Posts tagged 'values'
Respect is crucial for every relationship, and the foundation of every successful marriage. The problem in every relationship arises when we feel under attack, respect goes out the window.
It is easy to be respectful when everything is good and lovely. The real test comes when things are not easy and we no longer feel trusting, safe and secure.
Still, I think it is good to understand what a respectful relationship looks like, so you notice when you are not in that zone.
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.
Yay, I did it! My new book, The Will, was published in November 2019 and I am proud to the max.
In this post, I’ve decided to answer all the questions I got from Carol Grainger, who edited the book, about the book and the process of writing it, from the first time I told her about it until the last edit.
Stick around and enjoy the ride with me.
The Will is a fictional novel. I love the story medium to help readers take their own journey in answering the question of whether money is curse or a blessing.
Judgment is a very tense concept. We hear many objections to it, like “Do not judge a book by its cover” or “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes”. Still, although judgment is considered negative, we have lots of judgment towards everything that happens around us.
The reason we do is that we need judgment to navigate through life. If you consider judgment as the process of determining right and wrong, then judgment is essential to our survival. This is especially true for social survival.
We must have some kind of judgment towards everything we do in life, because it helps us choose what to do and what to avoid doing. Judgment and decision-making are Siamese twins. They have the same DNA and are inseparable. Making decisions requires us to use judgment to determine which of our choices we consider the best. So, judgment is not bad if we use it to make better choices.
You can learn assertiveness skills at any stage of life and you can always improve them and gain more respect for yourself and others. In this post, I have gathered all of my assertiveness tips in one big list. I hope this summary will be useful for you and for your children and students.
If we create a society full of assertive people, we will not have conflicts and we will live with each other with respect, so pass this along to everyone you know.
So far, I have covered things that affect our ability to be assertive. This post adds some tips on how to know your rights, keep them and be assertive about them. I hope they will help you on your quest to develop your emotional intelligence and communicate with assertiveness.
When you are assertive, you express yourself with confidence without hurting others. You are firm, not a bully. You are clear, not manipulative. You are honest, not aggressive. Healthy communication is based on honesty, clarity and confidence.
First, you have to know your rights in every communication. It takes two to tango and when one has more rights than the other does, this will not be an assertive relationship. I suggest teaching kids these rights too and giving them opportunities to practice them.
Assertiveness is a helpful skill in life, yet most people do not have it. They do not have it because they could not learn it at home or from anyone else except professionals. You see, the people who teach assertiveness must be very confident and not afraid that you might use assertiveness with them, and these people are hard to find.
Am I assertive all the time? No, not really. Sometimes, I choose avoidance or aggression, and every time I use them, I feel uncomfortable. They either hurt me or others, which is not very good. Still, I aim to use assertiveness in my communication with others and most of the time, I do.
Assertiveness requires confidence to express your own thoughts and feeling without fear and without the need, desire or intention to hurt anyone else. It is important to distinguish between having the intention to hurt and actually hurting someone else.
My life changed when I was a teenager. I was in the middle of 10th Grade when the school counselor gave me a letter telling me that since I had too many failures in my report card, I would not be able to stay for 11th Grade.
There was nothing special about it. I counted the days to the end of the year, so I would not have to go to school anymore. I hated school with every cell of my body. I was looking forward to the end of it.
The change happened when there was a contradiction between what I wanted and how it felt. You see, I wanted to leave school at the end of 10th Grade anyway, but it just did not feel right.
This inner conflict was a very big quantum moment in my life. It made me wonder, “How was it possible to get what you want and still be unhappy about it?” It is a big question. Have you ever asked yourself this? I suggest you do!
In my kids’ assessments, I often need to discover what motivates the kids, so I play wizard games with them.
I believe that wanting is the essence of life. This is the battery that keeps us moving. I know that many parents tell their kids that life is not about what they want, when they really want to say that in life, we do not always get what we want. This is true, but I think they are making a mistake. Life is all about wanting.
Even in Buddhism, the intention or desire is what starts everything. Without it, we do nothing at all. We do not think, do not feel, do not do, do not move, do not connect and do not even search for happiness and good life. Without wanting, life has not meaning.
What do you want?
This is a simple question and your answer reveals a lot about you. I teach my clients to ask themselves this question from time to time and answer it.
When people ask me to summarize my studies, I say they were all about how the brain works. The first four years focused on how to use this knowledge to stimulate learning. Later on, I learned how to work with the subconscious mind to avoid misery and have more success and more happiness.
Learning about the brain is a never-ending quest. There is much research in the world about the brain and its functions in health, in success, in relationships, in learning and in everyday life. Over the years, I have tried to share my learning about the brain and its functions through this blog, especially in relation to parenting and education.
Why parenting and education? Because these two areas are very close to my heart. Since you are reading this, you probably care about them too.
Today, I would like to share some insight that is very important in parenting and in education. I want to tell you how the conscious and the subconscious minds work. Specifically, I want to tell you about how the subconscious mind deals with humor.
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