Escape of the Rats

The world today is a rich, technologically advanced, ever-changing, interesting, exciting, confusing, demanding, fast-paced, interconnected, stressful, cold, impersonal and sometimes abusive place. We live a different life from any other period. What does this mean?

To many of us, it means we feel trapped. We often hear or read the term “rat race” as a description for the way we live – like rats in somebody’s lab, running around, trying to find a way out or get to the reward at the end of a confusing and frightening maze. Trouble is we do not even know whose lab we are in and we feel helpless and out of control.

In his excellent book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes some fascinating events and research about how our environment affects our behavior and the behavior of those around us. Sometimes, it can drive a man to kill, but when managed well, it can lower the crime rate and improve the lives of many people. He calls this “The power of context”.

The book highlights some things that we can all use to regain control of our lives, improve the quality of our time on Earth and make the world a better place for our children and even for other people around us.

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Nothing wrong with feeling bad

Everybody feels bad sometimes – sad, lonely, upset, worried, even angry. OK, except Tibetan monks, maybe, but only after 20 years of meditation and a strict diet of warm water. The rest of us sometimes feel bad.

The problem with feeling bad is not so much that we find something hard to deal with, but that we have been brought up not to feel bad, so we feel really bad about feeling bad. That, of course, makes everything worse, because now, we are feeling bad about ourselves and blocking ourselves from processing and letting go of the original bad feeling.

When I was growing up, I was often told that only girls cried. “Take it like a man”, people said to me and to all of my friends who were boys. The girls were not supposed to take it like men, but they were instructed not to bother others with their feelings and to “show their happy face” like “a good girl” should. So happiness was clearly good and resentment, anxiety, regret and sorrow were bad.

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Life Coaching for Kids?

A few months ago, an Australian reporter called me to ask what I thought about life coaching for kids. She said, “There is now a growing trend of parents taking their children to a life coach. Isn’t that ridiculous? I mean, putting such pressure on kids from such a young age to perform… I see that you offer life coaching for kids. What do you think about this trend?”

Apparently, this topic had been mentioned on one of the morning shows on TV and the reporter cleverly turned it into a debate. She started her article with “Children as young as five are being taken to ‘life coaches’ by concerned parents pushing their youngsters to get their little lives on track”, which immediately set a confrontational tone to the discussion.

The article was then syndicated to other papers and read by other media outlets, which got me on radio a couple of times, in another paper and nearly on TV (we shot the piece with actual clients of ours, but another channel beat “us” to air and it was never shown). The whole hullabaloo was fueled by the inflammatory tone of all those interviews along the way.

So really, do parents “send” their kids to life coaches? Is that a form of performance pressure from the parents? Is it good for the children to see a life coach? How old is old enough for kids coaching? What do they get out of it? Is this something you should consider for your own child?

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High Maintenance

There are many things kids do not realize because they are too young. Most of them are related to knowing nothing about tomorrow and just living in the moment. One of these things is maintenance, particularly the need to maintain our physical and mental health. But maintaining our health is too important to ignore.

A few days ago, I went for a walk with Eden, who is a 22-year-old student of psychology. I was telling her about my previous day, when she asked me, “Dad, what’s with all these therapies and supplements and stuff? When will you be healthy and stop them already? When will it all end?”

She was referring to my visits to the chiropractor, kinesiologist and behavioral optometrist, which, admittedly, I was hoping would take a lot less time to get my spine straight, my body balanced and my eyes reading as quickly as I want them to. She was also referring to the various stretching exercises I now do and the occasional supplement I take to aide in those various treatments.

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Supplement Your Life

Modern times have put us in charge of our health and wellbeing and as parents, of the health and wellbeing of our kids. Gone are the days of the good old doctor who knew everybody by name and actually cared about them. House calls are certainly a thing of the past.

– We must take responsibility for our own health, because nobody else will do it

– We must take responsibility for our children’s health, because it is part of the “job description” and they are important to us

– We understand that being healthy is a prerequisite to doing well at school and at work, to staying alive longer and to enjoying life

– We live a lifestyle that is faster than ever and far more stressful, which is bad for our health

– We eat food made to taste good, not to be nutritious, which means that most of us do not get what we need out of it

– We need to prevent physical and mental issues and keep ourselves balanced, rather than treat symptoms

– We already use chemicals to overcome our challenges and we are typically aware of their effects (good and bad) on our body and mind

So why not use food supplements?

We are not experts, but we have found value in some food supplements, despite having to overcome the feeling we are self-medicating. We have tried superfoods and spices, as well as pills and capsules. We have tried “natural” products and “artificial” ones, and we have not found the complete answer yet.

Maybe if we parents get together and discover the best ways to supplement our life and the life of our kids, we will all be healthier, happier and more successful.

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Workplace Bullying (2)

If you look at the forms of workplace bullying listed in Bullying (10): Workplace Bullying, you know that almost everyone who works for others has been somehow bullied at work. The expectation to stay at work late has increased in the last 20 years so much that when you talk to people about getting home on time to be with their kids, they are 100% convinced that leaving work at 5pm (as they should do) will threaten their job, their career and their financial situation.

17 years ago, when we lived in California, all my women friends said their husbands returned home at 8pm, barely had a chance to kiss the kids goodnight and only spent weekends with the family. For everyone – the wives, the kids and the workers – that was part of life and they felt they had to accept it.

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How to Survive Parenting Holiday Stress

Much has been said and written about the effects of the holiday season on families, on health, on relationships and on stress. Holidays are so different from our everyday life they bring about many changes, not all of which are welcome. Today, I want to look at what happens to working parents when the holidays approach.

For many years, I worked in corporate information technology. As you would expect, this involved being away from home 10-11 hours every day, commuting during rush hours, occasional overnight travel and feeling stressed and sometimes insignificant.

With this kind of experience at work, all I wanted to do when I got home was to have some peace and quiet for a while, enjoy a pleasant dinner with my family and unwind from my workday. Some days, all I wanted to do was sleep.

In order for that to work, Ronit had to take care of absolutely everything to do with keeping a home and raising kids – housework, shopping, cooking, homework, parent-teacher meetings, afternoon activities and more. I knew very little about what went on during the week and pretty much saw the kids on weekends.

And during that time, I was terrified.

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What Happens When You Fight

Have you ever wondered what happens to your kids when you fight with your partner? Have you ever asked them?

Well, I did today and I was surprised and it got me thinking.

My 15-year-old son Tsoof is now on holidays, so he and I go for a walk around the neighborhood together in the morning. He sometimes brings his guitar and we sing, much to the enjoyment of passersby, but other times, we talk. Today, he brought his guitar, but we talked anyway…

At first, I asked Tsoof, “When you and your friends talk about how annoying your parents are, what do you say?”

“Nothing”, he said, “I don’t think you’re annoying”.

“Isn’t there anything we do that bugs you in some way? After all, we’re not perfect”, I asked.

“Well, I really feel bad when you fight”, he admitted, “It makes me want to disappear”.

OK, OK, so the big secret is out. Life coaches or not, Ronit and I are sometimes under pressure too and when that happens, we argue, as we did recently, with our unfortunate kids being present. Being from a culture in which expressing how you feel might involve raising your voice and making theatrical gestures (to help emphasize your point), we dominated the family scene, which apparently troubled our kids.

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Handy Family Tip: Early is on time

Last week, I wrote how important it is not to confuse being on time with doing things at the last minute and how you can lose opportunities by doing things at the last minute (“on time”) without taking spares or considering unplanned events, mistakes and accidents.

This second chapter will give you ideas of how to change it.

How to win in the game of life
Here is a story I tell my life coaching clients:

Every week for 20 years, an old man goes to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and puts a note in the cracks of the wall asking God the same thing, “God, please let me win the lottery”. Thousands of people come every day to pray to God and put notes with wishes for God. The tradition says that every night, God sends his angel Gabriel to bring him the notes. This old man put the same request every week, but nothing happened.

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STOP! For Your Kids’ Sake

As parents, we often claim that whatever we do, we do for our kids and, as far as our awareness goes, that is true. But parents are human, which means our decision-making involves mostly emotional reasoning and subconscious values, beliefs and needs, which our mind cleverly re-dresses as calculated choices.

Sometimes, life hands us a rare opportunity to become aware of our choices of lifestyle. These are typically unpleasant, but they still get the job done. Ronit and I have written before about our own baby losses and about our friend’s near-death experience.

I want to share with you a talk given by Scott Stratten at TEDx.

In his post 25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me, one of the most important things on the list is “My girlfriend and son were in a car accident December ’07 while I was at my Nanny’s (aka Grandmother) funeral. He walked away unscathed, she lives in constant pain and has partial brain damage and it kills me every day that I can’t fix it or I can’t go punch the woman in the mouth who ran the red light”.

I have been following him for a while and find him inspiring in many respects, but this video really hit a spot for me and I hope it will for you too. My son and I watched the video together and it made us choke.

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