by Rowena Starling | Jun 30, 2016 | Informational
Do you suffer from parenting guilt because your offspring turned out to be ‘a bad guy’? Do you have contempt for YOUR parents?
Heart problems often start once the kids are grown. Well here we are in a brand new half-year with a brand new start. I’ve taken a bit of time out to assess my objectives and I’ve come away with a startling conclusion. I feel like a fraud.
I have to say it. My so-called advice and wisdom on parenting comes with more than a little regret. My own Son, who is now 30+, alternately seeks my advice and counsel or holds me in contempt. I’ve had to take the time to sort this out. Here it is:
For those of you who have minors still, just know that when they grow up, they become who THEY are. It will be tempting to blame yourself for their perceived shortcomings. BANISH the thought!!!
Per the American Psychological Association: “Researchers may never be able to put a number on how big an influence parents have on their children, says Loyola University’s Fred Morrison, PhD, who studies the influence of parenting on school achievement. In terms of academics, some recent studies suggest that 50 percent of the variation between high-and low-functioning children results from influences that occur before children enter school. But even the half that results from influences after children start school may be mediated by family factors. For example, Morrison and his colleagues find that social skills, including a child’s ability to sit still and concentrate, have an effect on academic performance. “All of these things are intertwined,” says Morrison. “And parenting adds up to a lifestyle that funnels into the language, general knowledge, reading and math skills that children start school with.” Meanwhile, none of the arguments or studies by developmental psychologists dissuades Judith Rich Harris from her view that “genes and outside-the-home environment have a greater influence than parents on children’s personality development”.
I prefer to think of our influence and the environment we provide as parents as being up to about 70-80%. It’s an intuitive thing I have that informs that opinion, not science, as far as I have been able to find, Yet!
For all of the molding and building we do as parents, the fact remains that we are merely the ushers, the conduits of the future as our parents were for us. How deeply do we blame our parents for our shortcomings? How much love for our parents is sacrificed because of our upbringing, THEIR lack of wisdom?
In the final analysis, how much of who we are today is really THEIR (our parents’) fault? Do we as adults take responsibility for our lives or do we still, like whiney teenagers, hold our parents in contempt for all that they were able and unable to do for us?
Why do we let this stuff run us? These phantom fingers of pain and guilt are nothing more than the mind noise we allow to sap our love. There are so many other, better things to do with our time and energy: there’s money to be made, homeless families to help find food and shelter, animal rescue operations with which to volunteer, save the planet and trees operations, local church drives of various sorts. The list is nearly endless! Key word here – ‘allowing’ it to sap our energy. Remember: You are still the boss of you!
I know, I know. You like wallowing in that ‘love’ thang but once our offspring are adults, we need to take our ‘separation exercises’ seriously. We need to inject Joy into our activities by remembering what we loved to do before child or what we’ve always dreamed of doing but never had the time. Make the time for it Now!
How do we save ourselves from ourselves? My favorite means is meditation. Yes, there are a thousand ways to do it. The point for me is to have that silent communion with The On High. Why else bother? Do you have a favorite means for communing with The On High?
To do this, I sit comfortably in a quiet place, back straight but balanced so there’s no tension in my back muscles. I often use earplugs in to block outside noise and my eyes closed. I go to silence within about 5 to 10 minutes, sooner if I’m already pretty relaxed and I hold silence for at last as long as it took me to get there!
People new to meditation normally take longer to get to silence. Make it easy on yourself and start with just 5 minutes at a time. You’ll build your length of time through practice, as you would a muscle. When you build into 15 minutes of silence, your golden. Any length of time past that is gravy.
Yoga is meditation that incorporates exercise! Perhaps this is your cup of tea. Again, there are many types. It’s just a matter of finding the one(s) for You! Some martial arts have the same type of consciousness bent with more intense exercise. At my age though, I think I’ll damage myself if I engage one of those… OR you can do none of the above!
Meditation, per se, is not necessary when you recognize you are already in constant communication with The On High aka God and operate on a moment to moment basis with that understanding. Meditation comes into play when you find there is too much noise in your head blocking this ‘direct’ silent communication. THEN you (I) need to engage meditation to enlarge the silent spaces in your (my) mind for throughout the day. You get my meaning here? Is this the way you understand it?
Heaven forbid you have boomerang offspring (adult offspring living with you) or are suffering from empty nest syndrome (you’re grieving your adult offspring having left home)! Hopefully you’re not having to deal with a lot of lip and attitude if that’s the case. That would definitely be adding insult to injury, so to speak.
Can you get any comfort or insight from your experience at that age with YOUR parents? It sometimes helps to pull that memory up and be as honest as you can about what was happening then. Are there any solutions you can glean from that memory? It can be quite amusing to remember our attitudes from back then. It can be even more insightful to remember our parents’! What did they do right that you can use? What did they do wrong? Do you want to use it?
All in all, I say we need to guard our health through all this. The pre-mature aging thing is getting a bit ridiculous. Let halt that ugly soldier in it’s path. There are way too many of us wearing our stress on our faces! The good thing is, if we can see it, we can make haste to do something about it. The bad thing is, many of us think that look is normal. It ain’t.
Do as Elsa in ‘Frozen’ says, “Let it go…oooooo.” Peace of mind is an option and a choice. Choose it. It may seem glib in the face of what you’re going through but I assure you. It can be done. If you need help with that, let’s see if I can help you! Learn how to let it roll off of you like rain on a duck’s back. And if it’s more like a storm rather than rain, please do go within. Come within, out of the storm. You are not alone.
Let’s get over ourselves. Our parents were not perfect nor were theirs. Maturity dictates that we don’t blame the angels for God’s work. The beauty of life is that we are able to expand in ALL directions once we reach adulthood. The trick is getting to adulthood! Some don’t make it. Don’t blame yourself! Let’s love our humanity, our parenting, warts and all. Tote that barge! Lift that bale! Turn that kid’s cell phone off!
Would you like to eliminate fears and anxieties in minutes rather than taking months and years?!!! If you have fears and/or anxieties that stand in the way of you making the money you know you’re capable of or stand in the way of your dealing with parenthood in a thoroughly loving and effective way, if you find you are often anxious over disciplinary issues or over what the future holds, contact me for the Complimentary Parenting Breakthrough Session initiated at saveyourbreath101.com/parenting-assessment. It’s a $250 value for free for a limited time only. You’ll be glad you did!
We are placed here on earth to have fun. Somewhere through the generations, we lost sight of that or completely forgot it!!! Bring that BACK to the front of your mind. Dance with that idea. Revisit your 20s if you think that will help. Our hearts are ours. We must protect it!
Let’s forgo heart problems.
Heart Problems from ‘Once the kids are grown’.
by Rowena Starling | Jun 28, 2016 | Informational
You’re a traveler. You travel to all of the most exotic places in the world. From one air-conditioned airport to another. You arrive at this current destination, the doors of the wonderfully air-conditioned airport open, you step out and YOU’RE HIT BY THE BLARING SUN AND SMOOTHERING HEAT & HUMIDITY OF HONG KONG, CHINA!!! … that is what it’s like for people who THINK they suddenly realize what parenting or running a business is really all about!
I help parents, which includes parents who are business owners, with the stress and aggravation of parenting… whether their child is 5 or 50! Over the years, as an entrepreneur and parent, I’ve dealt with an overwhelming amount of stress and aggravation and a while ago I realized that for many business owners, their business is like their child even if they don’t have one. For example –
When there is a mess, who cleans it up?
Does your worry over it keep you up at night?
I’m sure there are growing pains, is it talking back to you? … So, hopefully, everyone will get something from this talk.
There are many aspects of parenting that apply to our business and working life.
Daymond John, founder of FUBU reminds us “As an Entrepreneur, you love your business like a child and you’re taught to be laser-focused on the business.” Are you laser-focused on your business? Are you laser-focused to the exclusion of everything and everyone else?
Many business owners think they must slog through the day to day stresses of owning a business because that’s just the way it is! That it is what it is! But, it’s really deeper than that. If they would just realize that their levels of emotional and financial well-being are of equal value and their health is effected by both, then they would accept the help they so desperately need. I have a Family System that I use to help parents that has one part in particular that helps business owners as well!
Today, I’m asking if you’re making these 3 mistakes in your business. … not that you’re making them all or any! I’d like to discuss them with you in the context of my personal story. May I? Thank You. I’m a Mother, a Healer and a graduate of CAL, Berkeley. I am now and have been a Financial Expert for over 15 yrs.
I currently hold 4 Securities Licenses, an Insurance license and I have over 32 years of intense training and experience in meditation and what it takes to be happy. All of this encompassed working with families and raising my Son whom I gave birth to over 30 years ago. In fact, he says I am the best mother he’s ever had.
He appeared with me as I launched my first parenting product back in 1996 when The Today Show flew us to NYC to be interviewed by Bryant Gumbel. I was also on the O’Reilly Factor, Local TV News, Newspapers and in International News and Radio talking about parenting. I lead a charmed life now. But it wasn’t always this way…
In the 80s, I was married and a successful Real Estate Agent when ‘irreconcilable differences’ in my marriage got in the way. My Son was just 3 years old when his father & I separated.
Who here has been through divorce? How did this effect your business/parenting?
What I want to remind you of is that communication starts before words even happen: … with yourself and your integrity.
1) What is the blind spot that’s wreaking havoc in your parenting and/or your business? It’s the neglect of your moment to moment awareness of the communication you have with YOURSELF. The unrelenting need to increase profits compromises quality AND efficiency in the business AND in the home. Expansive opportunities are missed in the moment (where they happen) because You are focused 1 or 2 steps ahead of where you are.
Note this: It’s ALL about the moment. Who can tell me why this matters? It’s ‘in the moment’ with people that you make the sell. People = profits!!! Work and home, emotional and financial have equal value. Your business is you. Your child, a reflection of You! — YOU! …expressing and broadcasting your unique voice over the airwaves of humanity – as parent and/or business owner. The blind spot is the lack of loving attentiveness to the ‘Moment’ in your broadcast.
For example: Have you ever had someone blow you off because they were preoccupied with something else? Do you remember how that bothered you? How much juice did it take out of what you wanted to do for them?
Have you ever BEEN the person who blew someone off because you were too focused on something else? I have. The negative impact of even these subtle types of exchanges on your life is profound because the health of both of you is damaged in that moment. Do you know that even subtle stresses and anxieties wear on the body? It’s as if you’re carrying a 30lb weight in each hand 24/7!!! In business, goodwill and money are damaged as well.
A tool for improving your moment to moment awareness is Meditation. Do you meditate? If you find yourself overwhelmed with too much administrative minutia in your business, delegate as much as you can to the Apps that have been developed to free you up! [share the apps article]
Note this:Quiet mind, Easy flow.
It’s in the moment that you find money and Joy in unexpected places. A simple example is, I’ve found $20 bills and more on the ground walked over by others in front of me. Money sticking out of seat cushions at hotels and airports. Do you think this doesn’t happen in business? Do you remember a time when you pounced on some money that others overlooked?
What if we continue to ignore ourselves? My marriage was supposed to be the ‘Happily Ever After’ little kids are taught to believe in and I had failed. I felt like a failure. I felt unloved, couldn’t even love myself. My Son was the only person I felt loved me. I had ignored the communication from myself that said “Stay in the moment with your husband and family.”
My business fell apart. I could no longer pay my bills, PG&E was turned off, food was a struggle to get. I lost my car. I was facing homelessness. Worst of all, I realized I had hurt my Son. I had to turn my Son over to his father for a while as I worked through depression and wanting to die. I was devastated. Have you ever faced homelessness?
Picking up subtle buying signs in body language and tone of voice of others is done best when we’re in the Moment. Who you’re being in business is who your employees or team or your child (if you have one) is modeling. Do you esteem yourself that way?
Do you have the voice of YOUR parent(s) still in your head? Are you STILL ‘interacting’ with it? For example: Did you choose your profession or did your parents choose it? …or… Did you choose it to rebel against them? Did they tell you ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’ or you have to ‘work very hard for it’? How many different kinds of exchanges and decisions happen in your head that are rooted in these things they said?
Many of our business failures stem from unreasonable fears, phobias and anxieties. Do you have a fear of speaking, of pressing for the sale and asking for money or … what have you… related to your business or parenting?
The turning point for me came from within as I was walking down the street one day picking up cigarette butts… to smoke. I realized that if I continued in this way I would die in poverty and THAT would be the legacy I would leave for my Son! I made the DECISION right then and there to re-enter the path to prosperity & Joy! …well it was actually a crawl onto The Path. Crawling…, I said “This isn’t me.”
What I learned from divorce is there is no ‘happily ever after’. I needed to accept MYSELF and love MYSELF. I am GRATEFUL that I was never homeless because there were people who cared and took me in.
I realized I didn’t know it all … I went on a learning quest, a spiritual quest, all over again. I got my Son back and became a better parent. With business colleagues, I needed to trust what I KNOW. Do you have confidence in yourself?
In business, I realized it was my fault that I failed. I hired MENTORS to feel more confident, build myself up and get back on my feet because I knew by that point that no matter how hard I worked, I would not reach the level of freedom I longed for without them.
Mistake #2) Do you ever feel like you say the same thing over and over again without getting a result? It’s tiring, stressful, detrimental to your health AND unnecessary. As in parenting, it’s UNNECESSARY because you ARE being heard. They just don’t care for what you have to say or HOW you’re saying it. SAVEYOURBREATH!!! The Parenting Breakthrough Sessions I do for parents functions as a way to help them understand that and save their breath.
Maya Angelou states that “If we accept being talked to any kind of way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.”
Communication can be a very complex activity and the paradox is, if we consider how we would truly react if things were said to us in the same negative way and tone that we speak to our associates and children sometimes, our reaction or lack thereof would be the same as theirs.
Getting your kids or your business colleagues to listen; having your living wisdom absorbed and sticking, is important to having lessons learned the easy, productive way versus the hard “OMG what happened” way. Having to repeat yourself over and over again takes time away from other stuff you have to do, show them or have them do. It’s the economy of energy that you need to employ.
Why is understanding communication important? Because of the integrity it does or doesn’t establish. Ninety-three percent of all in-person communication is nonverbal (38% vocal elements, 55% body language). Only 7% is picked up in the words being said. SAVEYOURBREATH!!! On top of that, forty-five percent of high-earning managers are too tired to converse with their spouse or partner after a long day at the office.
An average of 50% of parent-child communications are “not happy” with 48% of those parents being in denial of that fact. Twelve percent of parents are aggravated ALL or MOST of the time!!! This is important to know if you’re a business owner dealing with parents. Don’t you think? How many here have a business that serves parents?
For example: Your employee(s) or partner(s) take shortcuts in your instructions and end up costing you BIG MONEY! I used to resort to yelling & screaming at my child when saying it repeatedly didn’t work because I thought I wasn’t being heard or was being ignored. …and I was….
Note this: Repetition requires reflection. Here’s a training technique: Don’t repeat until you’ve found the hole in your communication. Sometime later I learned an important tool: stopping in the moment to look my son in the eyes to see & find out what was going on with him then addressing whatever that was. Explaining the reasons behind what I was requesting, having him repeat what he understood it to mean and why I was asking it of him alleviated a lot of tension and repetition. The result was better communication, more conversation, understanding and compliance… for both of us… because I needed to learn some stuff from him too.
OK, let’s do an exercise. Do you observe your emotions? Do you look at your fears? Write down a list of your fears, anxieties and phobias. Circle the ones that get in the way of your being more effective in your business or at home. Do you know how much they cost you? Put a star by the one that costs you $1,000+ per month, 3 months or a year. Really look at them and size then up! Raise your hand if you would like to be rid of it in minutes rather than months and years of therapy. I can help you do that!
I’ve turned failure to success. I live at the top of the world. My Son’s a success in his own right and my business speaks to the soul of people! This is why I’m so passionate about helping parents, and especially parents who are business owners, with the stress and aggravation of parenting!
And finally, #3What is the biggest mistake you may be committing in your business? It’s thinking that struggle and effort are necessary to succeed.” Marianne Williamson reminds us “The #1 Root of all Illness, as we know, is Stress.”
Note this: Seven people die every 2 seconds from stress. What percentage of them do you suppose are business owners, parents, parents who are business owners? What does this belief suggest? Struggle and effort suggests you are some sort of slave.
Why is it important to abolish this belief? Because it harbors stress which is at the root of what ails us, prematurely ages us and kills us. Ninety percent of Americans are stressed at work. Entrepreneurs experience more anxiety than employees and 47% of parents with children under 18 have stress that has or can lead to health problems.
The old paradigm of struggle and effort being necessary for success is obsolete. I know this sounds too good to be true but we are not living in the wagon train days anymore. What gets the job done faster? It is ‘knowing’ the result is already in place. All you have to do is get out of the way. Decide what you’re going to do, then do it without the noise in your head. The noise is ‘you in the way’.
How do we live our lives? The tip on how to do this is the understanding that we lead our lives ‘Energetically’. What’s the importance of the intensity of our intentions? Our Intentions direct our energy. Your life right now is the result of the level of Intensity you placed on your stated and subconscious intentions years ago, months ago, moments ago.
When I say ‘intensity’ here I talking about a deep ‘feeling’, not a ‘jam as much activity as I can in a short period of time’, hard physical thing. I’m talking about making a strong impression in your Intention, feeling it is done and then coming out and having a relaxed focused ENJOYMENT OF YOUR CURRENT ACTIVITY in any given moment!
For example: I have had very intense experiences of being in this ‘Aura if Intention’ so deeply that as I expressed what I wanted, it would appear miraculously. Things that would normally take weeks for me before would happen the very next day. This is not something exclusive to me. It’s available and used by all of us to varying degrees.
I even got to the point where I would play with it and with something that would normally take me 3 or 4 months through much struggle & hard effort, I would say and impress in my Intention that I want it to happen NEXT week and miraculously it happen next week through no struggle on my part and with nominal activity!!!
How to do this? Note this: Know in advance.Intend. Write a big result that you want already in place! What is YOUR tool for getting to this place WE ALL HAVE?
Are you ready to let struggle and effort go? It’s all about the Moment in your time here on the planet. Every Moment. Whether you’re a parent or business person or both, free yourself to enjoy it. Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds us, “All the suffering, stress & addiction come from not realizing you already are what you are looking for.”
I’m offering a Complimentary Parenting Breakthrough Session (a $250 value) to all the parents who are stressed. How many of you are parents of a person under 60 yo? Also take advantage of a Get out of Fear and Stress Now session whether you’re a parent or not, though it’s not complimentary. Contact me via the same link.
Thank You for your kind attention and I bid you eternal Joy.
References:
Harvard Business Review (2006 Study) … 45% of high-earning managers…
f the National Survey of American Families, and the 2003, 2007 and 2011/12 waves of the National Survey of Children’s Health. … 12+% aggravated most or ALL of the time.
We’re all under a lot of stress and feel pushed to the edge: one study shows that 9 out of 10 of us are highly stressed most of the time (Rose Medical Center, Denver CO)
Check this out: 9 out of 10 of us (88%) feel that incivility is a serious problem and getting worse. And 9 out of 10 Americans think that incivility increases opportunities for violence (Bozell Worldwide/US News & World Report Civility in America Study 1999) Statistics prove that more than 8 in 10 of us, both with kids and without kids, agree that bad parenting — the failure to instill good behavior in kids — is the major cause of bad manners (Bozell Worldwide/US News & World Report Civility in America Study 1999)
Younger generations and parents are also more likely than other Americans to point to financial concerns as sources of stress. Money is a somewhat or very significant source of stress for the majority of Americans (64 percent) but even more so for parents (77 percent), Millennials (75 percent) and Gen Xers (76 percent). Parents and younger generations are less likely than Americans overall to report being financially secure (parents: 5.0 on a 10-point scale, where 1 means “not at all financially secure” and 10 means “completely financially secure;” Millennials: 4.8; Gen Xers: 4.8; all adults: 5.5).
More than half of parents (58 percent) and Millennials (57 percent) say that paying for essentials is a somewhat or very significant source of stress, compared with 44 percent of Americans overall reporting the same. The majority of parents (71 percent) and Gen Xers (70 percent) say they have “just enough” or not enough money to make ends meet at the end of the month. ~ APA 2015
by Rowena Starling | Jun 21, 2016 | Informational
You jump up out of bed, frantic because you’re late for work! The kids are up, have made a mess of the kitchen and are running and screaming all over the house as you try to corral them and get them to dress for school. The dog’s barking, your spouse has left for work and your client is calling to find out where you are!!! It’s CHAOS!!!
Hello, I’m Rowena Starling welcoming you to The Save Your Breath Show where we help parents eliminate the stress and aggravation of parenting. Today’s show is about the chaos we experience in parenting and The Family System needed to restore order and enhance integrity.
Are you in denial? Are you parenting by default?
Many parents feel at peace with their parenting but few understand what they’ve made peace with and how it effects the ultimate outcome, the adult their child grows into. If they only knew The Family System that is required to render the best outcome, they would have a healthy relationship with the strong, happy, independent adult they hope to raise.
Through the work I have studied and over 30 years of experience as a parent, I have developed The Family System that has elevated my own sense of competence as a parent and confidence in many other aspects of my life, personally and professionally. How many of you would like to have that?
When my Son was a child, my skills as a parent were very poor. They were half bad and suffered from divorce and the loss of my business. Many factors in my life during his childhood devastated me to the point where I knew that if I did not get myself together, I would leave a legacy of depression and pain to my Son. Have any of you been through that level of degradation?
So, why have The Family System in place? The main reason is to keep your sanity as you grow your child into a strong, happy, independent adult! Chaos rules when we’re unfocused, out of integrity and have weak family systems in place or nonexistent. Stress then begins to eat away at our mental and physical health. Remember, according to the Center for Disease Control, 7 people die from stress every 2 seconds!!!
Here’s an example of ‘walking stress’, I was a volunteer at my Son’s middle school. As you know, when you get to hang out on a regular basis at your child’s school, you get to know who the trouble-making kids are. There was this one child that was known to be very disruptive.
One day his mother came in to the school. I was in the office when she arrived and banged her fist on the counter, my eyes opened like saucers, “Where’s the principle, you MFs!” she demanded. The Principle came out, ushered her into the office and I could hear her… “I don’t have time, you figure it out.”
The Principle said something I couldn’t quite hear, she responded, “My son did no such thing!!!” I had to leave for my class assignment but I distinctly remember thinking, ‘that child is exactly like his mother!!!’ … I like having a loving and peaceful home life! How about you? Do you have that now?
What does having an effective Family System do? It helps you run a smooth running of the household. For example, take our parent in the introduction that woke up in personal and household chaos. Can you see how having a family system in place would have help that parent, especially if chaos is a common occurrence in that household? It is for some…
It helps in integrating the core values you want your family to adopt. Do you like the idea of having done a good to excellent job of raising your child(ren) or, if your child is an adult, of healing parenting wounds you may have inflicted in your adult offspring? Having The Family System in place allows an all-encompassing and comprehensive means of family administration that overlaps into preventing or addressing pain being felt in adulthood.
It’s a reference point for your offspring for when they become adults and parents themselves. As you know, we tend to parent as we were parented or, in some cases, make a point of making significant alterations to our parent’s parenting styles. Do you value and appreciate what you’ve already done as a parent? Do you feel your offspring does?
How are your adult offspring treating you? They can’t help but love you. Do they like you? Do they come around? Call you? Do they share funny stories of how your influence manifests in their world?
My son related a funny one (well, it was funny to him anyway) of how he was driving a car full of his buddies down to Las Vegas and he says a couple of them got into a beef. I can’t remember what he said it was about but he said he heard himself sounding exactly like me, saying “If you guys don’t stop all of that fussing and arguing in this car, I’m going to turn this sucker around and head back to San Francisco!!! I mean it!”
He then pulled the car off of the highway and had them all get out. He told the two arguing gents, “Come to some point of agreement and apologize to each other. I’m not making this long-assed trip in a car to Las Vegas to get there and be miserable!!!” They put their disagreement aside, apologized and a good time was had by all! He said he was amazed at himself and how he felt like the only adult in the car!
My clients tell me that even when we have worked on a specific issue, other areas of their parenting woes clear up. Our problems don’t happen in a vacuum. For example, when we dissolved my clients, Calista and Jeremy’s, fears of confrontation and anger, respectively, they found that there were far fewer incidents of aggressive behavior from their children on each other and at school. That’s part of the mirroring and melding effect of our energies and non-verbal communications! Do you have fear and anger issues in your household?
So, how do you quell the chaos in your parenting? Without the help of a mentor, someone who has gone before, we frequently parent by default and fill in the blanks with our own assumptions. What is The Family System that I have cultivated low these many years?
Well, I like to think of this system as in the shape of a diamond. Families are the crown jewels of society so I feel diamonds represent us very well. We parents are being forged into diamonds, also known as ‘grace’, by heat, pressure and the weight of time; the heat of the day to day dealing with offspring, the pressure we face in supporting the family and the unrelenting march of time that makes us feel we’re not doing enough fast enough!!!
The System helps you raise your level of expertise and integrity in your parenting. Is that something you would like to do? You gain greater insight into from where issues arise. You gain overall greater confidence, expand your parenting skills and learn to make it EASIER on yourself, thereby preventing stress and passing it along to your child(ren)!!!
There are Five steps to The Family System and steps within the steps. For our purposes here, I’ll do the summary outline. Here at the head of the family is(are) the Parent(s). The parent(s) set the family priorities, core values and are responsible for mapping out and communicating the family system to the child(ren). I make a point of having:
1) Ease and relaxation built into the experience of the parent(s) so that their role as Hero can be done with fun and finesse. Are you OK with having more fun and ease in your parenting? Parenting is 2) a Calling. We go into what that means and the Hero aspect of all we do. We, parents often have challenges with money, supporting the family. I call it 3) raising the dough. We get to the root of this problem and establish the foundation for family prosperity. Would a legacy of your offspring knowing how to fish be alright? Know what I mean by that? The ol’ feed a man for a day vs. show him how to fish and he can feed himself all his days….
Teaching self-control, efficiency, and orderly conduct, also known as 4) discipline is a high priority and, of course 5) respect, both of the child to the parent and the parent to the child, cannot be left out. To feel honored and esteemed is a deep and extremely important sensitivity of humans. Do you agree? The understanding and appreciation of this core need we all have is expressly taught in the home. Bring it to the fore in your family system. More peace is the result because your family members are getting their recognition, yourself included. More Joy is present! I know you intuitively understand why this is so. I’ll hold your hand through the process if that’s what you need.
What if we don’t enlist The Family System to help us with our parenting? Then we get to continue with the random chaos that pops up. In some households, chaos reigns. Do you have a problem with it in yours?
You get to continue nagging and begging, saying the same things over and over and over again. You get to keep the anxiety you have over being the authority figure vs. your child’s friend. Is this what you want to do?
The ever looming money issues get to continue to haunt your very existence and the mounting stress of all this gets to prematurely age you, make you sick and then send you to an early grave. Do you know we can all be living a lot longer and happier than we do?
Is your family then like a boat without a tether, roaming aimlessly on the sea of life’s circumstance? Do you want to risk your offspring being rendered groundless, without a firm foundation to secure them in the storms of life? When would now be a good time to bring our best to the shore? Drop anchor and row in.
Do you have pervasive feelings of anxiety and don’t know how to manage them? Do you have difficulty dealing with the day to day stress of parenting on top of everything else that you have to do? Do you have an endless stream of negative self-talk that’s adding to the noise of it all?
Let’s talk. Meditation is at the heart of all that I do and runs a clearing stream through all of the steps in The Family System. Would you like to be stress-free? I have a 5-minute process that frees you from the different fears, anxieties or phobias in minutes (individually)! We can knock them out one by one. Eliminate years of suffering forever in minutes!!!
Would you like to have the inner game of money handled so you can flow more of it through your life? Would you like to break through the unconscious fears that are holding you back from being the parent and person you want to be? I can help you with that.
Parenting is the part you do for yourself, your child(ren) and humanity’s future. Our children are our future. We’re rolling it all forward. What exactly are you rolling forward?
If you feel you want help with the day to day chaos and stresses of parenting or at least an assessment to see where you stand, take advantage of the Complimentary Parenting Breakthrough Session offered when you submit the assessment at www.saveyourbreath101.com/parenting-assessment. You’ll be glad you did!
I Thank You very much for watching and listening and I bid you Eternal Joy. See you next time here on The Save Your Breath Show!!!
by Rowena Starling | Jun 16, 2016 | Informational
You’ve landed on Mars and have been there for over a month now. You’ve gathered your samples, taken videos of the various crimson views, earth and surrounding stars from that unique viewpoint. You’ve also had some pretty harrowing situations as you’ve discovered Martians do exist!
You’re tired now and you just want to go home… to Earth… when you find that you need the help of the Martians in order to be released from the atmosphere of Mars. Here’s the problem. The Martians don’t speak your language but you keep saying the same thing over and over and over again to them as if doing that will somehow make them understand! Insane huh?
That’s what it like for some parents who find themselves saying the same training lines to their child(ren) over and over and over again. Some people call it nagging. I call it insane. Children are from Mars, parents are from Venus.
Hello, I’m Rowena Starling welcoming you to the Save Your Breath Show where we help parents eliminate the stress and aggravation of parenting. Our show today is about having Integrity and ease in the communications you have with your children, be they wee ones or adults. We are heroes and as such, we need to perform our tasks with finesse and ease. Why? Because that’s what heroes do.
Many parents think that if they say ‘it’, whatever it is, over and over and over again that somehow and eventually, it will get through to their child (or whomever they’re nagging) and the recipient of this badgering will adhere and start to behave the way the parent wants without them having to say it again. But it’s really deeper than that, obviously, because the nagging is not working. If they would just realize that their long-term happiness and health and their child’s current and long-term happiness and health are at stake, they would look for more sane ways to get the resultant behavior they seek. I have a Family System that I’ve developed for my clients that helps eliminate a substantial amount of this need to nag.
Of course, there is some repetition required in training our children or relating to adults. What is saying ‘it’ over and over again meant to accomplish? It’s meant to instill a value and/or an element crucial to healthy survival. For example, when my Son was a little boy, he had this horrible (to me) habit of leaving his toys all over the floor, all over the house.
Have you ever gotten up in the middle of the night in a dark house to go pee and stepped on one of those tiny little sharp toys in your bare feet?!! NOT a pleasant experience. I can’t remember how many times I nagged him to pick up his toys before he goes to bed!
SO, one day when I came home from work and found myself starring at toys all over the floor, I grabbed one of those large black heavy duty trash bags and picked them ALL up, Legos and all and put them into that bag. It was QUITE the haul as this was a 33 gallon bag! I looked like Santa Claus as I swung it over my shoulder and carried it out to the woodshed.
Now, my intention was to have him earn the toys back piece by piece as he showed he would be responsible and pick them up. When he got home from his afterschool program, I waited and waited for him to start to miss his toys and inquire as to where they were… at least, certain ones of them that I thought were his favorites, like the Legos. Days passed. Before I knew it, months had passed! After all, a pretty penny had been paid for all of those toys! The least he could do would be to miss them out loud!!!
Do you know he NEVER asked me where his toys went? Do you also know that I never had to ask him twice to pick up any of his things again? Here’s what I learned: when you promise you’ll enforce a discipline if certain rules are not followed, do it… the first time. I had been threatening to do it for too long… causing myself all kinds of stress and grief.
Why did I want him to learn to pick up his toys without being asked to do so? Well, aside from stepping on them and hurting my feet, he needed to learn to be neat and maintain that kind of living environment from a societal and health standpoint. Being neat trains the mind/brain to be orderly and uncluttered. An uncluttered mind thinks clearly and faster.
From a societal standpoint, an uncluttered mind would help him learn his school assignments efficiently and he’d be easier to live with once he found the right girl in adulthood. From a health standpoint, he would avoid getting his or some other person’s feet hurt and the habit of being neat would carry over into other areas of his life that would eventually require it… like thorough and proper cleanliness in grooming. He’d be in the habit of picking up loose ends and details.
Why else do we engage in the nagging behavior? We do it many times to avoid hitting them. Are you one to threaten corporeal punishment if your instructions are not carried out in a timely manner? Do you threaten and threaten and threaten? There is no integrity in that. You are out of integrity with your word and in the eyes of your child (or your adult offspring) if this is the way YOU behave!
[As an aside here, let me say that corporeal punishment aka spanking and whooping (derivative word is ‘whipping’) are a betrayal of our intelligence. When we are reduced to striking a person (or animal for that matter), it is an insult to our intelligence and a sign of utter dismay. It shows no faith in our thinking abilities and capacities to adapt, regroup and solve a problem.
I know we get tired. I’ve been there… but do you really think violence is the answer? It begets resentment and hatred. Bring Joy to the challenge, make a project of solving a problem rather than exacerbating it!!!
The parent brain is bigger and has more experience here on the planet. Let’s bring our magnificent minds and hearts to bear on problem solving in disciplinary issues. Do the parenting assessment at SaveYourBreath101.com/parenting-assessment if patience and Joy are an issue for you. I’m here to help.]
When we engage nagging, it teaches the other person that we are weak in our word. There’s no strength in it. There’s no integrity and therefore, they lose respect for us. They lose respect for us because we are not telling the truth, threat after threat after threat equals lie after life after lie. Is there any wonder then why you find yourself disrespected not only by your child but by others? The result of the energy of our actions is not limited to individual situations.
How do you stop the need to have to say it over and over again? Make a note of this: Repetition requires review. First of all, make it easy on yourself. Within the context of the Family System I’ve developed, here are a few simple steps that help:
Stop in the moment and breathe. Be easy on yourself and them. Save your breath.Review your instructions and check for, the age appropriateness of them, the clarity of it, the attention span of the child/person at the time (Were they reoccupied?) and your attitude in delivery (the 93% of non-verbal communicated).After finding where the communication broke down from what you discovered in step 2, adjust instructions accordingly, reissue them in the same or another way andHave the offspring repeat to you what they heard you say and why it’s important to do the instruction.
Conversation may ensue. This kind of review opens the door to communication. This a good thing for integrity is built on the moment to moment trust and honesty of our intentions. Our moment to moment trust and honesty is conveyed by demonstrating our respect of THEIR opinion and process as discovered through caring to engage in conversation, however elementary it may seem. Do you know that patience has its own reward?
Stopping in the moment is the initiation of ‘patience’. We like to talk about ‘mindfulness’ as the gateway to stress relief and it is. However, I personally take issue with using the word ‘mindful’ because it feels like an oxymoron. When we think of our minds as ‘full’, we think of it being full of noise, crazy-making, planning, nagging us, complaining, judging and so on. I much prefer ‘mindless’ but still, even THAT suggests being inconsiderate or stupid. ‘Quiet mind’ says it best.
Stopping in the moment initiates the chance to be patient, to stop the mind, have it be quiet, pause, breathe… which promotes the opportunity to relax, a health break. Stress is killing us. Doing this helps kill stress! Marianne Williamson reminds us that “the #1 root of all illness is stress”. Constant repetition slowly (or not so slowly) puts pressure on the brain and raises blood pressure until we blow!!! We blow our health. It prematurely ages us. Do you want to head the uglies off at the pass!
Let me tell you about Hana. Hana’s children are now grown, a man 28 and woman 25. She and their father divorced after 12 years of marriage and co-parented thereafter. When I met her 2 years ago, she was 55, tired, haggard and had basically given up on the joie de vie of life. She looked much older than she was.
As someone successful and considering retirement, she felt she didn’t really have anything to look forward to because her adult children were still giving her grief, worrying her to death with their 20 year old behaviors, i.e. adventures with drugs and random bouts with the law. She and her ex-husband took turns bailing the son out of jail.
Worry and anxiety showed on her face and body. She was argumentative with her now adult children and upon deeper conversation with her she told me that she was often too tired to talk with her kids on their level when they were younger. She spent a significant amount of time when home TRYING to relax with a glass of wine in front of the TV.
She and her then husband argued and fought in front of the kids, argued with the kids… just generally yelling and screaming empty threats continuously right up until the time I met her. Her kids had little respect for her or their dad. Both of them were out of integrity in their dealing with the kids due to guilt on quite a number of fronts.
The truly sad part is, today, THESE days, Hana LONGS for a loving close relationship with her kids. We’ve made SOME progress. We’ve been able to work through her anger and pain with her own father. She’s stopped the yelling matches with her kids, her health is much, much better and her goods looks have come back. The physically ugly effects of the stress she created in her home for a couple of decades due to her lack of disciplinary integrity have subsided.
Now it just a matter of seeing when her kids will come around to the degree she would like. Things are MUCH better now, the lines of communication are open. What she wants now is to receive the deep affection she sees other parents have with their adult progeny. She’s concerned that she’ll die alone and longing still for that connection. They’re coming around, just not as fast as she’d like. After all, the kids need to process two decades of abuse and neglect.
They now have their own set of ‘special circumstances’ to overcome and because they are still comparatively young, they don’t see the need or want to engage the help they so desperately need.
If you find you have trouble wading through what’s necessary to cultivate patience, do the parenting assessment I have at saveyourbreath101.com/parenting-assessment. It starts the process for our complimentary session. This a $250 value for free for a limited time only!
What if you choose to continue the nagging? Well, it’s tiring, stressful, detrimental to your health AND unnecessary. It’s unnecessary because they do hear you! They just don’t care for what you have to say OR how you’re saying it. Save your breath!
Do you choose to continue nagging? Then you get to engage more crazy-making behavior. You get to cultivate a significant amount of resentment from your offspring because you’re talking at them rather than with them and you get to miss awesome opportunities to expand their brains/minds due to missed conversations with them.
You also get to lose something that benefits you that you would have learned from THEM!!! Do you understand that we are not the be all and end all of all conscious knowledge here. Our offspring come here to teach us something also. They bring the future into our homes. They’re the cosmic wisdom of consciousness incarnate as are we. We are to respect each other accordingly.
Do you find your ease and finesse difficult to access? If you were to expand on that part of yourself, how would you go about doing it? Ease and finesse are harbingers of Joy. Let’s have some fun and develop our capacity for them.
Consider this, like our story at the beginning about talking to Martians, our children, other people, are really in their own world. Children, especially, are fresh on the planet from the hinterlands of heaven. They’re having to learn our language. WE are the Martians to them as well.
by Rowena Starling | Jun 15, 2016 | Informational
You’re driving down the coast to Baja on your way to Cabo in your powder blue, 1965 Mustang convertible, the road collapses from beneath your car. You suddenly find yourself strapped in your car and into a battle with the roiling waves of the Pacific Ocean. Panic sets in.
That’s what it’s like for some parents who have issues disciplining their child(ren) or dealing with their adult offspring. They have a problem with ‘confrontation’ and being in integrity with what they know is best in certain situations. For many, it spills over into their other relationships also.
In the introduction scenario, the integrity of the road was necessary for a peaceful, enjoyable and safe arrival at your chosen destination (Cabo). The same is true for how we engage and discipline our offspring. The road is the integrity of the example we are for them. The chosen destination is a stress-free, happy, loving relationship with our adult progeny. The Pacific Ocean is the turmoil of life.
Many parents feel that if they’re too strict with their rules that they border on being hypocrites and their children will find them out and disrespect them even more than they do now but it’s really easier than that! If they would just realize having integrity, in discipline for example, helps keep their child safe, they would accept the help I offer to make their road smoother! I have a Family System that helps melt away these types of anxiety issues and more.
In this second quarter of The Save Your Breath Show, we’ll be exploring the integrity we instill (or not) in our family. I hope you were able to glean helpful information from our first quarter’s ‘communication’ theme. Communication is a perfect segue to integrity. Why is that? Because integrity must be effectively communicated.
What is integrity? It’s the uncompromising adherence to moral and ethical principles. It’s about the truth, discipline and core values you implant. As a tree is fed by its roots, so do our core values feed our spiritual lives. If we were to think of our family as a tree, the roots, trunk and branches (core values and parents) keep the tree going and the leaves and fruit (offspring) absorb energy from the Sun and air and feed our future. Our children bring us the future. (Case in point: they seem to come out of the womb knowing how to operate electronics!) The integrity of the roots and trunk of the tree supports, nourishes and prospers the family.
Why is integrity important? Integrity supports the desired quality we want in our lives. We go further in life socially and politically as we are known for having high levels of honesty and integrity. It promotes peace of mind and directs our future.
I like to use examples of me and my son. Here’s one. When he was a little dude, about 3 or 4 years on the planet, we needed to go to the grocery store. Since this was during the time when I was emotionally, and working my way into financially, devastated from the separation from his father, I’d lost my car. So, we had to walk. It was about 2 miles away from our apartment.
I did my shopping, we were headed back home, two bags worth and the weight of my purse, when I heard the sound of candy wrappers crackling behind me. My son had lifted some candy from the store and now felt he was at a safe distance away (we are about half a mile down the road at night, did I say we were on foot?) and could open it up and eat it!!!
I stopped us in our tracks and asked him, “Where did you get that candy?” I knew I hadn’t paid for any candy. “At the store,” he said, realizing something was wrong. I then went into the whole lecture of how that was stealing and we don’t steal and how that’s how people go to jail and prison.
I knew also that, as tired as I was, I needed to march him (us) right back to the store and find the store manager so my son could apologize for stealing, to drive the point home that this is NOT something to do!!! It’s called ‘Stop in the Moment’ and deal with the teaching moment in front of you. Integrity demanded that it happen that way. Do you see what I mean?
Follow through with what you know is right AND effective. There were many teaching moments. The one on stealing did not have to be repeated. Few needed to be repeated.
How do we instill it? We garner strength of character for ourselves and our child(ren). Make it easy. Make a note of this: Quiet mind, easy flow. Understand that you have this, already. Engage meditation, yoga and/or any ‘discipline’ YOU like to help you flow into your parenting duties with ease and finesse.
What if we don’t engage a deeper relationship with integrity? Well, life’s challenges, like the Pacific Ocean in the intro, can sweep them to the roiling dark side. They can be easily broken in spirit, even bullied. Feeling dishonored, they can lose self-respect. Haven’t you seen those people?
Look around you. I distinctly remember and still see parents who have dropped the ball and let their children run them. When was the last time you saw the fruit of a tree dictate to the trunk? We are The Heroes in our homes and Heroes thrive on integrity.
Michael Bernard Beckwith says it’s “Being About Truth: As you begin to study the wisdom teachings of the ages and be about the truth, the fruition is the realization of integrity. Integrity is about being integrated with the spiritual values of The Universe. It is also about being happy, because happiness and joy mean that you’re coming into integrity with your soul.”
Do you feel this is true? I do. I’ve done this very thing he states above: study the wisdom teachings of the ages, been about the truth. I have a strong foundation in integrity because of my Mother. Coupling that with the wisdom teachings of the ages and the emphasis on the truth, I couldn’t help but want to help as many parents as I can. Been there, done that. Conclusion: parenting can be fun and easy.
How will you know it’s ‘working’? Overheard information, for one. Some years later, my son and I were invited to the country home of a very supportive family of friends of mine. Thank God they were there for me through some difficult times. Anyway, it was Christmas. Families had converged on the home from all over the United States. My son and I were late getting there, it was about 10p or so when we arrived.
As we walked in, the adults in the house were in a little bit of agony over the noise the kids were making in the attic. They couldn’t get them to pipe down. They said to me, “Your turn. We’re tired of going up there and telling them to do to sleep. Good luck.” So, I got my son ready for bed. We climbed the folding ladder up there and the kids scampered for their cots.
My son found a spot and got tucked in. I told them, “If I have to come back up here because you guys are making noise, I’m going to separate you and put you in different areas of the house away from each other. Do you understand?” Kids, “Yes.” Me, “Is that what you want?” Kids, “Noooo.” Me, “Good. Then don’t make me have to come back up here. I don’t like climbing that ladder!”
As I descended the ladder, I heard my son say, “And she’ll do it too!” We didn’t hear a peep out of them for the rest of the night. THAT’s how you know it’s ‘working’. Compliance, overheard information and stealth observation.
The core of who we are relies on integrity. From the spiritual to the cellular level on denser! The integrity of our ever mysterious hormonal system and how it works, the integrity of the workings of our internal organs and blood flowing, nourishing every cell, the integrity of our skeletal and muscular systems, the integrity of our brain to orchestrate everything, all would be lost without the integrity of the system.
Our relationships and social systems need integrity the very same way. Systems of government and social order are just extensions of The Ever Greater Integrity we are all needing to have to have what we want. I’ve seen a significant amount of integrity go by the wayside.
I write this and do The Save Your Breath Show as a means for reminding us all of how precious we all are and how dire the need is for us to get back to integrity. Look around you. See what’s happening in our world. Without integrity, we’re doomed to destruction.
I have The Family System that I have created from the gathered wisdom of the ages and experiences I’ve had over the last 66 years. Systems in place allow us to have integrity in our approach to our goals. Do contact me through the Parenting Assessment found at saveyourbreath101.com/parenting-assessment if you feel you need help. I offer a Complimentary Parenting Breakthrough Session (a $250 value for free!) and/or a Get Out of Stress Session (which is not complimentary).
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