identity Tag

Posts tagged 'identity'

100 Things I Want People to Think of Me

Generally, I think we need to live our life based on our own judgment by developing a sense of self that functions as a moral GPS (or compass), and not by other’s judgment or external rules and beliefs. In life coaching, the task of finding who we are relies on our ability to strip away other’s expectations and what they think of us. Instead, we learn to listen to our inner voice and “redesign” ourselves.

This process of redesigning who we are happens in the context of being part of a society, because connections and relationships form a huge part of our experience. When we “bare ourselves” and take off the “clothes” of what others think of us, the “shoes” of where they think we should go, the “coat” of others’ compliments or criticism, we need to put on new “clothes” that we love and feel comfortable with to warm us through life’s challenges.

Sometimes, looking at ourselves from the outside, can help us see things with fresh eyes.

This post is part 42 of 49 in the series Make a List

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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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I am not Black, You are not White and We are not Labels

I have been doing diversity education for the last ten years. The more people I saw, the more I realized how important this work was. For some unknown reason, people like labels. They think that labels help them define the world. I believe they shrink the world, limit thinking and restrict our range of experiences.

When I was 21, I was greatly inspired by one of my psychology teachers at university. She came to class and asked us, “Who are you?” At first, we thought she was weird. Well, she was weird (at least this is how we labeled her), but the more we discussed this topic, the more we realized that this weird question was all about the labels we put on others to help us define ourselves.

In one of the classes, she asked me, “Ronit, who would you be if your parents gave you a different name?” I looked at her, unsure if I had understood the question. I was puzzled for a while, and then said, “Me!”

In our psychology classes, we discussed identity and how the labels we give to everything around us limit the range of the experiences we have. At one stage, she told us to move around the room based on our labels. She asked all females to move to one side, all males to the other. Then, she moved us around based on other labels we are given in everyday life, like height, age, race, religion, the area of the country where we grew up, etc. It didn’t take us long to realize that labels divide us into groups, and when this is done, it is very easy to control us.

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Don’t Put Labels on Kids

This story illustrates the danger in putting labels on people. I hope it will show you why I always tell parents “Don’t put labels on kids”.

This week, I met Lena, 22-year-old girl who was diagnosed with anxiety disorder. She was so anxious she was afraid to run in the park because “people look at her.” She came to see me through a referral, with the support of her mom who was a doctor and was exhausted form seeing so many doctors and so many therapists and psychologists.

When I asked her mom, “What do you mean by ‘so many’?” she said that Lena had been in treatment for 10 years and been taking medication for that long.

“Does the medication help?” I asked.

“No”, she said, “She is at home, in her room, afraid to leave the house and the medication does nothing at all. If anything, things only got worse over the years”.

“Then why aren’t you considering stopping the medication?” I asked.

“Her doctor thinks things will get worse without it”.

Catch 22, right?

When Lena came, I could no longer discuss the issue with her mom, because legally, Lena was an adult and I had the privacy obligation not to discuss her coaching with anyone else. When she came, I tried to figure out what happened that had gotten her to where she was and things fad gotten so out of hand to the point of shutting herself at home and refusing to leave.

This post is part 13 of 19 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

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Character Traits: Swapping the Bad for the Good

In the previous post about bad character traits, I gave an exercise to examine the bad traits parents and kids have. In this post, I will focus more on the good character traits and how to make sure they are “watered” well and kept alive.

Here is the list of good character traits again:

Letter A: Active, Adaptable, Adventurous, Agreeable, Appreciative, Articulate, Athletic, Ambitions, Artistic, Aesthetic

Letter B: Balanced, Brilliant, Brave

Letter C: Calm, Capable, Caring, Charismatic, Charming, Cheerful, Careful, Clean, Clever, Colorful, Compassionate, Confident, Conscientious, Considerate, Consistent, Contemplative, Cooperative, Courageous, Courteous, Creative, Curious, Crafty,

Letter D: Daring, Decisive, Dedicated, Deep, Discreet, Dramatic, Dynamic

This post is part 8 of 8 in the series Helping Kids Build Character

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Positive Character Traits for Children: Watering with Weed Killer

The previous Character Traits posts focused on what parents should say to instill positive character traits in their kids. Character traits are like plants or trees that grow over time – all they need is for parents to plant good beliefs as seeds and provide reinforcement as water. Unfortunately, some parents use weed killer as water. This ensures this plant will never grow big and strong and even makes room for some nasty “bad” plants to grow.

It is amazing how the seeds of character sown in childhood can have a long-term impact. Some of my grown up clients (aged 25 to 65) are being held back by some very old and poisonous trees that creep into everything they do. It is as if there is a space in the brain dedicated for each good trait. As soon as the area has been poisoned by weed killer, nothing good can grow there. If a person feels fundamentally inadequate, this becomes part of their identity. If anything were to suggest that they are adequate, they will subconsciously resist with all their might. The subconscious minds is a tricky thing and it takes time and courage to access and heal.

This post is part 4 of 8 in the series Helping Kids Build Character

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False Identity

In the first session with every new client, I go over the program I have written that has helped many people around the world find happiness, strength, confidence, love, power and health. I explain to them that finding who they are is crucial to the success of this program. The more confident and courageous clients tell me that they don’t really know what identity means. I like this honesty.

A great many people find it hard to understand what “identity” means. Kids, in particular, hear a lot about “identity”, but have no idea what it means.

To me, the simple definition of identity is being yourself, but this is very complicated, because it is not easy to answer the question, “Who am I?”

If you ask people to define themselves, you will find many beliefs and concepts they have that bring them lots of grief, anger, frustration and fear.

In finding who we are, it is very important to find out who we are not. Some negative examples can helps us refine the definition. Every time we have a problem, it is because we live in a false belief about ourselves – we use a false identity.

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Does Valentine’s Day Promote Violence?

Valentine’s Day is coming soon. My junk mail is full of advertisements for gifts for the Valentine’s Day couple. Just like every year, I am a little disgusted. Valentine’s Day, which is supposedly a day to share and express love for each other, is in fact a day that promotes very specific gender stereotypes – aggressiveness and violence in men, and vanity in women. You might say I am over reacting but I dare you to look at Valentine’s Day ads and see how stereotypical they are. Women are perceived as obsessed with their looks and man are obsessed with anger, violence, sex, aggressiveness and technology.

Since when do women only care about their beauty? It is a sad state of our a society if everyone believes the Valentine’s Day ads that think women are so shallow and dumb that they only care about their looks.

Since when do men only want to be perceived as strong and aggressive? It is a sad state of our a society if everyone believes the Valentine’s Day ads that think men are so shallow, angry, aggressive and childish that they will do anything to make themselves feel “manly”.

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Parenting 101: Top Parenting Essentials

After coaching so many parents, and raising my own kids, I have accumulated many essential parenting tips that I want to share with you. I hope you find them useful.

Take care of your happiness first. Just like they tell you on a plane, you should put the oxygen mask on your own face before helping your kids. If you want to raise happy kids, you must take care of your own happiness first. If you do not have oxygen, you are no good to your kids. Happy Parents Raise Happy Kids.

Be positive. It is very easy to notice what your kids are doing wrong but harder to pay attention to the great things they are doing. Parents tend to take the good things for granted. In life, you get what you focus on and parenting is exactly the same. If you focus on good thing, you will have more of them. If you focus on problems, conflicts, difficulties, bad manners, you will have more of them. If you notice your child doing something good, say it! Praise kids for being kind, congratulate them for making an effort, acknowledge their kindness and you will see more of it.

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12 Practical Ways to Parent Sore Losers

It is no wonder most of us are such sore losers. Winning is easy and losing is not. Let’s face it, regardless their age, no one likes to lose. Even the word “losing” sounds devastating.

Unfortunately, parents who are sore losers tend to raise kids who are sore losers. So, what can we do to make sure losing is not so devastating? What’s the best approach to parenting sore losers?

When I had my early childhood center, we stopped using the word “losing”. We replaced it with words like learning, opportunities, testing, growing and evolving. It does not sound like much but it worked well for the kids. It takes away a lot of the heartache and pain.

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