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affirmations Tag

Posts tagged 'affirmations'

Best Family Quotes by the Amazing Virginia Satir

Virginia Satir

The family quotes in this post were written by Virginia Satir, the mother of Family Therapy. I appreciate her and have learned a lot from her over the years, and some of her best quotes hang where I can read them again and again.

Virginia Satir’s quotes about family and her philosophy about family relationships have become a great compass for me. I would like to share them with you and inspire you to consider and adopt her ideas about family.

One of the reasons I enjoyed Virginia Satir’s work was that she started as an educator, and so did I. I have a soft spot for people who are educators as, because I think their spin on their work is different and more effective.

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I’m Disappointed in You!

Boy sitting sadly on a stone step after someone said to him "I'm disappointed in you"

Think of the last time anyone said to you, “I’m disappointed in you”. How did that make you feel?

Being disappointed is part of life. I guess it is one of the greatest challenges in life. Realizing that life is not happening the way you want and managing to push through despite it.

Although being disappointed is part of life, being disappointed in others should not be. When I work with my life coaching clients, we deal with a lot of disappointment. Sadly, what hurts them most is not self-disappointment – that things didn’t happen the way they “should have” – but being a disappointment to someone close.

When I think of all the times I have heard this, I can see two groups of people that express disappointment in my clients: teachers and parents, in this order. I dare say that they cause a lot of damage.

Disappointment is “sadness or displeasure caused by the non-fulfilment of one’s hopes or expectations”. Therefore, saying to someone, “I’m disappointed in you”, is telling that person he or she is not fulfilling your hopes and expectations.

Who are you to cause someone a bad feeling for not fulfilling your expectations?

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Blessings for You

Buddhist monk child pouring water in a stream

I think of myself as very fortunate, because I have found a profession that is a purpose and does not feel like work at all. I discovered my purpose 32 years ago when I started my Special Education studies. Serving humanity is very fulfilling and it is great to help people find their own purpose in life.

On my bookshelf, there is a beautiful blackboard that says, “To teach is to touch a life forever”. I have given cards with this quote to many of my students over the years. Touching people, helping them open their eyes to the endless possibilities and empowering them to take charge is a great joy and has become my mission.

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Children with the Auditory Communication Style

Girl playing the piano

In my child assessments, I check children’s communication styles. I have been doing this for so long that my family members can sometimes identify the kids with auditory communication style right away, because they talk. A lot!

I usually pay attention to the way they use verbal stimulation to memorize things, if they whisper as they work and if they can repeat numbers and sounds. I also check the way they respond to verbal encouragement. Generally, they do much better when they can control their auditory space than when they are restricted.

Auditory kids are very influenced by the sounds around them and are unable to block them. They are very sensitive to arguments, shouting, yelling, crying, whining and scolding. Some of them say they feel pain when their teacher or parent shouts. Communicating with them in a loud voice may cause them to shut down completely. On the other hand, speaking to them in a soft, calm voice supports their learning greatly.

Children with the auditory communication style can learn anything, as long as it is associated with sound effects, a funny voice, an accent or even a lisp.

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Eddie the Eagle: Determination and Great Parenting

Eddie the Eagle movie poster

Watching the movie Eddie the Eagle this week made me think again about my own children and the many children I work with. I realized that no one ever gets to the top, whether it is a top in a ski slope, the top of a class, the top of a sport or the top of a skill without determination and without someone holding the ladder while they climb up.

Being a different child is not easy. I know what it means, because I was different. There are two reasons for this. One, you cannot look at others and do what they do. Two, others do not like different people. There is something awkward about them, something that means hard work. Being social means building rapport, and it is hard to relate to someone who is different.

Supporting children in their adventures is linked strongly with the permission we give ourselves, their parents, to dream big. When we practice dreaming and following our dreams, we give our children permission to do the same.

In the movie, Eddie’s dad, who is a plasterer, tries constantly to convince his son to stop trying to be in the Olympics, while his mom is supportive of his adventures. At one point, Eddie asks his dad, “Have you ever had a dream?” and his dad said, “Yes… to be a plasterer”.

Michael (Eddie) Edwards was a clumsy young boy with a physical disability who dreamed of being an Olympic athlete. He is physically challenged and socially unaccepted, and while his mom supports his dreams, his dad does everything in his power to get him “off the clouds” and be “normal”.

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How to Encourage: Ronit’s List of Compliments

Drawing of hand with the words You Are Beautiful

Since I wrote the first chapter of the compliments series, I have received some requests from readers to give them some ideas about compliments, so I thought it may be a good exercise to make a list of 100 compliments we can give others that will cover different areas of life.

By limiting myself to phrases that only focus on the other person and not on myself (because complimenting is giving, not taking credit and focusing on yourself), I got to 182.

Here’s my list of compliments. I suggest that you mark the compliments you find useful, change them to suit your needs and keep them somewhere handy. Then, refer to the examples when you need a compliment idea.

This post is part 3 of 3 in the series The Power of Compliments

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How to Accept Compliments with Grace

Thank You!

As I said in Compliments: Give to Receive, most people don’t receive many compliments, because they don’t give many compliments to others, and this is caused by not feeling good about themselves. I hope everyone started the compliment challenge and that you already see the impact on your own confidence and sense of wellbeing.

Not feeling good about yourself also makes you feel uncomfortable when someone else gives you a compliment. As you might expect, an awkward response to a compliment will discourage the other person from giving you any more compliments.

In this post, you will learn how to accept compliments with grace.

Some people are not used to compliments, so they are shocked when someone says something good about them. Most people say something that reduces the compliment, like “It was nothing”, “You should have seen me do it last time” or “This time was not that good”, which is just like getting a gift from someone and saying, “Sorry, I can’t accept your gift, because I don’t deserve it”…

This post is part 2 of 3 in the series The Power of Compliments

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Compliments: Give to Receive

Young Asian girl at sunrise

Giving and receiving compliments are very important communication skills that boost our self-confidence and the confidence of the people around us. We grow up in a society that struggles with giving and receiving compliments. People are stingy at the giving end and uncomfortable at the receiving end.

What many people don’t realize is that complimenting others is a projection of a trait, skill or beauty that we see in ourselves. It is a gift of kindness that when we give, we also receive.

Recently, I ran leadership training with a group of high school students and we talked about compliments. It took us 10 hours to change the lives of all those students and increase their self-confidence ratings by 20% to 50%. Yes, in just 10 hours of a very busy training day, we change their attitude towards themselves and other people.

One of the leaders came to me in the evening, after the session with the parents, to say “Thank you”. She said that the part about compliments was very meaningful for her. She felt that it was a shame they didn’t teach communication skills in primary school and that it was important to give compliments to others, and even more important to accept compliments. On the ride home, I thought about it and realized I had never written about compliments in my blog, so I thanked this girl for bringing it to my attention.

This post is part 1 of 3 in the series The Power of Compliments

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25 Affirmations to Say to Yourself in the Mirror

Young woman in front of a mirror

I love mirrors. I love them because they help us learn things about ourselves and they have the power to change the inside by looking at the outside. What we tell ourselves in front of the mirror has a great effect on what we say to ourselves internally.

Our thoughts are affirmations we tell ourselves in the inside and they can direct us towards a happy life or painful life. If we say good things to ourselves, we will focus on good and our life will improve. If we say bad things, we will focus on heartache and pain and get more of them in our life.

Years ago, when I was very young, I heard that if I look in the mirror and tell myself that I was pretty, I would become pretty. I remember thinking it was stupid, but something made me try it anyway. I sat in front of the mirror for hours and, what do you know, I started feeling pretty. I was only 16 and I learned a big lesson in life. Beauty is a perception!

Years later, I tried this with another experiment. I wrote on the mirror, “Every time I look in the mirror, my hair looks full and fabulous”, and, what do you know, a week later, I met 3 different people, who knew nothing about each other or my experiment, who said, “Your hair looks fabulous. What did you do to it?” I swear to you I did nothing different at all.

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Helping Kids Build Healthy and Powerful Character Traits

Paper sunflowers

Many parents talk to me about their kids’ character traits and behavior. “He is a stubborn kid. He was always stubborn” or “She is a nag. She nagged from the first day she came home”. I wonder how much of what these parents are describing is real character (permanent and unchangeable) and how much of it we can change.

All kids are born with their unique character, a personality. This becomes really obvious when you have your second child. You realize that some of how they behave is just something they are born with. You notice that they have a certain character from the very first day you spend with them.

Unfortunately, not all character traits are wonderful and great. How they develop later on in life depends mainly on how we view these traits and how we react to them. For example, many parents treat their kids’ behavior as a result of a character trait. Since character is solid and fixed, they thing this behavior cannot be changed.

This post is part 1 of 8 in the series Helping Kids Build Character

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