World Peace and Harmony through Kindness

Recently, I was asked to take part in a panel at the United Nations World Peace Conference. The panel members were chosen for being “inspiring people who contributed to world peace”, each in a different way. My way of spreading peace is, and always has been, education. I talked about how parents and teachers can make a difference in the world around us.

The organizers asked my son, Tsoof, who is a musician, to perform at the event, but he was booked. It was a last-minute request, so it was a long-shot, but we still needed entertainment for the day. Luckily, they only needed to fill three minutes.

As a last minute idea, I suggested a song that I had been using in my presentations for 10 years. This song is a big part of my global citizenship program and on some of my free hugs campaigns. It was Jewels’ song, Hands, which I think is my spiritual motto, “Only kindness matters”.

World peace promotion using baby looking in mirror with the writing “The world is like a mirror. If you smile at it, it smiles at you”We can teach kindness in schools if we want to make this world a better place. Some people in the audience recognized the song and as I read out the lyrics, everyone was moved. As the song was played, some tears were shed.

I wish I could have thought of the lyrics myself! They are so powerful and I thank Jewel for the inspiration.

Check out the lyrics for yourself and see if you are moved by them.

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Handy Family Tips: How to Get Kids to Eat Vegetables

Vegetables are good for our health, but they are not very popular. I think this is because the advertising departments of junk, sugary and chocolaty food companies are much better than the advertising departments of vegetable companies. It is very simple. If we had the same publicity for vegetables that we do for junk food, it would be easy to get kids to eat vegetables and they would do it happily.

Even more than advertising, the best way to get kids to eat vegetables is to love eating vegetables yourself and to buy lots of them for your home. If this is what kids have on hand, this is what they will eat. Obviously, this is not as easy to do as we might think. Otherwise, everyone would do it and every kid in the world would eat vegetables at every meal.

The A-Z Vegetable Challenge

One of the tricks I offer to my clients to get kids to eat vegetables and overcome eating problems is the A-Z Vegetable Challenge. Starting with the letter A, the family chooses a vegetable beginning with that letter to focus on for the week, to learn about, research, cook with and eat.

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Kindness Matters

Be kind, for everyone is fighting their battle too

Kindness matters. If you look around, it is easy to see that everyone struggles. The world is a battle field and we are in a constant state of war.

If you watch the news for five minutes, you risk believing that the world is a dangerous place. Countries fight other countries, cultures fight other cultures, people fight in the name of God and in the name of their religion, people fight their neighbors, and their spouses. They fight their friends and their children. At work, they fight the boss or their colleagues. Even if they don’t fight for survival, they fight for justice or for love. If the fight is not with others, they fight time, weight, aging.

There is no end to the struggles. No wonder life seems so exhausting. I believe the source of all the struggles is the fight with our fears.

A fight, no matter what the cause is, is still a fight. It is like a war between two, even if the two are inside of us. I have learned a very good rule in life: In war, there are no winners. Some lose more while others lose less. In any case, there are only losers. So, if we fight, no matter who and what, we always lose.

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Social Media Reality: Look Up! What Are You Missing?

Technology and social media have become a significant part of our life. Recently, I learned some valuable lessons about just how they affect us and the opportunities they make us miss.

My 13-year-old daughter, Noff, is the youngest in our family. Lately, she has been struggling with not having a mobile phone to take to school. To her, mobile phones are very cool. Some kids need them to coordinate pick-up times or for safety on the bus.

Unfortunately for her, she does not need it for any of those things. She so much wants to be part of the mobile phone in-crowd that she uses our old phones to play games. She struggles with not being like everyone else and I struggle with my parenting.

I have some beliefs and rules about social media and I know I need to adjust them to suit the times. I have three kids and I cannot apply the same parenting rules regarding media with Noff that I did with my first two.

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The Adler Philosophy: Empwering Parents

Alfred Adler Philosophy: The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well

Alfred Adler (1870-1937), was a philosopher and psychiatrist who believed that humans have two basic needs: to belong and to feel significant. In the early 1900’s, he started looking into parenting quality and the importance of parent education. To empower parents, he developed The Adler Philosophy.

Adler developed a theory that was holistic at its core. He believed that when we are encouraged, we feel capable and appreciated. This contributes to a feeling of connectedness and we are more likely to be cooperative. When we are discouraged, we withdraw, give up and feel depressed.

Adler’s philosophy was very much relevant to parenting because he believed that our lifelong coping strategies depend on how connected we were to our parents and how significant we felt in our family. Based on Adler’s theory, every person is an individual who was created in early childhood, by his or her early life experiences, which are made up of his or her relationships within the family. Adler thought that a misbehaving child is a discouraged child. Instead of trying to put pressure on the child to change their undesired behavior, you should help them feel valued, competent and special.

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How to Have a Happy Life

I have dedicated my life to promoting happy living. I have watched many people living the life they want and, unfortunately, too many people who have no clue about bringing happiness into their lives.

I suggest to all my clients that they come up with an A to Z list of living a happy life. Below is just one version of what they have come up with. I hope it will encourage you to come up with your own.

Appreciate yourself and others. Accept everything as it is. Appreciation is the ability to see good in yourself and others. It does not change who you are but how you perceive things.

Be yourself! This is the main goal in life. Do not try to be someone else. It is draining. You are unique, special and perfect, just the way you are. Cherish it!

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How to Model Empathy to Your Kids

Mother showing empathy to her daughter with a hug

Empathy is a very important emotional skill. As parents and teachers, it’s our role to teach our children empathy. Although some people have a natural tendency to be more understanding and empathetic toward others, our role is to promote empathy in all children.

Regardless of their natural starting point, children can all improve their ability to put themselves in another person’s shoes. This will help them build better relationships.

A person’s level of empathy can tell us a lot about a person’s emotional intelligence. If they are more empathetic, they’re usually more confident. If you can be empathetic, it usually means you feel good enough about yourself to be able to share it with others.

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School Holiday Activities for Kids

In Australia, we are halfway through another school holiday season. I love school holidays, even though I finished school many years ago. For parents, the holidays can be a stressful time. Here is an A-to-Z guide of what you can do with your kids these school holidays to make the time a bit easier.

Acting is a very healthy and fun thing for kids to do. Give them opportunities to rehearse a play and present it to you. They can make puppets and use a table as a stage. Be a very supportive audience and encourage them to perfume for you.

Beach is a great place to be in the school holiday. Give the kids a ball and some boxes to build sand castles and they will be busy for hours.

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Proud as a Peacock (again)

Being a mother has been one of the greatest achievements of my life. Each of my kids is an achievement, and they are also big achievers themselves. Some say that it is a cycle. We, as parents, make our kids successful, loving achievers and in return they make us successful, loving achievers.

One of the best descriptions of my feeling towards them is pride. They do amazing things and I am enormously proud of them. I have come up with a theory that I like to call “Pride Therapy”. Every time one of my kids has an achievement, by proxy, I have also achieved something.

In my coaching and presentations, I sometimes ask people to describe their feelings as animals. I find it makes it easier to express these feeling. It does not have to be an animal that represents all your feelings all the time. Each feeling is a different animal. For example, you might be a panther in the office, and a sloth on a relaxed Sunday.

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Kids Cheating with Mobile Phones: Who is to Blame?

Schools struggle a lot with the increased use of mobile phones by children. Many new regulations are in place to stop children from bringing mobile phone to school. At a primary school level, some schools ask the students to deposit their mobile phones at the office. In high schools, the phone devices are part of everyday life and a regular item in each class. In the past, teachers had to deal with the concentration and focus of the children. Now, they need to fight the attraction of the mobile phones as well!

With the introduction of mobile phones, one new problem that teachers to deal with is cheating on tests. In the past, students had to think of very sophisticated ways of writing cheat shits on paper, on their hand, the back of the ruler or the calculator. Kids today have a very handy way to keep the information and they use it well.

A survey conducted by a media sources with some common sense discovered that a third of teens with mobiles admitted to storing information on their phone, using it in an exam or texting their friends the answers while their friends are in the exam.

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