How far can you reach today?

Skye Uncategorized

So the blogs going well, I think (insert laugh emoji). Seriously though, I’m really enjoying it. The process of taking the ideas, thoughts and feelings out of my head and putting them onto paper (so to speak) is so powerful. Talking this stuff through teaches me more than just having it rattle around in my own head.

What’s even more rewarding is when someone lets me know how it’s helped them.

I bumped into a friend a few weeks back and she had just read my blog post “The shoes!!!”  that morning. She stopped me to say thank you, because it had changed her perspective for the whole morning. She said it ‘made her day’; she was feeling relaxed, enjoying her children, feeling positive and inspired. It had shifted her thoughts, and so shifted her feelings and in turn her actions.

Consequently her appreciation and praise (her positive thoughts and feelings) ‘made my day’! I felt empowered. It was confirmation for me that my efforts, my learning and sharing is doing good things. My intentions are materialising.

I see it as a pebble dropped in a pond, the ripples are far reaching and you really don’t know how far they go. How many other people did she touch that day with her good mood. Who in turn touched others and created a chain of good thoughts that created good things? What difference had she made for her children?

So it’s an interesting phrase ‘made my day’, we usually refer to it in terms of something external. In the sense that ‘it’- the blog, made my day or ‘she’- my friend made my day. But what is it that is actually ‘making’ the change to our day. It’s our feelings, something external is changing our thoughts about something which starts the cycle of thoughts/feelings/actions. So most of the time we omit the first step – which is the decision. We spend our day floating around either being caught up in negatively or positivity depending on what our external environment brings. We are not deciding for ourselves but reacting to our environment.

So why is it that something can ‘make’ your day? Well, we are actually making our own days, hours, & moments always. By the thoughts we carry and put our energy into. We have just forgotten the first step. That step that empowers us! We have the choice!!!! We don’t need to wait for something external to us to ‘make our day’ for us, we can create it ourselves.

We are having an affect on everything around us, all the time. I also process it as ‘ the going viral’ phenomenon but on a silent platform. Everything we do is far reaching. We are just unaware. We are spreading our energy in every moment, so what are we giving our energy to is the great question? Negativity, complaining? the things we don’t like and don’t want? OR are we spreading joy and positivity, talking and thinking about what we do want.

It starts with a choice, then our thoughts, then our feelings and our actions all follow. So you really only need to make the choice. In every moment each day, be aware of your choice. What are you investing your energy into? What is going viral because of your choice?

Let’s make someone’s day today! I’m hoping it’s your own, and that those ripples are infinite.

Much love Skye x

Need some Help? Drop me a line skye@retrainthebrain.com.au

PHOTO: Many thanks Aaron Lee (Downloaded From Upslash)

And now the penny drops on praise

Skye Uncategorized

I have worked with children and in the field of education for my whole career. Couple that with being a parent and you can imagine I’ve said my fair share of ‘well done’s’ and ‘that’s fantastic’. It’s a pronounced habit, it’s normal. We praise our kids, we want to encourage them, we want to share our joy and show them we’re proud of them. We also want to encourage the behaviour we like and want to see more of.

The quality of praise

For a long time I’ve taken on board the type of praise that psychologists and educators promote. Often termed encouragement rather than praise as it offers children a lot more value than your old school ‘good girl’. And I get their point, ‘good boy/girl’ implies that they are only good if they are doing ‘x’. It holds them to an unrealistic expectation that they always need to be ‘good’ to get our affection. In other words that our love is conditional. So long as they demonstrate certain behaviour they get our affection. If you really want to drill down it can encourage deceit and internal conflict. They will certainly lie rather than lose their good standing. Or if they are labelled ‘good girl’ and they know some of their behaviour does not fall into that category (which of course it will not) it causes internal discomfort. They want to please and earn your affection however they feel bad about themselves if they fall from grace or have to lie to get it.

On top of that is the consideration; by whose definition? What is good? Grandma’s good is not the same as dad’s etc, etc. It’s a subjective and external reference.

So I’ve always promoted descriptive encouragement, “Gee those colours are so bright” “That has taken you a long time, you kept trying different ways until you got it”. It’s obvious that there is more value in a more descriptive encouraging phrase rather than simple praise.

Where the difference lies

However where the difference lies has just occurred to me. It’s the point of reference that makes all the difference. Descriptive encouragement alerts children to how they may be feeling, for e.g. “I can see how happy you are, doing that”. “The look on your face is priceless that must have felt so good”. However, it wasn’t until recently that I actually understood the value in the differentiation.

Does it really matter?

So some of you may be thinking yeah, I get it, but so what, does it really matter? Who has time to think up these things, can’t I just say “good girl” “that was awesome” or in our less interested moments “MmHmmm” … I’m being positive, I’m interested in my kids, surely that’s enough, what does it matter how I say it?

Well, I have to say that when we understand WHY we are doing something, we are more likely to be invested. When you see value in the potential outcome, you’re more likely to make changes. So here is the WHY?….

In any experience the end result is emotion. We experience something and our body makes a chemical called a feeling, an emotion and we assign meaning. And we remember that feeling as happiness or sadness or anger etc and we link the experience with the emotion as a memory.

And the Penny drops

Simply put, when we praise our kids we are teaching them to look for the feelings of acceptance/ happiness/ self worth/ love… externally. When we describe or alert them to how they might be feeling we encourage them to look within and develop intrinsic motivation and internal validation.

Have you ever noticed that around 4 and 5yrs of age children start to come to you and ask, do you like this? Do you like mine or my sisters better? Whose is best. They want to be on top, they are comparing themselves with their external world. And they won’t let you off the hook with an “I like them both”. What they are essentially asking is you do you love me? Am I valuable, am I worthwhile? We are teaching them to get their self worth from others, and by comparison. They start to feel that they always need to be accepted and validated by an external source.

I think it’s well worth updating our vocabulary and firing up a few new neurons to shift our children’s focus to how wonderful they are. So hit them with a “Do you like it”? and how does that make you feel, then that is perfect”. Because simple praise can lead to external self-worth. We teach them to chase validation and they lose their connection with themselves. When we alert them to how they feel on the inside we strengthen their self-love and self-worth. Now that is worth a bit of extra work and a rethink on our part.

They are enough, let’s alert them to that.

Photo from UPsplash Siora Photography

That moment!

Skye Dealing with Anxiety

The drawing of the treeMy husband and I went out recently. Yes, together. I know! So we had a baby sitter come and take care of the kids.

It turns out the babysitter is quite the artist! She left them a gift, a gorgeous charcoal drawing of a tree.

My 5 year old absolutely love’s to draw. She spends most of her waking hours creating, it’s her favourite pastime. So at the crack of dawn she rocks up to her spot and here is this creation sitting on her drawing desk. The joy on her face was beautiful.

So what happens next?

She starts to draw on it. My older two surface and are horrified. So we wake to the screams of what should become of this drawing. Bleary eyed we talk it out and the drawing is stashed away and preserved relatively intact.

Of course it got me thinking. What changes from 5 to 9 to 12 years of age? My 5 year old saw the tree and in that moment she was inspired. She wanted to invest her energy into it and be part of it in that moment. She wasn’t worried about the future and what it would look like once she was done. Certainly not what anyone else might think. It was the process, the journey and the experience she was interested in.

She was completely present.

The other two of course were thinking in the future and wanted to preserve the past. What they thought was; ‘what if she ruined it’, and that it might look bad…

How often do we lose the potential of ‘the moment’ for what may occur in the future?  and isn’t that anxiety in it’s negative form? What actually occurred in the future was that it ended up on the floor and no one cared anymore. I was left wishing I had allowed a little girl to be inspired and invest her energy in the moment.

How refreshing would it be to free ourselves from anxiety and limitation? To stop constantly preserving the past and safeguarding or fearing the future? Because what purpose does it serve?

Really we only have right now.

The shoes!!!!

Skye Joy & Happiness, Mental Health, Negative Emotion
Actual offending shoes
Actual-offending-shoes

I am sure a lot of you can relate. By the end of the day I’m often really scraping the bottom of the barrel. My patience, my energy, my acceptance, tolerance and love seem to be vapors. When the last of the …”I need a drink, I need the toilet, I’m not tired, I’m hungry, It’s too dark, it’s too bright, they won’t be quiet, I can’t sleep, my sports uniform is dirty and I need it tomorrow” are done, just the thought, of another child at the top of the stairs, is enough to send my blood to boil!

Because you know the thought is enough. Our amazing brains can create the same emotional intensity with just the thought, the memory. You get the same chemical cocktail in your brain as though it is really happening. So we don’t even need the real event. We can just think about it and it’s real in our minds and bodies.

So I land in a heap on the couch and release a sigh. I take a moment for myself to just be at peace. I glance over and there are my daughter’s sneakers and dirty socks on the end of the couch. I say to my husband, Her stuff is just everywhere! When I ask her to put it away she says ‘sure’, only to move it from that spot and put it down in the next room.

The frustration starts to mount in my mind because those shoes represent something. We give meaning to everything, nothing has inherent meaning, we choose what it means for us. It’s how we make sense of our world.

So unconsciously those shoes mean: I’m not a good mother because I can’t get my kid to put her stuff away. I have a lazy child. I have a distracted child. She’s never going to remember. How is she ever going to look after herself when she’s older. She’s going to lose everything when she’s on her own. I’ve made so many mistakes raising these kids. I don’t put my stuff away and she’s learned it from me, Or my husband is lazy and doesn’t put his stuff away, it’s all his fault…..we assign meaning.

We create fears for the future, blame from the past and in our body those feelings are like it is really happening. If we dwell on it, how do we feel? If we feel that way how do we think, if we think that way how do we feel, and so the loop goes on. All this often happens under the surface, unconsciously, and in seconds we have created a feeling that can loop for as long as we allow it….

My husband bless him just looked at me and said: “Those shoes won’t be there forever”. Nothing has any meaning except the meaning we give it and we can re-frame that in a second. Those shoes have sat there all night and all day and when I look at them now they mean I am blessed to have this beautiful child and I feel love and gratitude. Now that is something worth dwelling on x

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