(Here are the notes I wrote before I made this video. Messy but useful as a refresher.)
Your Equilibrium
As I spoke about in the last video, I said the the BEST WAY to prevent or end bullying in your child’s life is to raise a child with good inner confidence. It is the basis to everything. Blaming schools or parents or whatever will never work… at least for the long term. The main problem here is that people are bothering him, and he is deciding his happiness based on others. That is not confidence. With confidence, He must be able to be happy without anyone. This is not saying he has to be a buddhist monk living in caves, not speaking for years at a time. But we want to have a general understanding that he does not need any external sources to keep him at equilibrium. The reason why people are so depressed is because they’ve been raised to rely on THINGS to make them happy… maybe its coddling when they fall, maybe its a toy to make them feel good when they’re down, maybe its friends to bring them up when they are down. I’m sorry to break all of the regularly accepted ideals, but friends and coddles, and other things like that should only EMBELLISH your already love for life, not act as the thing that makes it happy.
The Endless Well
There is an endless well of happiness and contentment bubbling inside each and every person, its the only fuel source that never runs out as you use it, but only grows stronger the more you use it. However, we’ve chosen to use auxiliary fuel sources for creating energy and contentment, external ones. And we are constantly working and consuming as much of it as we can. Little do we know it’s there all the time. The more it is used, the more it refuels. We’ll talk more about this in later episodes, but right now, the main idea is to realize that the way you get your kid realizing this is to abstain from providing him with external contentment, and to show him how to access this “endless well” while acting as the BEST EXAMPLE of this when around him.
Here are the ways to make it happen:
Never get negatively emotional
I say NEVER. Why? Because I’m not talking to the parents that want to half ass this parenting thing. I mean NEVER EVER get negatively emotional. If you ever do, which I have… twice… I tell the child that I’m human and despite my insane efforts, every now and then things will get the best of me. We’ll talk about how to control this in a bit. When you get negatively emotional, it shows your child that getting negatively emotional is conducive to a good life, since you are the leader, and you are doing it. This also means that you will never EMOTIONALLY react to a child when they get upset, angry, or whatever. This shows you are able to react to your child in a negative way, which shows you are weak and they can control your emotions. The leader can control his own emotions.
Stay always positive
Staying always positive sounds like the obvious thing if you are to never get emotional, but you wouldn’t always think of that. Staying positive shows that this is the best way to live a great life, and they will follow suit. A lot of people say it’s hard for them to get like this, but I am speaking to the parents that are consistently exercising rigorously, eating extremely healthy, and getting ample sleep at night. If you’re not doing these three things, then don’t even think about how you can be always positive. They are protocol, givens. Every situation should be seen through the eyes of a positive person. Anytime something seemingly negative precipitates, I look at it in a way where it always benefits, or ignore it and focus on the positive. I never accept negative things, they simply DONT REGISTER in my mind.
Little Boat motor
Two types of boat motor I’d like to talk about: direct and indirect. First, let me explain what it is. It is when you take your positive attitude and purposely ooze it at specific times that will get your kid in a positive, value-giving mood. Imagine a boat motor, it needs the revving up first. We can think of this on a macro level, and a micro level. The micro level is as you are driving your child to school, or getting him ready in the morning, are you rushing him, making him feel nervous and anxious? Or are you having an AMAZING time in the morning, playing music, dancing as you get ready? Leading with sternness, but still staying fun and positive because that’s what life is about? Do you dance in the morning? The macro level is the boat motor you are revving up throughout childhood. Because as he grows through this positive lifestyle, he will eventually run positively all on his own.
This brings me to direct revving. As a kid, my parents were RIDICULOUS in giving me positive mindsets about myself and about others. They both provided both, but moreso my father focused on showing how i can love others, and my mother focused on how I can love myself. Every day, she would tell me how amazingly handsome, good looking, and talented I am. No, not once in a while… ALL THE TIME. It annoyed me a bit, but you can be frickin sure as hell that I now believe each and every thing she told me. She ingrained it in my head, she filled my subconscious with this incredibly high-value self-talk. On a direct micro-level, do this as you are coaching your child into and out of social situations. Fill him with positive talk. Eventually that boat motor will go on it’s own. Now onto my Dad. I was raised Catholic and my dad focused much on loving and caring for others. He was always telling me how I could make others happy by giving them love. You don’t have to be Catholic to do the same to your child. Plus, whenever he was around people, he was ALWAYS chatting them up. Instantly getting to know a person very quickly, because he was genuinely interested in each person, and getting into a real conversation. My dad doesn’t do small talk, and I’m the same way. And because of his constantly social demeanor, I am in love with talking to people. But not only talking to them, DELVING into their lives. I probably do it moreso than my father. My dad revved me up.
This is how you rev up the little boat motor with your kids. So you can do it on a macro level, micro level, directly, and indirectly.
