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Home » control » Page 6

The Want Muscle

Sometimes being yourself is scary until you stop and remember everybody in the whole wide world is scared about the exact same thing

Magda came to see me after 16 years of heartache and pain. She was referred by a client of mine. She had seen psychologists and psychiatrists before, but felt very criticized and had never gone for a second session with any of them.

When I finally got to meet her, I was a bit surprised. She was in her early fifties and looked amazing – almost like a doll. She was tiny and very well presented with beautiful skin.

Yet, during the first 10 minutes of introductions, she managed to say only bad things about herself. The gist of them was that she was not good enough, unworthy and helpless. She said 27 bad things about herself in those 10 minutes. I counted!

This made me very curious about her because at that point we had just met and I knew nothing about her.

Coaching is very much like solving a puzzle. I tried to gather information that would allow me to help Magda in a way that the other therapist could not. As it turns out, Magda was an only child, born to very old parents. Her dad died when she was very young and her mom never had another man in her life.

This post is part 10 of 19 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

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Published: February 17, 2015 by Ronit Baras
Last modified: December 25, 2019In: Personal Development, Life Coaching Tags: abuse, needs, fear, choice, acceptance / judgment / tolerance, divorce, self confidence / self esteem / self worth, empowerment, personal development / personal growth / personality development / self improvement, control, freedom, happiness, expectation, Life Coaching, frustration, relationships / marriage, guilt, neurolinguistic programmiing / NLP, emotional development, bullying

Abusive Parenting Cycle

Cow in a meadow

Recently, I wrote a post about parents who justify their bad parenting style by claiming they are better than their own parents. Parenting like this creates a cycle: bad parenting, leads to difficult children, who become bad parents, who raise difficult children, etc. Over the last 28 years, I have dedicated my work to breaking this cycle. To helping kids through helping their parents.

Last week, this topic came up again when I met a 16-year-old girl who came for teen coaching. I sat in front of her for almost 2 hours and was shocked at how mature and aware she was. She was sitting in the same balcony in which I have seen many grownups who did not understand half of the things she did. Last year, I started writing a fictional story about a girl with parent problems and anorexia. In front of me was this most beautiful, good looking girl with a similar story. It amazed me to discover that the story is so much worse when you see it in real life.

She was a 16 year old, living with abusive parents, who believed they were better than their own parents, because unlike them, they did not use physical violence. It surprised me that they sent her for life coaching though. It seemed very contradictory to what a controlling and abusive parent would do. Never-the-less, I asked about her grandparents to get a better picture. Things became crystal clear: they had been abusive parents, who raised abusive kids, who become abusive parents. This cycle would go on and on unless this troubled, 16 year old teen could stop the cycle with her awareness (if she survived the emotional abuse).

This post is part 11 of 19 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

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Published: February 3, 2015 by Ronit Baras
Last modified: February 29, 2020In: Personal Development, Parenting Tags: story, bullying, attitude, abuse, grandparents, emotional intelligence, kids / children, control, violence, feeling, dad, practical parenting / parents, Life Coaching, neurolinguistic programmiing / NLP, anorexia

Justifying our Parenting Style

Smiling mother and child

Finding your own parenting style is not easy. Most of us adopt our parents’ parenting style, without regard really thinking about it. We don’t choose our parenting style, but let the style choose us.

We also like to think that we are better at parenting than our own parents. We often don’t notice how we use the exact same parenting styles we hated in them. To our credit, we sometimes manage to make small changes and this makes us think that we are better than them. We can do something they couldn’t. We think that the harder it was to make the changes, the better we are. This is not always true. In fact, the damage from our choices can be as bad for our own children as it was for us (or even worse).

This is a very hard concept for parents to understand. Kids see things completely differently. If your dad beat you with a belt or hot iron and you only use your hands to beat your own children, it is not very effective to tell your kids that you had it worse and that you are better than your own dad. When you hurt your kids, they can’t really be all “Pollyanna” about it (Pollyanna was a girl who always found the positive side of everything).

Read Justifying our Parenting Style »

Published: January 29, 2015 by Ronit Baras
Last modified: December 25, 2019In: Personal Development, Parenting Tags: Life Coaching, practical parenting / parents, fear, relationships / marriage, choice, positive, truth, questions, safety, kids / children, beliefs, self confidence / self esteem / self worth, control, personal development / personal growth / personality development / self improvement, violence, freedom, inner peace, feeling, focus, mind, evaluation, abuse, change, emotional development, how to

Expressing Feelings in a Marriage

Married couple walking down the road

Expressing feelings in a relationship is very important. Feelings are at the heart of every marriage. We get married because we love and have strong and positive feelings towards someone, and we choose to spend our lives and have children with him or her.

As long as we express those happy and wonderful feelings towards our partners, the more happy our relationship with them will be. Problems start when we express those not-so-happy feelings and this can easily get out of control.

Many of my relationship-coaching clients confuse between thoughts and feelings. They learned that expressing feelings was important so they added the phrase “I feel” into their communication. Unfortunately, instead of expressing feelings, they disguised thoughts as feelings.

Imagine your communication with your partner as a ball game. You can throw the ball in a way that your partner will catch or you can throw the ball in a way that will probably hurt them. One of these is called communication and is a constructive way to create a happy marriage. The other is called “the blame game” or painful communication and it contributes to struggles in a marriage. No one wants to play a ball game if they need to protect themselves from getting hurt.

This post is part 25 of 34 in the series Save Your Marriage

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Published: October 7, 2014 by Ronit Baras
Last modified: March 2, 2020In: Relationships / Marriage Tags: divorce, acceptance / judgment / tolerance, control, emotions, happiness, feeling, relationships / marriage, thought, perception, partner, conflict, frustration, communication, family matters, focus, interpretation, love, positive attitude tips, emotional intelligence, positive, negative

Peer Pressure: The Power of the Group

Teens are often criticized for not being able to stand up to peer pressure. In my parenting workshops I show parents and teachers how much they, as mature adults, grownups and parents, submit to group pressure. They are usually very shocked to discover how many things they do that do not match their own thoughts and beliefs, and how strong their desire is to be accepted, not judged and not criticized by the people around them.

Being social creatures makes us compromise our thoughts and beliefs to match those of the society we live in. It is in some way a survival mechanism that got out of control. In the beginning, we did it to survive in the group. Later on we have to obey the group if we want to be accepted in.

The power of peer pressure was examined many years ago in a famous study called “Asch’s conformity experiment”. This short video can explain how easy it is conform.

Read Peer Pressure: The Power of the Group »

Published: October 2, 2014 by Ronit Baras
Last modified: November 9, 2021In: Parenting, Teens / Teenagers Tags: books, stress / pressure, beliefs, personal development / personal growth / personality development / self improvement, control, feeling, rules, practical parenting / parents, parent coaching, teen books, society, social, video, teens / teenagers, values, parenting teens

The Nitpicker

Nit comb

In the last chapter of save your marriage, I explained how a “king/queen” mentality can impact even the most wonderful of relationships. Over time, kings only strengthen their position of feeling superior, which can drive any “servant” out of the relationship.

In this chapter, I will talk about the king’s cousin, the nitpicker.

In a similar way to the king who adopts his mentality from his upbringing, the nitpicker adopts his habits from his parents. Growing up with a parent who is a nitpicker starts a pattern that children carry on into adulthood. Depending on their emotional state, kids will choose to either adopt or totally reject this mentality. They will either be like their parents or avoid their company and adopt a completely new way to communicate. This is not a conscious decision. Most people are not even aware that they do it. That is why external help is necessary if you want to change from a nitpicking communicating style.

This post is part 24 of 34 in the series Save Your Marriage

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Published: September 23, 2014 by Ronit Baras
Last modified: October 29, 2018In: Relationships / Marriage Tags: family matters, success, kids / children, how to, negative, personal development / personal growth / personality development / self improvement, control, feeling, separation, partner, change, planning, happiness, practical parenting / parents, communication styles, relationships / marriage, communication, hope, focus

Obedience: Should You Teach it to Your Kids?

Child holding a metal chain

One of the biggest dilemmas in parenting is how to teach your kids to react to authority. The reason this is a dilemma is because you are the first authority figure they will meet and you want them to obey you because you have their best interests at heart. But not every authority in their lives will be the same. And if they obey you blindly, they will do the same for other authorities.

Kids are born completely helpless. They look up to their parents and their lives are highly dependent on them. Parents become authority figures. They have so much power during this time, a bit like Gods, deciding their children’s fate.

Whether you like it or not, as part of your job description as a parent, you must decide what your stance is on the question of authority.

Read Obedience: Should You Teach it to Your Kids? »

Published: August 28, 2014 by Ronit Baras
Last modified: August 28, 2014In: Parenting Tags: fear, choice, control, kids / children, behavior / discipline, self confidence / self esteem / self worth, personal development / personal growth / personality development / self improvement, practical parenting / parents, values, how to

The King and His Servants

Crown

Being in a marriage or a close relationship is the secret to a long life. But it requires effort. If you want to save your marriage, it helps to learn about communication.

On our wedding days and during our honeymoon periods, we tend to be very accepting and flexible. Communication flows, even if we say nothing at all. It is the life that begins later, which tests the strength of our relationship. Slowly, day after day, the conversations, experiences together, arguments and stress create holes in our communication.

This can lead to the destruction of the relationship. In a happy relationship, time is a healer. In an unhappy relationship, time is a prison.

Some researchers claim they can listen to a married couple’s conversation and predict the success of their relationship about 90% of the time. 90%! That is a lot! With the couples that come to do my relationship coaching program, I can often tell from the way they talk to each other or about each other if their relationship is still as sweet as honey or whether they are feeling the bitter taste of separation.

This post is part 23 of 34 in the series Save Your Marriage

Read The King and His Servants »

Published: July 31, 2014 by Ronit Baras
Last modified: October 29, 2018In: Parenting, Relationships / Marriage Tags: family matters, abuse, kids / children, success, negative, personal development / personal growth / personality development / self improvement, research, feeling, control, partner, separation, planning, change, practical parenting / parents, relationships / marriage, hope, communication, anger, focus

Discrimination: Speak Up!

Discrimination is an important issue that we as humans need to tackle. I even have my own discrimination story. When I was young, I was discriminated against a lot.

I was discriminated against for not being a good student, for my ethnicity, for my social status. I was discriminated against for things I had control over and things I had no control over (like my parents’ income, my height). I was also discriminated against by my own family. My mom discriminated against me for being a girl (and not a boy) and for being sick while everyone else was healthy. Even my siblings excluded me for not being able to sing like them.

Back then, I felt very sad and miserable about it. I think I was very confused. It was hard for me to comprehend people’s discrimination towards things I had no control over. Now, over 35 years later, I am glad I experienced that discrimination.

Do you know why?

Read Discrimination: Speak Up! »

Published: July 1, 2014 by Ronit Baras
Last modified: September 25, 2023In: Education / Learning Tags: social, video, justice, fear, attitude, choice, acceptance / judgment / tolerance, action, personal development / personal growth / personality development / self improvement, beliefs, teaching / teachers, control, change, social skills, society

Knowing Your Happiness

Signs you are truly happy - infographic

I have been teaching happiness for many years and one of the things most of my clients want to know is how to find out when they are happy. You see, people are focused on what is going wrong in their lives. They have signs that tell them that things are not going great. Let me share some with you.

image”I am unhappy when I’m in conflict”

“I am unhappy when I don’t succeed”

“I am unhappy when things don’t happen the way I want them to happen”

“I am unhappy when people do not agree with me”

“I am unhappy when I am tired”

“I am unhappy when I don’t have the money to do all the things I want to do”

“I am unhappy if I can’t predict the future”

“I am unhappy if I am not in control all the time”

“I am unhappy when I worry”

“I am unhappy when people do not appreciate me”

“I am unhappy when others are more successful than me”

Research shows that people have more signs for unhappiness than signs for happiness.

Read Knowing Your Happiness »

Published: June 12, 2014 by Ronit Baras
Last modified: December 25, 2019In: Health / Wellbeing, Life Coaching Tags: sleep, focus, friends / friendship, gratitude, how to, choice, research, control, exercise, happiness, Life Coaching

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