Encourage your children to blossom
A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it. It just blooms
Zen Shin
How would you bloom if you knew the people you love would always support you, approve of your choices and keep cheering you on?
How do you help your children bloom into their full potential?
The world is reacting to you
Feedback is what you continuously get from the world when you’re going about living your life. Any given choice you make will result in a reaction from the people around you. In the blog post about communication I’ve given the example of how talking is one way of interacting with the world. Another way is how you act. Sometimes the reaction of the world is that you’re not getting a reaction at all, even that is a sort of feedback that will tell you something.
Another kind of feedback is what you get when you’re not getting the result you are after. Some people call that feedback “failure”. And believe me I know how that feedback stings even though I know it’s just telling me that the current way to approach a certain goal is not working. The feedback is just telling me that I need to adjust.
The feedback you get as a child will form your mindset
We are all impacted by the people we are close to and by no one more so than the people who raised us. To begin to understand the scripting we were given as children, the scripting that if you’re not aware of it is still running your life, you can ask yourself some revealing questions. Speaker and Coach Tony Robbins asks a set of questions that can really help you get to the bottom of how the feedback from your parents has molded you.
- Whose approval meant the most to you growing up, your mother’s or your father’s?
- Who and how did you have to be/act for that person? (To get that persons approval)
- How are you still living by those rules today?
I believe that everyone are impacted by these most important early relationships What your parents thought of you depending on what you did have created patterns in your brain. You’ve adopted strategies for how to be loved, accepted and significant.
I also believe that parents do all they can to try to give their children everything they need. The intention is usually good. But as we’re all a work in progress we can be sure that, regardless of how unintentional, we’re more or less messing our children up in some way while we’re working ourselves out.
Getting approval from others
Some people are more motivated by external feedback than others but I think most people can agree on that getting approval from someone you care about feels really good. I don’t see a problem with that. It becomes a problem only when you feel bad about what someone else says or does. Have you ever got caught in what someone said about you? Started to doubt yourself based on an offhand question or comment?
Wayne Dyer said something really genius about this: ”Anytime you get upset about something somebody else says about you what you’re actually saying is that “what you think of me is more important than what I think of me””
Logic tells us that it cannot be true that someone else’s opinion of us matters more than our own. I am the one living my life. I am the one who knows what I like, don’t like and what my goals and dreams are. But the reactions we get from the world, especially our close family, massively impact how we feel.
We know that someone else’s opinion shouldn’t dictate what we choose to do. We also know that some of the basic scripting we’re wired with is not to be trusted either. Yet we often fall into doubt and uncertainty when the feedback we get from the world isn’t supporting us.
Encourage your children to blossom
Knowing that my actions as a parent heavily affect my children’s futures makes me curious.
What feedback am I giving them with my words, my focus and my actions? How am I conveying my approval of them as they try on different things, personas and beliefs? If my actions and words have such an impact on them then how can I make it an empowering one?
If anything I want to give my daughters the knowledge that they are loved for who they are – to let them know that there’s nothing they could ever do that would make me think less of them. How can I make them understand that the only thing that matters to me is that they keep searching for the things that makes them come alive?
How can I give them “permission” and encouragement to go on that search and how can I lead them when I haven’t found my own way just yet?
Some ideas comes from answering the question of “how would I like to be supported by my own family”?
- Compliment my willingness to try new things
- Support me by asking if you can help in some way
- Refrain from asking me questions that only you need answered to feel better about my actions. If you doubt me then try to prepare to help me if your worries turns out to be valid.
- Tell me that you are inspired and proud of the person I am and the person that I’m becoming
How are you supporting your children, and everyone else around you, in becoming the persons they are supposed to be?
Maybe answering some of the questions in this blog can give you some ideas. Let me know how you’re doing and if these questions have been valuable to you.
