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Posts tagged 'responsibility'

The Art of Being: Teach & Inspire by Living Authentically

Living authentically - grandmother and granddaughter on a nature walk

Three years ago, someone asked me, “If you could teach anything, what would it be?”

Honestly, the question caught me off guard. I didn’t have an answer. It’s such a big question that it’s been stuck in my head ever since.

You see, I’ve been a teacher for 38 years. My whole career has been teaching special education and focusing on emotional intelligence. I’ve always loved helping people find their strengths and use them to navigate life with happiness, health and success.

But in all those years, I never stopped to ask myself, “What would I teach if I could choose anything?” I didn’t think I needed to. I was just Ronit, the teacher, doing what I do best.

That question changed things for me and took me through a process of discovery. It made me think about life, about what I’ve learned, and what I really want to give to the world. Maybe by sharing the process of my discovery about the art of being, I can help you think about your own answers too.

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Mastering Self-Care: Your A-to-Z Guide

Self-care has a very simple definition. It is the things we do, or avoid doing, in order to look after ourselves, physically and/or mentally. If you have a car, you need to maintain smooth operation with regular servicing and gasoline/electricity. If you want to travel safely in this life, you also need to care for your mind and body.

Self-care maintains our health and wellbeing so we can function and enjoy our life.

Many people confuse self-care with selfishness and roget that we never say our car is selfish when it needs service. We accept it and are even willing to pay for it.

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It’s Hard to Say “I’m Sorry” When You’re Not

Kids sometimes do things that others don’t like. Sometimes, they break things and even hurt others. It’s important to help them understand what happened, but parents should never force them to say, “I’m sorry”.

I think the idea of saying “sorry” is distorted because of social “expectations” that if someone is hurt, we must have done something to cause it. This makes parents “teach” their kids to say “sorry” even if it comes without actual “sorrow”.

It’s very easy to see it with young children. They take a game away from another kid (sibling), the other kid cries. Immediately, the parents scold them and force them to go to the other kid and say they’re sorry.

This is humiliating. It plants in those kids the idea that saying “sorry” is admitting guilt, even if they don’t think they’re guilty. And it builds up and stays with the kids.

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Seize the Day: Are You Using or Losing Your Time?

Time is precious. Some say that time is the only thing we really have. Most people know the expressions “Carpe diem”, “Seize the day” and “Seize the present”, but only few actually live by them.

Time keeps moving forward. Often, we feel like it’s just flown past us and are out of time. So, we need to learn to appreciate the time we have and use it wisely. We all have the same 24 hours every day. We should make the most of them.

We say that children have no concept of time. My 3-year-old granddaughter has reached the stage of recognizing past and present. For her, the past is “yesterday”, and the future is “tomorrow”. That’s advanced for her age, but limited compared to an adult’s understanding of time.

But I wonder about this view.

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This Is How To Take Charge Of Your Life

Many people want to take charge of their life, but simply don’t know how to. It’s one thing to understand that taking charge is important and another thing to actually do it. If you’re looking for tips that will help you, keep reading!

I wasn’t always in charge of my life. For my first 16 years, other people and circumstances ruled everything. I had no control whatsoever and my life looked, well, out of control.

I was sailing in the sea of life without a captain and was knocked around from side to side, crashing and tumbling when strong winds came. Without direction, without resources, with no captain and no crew to support me, every breeze turned into a storm.

For every two steps forward, I took one step back. Even when I made progress, I still felt I was going nowhere.

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Powerful Benefits of Teaching Your Kids to Help the World

We should all teach our children how to help the world, because they will grow up in it and it needs to sustain them and their children. The good news is that if they start caring for their world at a young age, their emotional health and wellbeing will benefit too.

Children are born in a world where things are done to them and for them. Babies are born helpless, and since they can’t take care of themselves, they grow up thinking that the world revolves around them. Realizing that it doesn’t brings a lot of tears and tantrums, as you might expect.

Most kids gradually learn to live with not getting everything they want. But they don’t completely grow out of the tantrums.

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Boring: What Does it Really Mean?

As a parent, I hear the word “boring” a lot. I also heard it a lot as a teacher. There are two main reasons kids use the word “boring”:

1. They say “boring” instead of “hard” when they want to hide their difficulties.
2. They want to manipulate their parents and put pressure on them.

Today, I would like to talk about the reasons and solutions for the second type of motivation.

Children learn at an early age that their parents find the word “boring” painful. They know their parents feel uncomfortable when they hear it, so it becomes a “button” to press. This happens when the parents see themselves as being in charge of their children’s entertainment.

I am sure you have heard many mothers say that they can’t leave their babies on their own for 2 seconds. Those babies grow up to be kids who can’t entertain themselves, and later on, they become adults who can’t entertain themselves.

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Contentment and Gratitude: How Green is Your Grass?

I’ve written a lot about happiness and realized that some people just don’t get that happiness is an idea, a thought, an action you choose. On the other hand, unhappiness is the absence of that idea. One of the things that make people miserable is always comparing themselves to others.

I guess the reason we compare is that we learn it from our parents. It is an essential part of life and an important factor in our evolution. We must have a definition of what is right and what is wrong to navigate through life. If green, vibrant, healthy grass is the definition of happiness, then yellow, dull, dying grass is the definition of misery.

So, it’s OK to look at other people’s grass to find better ways to treat ours. But it’s not so good to believe that “The grass is always greener on the other side”.

Do you know why it’s not good? Because it’s not true.

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Self-Regulation in Your Marriage

Bride and groom holding their hands in heart shape

This entry is part 1 of 34 in the series Save Your Marriage

Marriage is a give-and-take relationship. It succeeds when two people balance their own desires with those of their partner. If you have been married for a while, you know that this balancing act is not easy. It’s not easy because it requires regulation of thoughts, feelings and behaviors, and when this self-regulation takes too much energy, the person collapses and so does the relationship.

Regulation is a science. To understand why people reach this point of “no more” and consider separation or divorce, you need to know how to prevent yourself and your partner from reaching break point and how to separate external and internal regulation (self-regulation).

Regulation is the ability to control thoughts, feelings and behavior, instead of doing things on impulse. The more we practice, the stronger it gets, like a muscle. Once it is strong enough, it’s much easier to resist temptation and function according to a plan, rather than going with whatever comes our way or whoever applies more pressure. Just think of a baby that needs to hold his pee until he gets to the toilet. He needs to regulate his impulse to pee in his pants (or diaper).

Here are three research conclusions about self-regulations.

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Best Family Quotes that Will Change Your Life

Family quotes, and other quotes, have been part of my life and personal growth since I was 16 years old.

For the first time, I had my own room. I took a sheet of thick paper that looked like an old scroll, burned its edges with a candle, wrote some quotes on it (by hand) and put on to my wall with sticky tape.

Recently, my sister helped clean up my parents’ house and found the quotes I left there 38 years ago. One of the family quotes was from the book Illusions by Richard Bach, which I had received as a gift.

This book has made a huge impression on my life and this quote changed the way I looked at family and life.

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