Family MattersPractical Parenting Blog

No More War

Last week, When Gal wrote about the dark side of Quid Pro Quo, it made me think immediately of solutions to that effect.

You see, much like in Gal’s example of fighting with your husband, wife, kids, your own parents or just anybody else, life is full of little personal wars – you do something I think is hurtful, I do something to hurt you back.

Wars have become part of our life. I think that as we grow up, we shift from “living” to “surviving”. If we do not fight someone else, we fight ourselves, our desires and dreams, using norms and external rules of behavior.

The wars with others are loud and produce feelings of revenge and anger. The war inside echoes in our mind and produces regrets and low self esteem. But in wars, there are no winners, only those who lose more and those who lose less.

This reminds me of the story of the line. I think this story speaks for itself. Enjoy!

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Quid Pro Quo (2)

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Quid Pro Quo

Last week, I wrote about the notion of fairness and how it can be used to manipulate people to do what we want them to do. Today, I am going to cover “the dark side” of fairness, which makes us do things we later regret.

If you have ever broken up a fight between kids, you are familiar with the exclamation “He/she started it!”

Further investigation into who “really” started it usually yields a detailed list of escalation steps, starting with something surprisingly small, even trivial, like “He stepped on my dragon” (little rubber toy dragon, that is) or “She made a face at me”.

But it is not just kids, is it? Any “married couple” (any couple sharing a life together for long enough, really) can tell stories of fights that started from nothing and ended up in days of angry silence, only to be resolved later when the original issue was finally addressed on its own.

So why is it we can be pulled into bad cycles with little things and get into big trouble “all of a sudden”?

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Ferris Wheels of Hell and Heaven

In the life-long search for personal development and growth, we try to find support for our actions, beliefs and attitudes towards life. Many people think we form our beliefs based on what happens to us, but it is important to realize just how much the things that happen to us are influenced by our beliefs.

Most people think that what they believe is set in concrete and is beyond their ability to change. Humans always have explanations for why they think the way they do. Whether it is genetic inheritance or a result of something that has happened to them in the past, it is there and untouchable. A fact of life.

I always say to my clients, “If you have only happy, joyful, loving, understanding, accepting, forgiving, kind and healthy beliefs, I would not change them if I were you. Then, the idea of them being unchangeable is great, but if you are not happy about something, it means you hold a belief that is causing this and it is better to change it than to keep it”.

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Happy Ripple

Recently, I ran a professional development workshop for teachers at a primary school. It was just a few days before the beginning of the year and into one of the classes crammed a group of teachers.

I came an hour before the official time and spent all of it waiting for someone to open the door. We started about 45 minutes after 9am, which is when we were supposed to start. As if that was not enough, the principal said to me, “You know, the teachers don’t really want to be here, so could you finish at 3pm?”

At the end of the day, I packed my props, feeling really good about myself, and discussed a potential research program at the school with the principal when she said to me, “There was a lot to take from today. If the teachers only take one thing, I will be very happy”. It made me wonder what this thing may be.

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Quid Pro Quo (1)

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Quid Pro Quo

When the ancient Romans wanted to be fair, they gave “quid pro quo”, literally “something for something”, meaning “a favor for a favor” or “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”. Not that they were fair to everyone they met – just ask the other ancient peoples of Europe and the Middle East – but this particular expression stuck.

More importantly, the people of our time still feel the need to be fair and return favors. So much so that it can be used to manipulate us in various ways. I want to talk about that today. It also makes us do things we later regret, but I will talk about that next time.

To find out how this notion of fairness works, Psychology researchers went to a museum. They joined a tour, picked a person and started talking to them, then went away and returned with two cans of soft drink, one of which they offered that person, who had been a total stranger only 5 minutes earlier.

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Like a Dog

Dogs are really simple creatures. Whatever they do, they give it EVERYTHING.

If you have ever seen a dog happy, you know they are happy with their whole body – they wag their tail like crazy, they jump around, the breath excitedly, lick every part of you they can reach and even yelp with joy. If you have a dog, just take its leash and stand by the door and you will see what I mean.

People, on the other hand, think too much. Particularly, people care about what others will think of them. So instead of being true to what goes on inside them and expressing it to the best of their ability, they aim for a response out of the people around them and behave in a way that will get them this response.

But that is being manipulative, really.

It is also far less likely to succeed than being honest.

Kids start out like dogs – they get all excited when Mommy pulls a breast out of her bra. They wag their little arms and legs, their face lights up with excited anticipation and they cling and suck with everything they have. When Mommy goes out of their room, on the other hand, they start crying bitterly, twitching their arms and legs in a futile attempt to chase her.

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Pay it Forward

It was 4pm and I finished packing my presentation after running a full day of professional development for teachers. I taught a group of 40 teachers the importance of touch and planting good and happy seeds in their students’ minds.

As I packed, everyone came to give me a hug. I was pumped and very happy. I was having a good day. An older teacher, who had not spoken much throughout the day, talked to other teachers and smiled to me every time she passed next to me, but did not give me a hug. She was the only one who did not hug me at the end of the day. I tried to tell myself that convincing 39 people we all need 12 hugs a day was good enough, even if I have missed one person. After a long day on my feet and doing my best to stay fully focused, all I wanted was to go to the supermarket, pick Eden up from the bus station and go home.

When everything was inside the car and I started driving, the older teacher came out of the building. I smiled and opened the car window.

“Have I given you a hug?” I asked.

“No, you haven’t”, she said, sounding disappointed.

I turned off the engine, unbuckled my seatbelt, got out of the car and gave her a hug.

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Love, Actually

Loving another person is one thing, but making the other person feel your love is another matter altogether. Differences in communication styles may get in the way, love languages may not match and other circumstances may interfere.

So what you need to do is make your declaration of love stand out so big it simply cannot be ignored or overlooked.

And what better teachers do we have for this but our very own kids?

One day, our 8-year-old daughter Noff came back from school with a bookmark she had made at school. She brought it home with the utmost care, showed it to everyone and told us it was a special bookmark she had made for us and offered it to us to use for our books.

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What I Would Do If I Had One Year to Live

Running out of time - woman staring at hourlass
This entry is part 29 of 49 in the series Make a List

In any personal development program, there comes a time when the coach asks the client to answer this question. If you have ever been seriously sick or had a chance to meet someone who had to answer this question for real, you know it is one of the biggest and most important questions in life.

Of course, I do not wish you to ever have to plan your last year for real, but playing with it in your mind may just do that thing it does to those who must do it in real life. However, this question is important for most people as a way of gaining perspective.

About 90% of people live life without direction, purpose or drive. They live life based on what they must/should/have to do or what others might think of them and feel disempowered to take the responsibility over their own life. The reason they do it is because their parents did just the same and their grandparents and great-grandparents before them. By living like this, they are neglecting to update the things that are important to them.

Every frustration, failure or problem is an indication of such neglect to update our priorities. For example, in all my parenting workshops, parents claim the most important things they want for their kids are happiness, health and love, yet most of them spend most of their energy on fighting with their kids over homework, manners and housework.

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Force of Habit

What we do on a regular basis, even with little things, becomes our future.

Yes, this is a bold statement, but it is true. The main challenge is that sometimes, we may not realize that what we have just done or said came out of habit. It is easy to see that we eat the same cereal for breakfast every day. That is a simple one to spot, as is driving the same way to work, choosing a certain style of clothes and the likes.

What is much harder to detect is a particular kind of thinking. Today, I want to talk about focused, persistent, determined thinking, as opposed to scattered, carried away, wishy-washy thinking.

We have many defining moments in life, but we do not always know that they are defining, because they simply add a little, or chip away gently, to the definition of who we are. Over time, however, these tiny changes in our self-definition become a whole different person than the one we could be otherwise.

Read Force of Habit »

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