Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (4): Parenting Changes Life

Many parents say parenting has changed their life.

As young woman, I wanted to join a course to become a facilitator of parenting workshops. The director of the project said to me, “Ronit, in order to be a parent educator, you need to be a parent first”. And she declined my application.

No matter what I said, she just replied, “When you have your first child, you will understand”. She was determined and I failed to convince her to accept me into the program.

Later that year, when I held Eden in my arms after a long, hard labor that ended in a caesarian section, I understood why.

Today, in this chapter of Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss, our experts answer the question “How has parenting changed your life?”

This post is part 4 of 14 in the series Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss

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100 Things that Make Me Happy

Happiness is the ultimate desire. Whether you are happy with your relationships, happy with your social life, happy with your health, happy with your job/profession/career, happy with your financial freedom or just generally happy with yourself, you want to be happy!

Happiness is a measurement of fulfillment, achievement and success, yet although most of us think it is important, we dedicate more time to other things than we do to studying the art of being happy.

It is as simple as this:

“If you want to be happy, study happiness”

One of the greatest shifting activities we do with our clients is called “100 things that make me happy”. Focusing on the things that make us happy diverts our focus in life from what we do not have to what we have, from complaining to appreciation, from negative to positive and from sadness to happiness.

This post is part 30 of 48 in the series Make a List

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Happiness is a Choice

Happiness is probably the thing people dedicate their life to achieve the most. Their definition of happiness is different from one to another, but when they focus on a relationship, they want to be happy in that relationship, when they focus on money, they want to be happy with their financial situation, when they try to be healthy, they want to be happy with their body and wellbeing and when they spend time with their kids, they want to be happy in their parenting. Happiness covers every area of life. Life is a journey to many destinations, but in all of them, we seek to be happy.

So the big question is “How to achieve happiness?”

Would you like to have a happiness manual?

Who wouldn’t?

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Big Picture Kids

Every parent would like to give their kids abilities that will stick with them and make their life easy, happy and successful in every area.

One good and easy way of doing this is to raise kids who look at the big picture, because it increases their emotional intelligence and, as a result, their happiness and success in everything they do.

Kids who are able to see beyond local and immediate circumstances (“right here, right now and only me”) can handle and prevent difficulties more easily and it only takes practice to teach kids this mindset. Seeing the big picture means being able to detach and look beyond what is happening right here, right now into other places and other times that are being affected. It is very much like being in a helicopter (hence the term “helicopter view”, as opposed to “tunnel vision”).

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Lessons in Patience

Have you ever looked at the watch again and again, only to find that 30 seconds had passed? I think humans have a real challenge with the notion of time. Time is not very consistent with the feeling of waiting for something to happen. When we are happy, time seems to fly quickly and all our attempts to freeze the moment for a bit longer result in total failure. When we are down or waiting for something to happen, it is almost as if the clock ticks in . s l o w . m o t i o n.

Feels familiar?

I think I have found the cure for this inconsistency. It is called “patience”. It is kind of a strange cure, almost like vitamins. The less we have of it in our body, the more we need it. You will be very surprised to know that just last month, I had to take large doses of my own medicine, unwillingly of course, but it helped me heal a bit. Today, I would like to share with you some insights I have learned about this medicine, which I call The P Inhaler.

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Life Formula

This week, I was asked by one of my clients about the formula for a successful, healthy and happy life, but as much as I wanted to give him the formula, I could not.

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Make a list: List Making

One day, I took my daughter Eden, who was 16 years old at the time, to a workshop I ran with a group of women about life skills and relationships. When we reached the positive thinking and happiness part of the workshop, I asked everyone to go home and think of a 100 things that would make them happy.

This post is part 1 of 48 in the series Make a List

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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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The Wizard of Oz

I dedicate this post to you, the person researching the site to learn about me, and to the aspiring coaches out there. Over the pages of my blog, I will explain the process I went through when studying to become a life coach, the connection between education and life coaching and why I believe it is a winning combination. I hope that you will be inspired. I believe that the more coaches there are in the world, the closer we get to a better world.

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Parenting for Tomorrow

Here is a typical scene in many homes these days: you come in the door, pass by the living room and see the TV on and one or two kids holding something in their hand, with a wire leading to just under the TV. They kids are totally absorbed in what is happening on the screen and ignore you completely, while pressing buttons and pushing little levers on the box in their hands.

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