Kindness Matters

Be kind, for everyone is fighting their battle too

Kindness matters. If you look around, it is easy to see that everyone struggles. The world is a battle field and we are in a constant state of war.

If you watch the news for five minutes, you risk believing that the world is a dangerous place. Countries fight other countries, cultures fight other cultures, people fight in the name of God and in the name of their religion, people fight their neighbors, and their spouses. They fight their friends and their children. At work, they fight the boss or their colleagues. Even if they don’t fight for survival, they fight for justice or for love. If the fight is not with others, they fight time, weight, aging.

There is no end to the struggles. No wonder life seems so exhausting. I believe the source of all the struggles is the fight with our fears.

A fight, no matter what the cause is, is still a fight. It is like a war between two, even if the two are inside of us. I have learned a very good rule in life: In war, there are no winners. Some lose more while others lose less. In any case, there are only losers. So, if we fight, no matter who and what, we always lose.

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Strong Affirmations: High Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is something that functions like fuel to the body. If we have high self-esteem, the ride is better in many ways. We move forward more smoothly, we have fewer problems and we get to our destination faster.

Everyone has some level of confidence in life. It is just that some people have more than others and they seem to go through life with much more success and happiness. People with high self-esteem have fewer doubts and they don’t blame their “ride” every time things don’t happen the way they want them to be.

Let’s face it, we can’t always get what we expect 100% of the time. If we could, we would be able to predict what will happen in the future (I don’t know if this is a better way to experience life but let’s leave this dilemma for another post). What we can do is make sure our beliefs set us on a very easy, smooth (as much as possible), happy and successful ride. If it can get us forward faster, all the better.

This blog is full of many beliefs about living life with confidence. I have written about ways to instill confidence in our children as parents or teachers. The list of affirmations that promote high self-esteem is endless. If I tried to write a list of them all, I would find myself spending years and never reaching the end of the list. There are millions of thoughts or combinations of thoughts that support high self-esteem and boost confidence. Notice these in yourself and in the world around you. Start collecting them and learning how to adopt them.

This post is part 1 of 6 in the series Affirmations

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Good Relationship with Loving Affirmations

Relationships and the way we connect with others are very important and essential to our happiness and success in life. Research shows that people who are in good relationships are healthier, happier and they live longer. So, good relationships are the best prescription for a long life. I would take two prescriptions of that kind of medication.

We learn about relationships from the people closest to us – usually, our parents, later on our siblings and much later, from friends. If they model good relationships, we copy them. If the model bad relationships, we model that as well. Why? Because as kids we don’t have any way of filtering bad examples. It is only as we grow that we start developing critical thinking, and we start noticing that relationships at our house are different to other houses. Often times, that can make us frustrated because we don’t have the skills to make things change.

I once worked with a woman who was 37 years old. She had so many partners and no stable relationships. We checked her beliefs and found the source of the problem. We discovered that the origin of it was from her dad leaving her mom and her siblings when she was about 10 years old. He left to be with another women and she adopted a belief that “all man are assholes” (I am quoting). As a result, she did not trust men. With a belief like that, it is hard and even impossible to find a relationship, not to mention keep it.

This post is part 5 of 6 in the series Affirmations

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Healthy Affirmations: Healthy Body

In the last chapter of the affirmation series, I explained why it is important to adopt good beliefs about the world around us. What we think of our body and about its health is very important to the function of the body and its health. We can plant healthy beliefs in our minds by using healthy affirmations and reading them over and over again.

As a mother, I am a strong believer in affirmations and planting good and healthy beliefs in kids’ minds. I have 3 kids and they are extremely healthy. They go to the doctor for health checks, not due to illness. I truly believe this is mainly because they have very healthy beliefs about their bodies and their health.

Gal and I appreciate health very much and we try to instill healthy thoughts in our children. If you are a parent and would like to raise healthy kids, read the list of beliefs and pick those you want to plant in your kids.

This post is part 4 of 6 in the series Affirmations

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Moving House Made Easy: Moving Day

When you and your family are moving house, the moving day itself is one of the most exciting days for everyone. The day also brings up a mixture of anticipation and fear. You will often find yourself consulting your to-do list to make sure you remember everything without feeling overwhelmed. I love to-do lists. They make my life very easy. That is why I have added a list here to help make life easier on your moving day.

If you have people hovering around on your moving day, make sure they are helping and not getting in the way. Some people make themselves at home and jump straight in. But other need you to host them. This is not helpful on your moving day. Keep visitors for another time.
Make sure you have a plan for your trip to the new destination. If you are travelling long distances, you may need accommodation on the way, petrol for the ride, make sure your car is serviced. If you are moving overseas, consider visas, passports, flight tickets. And it is a good idea to have a few copies distributed between the adults. Make sure you have enough cash for the move.

This post is part 11 of 13 in the series Moving House Made Easy

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Moving House Made Easy: Movers

Moving house can be a stressful situation. To make your life easier, find trustworthy and reliable movers. Adding unreliable movers to your list of things to deal with will make the move more expensive, not to mention draining emotionally, and you need all the energy you can get to manage such a big transition.

Some professional movers will take advantage of your situation and put pressure on you. To prepare, get 3 quotes for everything. Make sure there is an agreement they cannot get out of.

Some movers (called “removalists” in Australia) will come to your door on the day of the move and say that you have to add more money because you have more furniture than they thought when they gave you a quote. Or a cleaner might say, “Oh, I didn’t realize the carpet was so dirty” and since you are rushed to get it done on the day, you have no choice but to pay the extra before they are willing to start working.

This post is part 5 of 13 in the series Moving House Made Easy

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Boosting Kids’ Self Esteem

Every parent wants their child to have high self esteem. This mini course shares tips that help make that happen. In the last chapter of the mini course I shared 60 sentences parents say that kill kids’ self esteem.

The worst 4 things we, as parents, can do that compromises our kids’ self esteem are:

Telling them they are wrong
Expressing disappointment
Expressing shame
Expressing doubt in the kids’ attempts
Fortunately, we can also say the opposite things, which will boost their self esteem

This post is part 20 of 20 in the series Self Esteem Mini-Course

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Depression: Not Good for Parenting

Black dog of depression holding a man back

In over 1,100 posts on this blog, I have covered a lot of topics that lead to happiness. Today, I want to talk a little bit about the flipside of happiness – depression, because depression is a big issue for many families these days.

There are many depressed couples, depressed parents and more and more depressed kids. The most concerning of these are parents who suffer from depression, because they often raise kids that cannot handle life very well.

Some say depression runs in families. That is not surprising because I think if you take a perfectly normal and healthy child and raise them in a house where one or both parents are depressed, they will definitely grow up to be troubled.

Depression is something people do not like talking about. I know many families in which the depressed parent is dragging the whole family down but no one says anything. It is very much like having a parent who is alcoholic or terminally ill. Everyone walks around on eggshells but tries not to say anything. Not always because they are afraid, but often because they have given up trying to speak up.

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Positive Beliefs about Money

Being wealthy is more than counting the money you have in your bank account. It is a mindset. In the last chapter of Happily Wealthy Family, I shared many of the negative beliefs we often have about money. By identifying these beliefs, you can do your best to replace them with positive beliefs about money.

Here is a list of 100 positive beliefs about money, wealth, investing and rich people. Reading them does not mean you automatically adopt them. Find the ones you do believe in and make sure to hang them up in a place you can read every day. If you find others you want to adopt, find a story, a situation, or a person you know that is proof that this belief is valid.

For example, I had a belief that you have to be born rich to be rich. I wanted to believe that everyone could be rich. I knew a guy (who was my dad’s boss) who was very wealthy but was born to a very very poor family. With the help of this story, I could adopt the belief “Everyone can be rich!”

This post is part 9 of 10 in the series Happily Wealthy Family

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Proud Kids and Proud Mothers on Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day was a few days ago and it always makes me think about my role as a parent. Over the years, I have written a lot about being a mother to my 3 wonderful children. As a life coach, specializing in families, parenting has been my calling. I believe we bring our kids into this world so we can learn love. When our first child is born, we discover just how much love we are capable of.

The greatest struggle of being a parent is the unrealistic desire to be superman and wonder woman so our kids can be proud of us. In this quest we are often too hard on ourselves. We focus too much on what we do not do well rather than what we do that is inspiring to our kids.

A while ago, I received this video from my daughter that shows how hard we are on ourselves as parents. I think it is very touching and inspiring.

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