Everyone has rules for establishing self-worth. Just like the need for approval forms in our early years, due to our relationship with people who are significant to us, our definition of self-worth comes from them too. Parents and educators are the main source of our thoughts about our self-worth.
Most people do not like to talk about their rules, but they have them for everything. There are rules for living, rules for dying, rules for work, rules for home, rules for riding the bus and rules for eating in a restaurant.
In one of the newsletters I get regularly, I received a link to the article titled “Social media…dirty word or essential skill?” I am sure most parents with Internet access and a teen or two would vote for “dirty word”, considering their kids’ obsessive texting, chatting and emailing.
Read Do As I Do »
Sabrina did not believe it when she overheard the school librarian talking about the days her grandfather had been so poor he used to walk 45 minutes to work to save the money required for a bus ticket. “He made all his money from the jar”, said the librarian to her friend. Sabrina thought he had made his money from building houses and was very surprised.
Read The Magic Money Jar »
If you are like me and like many other people I know, you sometimes ask yourself just how successful you are. Birthdays and New Years are typical opportunities to do this, but there are many other soft moments, when we find ourselves sitting quietly and thinking, “How is my life going?”
Read How to Measure Your Life »
I hope that by now you are convinced it is better for you to be a happy, wealthy parent and all you need is some knowledge about the way to get there. As strange as this seems, not all people want to be wealthy and, sure enough, they are not.
As parents, we all want our kids to do well. So we look for ways to measure and track whether they are doing well. Not having gone through parenting school, most of us resort to what our parents have done with us, which is focus on the grades we “brought back home” from school. As long as the kids’ grades are good, they must be doing fine, right?
Read Learning? What learning? »
For many years, I have been writing about the quest for happiness and, as you may now, I believe that focusing on good is the best way to make it expand. However, there are (many) people who find negative examples more effective, so I am going to try some humor (taking a cue from my kids, who flattered me this month when I bought a funny birthday card and said I was developing my sense of humor) and talk a little bit about the dark side of life.
Read The Art of Misery »
Many people, when I talk to them about making money and being rich, come up with good “reasons” why they do not need to be rich. They tell themselves that rich people are sad, miserable, stingy and, most commonly, corrupt, and they do not want to be rich to avoid fitting these descriptions.
These beliefs were made up by poor people looking for ways to feel good about not having enough money or the skills to get it.
Read Rich Thoughts, Poor Thoughts »
This is a question I got from a mother:
“I have a 13-year-old son who is a forgetful kid. I ask him to bring notes from school and he forgets them. He forgets his homework, he forgets to bring messages from school, he forgets he has a test, he forgets we have plans in the family. I talked to his teachers and we agreed to communicate between us but he keeps forgetting his communication book. I feel lost and I do not understand why he is so forgetful in things that are important and remembers his computer stuff well.
What can I do?”
Read How to Cure a Forgetful Kid »
Book your private life coaching with Ronit Baras and learn how to be happy in life
