Family MattersPractical Parenting Blog

Gratitude: The Happiness Attitude

When we focus on our gratitude, the tide of disappointment goes out and the tide of love rushes in - Kristin Armstrong

Over years of learning about happiness and success, emotional stamina and wellbeing, I realized that gratitude is the best antidote for frustration. Frustration is a feeling, a thought. If we change the thought to gratitude, we will no longer feel any pain.

Life is full of challenges as we grow and become more aware of our surrounding. We are born into total dependency and we learn from our parents and other adults around us how to be frustrated when our desires are not fulfilled. This brings us lots of heartache and suffering.

The way we react to frustrations in life as kids is the way we will react to frustrations in life as grownups. We also pass this way of reacting to our children and the cycle never ends. If our reaction to frustration is positive and empowered, we hope the cycle will continue, but if our reaction to frustration is painful, we must stop the cycle NOW!

This week, I had a chat to my 14-year-old daughter Noff. We talked about her being very frustrated about an upcoming school assembly, which she hated. I told her about Pollyanna, the girl who inspired me to be a positive person and change my life from frustration to success. I asked her, “What is good about the assembly tomorrow?” She answered straight away, “It’s the last assembly of the year and there are no classes during assembly”. This made her feel better.

You see, there is something good in everything, even if it seems all bad at first glance.

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How to Get Rid of Procrastination

Procrastination is the thief of time written on a blackboard

Procrastination is a big problem for anyone who would like to achieve anything. Although from the outside it looks like it is not a problem to do nothing at all, it is not a state of doing nothing from the inside. Inside, there is a fear that right now, doing nothing seems better than anything we can think of doing.

It is important not to confuse a state of bliss and contentment with procrastination. Bliss is doing nothing and enjoying it. Procrastination is doing nothing from fear of the outcome of anything we do.

Procrastination and anxiety are twins and anxiety is the elder. Anxiety is a fear of some imaginary bad future and procrastination is our coping mechanism with anxiety (not a very effective strategy, but a very common one).

When we use it too often, we reach the “whatever” stage, when we “pretend” we do not care what the outcome will be. We always care! Unless you are a Buddhist in your heart and soul (which is a good aspiration), you care about the outcome. You can say you do not care, but you cannot cheat your own subconscious mind into believing you are the Dalai Lama and will be happy with whatever happens.

When our mind thinks we are in danger (because of something someone said or because of what someone might say), it has three choices: fight, flight or freeze. Procrastination is equivalent to the “flight” response – running away at the sight of danger.

Read How to Get Rid of Procrastination »

International Women’s Day 2016

1 in 3 women will be raped, beaten or abused in her lifetime - Amnesty International

Recently, I was asked to take part as a facilitator in the 2016 International Women’s Day at Griffith University, which was organized by a very good friend of mine, Wendy Flannery, from the amazing organization Believing Women for a Culture of Peace.

Do you ever think you know a lot about something and then discover that what you thought was very far from the way things really are?

I have been involved in diversity education for many years. During those years, I was convinced that I was aware of all the challenges women faced, so I was very surprised to discover just how unaware I was.

During the event, there was an introduction to the declaration for the dignity and human rights for women. We had speakers from different religions and they all declared that we are far away from having fair and equal rights for women.

The shocking bit for me was statistics of women’s position in the world, which highlighted the need for serious social change.

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How to Switch Your Parenting from Preaching to Teaching

The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see - Alexander K. Trenfor

In Parenting is Teaching, not Preaching, I explained why kids resent parents who take too long to explain things and why a relationship based on lecturing your kids is not healthy and makes the kids just not listen to you.

Today, I share five tips that will make the communication and cooperation at home better for you and show you how to switch your parenting from preaching to teaching.

1. No Pink Elephants

Parents are used to telling their kids what not to do. The words “don’t”, “stop” and “no” are very common in the parenting vocabulary. Unfortunately, using them only makes the child do more of what you are trying to stop. Read Beware of Pink Elephants for more.

Rather than telling your kids what not to do, tell them what you want them to do and notice how their behavior changes dramatically.

Read How to Switch Your Parenting from Preaching to Teaching »

Questions to Practice Mindfulness and Change Your Life for the Better

Mistakes might not give you answers. But they give you questions for a greater answer.

Questions are very important on our way to mindfulness. The Greek philosopher Socrates thought that questions could lead us to many discoveries. One of the most important discoveries is the way we think and function. When we ask the right questions, we get good answers that help us grow and evolve to a better version of ourselves.

As a life coach, I master questions. I know that some questions I ask (myself or others) will lead to pain and others will empower people, like press buttons for “let’s move on”, “let’s do something”, “let’s think positively”, “let’s plan”, “let’s change perspective” and “let’s appreciate”.

There are many “buttons” in the brain that trigger a thought or a feeling. For example, the “good memory” button will make us happy and the “bad memory” button will bring us pain and suffering. We may not have more bad memories than good memories, but we will have more suffering if we hit bad memory buttons more often.

Questions can trigger happiness, empowerment, hope, anger, frustration or anxiety. When we ask, “Why do they hate me?” we trigger all memories supporting it. If we ask, “How can I make them love me?” our brain searches for memories of things we’ve done that have led to others showing us love.

Think of questions as instructions we give the brain to go and search for something. Like a dog – you throw it a toy or a boomerang and whatever you throw comes back (only the brain doesn’t bring it back wet).

Read Questions to Practice Mindfulness and Change Your Life for the Better »

Should My Child Repeat a Year at School?

Little girl making faces

Last week, I got another letter asking “Why and when should children repeat a year of school?” Here is the letter and my answer for you to read, because I get many similar questions and I am sure many parents will find the answer useful.

“My daughter is 8 years old and will go to year 5 this year. She is quite young for her class and is studying with much older children. She is academically an average child and it is quite stressful to keep her where she is. We work very hard at home. Many a times she has mentioned that she finds Math difficult, but the teacher feels she is ready for the next class.

My daughter has a couple of good friends in the class but finds it difficult to be make new friends. When she does not win in various competitive activities, she gets very disheartened as she feels she really worked hard for it. I can understand it’s not easy to compete with older children. Many times, she finds it difficult to complain the teacher about the girls who trouble her, so in a way I would say she is not mature. On the other hand, she is a confident girl. She does speech and drama, dance and other few activities. We feel she should repeat the year, we have been toying with this since last couple of years but now we feel it is high time.

I am concerned about two things: my daughter is quite tall and since she is in year 4, will she cope well emotionally?

I am quite stressed as the school starts next week and we need to talk to the school management. Please can you advise if this is the right way for her?”

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10 Life Philosophies for Peace of Mind

Sleeping fox - such peace of mind

Life is full of stress and it can be hard to achieve peace of mind. Many people don’t even remember the last time they felt at peace.

Life coaching helps people understand that peace and stress are in our mind and we can control them by changing what we think. Once we understand that we are what we think, we can change our life by choosing to think other things.

Here are 10 quotes that can be adopted as life philosophies. With these philosophies, we can manage tough times, we can be happy and relaxed, avoid stress, be successful and take control over our life, rather than feel that life is happening to us and we are at the mercy of our circumstances.

Read 10 Life Philosophies for Peace of Mind »

100 Tips for My Children

Ronit and Noff on the beach

Over 26 years of being a parent, I have made a huge effort to give my kids the rules of life that, in my belief, will set them up for a better life. Every parent wants to raise happy, healthy, successful, kind, smart, courageous, creative, friendly and wealthy children that have lots of love and happiness in their life.

I say that parenting is a sales job. If you sell your life philosophy to your kids well, you have great relationships with them and you know they will do well. If you are not a good sales person (even if your philosophy works well for you), you will face lots of conflict and frustration.

Years ago, I started writing a series called Things I want my kids to know. I think I want my kids to know everything I have written in this blog, but this series is a good summary. In this post, I would like to give my kids 100 tips from my bag of tips for a happy, healthy, successful and loving life.

I encourage you to make your own list of 100 pieces of advice you want to share with your kids, so that one day, when they ask themselves what you wanted for them, they will have it in writing.

Remember that giving advice is something you give from your own free will, with the full intention of doing good. It is your child’s choice whether to take your advice or not. We give! They need to choose to take. If they don’t take our advice, it may be because they are not in a good relationship with us and there is a distrust. It may be because they are not ready, you haven’t presented it well, you are not a good role model for what you suggest, or their life circumstances are different from yours and they can’t see how they can apply your advice to their life.

This post is part 7 of 7 in the series Things I Want My Kids to Know

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New Book by Ronit Baras: Reflections

Reflections by Ronit Baras

I am happy to announce that this week, on my birthday, I launched a new book (my fourth), Reflections. Over the weekend, I had a wonderful and emotional celebration with my family and friends and I am happy that Reflections is now available and taking its first steps into the hearts of many readers.

My quest for happiness started at the age of 14, when I was a very confused teenager, searching for direction and purpose, and asking the big questions of life. Who am I? What am I doing here? Where am I going?

Back then, all I wanted was a glimpse of the future, so I could draw hope to carry me through tough times. I played the “fortunetelling” game many times, imagining myself as a hero, strong beyond measure, successful, happy, content and with purpose.

During my teen years, reading and writing were my refuge. At the age of 15, I met David. He was 72 years old when I met him and for a teenager, that seemed a huge gap. David was a holocaust survivor with a very special view on life. He had lost everyone and everything that was dear to him and developed and inspiring attitude to life.

We both shared a love for poetry and often asked each other’s opinion about the poems we wrote. He was the one who taught me to ask and to question. I spent hours with him asking big questions about life. Most of the time, he would ask me questions and when I asked him about any topic, he would give me a wise perspective on it and asked me a question in return.

Read New Book by Ronit Baras: Reflections »

Addictions: Are you Addicted to Your Beliefs?

Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? - Rumi

When we hear the word “addiction”, we think of bad things. Most people think of drugs and alcohol, when in fact, we are all addicted to something even if we don’t drink alcohol or take illegal drugs. If every addiction were illegal, we would all be living outside the law.

Addiction is actually an idea. It’s the thought that we cannot live without something. When we are addicted to something, it is because we think/feel/believe that the thing we are addicted to is essential to our survival and the fear of living without it is greater than the fear of the consequences of consuming it.

That was a full on concept, but please read it again:

When we are addicted to something, it does not mean we don’t understand the consequences of consuming it. It means that the fear of not consuming it is greater.

This is why it is hard to fight addiction. Our subconscious mind is stronger than our understanding of the consequences so let’s stop talking about the consequences, because they will never be the reason we stop believing anything.

Research on addictions has found that consuming something (like drugs, alcohol or sugar) is not enough to become addicted to it. We consume it when we have a void, because it allows us to manage better with that void. People who connect well with others, are in a happy relationship, are active and have a good social life are less likely to become addicted. Therefore, the way to help everybody overcome addictions is not punishing them for finding a solution that gives them (brief moments of) comfort, but helping them create the connections they need to replace their addiction.

It is important to understand that we are not only addicted to substances, but also to thoughts and ideas. Even substance addictions are based on strong beliefs. In a research on alcohol consumption, participates were given water to drink, but were told they were drinking alcohol. They behaved later on as if they were drunk, showing impaired coordination, giggling and even throwing up, just because they BELIEVED they were drinking alcohol.

Read Addictions: Are you Addicted to Your Beliefs? »

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