Tools, tips and education to help you live the life you choose

We took the children down to the beach for a night this weekend.  They really love the beach and enjoy seeing how much sand they can cover themselves in.  Being late in the season the water was only what I would call ‘kid temperature’ as in I wasn’t getting anywhere near it but the children enjoyed a bit of a paddling – followed by a roll in the sand.

When we first got down there we went for a quick stroll round the local market and came across a second hand book stall.  I picked up a few books and was about to pay for them when Daughter got hold of a cute little book and asked what it was about.  It was called ‘the little book of Love’ and it instantly became a favourite.  The lady on the stall gave it to her.

Now the funniest thing is Daughter can’t quite read yet, she is getting her first few words, not enough to read the quotes in the book.  This didn’t deter her, she wandered around with the book open in her hands pretending to read and tell us all about what love is – according to a five year old.  She did this at several points over the weekend and it was interesting to hear some of her thoughts: Love is when you love each other, when you love someone you give them a flower and so on.

I got hold of the book at one point and read some of the quotes and I must say many didn’t follow her train of thought.  A lot talked about love not being a totally positive thing like ‘Love is like the measles, we all have to go through it’ (Jerome K. Jerome).   This certainly didn’t inspire me, it did get me thinking about love and what it means to different people.

For me love is something that is all around us, not just the love I share with Him, it is love of myself, love of the children, love of life.  If your life is filled with love then it certainly more enjoyable.  One of the quotes that I liked was from Oscar Wilde and goes like this:

‘Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.  The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring’

I was touched later in the day when we were down at the beach and I had buried Daughter up to her neck in sand.  I wrote her name over her chest and then suggested I draw a heart over her tummy.  She immediately said ‘and write ‘her Mum’ under that ’cause I love you’.

So what is stopping you from having more love in your life, as the Irish proverb says ‘it is best to cultivate a heart of love that knows no anger.’  For the next couple of weeks spend a few minutes every day thinking about love and feeling the feeling, think about all the things and people you love – including yourself.

There seems to be so much happening for us and others around us.  I was talking with Him yesterday and filling in the calendar for the next few months and we seemed to have quite a few things to add, seminars for me, a fishing trip for Him (yummy fresh fish) plus things for the kids.  I was seeing one of my brothers at the weekend and he has even more on as they are in the process of buying a new house so have a new job to find, moving house, moving schools for the kids and so on.  Then I was talking to a friend for whom start of school term means not only sorting her kids out but sorting out all her work for the term.

So who is under the most stress or pressure?  Well that sort of reminds me of the saying it is not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog.  Similarly here it is not the size of the problem, it is the size of the problem in the view of the person who has it.

There is stress in everyone’s life, you can’t avoid it.  What you can change is how the stress affects you.  After all if you forget to buy the bread for the children’s sandwiches tomorrow how do you want to react, get a headache and not sleep worrying about what you will feed them or be able to relax and sort it out in the morning when you do their lunches?

Obviously the second alternative would be preferable so how can you react that way to the more serious problems in your life?  In this post I am just going to look at one idea, we will look at other things in future posts.

Daughter was devastated on Friday night, after a long day out at a fun park for a friend’s birthday.  At one point they had all got a Kinder surprise egg and she had just realised that she hadn’t picked up her toy or it had got lost and it was the end of the world.  We had tears and the works, all she could focus on was the loss of this toy – she couldn’t even remember what it was.

Similarly when we get stressed by something we tend to focus in on a problem and let it consume us.  This can be good if we can utilise this energy and focus to help us deal with the issue and resolve it.  At other times it is not something you can fix immediately and you need to step back for a moment.  When you focus in and get consumed you can often miss other solutions. 

For daughter the only solution was for me to ring the mother of the birthday boy and demand another egg.  We sat and talked about it and I tried to get her to see the bigger picture, how we had had a wonderful day and this was a minor blip and if she really felt that bad about it then we could buy her another one when we went shopping.  It was a bit of a tough task with a five year old after a twelve hour day and I wasn’t sure how successful I was although I did stop the tears.  No further mention was made of the egg until two days later when we were in a shop and guess what, a little voice said ‘You said you would buy me another Kinder surprise’!

For us adults it can be just as difficult to take a step back sometimes and see the bigger picture with a problem.  Stop, take a deep breath and look at the problem from a different point of view, are there other solutions, can you do anything about it or talk to someone about it.  If you zoom out for a moment you can often get a different perspective – try it sometime.

It was Daughters fifth birthday party at the weekend.  We did the invite a few friends around home and have a party.  We don’t do the invite the whole class, just half a dozen or so which usually grows to a dozen by the time there are a few siblings thrown in.

I have to admit I am fairly strongly against the concept of inviting the whole class, especially when your child is in a class of around twenty.  There seems to be a lot of stuff done in school to include everyone, make sure you don’t ‘fail’ anything and that sort of stuff.  Sometimes I think it goes too far.  I remember reading about a case somewhere in the world where someone was taking action against someone else for not inviting their child to the birthday party of the other child.  My feeling is that the child has to learn a bit about life and why leave it until they are an adult.

After all as an adult you don’t get invited to every party, get all the jobs you apply for or all the promotions, get all the boyfriends/girlfriends you want and so on.  If your children can learn, understand and deal with this concept at an early age by dealing with the fact that they don’t get invited to every party then I believe it puts them in a great place to deal with the harder knocks that life can deliver as they get older.

It also can teach your kid to think about their feelings for the other children in their class, who they like and why.  It was quite fascinating trying to get Daughter to decide on who to invite to her party.  We asked her several times over a period of a couple of weeks.  Several kids were always on the list, there were a few others that were sometimes there and sometimes not.  This appeared to match her style of play where there are some kids she plays with more often and others that appeared after she had done some activity with them or played with them that day.  There were also a couple of boys and I had to laugh at the comments about them for one it was , Chris loves me so I’ll invite him and about Brett it was “I’m going to marry him”.  Of course at the actual party a lot of time was spent with the girls doing girly play and boys getting to play boy games with Son’s recent bonanza of guns, swords and so on that he got at the Easter Show.

Later in the day after cleaning up and so on I sat down with Son and Daughter and we played a game of Mouse Trap.  Unfortunately it didn’t end too happily with two tired children and no one wanting to lose and of course there can only be one winner.  Yet another good lesson in life, you can’t win all the time, help them learn how to deal with it.

I think kids need to start learning about life from the simple things early on to build up their reslilience.  If they can deal with the little things like losing a game or not going  to a party it helps with the big things later on, so look on the positive side next time you kid doesn’t get invited to a party and make sure you win your next game with them!

We decided to brave the Royal Easter Show in Sydney on Saturday at Easter.  For those that aren’t familiar with this event, it is a huge show with everything from animals to rides to show events to agricultural shows and much much more.  We stayed with my brother and his family as it is a three hour drive from our place to Sydney, mind you it was just over an hour from his place by car and bus to get there.  The kids enjoyed the novelty of a bus ride. 

I think we managed about seven and a half hours at the show and didn’t manage to see everything.  Mind you that did include some time giving the kids rides.  Despite our misgivings, it seemed the scarier the better for them.  Daughter was feeling a bit sick, I think the start of a bit of a cold and I asked her if she wanted to go on the rides and got an immediate yes.  In fact one of the few times I saw her smile was when I put her on the Freefall ride.  You sit in this seat, along with 9 other kids and the platform thing raises you up to a height and then drops a little wayand keeps repeating this (see photo).  She loved this squealing with delight while some other kids were screaming.  She went on it three times!

Near the kids rides they had several sideshow alley type stalls, you know the ones where you throw a ball or shoot something and if you are really lucky get some sort of huge cuddly toy to take home.  We are walking past these when I suddenly look round to see Son standing in front of one of them holding a ball about to throw it.

I quickly announced that I am not paying for him to have a go and he needs to come with us now so we can find Him who was watching a fishing demo.  The stall holder says that the first go is free.  Damn him, that age old trick of offer something for free so people feel obliged to reiprocate.

This doesn’t have to be a trick, it is an excellent tool of persuasion, in the case above I felt it was taking advantage of kids.  In general it can be a useful tool to help build trust, to pay it forward and so on.  I always remember the example in Robert Cialdini’s book on persuasion about the guy going round the office selling raffle tickets.  If he has recently helped you with something then most people feel some obligation to reciprocate and help the guy by buying some of his raffle tickets.

It is an important lesson in life to learn, helping someone in some way can often lead you to be paid back in ways you hadn’t thought of.  Obviously if you are offering some sort of free report or free interview then you hope to build up trust in others and they may be more likely to assist you or trust you when you offer them your services or products.

In the case of the guy at the show, it was a good tactic, get the kid hooked so the parent feels obliged to pay up.  It probably works quite well, I just found it to be manipulative in that he was using kids.  Like any of these techniques they can be used or abused.  You need to use your conscience to decide which it is for you.  Reciprocation is a wonderful tool when used with the right intent, use it and reap its benefits.