100 Things I Want to Do in My Lifetime

Every person dreams about extreme happiness. That’s a time when we do only the things we want, spend most of our time with the people we love the most, have the money to give ourselves everything we want and are at the peak of our health. In short, our life is perfect.

I think most of our energy in life is spent on bridging the gap between our reality and our dreams, but this energy is wasted if we do not know where we are going.

Many people, when I ask them about what is going to happen in ten years, they say they do not know. I wonder how they can bring themselves to that day without knowing that is where they are going. Most people feel they have no control over what is going to happen in ten years, so they give up planning.

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Weddings, Love and Marriage

This week, I went to my young daughter’s school with a group of other mothers to celebrate the teacher’s wedding. On the card from all the families in the class, I wrote “Happy wedding day”, but I did not think it was the right blessing.

You see, my wedding day was not a happy day at all (too much family politics), but it did not change the fact that Gal and I have been together for over 27 years and are still very much in love. In my head, a happy wedding day is no guarantee for a happy marriage and I am sad for it. I would certainly like it to be a sign for the years to come, but it is not.

Relationships require work. Having a loving relationship requires the couple to fall in love with each other again every day! Anniversaries are celebrations of this love, only without the big crowd. It is amazing that the world marriage statistics show that only rare couples reach their 30th wedding anniversary. I think it is about time we changed this (and I suggest we start right away).

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Your Self-Esteem Checklist

Young woman lying peacefully on a bed of leaves

For people to think highly of themselves, they need to be aware of every aspect of the self and identify their own personal scale to measure their performance. Most people are so used to defining themselves based on others around them that I can understand why this is not an easy task. Easy it may not be, but it is possible and, I believe, essential.

Last week, in Service Your Self-Esteem, we talked about essential rules to increase self-esteem. To increase our self-esteem, we need to look at ourselves carefully and examine each part of what creates the self.

Last week, we met Eli, my mechanic, and talked about his checklist for car maintenance, the one he uses before returning each car to its owner. Well, here (at last) is a self-esteem checklist – your very own list of the parts of your self-esteem.

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Expect to Be a Happy Parent

One major difference I see between happy parents and unhappy parents is in the gap between their expectations and the fulfilment of their expectations. Basically, if your expectations are high and are not fulfilled, you will be disappointed and unhappy. However, if most of your expectations are fulfilled, you will be a satisfied and happy parent.

Expectations are one important factor of happiness. Byron Katie does some wonderful work (she even calls it “The Work”) on how our expectations can make us miserable if they do not match reality (read Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life).

Children living in a family with expectations that are too high to be fulfilled feel inadequate and develop a failure identity. For example, a family of musicians with high expectation from their kids regarding their musical aspirations and abilities would be devastating for a kid whose passion is playing soccer.

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14 Ways to Teach Your Kids Resilience

As much as we would like to defend our kids from the difficulties in life, from experiencing crisis, change or loss, we cannot! However, we can give our kids the tools to recover from difficult times when those hit.

Many people say to me, “They are just kids. What horrible things can possibly happens to them?”

My answer is, “Let’s not wait to find out”.

For children, what seems like a simple thing might be a horrible problem. We have good friends whose 18-year-old son took a gun and shot himself in the head because he was not accepted to the course he wanted.

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Super Kids: When Academic Success is Just a Side Effect

Last week, on our way back home from a weekend at friends’ house, our 12-year-old son Tsoof asked if we thought he was a “super kid”.

In the past year, we talked to him a lot about three kids in his music department that everyone, including us, thinks of as “super kids”. They are older than Tsoof and are very very very smart and talented. All three of them are wonderful role models for him.

Well, this made us wonder about Tsoof too.

Tsoof was born 12 years ago in California after a lot of heartache and waiting. By the age of 4, he had already lived in 4 countries with two languages and travelled to 6 other countries as a fun-loving, happy and curious child.

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Should my child repeat a year at school or not?

This question usually comes up after a teacher tells a child’s parents that the child is not keeping up with their schoolwork. Often, the teacher actually suggests that the child repeat a year.

However, although the indication given is academic, the problem is most often emotional.

If the reason for the child’s poor performance is academic, I believe there is no point repeating a year. If there is a real difficulty, time is not the cure!

It is better to offer special support to the child during and after school, or in extreme cases, in a special school.

However…

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Should I Choose a Single-sex School for My Child?

The single-sex school originated during the 18th century, when rich families sent their sons to “special” schools. Only later, in the 19th century, when the awareness of the value of education increased, were girls also sent to study. Single-sex schools were very popular in England and now also in Australia.

Today, the single-sex schools are popular among religious populations and even more during high school.

Supporters of single-sex schools believe they help kids concentrate on their academic work and avoid the sexual distractions of adolescence.

Critics believe that some social skills relating to the opposite sex reaches its peak development during teenage and that if teens do not have enough practice, this limit their social skills and their ability to relate later on.

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How School Promotes Low Self Esteem

Last week, in Self Esteem Mini-Course (part 1), I wrote about the definition of self-esteem. This week, let us explore how school promotes low self-esteem in children and shapes our society in the opposite way.

Since our self-esteem is based on our perception of ourselves and school is the place we spend most of our time between the ages of 6 and 12, every school experience either increases or decreases our self-esteem.

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Networking for Kids

These days, networking is synonymous with success. Networking is also the key to a good social life.

No matter how big our house is, how colourful our car is, how powerful our computers are or how many academic degrees we have, it is the ability to establish good relationships with our family, our friends, our customers, our colleagues and, perhaps more than anything else, with people we do not know, that determines our success in life.

At school, we get the idea that the more knowledge we gain, the more successful we will be in life. This intellectual focus on life is still practiced in many places around the world.

In fact, “It’s not WHAT you know, it’s WHO you know”.

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100 Things I Want to Do in My Lifetime

Weddings, Love and Marriage

Your Self-Esteem Checklist

Expect to Be a Happy Parent

14 Ways to Teach Your Kids Resilience

Super Kids: When Academic Success is Just a Side Effect

How School Promotes Low Self Esteem

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