We send our kids to the best schools we can afford. We make sure their food is nutritious, we organize abacus lessons, music classes, private tuitions and if they need it, we take them to the best known paediatrician for any of their physical ailments. We give in to their pleas for the latest fashion clothing and gadgets, and frequently fall for their pleas for fast food. All this makes it abundantly clear that we love them very much and want the very best for them.
Our most noble intention behind all this is our 'need to see them happy'.
Today I want to discuss other aspects of helping them grow up well and happy. And all of these have to do with us, and not with them.
This asks for a lot of introspection – looking inside ourselves
What does your own happiness depend on? Do you need your external circumstances to be just so in order to be happy? Or have you found the way to being happy no matter what the external circumstances? In other words, have you worked on yourself enough to depend on yourself for your happiness?
Are you happy being what you really are? Or have we fallen into the trap of posing to be happy by aligning ourselves to certain norms and standards set out as parameters of success and happiness?
You always have a choice
What kind of choices do you make? How much responsibility do you take for resolving your own issues? When you make your choices - every day - during your entire life, do you remember to be aware in order to recognize that at each step of the way you always have alternatives? Do you remember that you are responsible for everything you feel, think, say, and do?
In other words, you need not yell, you need not cry, you need not despair, you need not fear, you need not resort to anger, because you always have another alternative.
As the saying goes 'Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional'. In any situation in life, troubles abound but our choices make all the difference. If we decide to take things head-on, we are bound to find workable alternatives.
Are we in our lives behaving so as to show our children 'to look for alternatives' or we're surrendering to be victims of our circumstances?
Do you carry emotional baggage?
Do you tend to blame others? Are you a victim of events or people in your life? Can you forgive? What you show your child by one or the other mode of behaviour, will, in some ways, determine his/her chance at happiness now and in the future. If you carry your past along, your children learn to do the same. Learn to live in the present- remember 'the past is gone – but the present is a gift'. Learn not to blame, no matter what - stop being a victim, no matter what - and begin to forgive, no matter what - in order to teach all of this to your child by virtue of your own example!
Walking Your Talk
Do you walk your talk? Do you say one thing and do another? Are you authentic? Are you really the way you portray yourself to be? Discover yourself because only if you do that, can you really walk your talk and in the process show your child what it means to be authentic. Your children will learn to honour you and your word if they see that you mean what you say.
Transparency
Be open with your children! Show them that you can make mistakes, or that you can learn from them. Show them that you are open to being open, and that you invite openness from them, no matter what they want to confide in you! Doing this is both easy and hard. It's easy because it is really just a question of choosing to be like this, but it's hard because in order to be like this, you must also choose to become self-aware and conscious at all times, choose to make yourself responsible for all that you feel, think, say, and do, and hence choose to work on all the those aspects
Value people more than things
There'll be umpteen situations when they will damage things you like, things that they like, ones which are rare, others that are expensive- but at the end of it they are only 'material things'. If you reprimand your child, spouse or helper unduly for the loss, they are bound to learn to value them more than people. With kids around keep precious things out of reach and despite due precaution if something is damaged, see it as an opportunity to replace it with something better- letting her down will only distance her from you.
So, if you want your children to grow up to be exceptional kids, look within, work on yourself, become congruent, love yourself and realize that every positive thing you do in order to improve yourself will have a ripple effect on the lives of all those you touch.
You have so many gifts to give your child. No one expects you to be perfect. But you can start the road towards the goal of growth, self awareness, and loving yourself by beginning today with the first step. That first step is simply remembering to be conscious, and when you forget, forgiving yourself for forgetting, but praising yourself for at least having remembered that you forgot to remember to be conscious. And then doing it all over again...
The more time you spend being conscious, the more quickly you will reach the goal of your own inner freedom, and the more quickly you will reach the goal of being able to offer your child the gift of your example with all of this.
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