You’ve taken your kids and the neighbor’s kid out for a fun afternoon at the beach. You’re lying on a cool towel on the hot sand. Your eyes are closed. You can smell the salty ocean and hear the crashing waves a few feet away when suddenly the neighbor’s kid dumps a bucket of sand in your face!

Our topic today is Technique vs. ‘The Calling’ in Parenting. ‘The Calling’ is one of the very first steps addressed in The Family System I’ve created for parents. I find it humbling as I was once quite clueless as a parent and made many mistakes along the way. Help was very scarce. Do you want help that you can’t seem to find?

Many parents feel that the frequent and often rude instances that interrupt the quiet, peaceful enjoyment of their parenthood moments are the cruel joke of parenting that was withheld from them until it was too late. That the pain of parenting must be endured endlessly but it’s really deeper than that. If they would just realize that their parenting is a Calling, the context of their experience would shift, the rude instances would diminish and their outlook would become more beautiful!

Having the topic be technique vs. calling is a bit of a ploy on my part because technique is useful in parenting as well. Wouldn’t you say we parents need all of the help we can get?!!! I just tend to think we rely on technique or seek it out a little too much.

So, what do I mean when I say parenting is a calling? How many of you like the idea of having done a good to excellent job of parenting? How many of you value the heartfelt aspect of parenting almost to the point of distraction? Are you one who is dissatisfied with parenting by default?

Through the work I have done over some 40 years or so, I have developed a set of skills that have elevated my own sense of parenting and yielded the realization that parenting is a ‘calling’. The use of these skills not only enhanced my parenting experience in a good way but my personal and professional experience as well. Would you would like to have a set of skills that elevates your parenting to a calling while simultaneously enhancing your personal and professional experiences?

A calling to parent, in the context I’m speaking of, is ‘a strong inner impulse toward being the best parent you can, especially when accompanied by the conviction of divine influence. You are ‘called’ by God to oversee the development of God’s progeny. When you see it described this way, can you see why I call parenting a calling?

So, why place the emphasis on it being ‘a calling’? I do that because the ‘conviction of divine influence’ part sets us free. It renders the whole process and ‘technique’ aspect of parenting easier. An understanding of this ushers in the finesse I’m so fond of promoting!

Are you tired? Even exhausted? It’s this ‘divine influence’ that gives you the juice to sprint forward with joy and glee! As you sprint, you take your child with you!

When we frame our parenting experience as ‘a calling’, we can get out of the way a little bit and let the easy winds of divine purpose blow through our activities. We can engage creativity and inspire our children to curry our favor (that means they’re more cooperative). Do you think they are totally oblivious to you? Oh, no. They ADORE you!

For example, I have a client, and by the way, I change the names of my clients in my stories to protect the innocent. Most have or are working through some pretty painful, private issues and prefer I keep their identities confidential. Anyway, I have a single mother of 3 children who obviously loves her kids more than anything but they get on her last nerve.

When we first started working together, she felt the whole parenting thing was just some cruel joke that God put upon us all to amuse Himself. I knew exactly what she was talking about because I felt the same way for a long time. She said, “I feel like I’ve been walking around in a continuous fog of post-pardum depression for the last 6 years.” It occurred to me that she probably was!

After working together for a month or so, this depression subsided and she felt like she was finally breathing clean air again. Her children, though still wild, chilled out quite a bit. Mother and sons are all now able to enjoy ‘quiet time’ together. “THAT is something”, she said, “I never thought would happen!”

She says, “Understanding that I had been ‘called’ to be a parent gave me a perspective as the Hero of my family and it empowered me. Feeling more power, taking better care of myself, I thrive and see my children mostly as the charming mischief that they are! Would you like to have her view?

So, how do we absorb this ‘calling’ mindset rather than the constant technique seeking many of us do? Make a note of this: Integrity is The Hero’s way. Step into your integrity and reinforce your core values. Examine yourself and find out what you really want for yourself and your family.

Doing this has a way of making it so and smoothing out the wrinkles in our day. At the root of our integrity is our ‘calling’, that still, quiet voice that says “I trust you to be the guardian of our future. I’ll give you the truth of what’s good for us all.” Do you trust yourself?

You, my Hero, what you want comes in ‘the gap’ of the extremes. You want out of hell and the feeling of being in parenting prison and you want all of heaven and freedom! You want out of debt, depression and arguing and you want all of positive outlooks, peace and Joy! To get from here to there you need to assess your position and move through the paralysis and disappointment to meditation, relief and surrender. I’m not talking about ‘surrender’ as in giving up the valuables as spoils of war. I’m speaking of surrender as in ‘surrender the wheel, you’re driving into a wall’!!!

Do you know techniques have their place but you will have less need for them if you’re coming from a place of power in the first place? It’s pretty amazing to find that once you shore up your inner space, many things in your outer space are suddenly resolved! This tends to render a lot of techniques unnecessary.

If you’re feeling like anything less than the Hero that you are, chances are you’re not meditating or doing the thing that gives you air and feeds your power. If you are doing it, are you doing enough of it? Even more pointedly, are you teaching it to your children? Of course you put the oxygen mask on you first but please don’t forget to put it on the children!!!

Do you have specific fears, anxieties or phobias? Would you like to literally pluck them out first so that you can start with a fresh clean slate? I can help you do that in minutes rather than months and years. Is this something you would like to do? I simply help you get in touch with a certain natural ability we all have to rid ourselves of these negative emotions.

So, what if you decide to keep the status quo? Are you too tired to check into your ‘calling’? Then you get to keep a lot of fatigue, mishaps and you miss out on working with me! But seriously, I submit to you that on the other side of fatigue is the breath of fresh air, the insurgence of energy and the co-operation of your babies to a greater degree than you now see. As the saying goes ‘Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. There was no one there.’ You’ll open the closet to where the money boogey-man lives and find there is no one there.

You know the saying, ‘If it is to be, it’s up to me’? Imagine a world where all of us parents recognized our divine calling to raise the next generation of heroes!!! Can you literally see world peace in our grasp if we seize the opportunity to have parenting be more loving AND easier? Collectively, we can make that happen!

This is a ‘Call to Arms’ to every parent that treasures all that is holy and sacred to take up arms against parenting by default, living in fear and anxiety and just generally feeling crappy. Of the ones called, an HEROIC task is laid before them… Bring up the next generation of HEROES. BE the light that shines for your offspring on the path to Infinite Joy. Give it to yourself first. Have your True Will. This doesn’t stop just because your child is now an adult.

I’m offering a Complimentary Parenting Breakthrough Session (a $250 value for free) while supplies last! Just complete the Parenting Assessment located at saveyourbreath101.com/parenting-assessment. I also have Get Out of Fear and Stress Sessions, though they are not ‘complimentary’.

Thanks for reading. Talk to you soon. I bid you Peace and Eternal Joy.