Every person feels anxiety sometimes. It is a natural reaction to what is perceived as danger – an evolution of the “fight or flight” response. While for most people, experiencing anxiety in small doses is normal and healthy, for others, feeling anxious about the future or about situations over which they have no control may cause real interference with daily living. It is the frequency of the fear and the perception of danger, when in fact there may be no real danger, which causes anxious people to avoid participating in “normal” activities.
Irrational Rules of Living – My Way or the Highway
Irrational Rules of Living – Right and Wrong
If you think about it, from the day you are born, everyone around you tells you what is right and what is wrong. In previous generations, parents used “the carrot and the stick” to teach kids about right and wrong. Anger and punishment were the stick and smiles and rewards were the carrots. Some parents, following the example of their own parents, even used real sticks, belts and denying of physical touch as punishment, while using physical gestures like a hug and a kiss to say, “You’ve made me proud”.
Irrational Rules of Living – Problem Solving
Irrational Rules of Living – Self Worth
Irrational Rules of Living – External Approval
Great Expectations
When I was training to be a life coach, our instructor said to us that our level of disappointment is related to the gap between two things – our expectations and the facts. Although this may sound simple in principle and you may be saying to yourself, “Well, of course”, stop and think about real-life situations where you find yourself disappointed and you will soon see the problem.
I went out to lunch with a few other future life coaches, and one of them, Sarah, told me about some challenges she was having at the time with her teens. Sarah was married for the second time and had two teens of her own and two teens who were her husband’s kids. Most people would already cringe at this stage, right?
Anyway, Sarah said that her kids were well organized, but her husband’s teen daughter was “very messy” and kept leaving her clothes on the floor, which drove Sarah bonkers. When Sarah tried to confront her stepdaughter about tidying up her room, she got the “You’re not my mother” treatment.
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Kids are Like Fish
Kids are like fish. No, not because they are pretty and cute (although they are pretty and cute) but because their ability to grow depends on their environment, much like fish.
Did you know that fish will grow to the size that will be supported by their surroundings?
If you put a fish in a small bowl, it will grow to fit the size of the bowl. If you take the same fish into a small pond, it will grow bigger. If you move it to a lake, the same fish can grow to be big, really big.
Kids also have this fishy characteristic. For them, life is a fish bowl and they depend on the grown ups in their life to find a good size bowl to call home. They also depend on the grown ups in their life to “clean the water” and supply them with “food”.
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