Turn Your Unhappiness into Personal Growth

I often discuss happiness with my clients. They find it very awkward when I tell them it is possible to find happiness everywhere, including times of unhappiness.

Most people try to avoid unhappiness like the plague. They divide life into happy and unhappy and think they should move towards happy and avoid unhappy. This is good if you think of it as a process and direction, but not if you think of it as something that shrinks you. You see, we can grow from happiness and we can grow from unhappiness.

Trent was a 28-year-old man who worked at a petrol station. He was healthy, made good money, could pick shifts if he wanted to do something in the evening, had time for computer games and had some good friends.

On the surface, you’d think Trent had a very good life, but he didn’t. His friends were all professionals with university degrees, and he still didn’t know what he wanted to do in his life. He told me he’d never known what he wanted to do in his life.

One day, Trent had a weekend away with his friends, and although the time spent together was fantastic, Trent came back very unhappy. This was when he looked for a life coach and found me.

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Choosing the Right Career Path for Your Kids

Parents worry about their children choosing the right career path. Some people start these worries very early in their kids’ life. I know parents who have registered their babies to a special daycare center when the mother discovered she was pregnant.

Don’t get me wrong, I think education is important and planning children’s future is important too, but choosing a child’s career path before he or she is born?

I met Miguel when he contacted me about child coaching. He wanted me to work with his son, Luca. When I asked him and his wife to tell me about Luca, they only had negative things to say right from the start.

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I’m Disappointed in You!

Think of the last time anyone said to you, “I’m disappointed in you”. How did that make you feel?

Being disappointed is part of life. I guess it is one of the greatest challenges in life. Realizing that life is not happening the way you want and managing to push through despite it.

Although being disappointed is part of life, being disappointed in others should not be. When I work with my life coaching clients, we deal with a lot of disappointment. Sadly, what hurts them most is not self-disappointment – that things didn’t happen the way they “should have” – but being a disappointment to someone close.

When I think of all the times I have heard this, I can see two groups of people that express disappointment in my clients: teachers and parents, in this order. I dare say that they cause a lot of damage.

Disappointment is “sadness or displeasure caused by the non-fulfilment of one’s hopes or expectations”. Therefore, saying to someone, “I’m disappointed in you”, is telling that person he or she is not fulfilling your hopes and expectations.

Who are you to cause someone a bad feeling for not fulfilling your expectations?

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Who’s Afraid of Exams?

Many children hate exams. If you ask them what they hate more than homework, they will tell you it is exams. They hate them because it is natural to be anxious in a situation that puts our abilities to the test.

Someone is looking at what you do, checking what you do and then judges you for it. Children don’t like to be judged. Well, in fact, no one likes to be judged.

Many parents say to me, “This is life and kids need to learn to live with it!” and I wonder if this really must be part of life and whether we must live in such a judgmental environment. Maybe we can transfer the focus from what others think about us to self-awareness and what we think about ourselves.

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Pocket Money: Parents’ Dysfunctional Attitudes

Pocket money is a topic that concerns many parents. “When to start, if at all?” and “How much to give?” are questions that almost every parent struggles with. To answer these questions, most parents should first answer the following question:

Why do I want to give my child pocket money?

I grew up in a poor family and pocket money was never an option for me. Only when I was 14 and we moved to a new town (which was only slightly bigger than the small town I grew up in), I discovered there was such a thing as pocket money.

I was so surprised. My parents had so little that whenever we asked my dad to buy us something, he said, “We don’t have money”. Therefore, in my mind, pocket money was part of wealthy kids’ life.

But it does not have to be.

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You Can Change Your Life

Change is not easy and you can recognize the points that have changed your course in life only in hindsight. We call these points “quantum moments”. I have had many quantum moments in life and the ones that have steered me in the right direction included reading books, meeting inspiring people and attending empowering events. I contemplated each of them until I got to some realization that later became part of my being.

My biggest change in life was when I was 15 years old. I remember how before it, I dreamed every day of waking up to a different life. I said, “I wish…” and had millions of wishes. I hoped to be the Genie of the Lamp, but every morning realized I was not. I built up hopes and got up in the morning to realize they were just illusions that I had no power to fulfill.

You see, it is one thing to want and another thing to make it happen.

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The Power of Complimenting: Don’t Be Stingy

Some parents are stingy with complimenting. I do not blame them. They probably grew up with stingy parents, who probably grew up with parents that did not compliment them either. I have said many times that we suffer today for things our ancestors did, which have not evolved.

Wake up, parents! We do not need to do the same things our great-great-grandparents did, because in some areas of life, they were not great at all. Giving compliments was definitely one of these areas.

The belief “back then” was that compliments got in the way of “building character”. I have clients and friends who say it aloud, “If you compliment people, especially children, they become complacent”.

What?!

Since when is complacent a bad word, anyway?

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Leadership, Management and Parenting

My mother-in-law was an experienced teacher and a manager at an adult education institute. Many years ago, when she was still alive, she told me about a management course she was taking that shook her perception of her work. She was very surprised to discover that there were many types of managers.

After her course, we had many discussions about how management, leadership and parenting are very similar in their essence. At that time, I was running my first business, where I was a manager, a leader and a parent. I managed all the aspects of the business and led the educational program, while being a young mother.

I thought about these three roles we play for years and managed to combine them into something that worked really well for my family and me. Hopefully, the ideas below will work well for your family and you too.

Parenting is a management position. For the family “business” or “operation” to run properly, we need to manage time, manage our emotions and those of our family members, manage money, manage habits, manage education, manage health, manage work and manage time off. In fact, all aspects of family life, we even need to manage things we have no control over (yes, it is very frustrating that we cannot control everything).

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The Expectations Paradox: Danger Ahead

From the minute I woke up, at the age of 16, and took control of my life, I had a good understanding of the power of expectations. At least this is what I thought for a long time. I thought that I switched from having low expectation to high expectations and believed that high expectations were the key to success in life.

I still think so, although I believe that it is important to distinguish between expectations from ourselves and expectations from others. Even more important is what we do when our expectations are not fulfilled.

Expectations can be a blessing or a curse and we can always determine what they were after the event. Subconsciously, when we succeed, we tend to consider our expectations as blessings, as a ladder that led us to victory. When we fail, we consider them false, frustrating and painful. In victories, we reward ourselves for having “motivating expectations”. In failures, we blame circumstances and/or people, and sometimes, we blame ourselves.

Expectations are a double-edged sword if we do not define them properly.

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Children with the Kinesthetic Communication Style

Kinesthetic kids love mess. Two boys cutting out Halloween pumpkins

The idea that all kids are the same is false and brings parents and teachers into lots of trouble. Every time these kids are not “the same” as others, they think something is wrong with them. Nothing is wrong with them! They are just different and we should all be happy that there is not such a thing as “one size fits all”.

In my kids’ assessments, I check children’s communication styles. If I know their communication styles, I know what challenges they have and why, and I know the best ways to introduce new information to them.

During our sessions together, I pay attention to how they move. I check if they stand up while they work and if they move their legs or other body part. I notice if they are social and friendly and pay attention to how they talk about others. Moving a lot and talking about emotions, fairness, kindness and caring are typical for kinesthetic children.

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