never happens, we can only imagine a sad show, in which our kids will be just like their parents and stop believing that more importantly than being thin and skinny, we need to love our body, more importantly than making money, we need to be content to put it to good use or give it away, more importantly than striving for happiness, we need to be happy along the way, more importantly than being pretty in other people's eyes, we need to feel pretty, more than wanting to be successful, we need to celebrate our existing successes, however small, more importantly than social status, we need to enjoy our friends and family and more importantly than buying gadgets, we need to enjoy them.

For kids, every experience is a show. It is natural and without conditions. They cry a little, laugh for no reason, sometimes they fail and they always get up. They do not have to have an audience and if they do, they do not try to please everyone. When they do not get any cheers and claps, they applaud themselves for participating.

We can learn philosophy from our own children, small, inexperienced and lacking perspective. We can learn from kids that life is a show that starts when we give up on endless rehearsals, when we stop trying to come up with the best show ever and we just participate and have fun. We can learn from kids that fun is an enormous force.

May the force be with you!
Ronit

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At first, I thought Australians were just sick more often than others in the world, but after a short time, I came to the conclusion they were taking a day off when they were tired, sneezed too much, had some errands to run or just needed a day off.

As a parent, that freaked me out. I could take myself one or two years into the future and imagine my own children substitute "Mom, I want some time off" with "Mom, I'm sick". I believe that if you say you are sick enough times, you will convince your body that you are and then you will actually feel sick. Gal and I put a lot of effort and thinking into raising healthy kids and the thought of them being "sick" every time they needed to rest made me feel sick ;P

I fully understand that people need some a break from time to time and the regular days off on weekends and public holidays are good, but they do not always come at the right time or provide enough relief. It makes sense to me that kids do not plan to need time off exactly on those days, so it is just natural that they want time off on a school day.

The problem with "being sick" is that you cannot really enjoy the day and rejuvenate, which defeats the purpose of taking a day off. Taking these needs into consideration, I came up with a solution that has been working for me for over 12 years.

No more sick kids

I told the kids that if they are healthy the whole term (each term is about 10 weeks long), they can pick a day in each term to have a break and on that day, we can do some fun things together. There are some rules to this contract:

1. You cannot pick an exam day
2. You must let me know ahead, so I can plan it and be home with you
3. You cannot pick the same day as your sibling (this allow me to spend individual time with each one of my kids, although on special circumstances, we have had lots of fun with the whole family)

Advantages of picking a day off over being sick

There are many advantages to picking your day off when you are healthy over saying, "Mom, I'm sick" and pretending to be sick.

• The greatest advantage is that kids do not associate having time off with being sick, so they are sick less often.
• I have seen so many people that say, "I can't out so that no one will see me, because I'm supposed to be sick in bed". Not much fun being stuck at home. On a planned day off, you can do whatever you like.
• You do not have to lie to the teachers, so this is a good reward for being honest. I always send a letter to the teacher beforehand and say, "Noff is going to be away on that day". I never lie about this. Remember, teachers and schools are giving you a service and being afraid to be honest is not good for your relationship with your service provider. The teachers will appreciate that more. They know that some parents write "sick" letters even when their kids are not sick (because they do it themselves).
• You can arrange for one of your or your partner to take a day off instead of having to ask family members, neighbors and friends to take care of your sick child.
• You can pick better days for time off so that your child does not miss things that are important to them at school.

I have had this agreement with my kids for 12 years. Tsoof hardly ever used those days, because he was busy and did not want to miss out. In the last two weeks of term, I would ask him, "Which day would you like to take off?" and he would say, "Monday ... no, I don’t want to miss Show Choir ... Tuesday ... no, I don't want o miss Wind Ensemble ... Wednesday ... no, I don't want o miss Drama ... Thursday ... no, I don’t want to miss Percussion Ensemble ... Friday ... no, I don't want to miss Big Band. That's OK, I won't take a day off this term". This was true almost every term for the last 6 days of his schooling.

This week, Noff asked to take her day off. Our new kitchen was arriving and she wanted to be home to watch it being assembled. I was so happy she just asked to stay home instead of having to pretend she was sick. We had to go to school early to bring back something she had left there, so she went to school without her uniform, walked into her classroom and told everyone she was staying home to watch the instillation of the new kitchen. I was very proud she felt comfortable to tell the truth, not to mention that she had been healthy the whole term.

Please try this at home! It works like magic (you can even reward yourself with a day off after being healthy for 3 months solid).

Happy, healthy parenting,
Ronit

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