Tips for Teens: How to Make Good Career Choices

Wrench and a note saying "job search" in the back pocket of jeans

Teens have a bad reputation. Many people believe that they generally make bad choices, misbehave and lash out in ways that hurt them (and others) later. Among other things, they think that teens do not know how to make good career choices.

I have had the honor of working with many teens. This has given me a chance to prove to many of them, and to their families, that the bad reputation teens have is wrong. There are always teens who choose well, behave well and do well. And if they can do it, so can other teens!

Many of my clients share teen horror stories, like “You know teens. They never have any money”. I do not know what they are talking about. My own teens have always had money, and it was their own money.

Another common belief is “You know teens. They don’t want to work”. No, I do not know, because my own teens have always wanted to work. My kids also have friends who started working as soon as they could and are doing very well.

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Your Child’s Subconscious Mind Has No Sense of Humor

When people ask me to summarize my studies, I say they were all about how the brain works. The first four years focused on how to use this knowledge to stimulate learning. Later on, I learned how to work with the subconscious mind to avoid misery and have more success and more happiness.

Learning about the brain is a never-ending quest. There is much research in the world about the brain and its functions in health, in success, in relationships, in learning and in everyday life. Over the years, I have tried to share my learning about the brain and its functions through this blog, especially in relation to parenting and education.

Why parenting and education? Because these two areas are very close to my heart. Since you are reading this, you probably care about them too.

Today, I would like to share some insight that is very important in parenting and in education. I want to tell you how the conscious and the subconscious minds work. Specifically, I want to tell you about how the subconscious mind deals with humor.

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Raising Children with “The Disease to Please”

Children are affected strongly by their emotional state. When I work with children, I can see their performance decrease when they are emotionally preoccupied. Some kids are affected more and others less, but all of them drop in performance when they are down.

Kinesthetic children are typically affected more, because they are very sensitive to the people around them. These are the kids who can “sense” others around them and all they want is for “everyone to be happy and nice to each other”.

Children who are highly sensitive to pressure are at risk of developing “the disease to please” – dependence on external rewards and oversensitivity to pressure. It is the perception that other people’s feelings are so important that they trump your own.

In most cases, “the disease to please” comes from fear of rejection, which most people want to avoid. Many people have this disease and they got it during their childhood. We can say that this kind of disease is contagious and we catch it from our parents…

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Life Coaching Tips: Quote Cards

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goal, adjust the action - Confucius

Today, I would like to share with you, my coaches and mentoring clients (and even parents) a tool I have for working with my life-coaching clients. This tool is also useful for every form of therapy and even for teaching and parenting. This tool is quote cards.

Sometimes, it is hard to start a discussion with children, teens or adult clients, and we want the messages to appear as if they are coming from somewhere else and not from us. Quotes are a wonderful way to do that.

Generally, quotes are a wonderful tool in motivation, because they typically communicate an idea powerfully using a very short and concise format. Many times, when you read or hear a great quote, it reinforces a belief you already have, or already want to have, and you think, “I couldn’t have said it better”.

In coaching, our goal is to help our clients switch from one emotional or mental state to another. We need to be very careful about helping them get to where they want to go, not to where we think they should go. This is why getting to know them and their coaching targets is essential to our work.

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Parenting Focus: Point Your Flashlight and Magnifier at Good Things

Parents want to raise happy children. In all of the many parenting workshops I run, regardless of their parenting style, cultural background or socioeconomic status, all the parents want their kids to be happy, healthy and successful. The problem is that parents whose kids are not happy, healthy and successful do not understand how they contribute to this. They just cannot see how their parenting focus and the attention they give to problematic things creates these problems.

When children do not behave like we want them to and when they do things we do not like, we tend to pay attention to their behavior more than when they behave like we want them to and when they do things we like. This attitude only makes them continue to behave “badly” and creates a never-ending cycle of attention to “bad” behavior.

When pay attention to the problems, the problems keep growing, and then we pay attention to them more and we trap ourselves and our kids in this dysfunctional parenting style. In life, we get what we focus on. Some call it “the law of attraction”, I call it “the flashlight model”.

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Children with the Auditory Communication Style

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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How to Overcome Hard Times with Mindfulness

Hard times are part of life. Even the happiest and most successful people go through hard times. When they describe their successes, they typically share the hard times and how they got over them. When you are in the middle of a difficult period, it feels all consuming, like end of the world. It feels… hard!

Unfortunately, negative thinking can make the hard times feel even harder. Think of it as driving a car. Good times are like driving in a flow, when all the traffic lights are green and it feels like you are cruising. Hard times feel like there is a stop sign or red light at every intersection, and driving seems to take forever, because the cars in front of you cannot move forward, while you are running late for an important meeting.

When your thinking is negative, it feels like you are driving… backwards.

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There is Life after Relationship Breakup

Woman punching man in anger with boxing glove

Relationships are at the heart of human society. Some say that being in a relationship is a basic need. In the bible, even the animals in Noah’s ark were in pairs. I think we are meant to be in relationships. Having a partner to share our life and be with us along the way gives lots of certainty in life. Together we share love, friendship, adventures, struggles, finance and children, and together, it is always easier and more fun. Unfortunately, sometimes, it just does not work. In fact, in our society today, relationship breakup comes more often than not and with it comes pain, grief and loss of hope.

I work with many couples through relationship breakups and with individuals rebuilding their life after breaking up with a partner, and I can reassure you, there is life after a relationship breakup. Usually, couples feel a hole in their heart that they wish to fill up. The desire to fill this hole drives them quickly into a new relationship that looks exactly like the one they left in pain.

Why?

Because the separation originated from a hole inside of them, which they thought the other did not fill, and they enter the new relationship with the same mindset. After a short time of excitement and attention, they realize that the new partner, lover or boyfriend/girlfriend cannot fulfill their needs and they go through the same breakup with more pain, more grief and more loss.

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The 10,000-hour Rule and Becoming a Facebook Expert

When my son had some friends over for lunch one day, we had a talk about what they did in their spare time. This question always interested me, because my son, Tsoof, never had any spare time in high school. In the last year of high school, he started at 7am and finished around 5pm most days of the week. Since he was in bed by 8:30-9:00pm, there was not much time left for other things.

I was very surprised when some of them told me they spent 3-4 hours during weekdays on Facebook, and on the weekend, they even got to 6-8 hours.

I was shocked!

It made me realize why Tsoof was in a different state to them. Back then, he had no Facebook account, he was a student leader, he was taking a university course, he had 8 before-school and after-school activities every week and he was an excellent student.

I told them that if they understood the 10,000-hour rule, they would see that they were gearing up to be experts in … Facebook.

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Best Mother’s Day Gift: Time for Self-Care

It’s Mother’s Day again this weekend and the quest for the best Mother’s Day gift is on. This time, I want to inspire mothers around the world to give something to themselves, and you can help.

As a mother, I find it very hard to take time for myself. I am so used to giving and giving and giving, maybe I forgot how to take. You see, I am self-employed and the balance between work and life is mine to control. Some say it is easier. I think it is harder.

I had my first business straight after I graduated from college and I was already a mother by then. It was tough, but it made me efficient. When my kids were young, I never protested. I accepted that giving was part of my role. Over time, I learned to take time for myself in the spaces between being with my kids, my husband, housework and my job, and gradually increased it.

Time for ourselves is short in our society and as hard as it is to admit, mothers have even less of it than anyone else.

Why mothers?

In our society, mothers are in charge of many aspects of family life. I do not really like the stereotypical jokes about what mothers do in the time it takes dads to say “Jack Robinson”, or what happens when mom is sick vs. when dad has the Man Flu, but there is a lot of truth in them.

One of my clients protested this for a long time. She was in charge of her household and family life for 4 years. When she was ready to get back to work and asked her husband to be with the kids for one evening a week, he did not manage.

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Tips for Teens: How to Make Good Career Choices

Your Child’s Subconscious Mind Has No Sense of Humor

Raising Children with “The Disease to Please”

Life Coaching Tips: Quote Cards

Parenting Focus: Point Your Flashlight and Magnifier at Good Things

Children with the Auditory Communication Style

How to Overcome Hard Times with Mindfulness

There is Life after Relationship Breakup

Best Mother’s Day Gift: Time for Self-Care

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