Improve your life and grow as a person by making these lists – what makes you happy, who are your friends and lots more
I often describe improvements and progress as the currency of personal development. We can only be highly developed by continually improving our thoughts, ideas, actions and outcome in life. To my kids I say that as long as they keep moving forward, they are developing.
Read Make a list: Improve My Life »
Some people shiver when I tell them about this task. If you have had a chance to read my earlier post about divorcing your parents, you know that, as sad as this may be, too many people do not have good relationships with their parents. And you know what? This is not good! No matter how horrible our parents might be (or rather how horrible we perceive them to be), this relationship does not stop to exist because we do not like it. It continues to influence us in a sad and bad way.
Money is a big part of every success in life. Money is an enabler – the more money you have, the more successful you can be. For example, my son is very successful as a musician, no doubt due to his special talent, but without the money we spend to support his musical journey, he could have never reached this level of success.
Today’s post is about how to discover the feelings your want to feel in your life, and finding great ways to feel them when you want to. We do this by listing “100 feelings I want to feel”.
As a life coach, I teach my clients emotional intelligence and I find that “learning to feel” is helpful (and, unfortunately, very much needed) in personal development. Our slogan at Be Happy in LIFE is “Happiness is a choice” and we see our goal as coaches to teach people how to feel happy and how to choose happiness.
Some people tell me that teaching happiness is strange. They say, “It’s a feeling. You either have it or you don’t”.
Well, in my opinion, this is not true.
I think time is one of the greatest challenges for humans. The notions of death and end affect many choices in our life. There are many things we do not do because we think they might take too long (or we might not have enough time). We believe it is essential to set our priorities, conserve our energy and choose our battles, but if we could live forever, life would be a totally fascinating ride.
I thought that as parents, making a list of thoughts and beliefs about kids is highly appropriate, because reading such a list can be a wonderful reflection on our parenting and a chance to do things even better.
In my parenting workshops, where parents get the tools to raise happy kids, we take stock of our beliefs to find empowering or limiting beliefs. It is amazing for people to discover how closely their beliefs about parenting or about kids match the challenges and the happy experiences in their life. Although we believe in things due to our life experiences, once we have those beliefs, they start to drive our experiences instead.
Buddha has said this beautifully, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought”. So if you are a confident parent, it is a result of what you have in your mind and if you are not confident in your parenting, you can be, just change your thoughts.
Last week, I wrote about writing your beliefs about kids. As I said, beliefs are a reflection of our parenting style. What we believe about kids becomes our reality. I realized this during my Special Education studies and I started making sure I always had the right beliefs, the most empowering beliefs that will make me the best mother in the world. And they have!
I examined all my beliefs and found out I had many I had received from my parents, my older sister, my teachers and other adults in my life that were very limiting, such as “Kids are cruel”, “Kids have no respect”, “Kids must be disciplined” and I will stop writing this list, because I would like to focus on beliefs that are better for parents to have.
So here I am opening my heart and telling you 100 of my beliefs about kids. I only write the beliefs that are empowering to me and that have made my parenting happier, healthier and more successful. I hope you will find inspiration in them and learn about the philosophy and vision I have for my parenting and for the Family Matters blog.
Events in our life shape our thinking, beliefs and overall attitude. When I ask people, “Please share the things that have shaped your life”, they come up with big things, mainly traumatic events that were hard to ignore.
I can relate to this too, because when I worked on my own list, the first things that came up were the big things – moving house, changing city, changing country, the birth of my kids, loss and painful failures. I did have some positive, wonderful, exciting events too, like the birth of my kids and winning prizes and awards, but there were not as many of them as there were hits.
Focusing on the big things is natural. However, I believe that the small things, the ones we neglect to pay attention to, may contribute a lot to how we conduct ourselves in a way that we hardly recognize.
I’m saying this is because very often, when my clients bring up their past and examine it, they talk about small incidents that were big for them at the time, even out of proportion.
In 1991, Allan Luks (former executive director of The Institute for the Advancement of Health and executive director of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters program in New York City) documented a study about kindness in a book called “The healing power of doing good: The health and spiritual benefits of helping others”.
In a survey he conducted among 3,000 people of all ages from 20 organizations around the USA, he found clearly that “Helping contributes to the maintenance of good health and it can diminish the effect of diseases and disorders both serious and minor, psychological and physical”. So there you have it – if you want to be happy and healthy, help others!
In his research, Luks found that helping others and being kind resulted in a sharp reduction of stress and increased the release of endorphins (the body’s natural feel-good drugs). Over 90% of participants in his research reported that regular volunteering lowered their stress level and contributed to their health and wellbeing.
Read Make a list: Ways to be kind »
Time is a monster that cannot be reasoned with. It responds like a snail to our impatience, then it races like a gazelle when you can’t catch your breath
– Adult Joe Wentworth from Simon Birch
I am sure everyone wants to be very productive, especially when they look at successful people and see how well they use their time, their resources, their talents and the people around them. Looking at these people, you might think they know something you do not.
They do! They know themselves better!
If you have been a regular reader of my Make a List series, you know why making these lists of 100 things means you get to know yourself better, so with today’s list you hit 3 birds with 1 stone: you get to know yourself better, you get to be more productive, because you know yourself better and you get to be more productive, because you find 100 ways to be more productive