Tag: Parents

How you experience the world happens in the privacy of your own mind. You rule that inner space, so it pays to notice what kind of mental climate you are building for yourself.

Negative thoughts can stir up anxiety, anger, resentment, jealousy and a whole range of other feelings. Thinking negatively now and then is normal. But when it never stops, it can drag a person into deep unhappiness and harmful behaviour. Our thoughts come and go so fast that catching them can seem impossible. With awareness, and a gentle attitude towards ourselves, we can still steer the negative ones towards something better.

The story of two wolves

An old folk tale shows the biggest contest we ever face: good thoughts against bad ones.

An old man was teaching his grandson about life. He told the boy that a fight was raging inside him, a terrible fight between two wolves. The first wolf was everything dark in us: rage, jealousy, grief, regret, greed and arrogance, along with pity for oneself, guilt and bitterness, feeling small or feeling superior, lying, vanity and ego. The second wolf was everything bright: joy, peace, love and hope, serenity and humility, kindness, goodwill and empathy, generosity, honesty, compassion and faith. That same struggle, he said, goes on within the boy and within every human being.

The boy thought for a moment and asked which wolf would win.

The old man answered simply: the one you feed.

Guard the gate of your mind

To build a good inner world, you have to become the gatekeeper of your own mind. Changing your mental habits and the way you talk to yourself is not easy. Happiness depends on having an alert inner referee who lets in only what truly helps you. Without regular, careful reflection, you may already have woven a web of unhealthy thinking without noticing.

Stop feeding on junk

A steady diet of stressful and anger stoking material does your mind no favours. Constantly filling it with this mental junk food will quickly reshape your thinking for the worse. Break that cycle now. How good your inner life feels is something you can change.

Nobody can be liked by everyone, and some people simply do not get along. That is perfectly fine. Sometimes, though, it really matters that a particular person warms to you. They might matter to someone dear to you, or they might be the person you report to. In any case, here are some ways to win over someone who seems to dislike you.

Check that it really is dislike

Some people are just quiet, or naturally reserved with everyone. It is only real dislike if they keep being rude to you and go out of their way to make your life harder. Before you do anything, compare how they treat you with how they treat others, and do not overreact.

Talk to them directly

Sometimes the straightforward route is the best one. Choose a good moment and calmly ask why the two of you seem to have started off badly.

Look honestly at your own part

Was it something you said or did? Think about how you generally behave and about your past dealings with this person. If their dislike turns out to be your fault, consider saying sorry and starting again.

Try kindness

Give warmth a chance, even when they are being unpleasant. Be kind to them a few times and see whether they meet you halfway. Do not go overboard. Give them a fair chance to respond in kind, and if they do not, simply keep a polite distance.

Keep things normal

Speak to them the way you would to anyone else. At the start of the week, ask how their days off went. You do not need to sit beside them and chatter. One friendly gesture a day can go a long way towards changing how they feel about you.

We tend to believe that the material world is what makes us happy. So we keep chasing money, high paying jobs, a bigger house and more things. But happiness is mostly a matter of choice, and there are simple ways to choose it.

Be joyful

To be the master of your mind, keep the negative out and let the positive in. Train your thinking so that it takes note of every happy thought and leaves no room for the gloomy ones. This does not mean pretending that problems do not exist. It means deciding which thoughts get to stay and settle.

Let love guide your way

Love does not have to be kept only for your family or your partner. You can share it with anyone, by helping strangers in trouble and being kind to them. You will overflow with good feeling when you go out of your way to help someone.

Turn inward

The quickest route to feeling happy for no particular reason is to connect with your inner self and find peace from within. Stepping back a little from outside things while staying aware of yourself works wonders.

Put together, the message is a gentle one. Happiness is not a prize at the end of a long chase. It is a habit of the mind, a kindness passed to others and a quiet place within that you can return to at any time.

There is already plenty to celebrate. The flowers are in bloom, the birds are singing, the sun is up. You are breathing, you are alive, you are aware. Celebrate that.

Happiness lives inside us, and we have to get in touch with it to know what being happy really means. No amount of money, possessions or worldly success can bring happiness the way that inner source can.

Where celebration comes from

All of life invites you into a close relationship with it: the trees, the grass, the animals and every person you meet. Celebrating life does not come from the reasoning mind. It springs from the wonder of life itself, from sensing a power that keeps creating something new where nothing was before. It honours the marvels of the earth and the sky, and the joy that rises in your heart when your own child is born. To keep celebrating, try these.

Nurture the people around you

Make sure the people who matter most to you always know they are valued, appreciated and needed. Not only when we carefully pick a birthday card full of good wishes and thanks, but every single day, by telling them how lucky we feel to have them.

Be present in the moment

Life keeps asking you to respond, to engage, to be in a relationship with it. It reaches out and calls you to show up. Fear shuts off your ability to hear that call, and guarding yourself stops you reaching out to others. Yet other people keep reaching out to you all the time, ready to help and guide you.

Treat yourself and others

A treat means different things to different people: an ice cream, a massage, a walk in nature, a new pair of shoes. A job well done feels celebrated when it is rewarded. Simply being alive and trying your best deserves celebrating, and so do special days like a birthday or a big event. You deserve to celebrate yourself. Treats are also nice just because. A gift for no reason makes us feel special, so why not pass that feeling on to someone else?

Surround yourself with happiness

Listening to or playing uplifting music is one of the easiest ways to lift the mood around you. Open your eyes to the small details and savour what you see. Find beauty on a path you had stopped noticing. Enjoy the little things happening around you, because happiness depends less on how much we have than on how much we enjoy it. You do not need some grand act to change the world. You can start one step at a time, transforming the smallest corners of your own life or someone else’s.

Say yes to life

What better way to celebrate life than to live it? Saying yes to invitations lets us move with the flow of life and discover more of what it has to offer. Say yes to the things you have always wanted to do and the places you have always wanted to go. A yes often brings opportunities, wonderful new people and inspiring experiences. When you are unsure whether you should, say yes. Either way you will learn something, and you will create more moments worth celebrating.

Praise is among the most powerful gifts one person can offer another. A compliment brings warm feelings both to the person who receives it and to the one who gives it. Everyone needs to know how to give praise and how to take it. A few pointers make all the difference.

Mean what you say

People can nearly always tell when a compliment is hollow. When you truly mean it, they are far more likely to believe you and to feel good about what you said.

Do not let it look like a set up

This can happen without your noticing, so watch for it, because people will judge you on it. Never praise someone and ask a favour in the same conversation. The praise starts to look like bait, and your good intent is lost.

Be respectful

Make sure your words cannot hurt, even when you mean them kindly. Praise built around someone’s race or their looks is risky ground. And if your compliment needs a “but” or a qualifier attached, it is probably better left unsaid.

Keep the spotlight on them

Do not turn someone else’s compliment into a story about you. Saying “You did such a good job last week, I could never have managed that, I am hopeless at it” makes you sound self absorbed, as if you praised them only to steer the talk back to yourself.

Praise people when they are not in the room

Criticising someone behind their back is common. Praising them behind their back is rare. The reverse would serve us better, because praise passed on through others is seen as more sincere and genuine than praise delivered face to face.

Praise what they can control

Point your compliment at things within the person’s control, such as their character, their efforts and what they have achieved. This helps them feel secure in the feedback, instead of worrying that they might lose the very thing others admire in them.

Hard times show us something we easily forget. Under the outward show each of us puts on, we are made of the same stuff. Every one of us hurts, cries and hopes, and every one of us has to lean on others for support and strength.

It teaches humility

Adversity reminds us that we are only human. We are not in charge of everything, and we cannot manage it all on our own.

It teaches perseverance

In a crisis, the choices shrink to two. You can give up, or you can keep going. There is not much else to decide, because life has been pared down to its most basic question of carrying on or not.

In the middle of such dark days we may have no idea where we are headed or what tomorrow holds. All we know is that if we get through today, we will reach tomorrow, and that is how it goes, one day after another.

It shows us who we really are

Whether we are the ones suffering, the ones helping or the ones looking on, adversity shows each of us that we are not as unbeatable as we believed. We are not always in control. Yet in ways we never expected, we turn out to be stronger than we ever knew.

Three gifts it leaves behind

• Strength is often found in weakness, and when we have lost everything we sometimes discover more than we ever had.
• Life itself becomes dearer. Our own life and the lives of others start to feel far more precious.
• Gratitude takes root. Whether we have much or little, we stop taking anything for granted.

The promise on the far side

Nobody can promise that hard times will pass us by. But if they come, we can trust this: we will climb out of the wreckage of a broken life carrying a strength that was hammered out in fire, and we will not be the same person again.

Few phrases are heard more often from young children than “This is mine!” In a small child’s world, everything revolves around them, so it is easy to see why sharing does not come naturally. As parents, we need to show them by example what sharing is worth. Here are some ways to teach it.

Create a sharing environment

The first thing to understand is that forcing a child to share achieves little. Instead, build a home where sharing is simply part of daily life, so it grows on its own.

Keep in mind that a child never sees a toy as merely a toy. It is a treasured possession to be guarded. While you teach sharing, respect a normal amount of possessiveness, and gently encourage the habit of giving others a turn.

Talk to your child

Help your child explore the feelings that come with sharing. If they are holding something back, explain how their friends might feel about it. Help them see how happy a friend would be if they could play together with the toy, and point out that a friend’s happiness can make them happy too.

Look for everyday moments. At snack time, for example, praise how nicely your child is dividing the biscuits, and point out how enjoyable a treat becomes when it is shared.

Try a little role play

If your child has become an expert at saying no, try swapping roles. While playing together, when your child asks you for something, simply say no. When they get upset, talk with them about how that felt, and how they would not want their friends to feel the same way. The next time they hesitate to share, you can gently remind them of that moment.

Sharing is learnt slowly, one small moment at a time. Patience and a good example will do most of the teaching.

After a bath in the river, an elephant was making its way along the road. As it came near a bridge, it saw a pig heading towards it from the other side, covered from snout to tail in mud. Without a word, the elephant moved to one side, let the grimy pig go by, and then carried on with its journey.

The pig’s boast

Later, the pig bragged to its friends. “Look how mighty I am,” it said. “Even the elephant was scared of me and stepped aside to let me through.”

When the other elephants heard this, they asked their friend why it had given way. Was it fear?

The elephant’s answer

The elephant smiled. “I could easily have crushed that pig under my foot,” it said. “But I was clean, and the pig was filthy. Had I stepped on it, my own foot would have been covered in dirt. I wanted to avoid that, so I simply moved aside.”

The lesson

People who have grown wise keep their distance from negativity. They do not do this because they are afraid. They do it because they want to stay clear of what would soil them, even though they are strong enough to overpower it.

You do not have to respond to every opinion, every remark or every situation that comes your way. Let the drama pass and keep moving forward. Pick your battles with care. Not everything is worth your time and attention, and walking past something is often the strongest choice you can make.

Feeling lonely is not a life sentence. It is possible to soften it, and sometimes to shake it off completely. The key is to stop turning the problem over and over, and to fill your mind with activities that draw your attention elsewhere. Here are three simple ways to begin.

Stay busy and get out

When loneliness settles in, resist the urge to sit and dwell on it. Get up and go somewhere with plenty of people around. It does not matter if you know none of them. Simply being among others can lift your mood more than you expect.

Reach out to someone else who is lonely

You are far from the only one. Many people feel exactly as you do and have no idea how to cope with it. If you seek them out and make an effort to ease their loneliness, you will find in the end that you have eased your own as well. Kindness travels in both directions.

Change the pattern of your thoughts

Notice what you are feeding your mind. If your evenings are filled with films that leave you reaching for tissues, it may be time for a change. Try listening to music that lifts you, reading poems or other writing that inspires you, and watching programmes that leave you feeling lighter. Each of these helps to break the cycle of heavy, negative thinking.

These are only a few of the ways to loosen loneliness’s grip. The common thread is simple: move your body, turn towards others, and choose what fills your mind.

Children need love. They need boundaries. And they need a person they can admire and learn from. A parent’s task is to lead by example, living out the kind of behaviour we hope our children will take on.

Few things a parent does matter more, or bring more reward, than being a positive role model. It often asks for a close and honest look at how we live ourselves. Here are some ways to set an example that helps children build character and self respect.

Own your mistakes

Let your child see you admit when you get things wrong. Nobody is perfect, and when you are at fault, say sorry to your child plainly. This teaches acceptance and shows what a real apology looks like. Children tend to absorb our nature, and this habit will serve them for life.

Keep a positive approach

A negative outlook rubs off on children just as easily as a positive one. Keep a hopeful, affirming attitude towards life and its situations. When tension rises, do not lose your composure, because your child is learning how to handle pressure by watching you. A positive approach helps a child grow into a better human being, so choose your words and actions with care.

Teach a questioning mind

Children trust easily and look eagerly around them for people to copy. Help them understand that not every so called role model deserves that trust. Show them what healthy doubt looks like, and encourage them to listen to their own instincts.

Look after yourself

Being at your best begins with caring for yourself: enough sleep, time for exercise, and healthy ways to deal with difficult emotions without lashing out. Wearing yourself down by always putting everyone else first is not a wise move either. That is not the future you want for your child, so do not show it to them as the normal way to live.