100 Things that Make Me Happy

Gratitude is an excellent cure for taking life for granted. On the quest for happiness, appreciating what we have is a great way to shift from feeling sad, bad or frustrated.

In the Make a List series, I have written about the importance of knowing myself and presenting my identity to the rest of the world. I have written about the importance of friends in our life and how they have contributed to who we are today. I have written about why it is important to have long-term goals and desires and to plant self-fulfilling prophecies in our mind.

Today, I want to tell you why appreciation and gratitude are important skills that we need to practice-every day (yes, every day)!

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How to Make Troubled Teens Relax: Change Your Parenting

What are troubled teens? Could your teen be troubled? Can you do anything about it as a parent? What can you do? Get your answers right here.

In the past few weeks, I overheard talk about a teenager (let’s call him Jonathan). Besides being very talented, he used to be friendly and “normal”. But recently started to miss classes, show up late, fail various subjects and behave indifferently. One speculation was that he might have started using drugs.

I thought this was serious enough to report to his school through a friend of ours, who is his teacher. “Speculation or not, the school should look into it”, I said.

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100 Things I Want to Be, Do and Have in My Lifetime

Young woman holding a photo of an old woman in front of her face - a lifetime perspective

Dan, one of my personal life coaches, told me about this list on the first sessions I had with him.

“When I was 18, my dad sent me to an evening with a motivational speaker”, Dan said, “He told us to write down 100 things we want to do in our lifetime. I write my list and put it somewhere. When I became a life coach, I found my list again and I was amazed at how many of the things in it I had already done “.

About a month ago, I started writing about list making and I was very happy to receive many encouraging comments about how effective and motivating it is for people to make these lists.

Today’s list is about looking forward into the future. The Roman philosopher Seneca said, “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable”. Imagine yourself sailing in the ocean of life. You need to know where you are going, right?

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Riding in Cars with Kids (2)

Yesterday, I started writing about my secrets for riding in cars with kids. If you are a parent and you have kids, I am sure you are asking yourself how to make the ride safe and happy for everyone. I hope the secrets I give here from 20 years of experience and many hours of being in the car with my kids will motivate you to get into the car with your kids and go on wonderful journeys of fun and joy together.

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Riding in Cars with Kids (1)

Riding in the car with kids is challenging for many parents. When the kids are younger, when the rides are longer and when you are the only adult in the car, it can be even worse.

Gal and I lived in Bangkok for a year and half and riding in the car our kids was something we did for hours almost each day. Eden was about 7, Tsoof was just a baby and Bangkok was a big traffic jam. One day, Gal was on his way home (well, it was a hotel, but we called it home for a month) and sat in traffic for 50 minutes until he decided to get out of the car and walk (oh, I forgot to say we had a driver). He arrived at the hotel after 10 minutes, showered, changed and went back downstairs to see the driver pull into the driveway.

To take Eden to see a friend on Saturday morning, we would drive for about 3 hours to a place that would only be 30 minutes away at 9pm. Going to work took 10 times as long as it would in light traffic and that got every worse during the rainy season.

As usual, when you do not have a choice, creativity sparks.

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Balancing Act

While many people are in a constant battle to get more and more things in life, this brings with it more and more of the things they do not want. The Genie of the Universe who grants our wishes cannot separate the good from the bad and provides both. You ask for more money and the Genie gives you a promotion with more time away from your kids.

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Mother’s Day Every Day

The week before Mother’s Day, I heard the kids whispering to one another and being not very good at keeping things secret. I knew they were planning something for Mother’s Day and it made me wonder what I would like to receive for this special day.

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Dirty Dancing

What has the world come to? When little girls perform in provocative outfits, would you not agree this is a bit too much? When dancing is not an art, but another form of instructive subject, have we not gone too far?

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Skills You Don’t Learn at School

Unfortunately, there are a lot of things we should have learned at school, because as a society, we cannot rely on parents to be able to do it by themselves. For example, we cannot expect all parents to teach their kids literacy and numeracy because not all of them know enough and out of those who do, not many are also good at teaching.

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Kids Making a Difference

When I was 16, I joined the school council and fought for kids’ rights and freedom of speech. People said it was because I was a Libra, but the teacher who coordinated my school’s leadership programs (school council, school newspaper and class representatives) told us we were the future and what we were doing was very important. We wrote protest poems, listened to Joan Baez, negotiated with school authorities to make sure our education went beyond learning math and literature and made a big difference in the life of our fellow students.

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