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Parenting

3 Ways to Create Healthy Emotional Atmosphere for Your Child

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Family discussions, with old and young alike taking part, can be as stimulating as sparks that ignite a fire. – Spanish saying

1) Every Child Is Born With the Growing Desire to Discover the Unknown 

Curiosity governs his actions and you need to satisfy it and help it to develop into a conscious longing to learn, that in later years will determine his success in life. He perceives you as a magician that knows everything and has numerous wonders. 

You reach into your bag, take out the phone and put it to your ear and listen and talk back, you put it back and grab a bottle of water, put it on the table and place a cookie on it that you just pulled from the same charmed sack. Don’t be surprised when this little adventurer approaches your bag as soon as you put it down and starts his discovery process, taking everything out and examining every object. Let him satisfy his curiosity, when he is done he probably won’t disturb the contents of it anymore.

But if he continues to do so every time you leave the room or just turn around, and you can tell that now it is a mere play – not curiosity; then you can show him a sign of your disapproval.

2) Be Careful When Distinguishing Between Curiosity and Misbehaving 

He is a smart little guy and will read the expression on your face: knitted eyebrows and stiff lips. If you are careful when distinguishing between curiosity and misbehaving, you will reap the fruits of your efforts soon enough. One day traveling you visit a wonderful ancient church with colorful frescos, golden candelabras, and stained glass windows. You come a bit earlier to have enough time to wander around and then to listen to the organ music. Your son will look around with his eyes wide open and a smile on his face, taking time to examine each painting.

When you quietly call him to have a seat beside you he will show ‘behavioral discipline’ and sit beside you and listen with you, maybe still occasionally looking around. You did a great job thinking ahead and coming earlier to give him time to contemplate the beauty of the place.

You may see another family with kids. They came just in time to sit down and listen to the music. The mother keeps reproaching the kids for not sitting still. The father may threaten them with what he may do when they leave the place. And the little ones try to obey and hide the burning desire to look around and see what is on that wall behind them and the one on the left, and to learn why there are multiple colors and sun comes through the windows in rainbow-like rays. These kids will get used to bottling their emotions up to save themselves from scolding.

3) Create Emotional Freedom in Your House

Your effort will determine your future success as a parent and you will be proud of your children. Discipline is important. The goal is to create true harmony between the emotional world and conscience.

If you govern in your household by the rules you never explain properly so that little soul may understand and admit them – you teach external discipline – one without understanding. Kids will obey because of fear of punishment, not because they internally comprehend the importance and meaning of these rules. And when the very person who introduced the rules is gone, the kids won’t follow them anymore – there will be no threat to force them to do so.

But if you take time to explain every disciplinary action to your child in a way so that his conscience will recognize and acknowledge it – whatever happens in the future, with you beside him or when you are gone – his conscience will remind him the good and bad, true and false, love and hate.

Conclusion

Conscience is the most sensitive scale that perfectly distinguishes between right and wrong. Be an example of a principled centered life, governed by your conscience and this way you will teach your child to balance the emotional world with the help of internal discipline. Sooner or later the time will come when only those treasures will help him to be a good person. Make sure you supply him with all he needs and you will be proud of your child for making this world a better place. 

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

I Stopped Blaming Others. Now Nothing Can Stop Me From Being Happy

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You have the power to adjust the course of your life

Let an exceeding sweetness of this life take you a prisoner by stamping it with heartfelt poetry about people you love. – Olya Aman

I stopped blaming everything and everyone for the mistakes I made.

I used to look for weaknesses in other people to justify myself. I considered it to be a simpler path toward a contented life. I realized that it is the longest road to happiness, and it may not even lead me to the right destination — too many distractions on the way.

Looking for someone’s shoulders to put the weight of my mistakes on was impairing my intelligence and vivacity. My regrets haunted me. I wanted the people I blamed for my mistakes to run away from my life. These thoughts and feelings were taking the leading depressing role in my life.

To end this personality-ruining tendency, I made it my custom to look in the mirror and with affection in my eyes admit my blunders, own them, and learn from them. I am rather proud of the power I hold in my hands. My decisions, my choices, and my actions made this happen.

I have the power to adjust the course of my life.

There are so many things in life I did not notice. Losing beloved people taught me not to be so mindless. Because one day my play will be over and I will not have all the time in the world as I used to think I had. While I’m still here, present in the lives of people I care about, I want to hug our joined experience as much as possible.

I will not postpone the time to be with people I love, no more ‘later’, no more ‘another day’. I will not delay the meeting with an old relative. I will find time to ask the right questions and find out about the roots of my family tree. No more ‘now is too late’. I won’t reschedule that vacation I dreamed about for so long. No more ‘next year’. I will do all the travel while I am healthy enough to enjoy it.

I won’t feel ashamed of the strange excitement that childish activities can gift. This nervous, restless, and passionate kid is in me and I love this creature. I want to be silly sometimes, funny often, and wise now and then. Today I give voice by my pen to the fantasies of my brain, not afraid of ridicule, not letting the negative judgment of others kill my work.

How great a privilege is mine to be my unique self, to have so much to say, to make my life unbroken. My fortune is enormous. I spend it entirely on doing good for others and myself. I want my kindheartedness to be even greater than my generously. Because the first one knows no bounds, while the other, although great, has its limits.

Don’t make your life a sad play. Take these life lessons into your breast pocket, close to your heart:

  • Some folks neither see though they are looking, nor hear though they are listening. These people exist, they do not live. Be present every minute of your life. Speak with superb animation, listen with passionate interest, ask questions with a magnificent sparkle in your eyes. It will be as impossible to stop you from being happy as to stop the Rhine at the Falls of Schaffhausen.
  • Eliminate any negative influences and impressions (TV-horror movies, people that make you feel miserable; places that bring bad memories — anything that can change the state of tranquility). All these activities have a peculiarly damaging effect on the nervous system. To recruit your strength, you need to be picky with the things that make you happy and express thorough censure toward things that can upset you.
  • There are circumstances in which men are powerless. When, for example, unchained elements cannot be combated by human power. Like a dream, fiction, or chimera — these situations should be read through and put aside. Sometimes we encounter ill-will coming from men. Do not waste your time in breeding revenge thoughts. Use your intelligence, energy, and decision-making ability in thinking of the present. The past is gone, but the future is yours.

A dull, dreary life is your destiny if you let a succession of victimizing thoughts dominate in your life. Blaming others is like living in some imaginative whirlpool. It is easy and makes you feel not as vulnerable. But it deprives you of your inner power, which stops your personal growth. You cannot embrace life and other people fully if you are constantly trying to find faults in others.

Finding yourself tipping, own it. Be master of yourself. Triumph over your mistakes. No bleating, bellowing, neighing — only self-acceptance, -respect, and -love. Don’t breathe a word of reproof, rather self-talk about lessons that can be learned, and experiences that can be implemented.

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

3 Reasons to Welcome Changes and Self-Change

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Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. – George Bernard Shaw

1) People Change 

It is normal to think one way today and to have a completely different point of view the next day. You may have in your circle of friends and acquaintances some people that always keep their old beliefs strong as a brick. These people do not even question the validity of those beliefs and don’t consider any judgments, believing, that just the idea of obtaining extra information (to clarify and make sure what they think is true is still this way at present) is an offense. If you have someone like that around you, you know how hard it is to talk with that kind of person. And you most likely try to either not even talk on that matter or do your best not to be left alone with that person at all. 

2) It Is Normal to Change Your Mind 

There is a ton of new information circling around us every second. And something we believed was good yesterday is not that way anymore today. Look at the medical world: a few years ago mothers were made to believe that breastfeeding is not as beneficial for babies as the formula was. But scholars changed their minds and revealed the undisputable benefit of mother’s milk. 

3) We Should Grow and Growth Requires Change

Without growth, life is not sweet at all, and growth requires change. The same is true with the people that surround you. You may find comfort in the company of a few select friends mostly because at this very moment they think in a similar way and you share similar views. And you still can be close, although your life path leads you to a different destination. You find new people to share your thoughts and to teach you new skills. 

Conclusion

It makes life an incredible adventure when you let in new impressions that new people bring. You may not be as open to taking the first step and saying “hi.” That’s not a big deal. There are plenty of people that enjoy doing it, so you just need to welcome that approach. The more people you meet, the more you listen to them – the more receptive your brain becomes to the “people reading” skill. And to develop it is one of the main keys to success in life.

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

3 Success-Defining Reasons to Listen Empathetically 

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Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know. No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone. – Mitch Albom (“The five people you meet in heaven.”)

1) The Very Success-Defining Skill 

There are many things that we learn early on but think insignificant and omit in the process of our upbringing. One of them is the very success-defining skill – empathetic listening. That skill involves all our senses: ears, eyes, posture, mimics. It is vital to learn to listen using all of them, and not just to “listen” without even capturing the meaning as we think at this very moment about what we are going to say next. Most of us do that. Pay attention next time and you’ll see the living proof.

2) We Need to Listen Twice as Much as We Talk

We have two ears and one mouth. Isn’t it a sign to be more attentive when someone is sharing information with us? But here again we need to rein in our egos. We think that no one can give us anything valuable, which is such a big mistake. Every person in our lives comes with a definite purpose and you just miss it when you do not pin your ears back and give yourself in full to this moment of shared wisdom.

3) The Art of Asking Questions 

Imagine a foreign language course in your curriculum. And you decided to skip a lesson or two. How hard is it to stay at the same level of knowledge as your more responsible classmates? You feel you need to put so much extra work in now to acquire the same speed they learn with. Of course, in a classroom environment it is easier to grasp the meaning of some rule that is difficult to understand, as there is always someone who will ask the right question that will cause you to understand the teacher’s explanation. The same thing in life: you may miss that particular opportunity to listen, think, and ask the right question and the life you want to live becomes a few steps farther from your reach. We need to master the art of asking questions. And to do that we need to listen and think. And, of course, to have the end result in mind (I mean “why I need to listen” and “what I need to learn”).

Conclusion

The vital ability to think requires some training and a lot of practice time. You go to the gym to make your body fit and strong, and in the same way you need to train your brain to think consciously on subjects of everyday life. I know it is insane to force your mind to think: “take a toothbrush in your right hand and brush the upper left side…” and so on. Our subconscious mind keeps us sane by relieving us of the necessity of tracking every routine movement. But simply by trying to use your left hand more if you are right-handed and vice-versa makes a world of a difference. Small steps like that create a habit of using our thinking muscles more frequently and making them all-weather resistant. Every achievement starts with the unremarkable little steps that we take every day in the direction of our ultimate goal.

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

3 Ways How You Can Invest in Yourself

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When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching – they are your family. – Jim Butcher

1) Take a Good Book and Take Some Time to Think

John C. Maxwell said: “Thinking is hard work; that’s why so few do it”. Become one of the few. Replace the TV-hungry guy with a friendly educational-video buddy. It is another way to fill in your brain with useful information and ideas for self-development. Make conscious choices when you are going to feed your mind.  This is crucial, eliminate controlling forces from outside and take the reins into your own hands. Do not just turn on the TV and allow yourself to take what you are given without your sensible approval first.  You will find by doing so how growth begins.

2) The Effect of Building Slowly Will Work Its Magic

You cannot build a castle in one day. It takes small steps to create a piece of art. Your mission is to invest your time and energy in building a mansion of unseen beauty that will be able to withstand any weather. This architectural masterpiece is you. When you make that decision, life changes and people suddenly want to confide in you and ask for your opinion. Provide your expert advice with thoughtful appreciation.

3) Your Circle of Friends Will Change Considerably

People you surround yourself with are supposed to help you accomplish your goals. They make you or break you, so choose wisely. You will be amazed to find out that people you thought “fly-too-high and out-of-the-way” are actually very responsive when asked to help out.

Successful people have gone through a lot of hardships on the way to the top. Now they know the path and can tell you the shortcut. It is vital to frame your life in a “better-people-around-me” way. Your social environment is as important to your mental health as nature (the outside environment) is to your physical one. It literally determines the trajectory of your life. Why?

Conclusion

“Eventually, we start to eat what they eat, talk like they talk, read what they read, think like they think, watch what they watch, treat people how they treat them, even dress like they dress.” Darren Hardy gives enough reasons to be selective in this respect. Do not let yourself just drift with a stream of life, paddle the way You want to go.

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

Body Positivity Couldn’t Be Explained Better Than This

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Regardless of their size, every woman is an apotheosis of fashionable nobility

It was wholly unlike the ‘Permitted Style’, and she could see the people’s awe and distant wonder… – Olya Aman

Sasha is my best friend. We had, and still have, a tradition in our village school to welcome 1st graders with smiles and handshakes from 5th graders. Sasha was the one to take my hand and lead me to my class. From then on, we were seeing each other regularly in school and outside of it.

Being charming ladies in our 30s, now we have families and both live very far from our native place. Some favorable universal coincidence glued us to the same town, though, so we still keep in touch.

Regardless of Their Size, Every Woman Is an Apotheosis of Fashionable Nobility and Strives to Be in Style

The fashion industry should find a sympathetic response in our lives - treat everyone with dignity and respect. It must not suppress self-expression and creativity.

Sasha has a large, square face, with a massive projecting nose and long-lashed, pale blue eyes. When she is smiling to herself, her face shines pink and childish. She is like one of those extinct birds, the Alagoas foliage-gleaner, once found in northeast Brazil, because she wears that elaborate hairstyle of a curiously improbable shade of orange.

Sasha is undeniably slender, and ponderably light, and… proveably short. Even in school, when people wished to distinguish her from the others, they always called her the ‘miniature one’. Nothing changed these days in this respect.

Sasha used to dress as if she had no sense of proportion, and the colors were always pyrotechnical. That was not her fault. You see, she had a sneaking mania for a fashionable style, particularly when she saw a slender, tall body wearing it. But her reality was the indispensable crisis — she couldn’t find the same garments to fit her petite form. And Sasha felt empty-hearted heading to the kids’ section all over again.

Social Media Is a Majestic Influencer and You Can Manifest the True Body Image Through It

Social media kick starts trends in fashion, particularly when used to illustrate diversity and body-accepting concepts. Nowadays everything is ridiculously exhilarated, beautifully abnormal, and deliciously insane. Gradually our vision is gaining in focus, and we wear confident faces and elegant outfits.

One-day I found Sasha turning everything in her wardrobe topsy-turvy and inside out. The whole place was utterly destroyed, as if by an earthquake, but it was only her frustration burning. With half-shut eyes she was lying on the floor in the middle of that devastation in a perfect unrelaxation.

That day Sasha decided to make a try for Paradise. She decided to be happy, even if it would cost her all honesty and money. Sasha shouldered her way in social media. She crafted her own outfits, which added a rousing fashionable kick to the lives of women with romantically shaped but very tiny forms. She created her own line of “Fashion for Petite” driving change and building her own following.

Clothes Have About Them Something Irretrievably Thought-Provoking for People Around

Our thoughts take on the color of our clothing. One can look simple and charming, and that will strengthen the desire to connect with other people. And being very much aware that you look stunning can bring closer the desire to bestow a little attention to a beloved person.

Sasha regained her good spirits. She is in sympathy with her beautiful self now when she makes her own clothes. She adopted and promoted smart and elegant dressing habit. Her style sends messages to her mind and the minds of others about self-respect and body positivity.

Sasha feels that the conventional visual landscape of the beautiful person needs to be changed. I think she joined a contagious, great, and brilliant movement that broadens the very narrow rules existent for what is considered ‘beautiful’

Conclusion

Being petite myself, I used to be almost swept away by the continually unsuccessful shopping experience. We all desire to parade among our acquaintances in the outfits tailored handsomely and becoming. But we used to be constantly pained by the sight of the fashionable dresses and blouses with shoulders too wide and waists too low.

That wretched mental stupor, the fashion industry used to be in, finally seemed to lighten. Inclusive sizing becomes a good business strategy, even for many haute couture houses. Women of different shapes want to be true to the trend and be part of a modern fashionable movement.

Inclusive sizing is more than just the first subtle outcropping in the fashion industry, it is a re-creating mountain that is going to influence many things in the world. 00, petite, and plus-sizes should not be treated as problems to be solved, but as realities respected and rightfully enlisted in life and business.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

My Encounter With Energy Vampires and Protective Techniques I’ve Learned

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Now I know how to spot, understand, and survive

Do not lock yourself in the secret tower of your deafness and muteness when a danger to be drained by a vampire presents itself. – Olya Aman

I became a member of ‘Pen-Friends’ club, aspiring authors of my little countrified and old-fashioned town in the spring of 2011.

There wasn’t a nerve in me this experience hadn’t twisted. It wrongs my heart to think that one of my books was so close to being buried in the coffin of a negatively false critic. The true nature of this club made me shiver with repulsion, sell my house, and change my address.

Hunting in the Night

I always loved reading and had a great natural aptitude for creating fascinating stories. I finished my book and its manuscript burned my fingers. When a friend of mine offered to spend a long winter night reading and discussing it in a company of like-minded people, I rejoiced and agreed with delight. Little that I knew what it would make me fear for the sanity of my mind and the soundness of my body.

Energy vampires prevent you from keeping your body and emotional state in health. There is nothing like a cheerful mind to stay sound and strong against any life challenge. Vampires defy positive and happy people to the teeth and do their best to wipe out the smile off their faces.

Dracula #1 — The Narcissist

We always met on the dark side of twilight and the owner of the house welcomed everyone with an uncompromising face, hard diction, and vibrating consonants. Dracula #1 was as crisp, new, and comprehensive as the first issue of a book before the folding in a cover. And from top to toe he had no misprint. But when I looked thoughtfully enough, I saw a person who admitted nothing and down faced everybody but himself.

If he could not out-argue me on the point of the value of my book, he bullied me and took my silence for agreement with his views.

A Narcissist Energy Vampire‘s face is decorated with a constant sign of grandiosity, a lack of empathy, and a craving for admiration. Such a person will collect his arrogance, self-centeredness, and ‘ME-first’ philosophy and hurl them into your face.

Dracula #2 — The Victim

Dracula #2 was very easy to sympathize with, but it was not at all easy to be of any help. She was apt to carry her head thrust forward and somewhat down in an imploring attitude as if she was looking to any available advice. But as soon as you offered one, she adopted a highly tragic and devoured by remorse air. Dracula #2 was not willing to listen, not looking for the solution, enjoying the attention, blooming only when complaining, and rejecting any possible solution.

In her company, my brains got so dry that I almost lost my wits. She made me feel sorry for the lack of inspiration, imagination, and confidence in her life.

Victim Vampires dwell in the enormous mileage of suffering, low self-esteem, and lack of self-responsibility. They will fill you with guilt, blaming your actions and behavior for every negative aspect in their lives.

Dracula #3 — The Passive-Aggressive

Dracula #3 hated the world and its inhabitants with a quiet smile on his rather handsome face. No one looked half so tranquil among this group. In his company, I suffocated from the toxic energy that saturated from his whole being. I flatted myself that he had got a tough nut to crack, but little by little he made me begin a new record of angry self-doubts.

With Passive-Aggressive Vampires, a thing promised is never a thing done. There is no way to make them speak directly and about the matter at hand. They always jump on the negative side of things but will not admit it to anybody.

Dracula #4 — The Drama Addict

Dracula #4 looked like an Arabian sheik with his snow-white beard and frosty sparkling eyes. He was a high-class expert in the art of making people cross with each other, cry to the deaf ears of opponents, and crash nearby loudly smashable objects.

Spending just a few moments near this person, I felt rather erased, blotted out from the healthy realm of normal life. He fed upon the lives of others, and to amuse himself he used a special scheme of telling lies and spreading slough scandal about people he knew.

Melodramatic Energy Vampires make you agonizingly conscious of the ‘catastrophes’ all over the world that you otherwise would not know about. They make up in drama around what they lack in their lives.

Dracula #5 — The Guilt Tripper

Dracula #5 had her hour of victory when with malicious intention she made me believe she was a trustworthy friend. And when my heart was open, she triumphantly ended any amicable intercourse, exchanging it to a pretentious smile. She invented various scenarios to make me feel sorry for the things I’d done and confided to her. Her sudden transformation was the major reason that raced my shadow away from my hometown.

Guilt Trippers have no sense of proportion when it comes to pressing your insecurity buttons. They want to imprison their misery in a false sense of power and control by blaming you for every misfortune in their life. Inventing this manipulative business, they make you do what they want.

Dracula #6 — The Splitter

Dracula #6 was very handy with tools to separate and make people jealous. She found the way to spread vile gossips about me and my boyfriend. The entire scene with my lover was an unutterable mixture of tragedy and pathos.

Splitter Vampires seek relief from their loneliness in making other people unhappy. They waste their time in the imbecile routines that go by the name of divorce and separation. It is axiomatic for them that people in a union cannot live in contentment.

Dracula #7 — The Criticizer

Dracula #7 was not tall, but he carried his head so haughtily that he looked a commanding figure and there was something cunning and sharp in the look of his closely set little grey eyes. He disapproved of every attempt of my authorship experimentations in his engaging, deep, and a little husky voice.

I almost lost an ability to think under a tyranny of his pressing personality. He reasoned well and was driving at making me doubt my book and forsake an idea to publish it.

Judgmental Vampires are virtuosos in making rude comments, judge your decisions, talking about wrongs and ‘bads’ and saying nothing nice. Being close to these people will make you feel small and ashamed for no reason.

Dracula #8 — The Fixer

After a while, I got restless as one did under the heat of a sultry summer day. Dracula #8’s advice seemed so easy to follow and never fixed anything, rather made me cease to think about my problems and let them grow and multiply till I could not close my eyes on them anymore.

Peculiar charm and vividness of her sweet talk made one forget the important meeting, skip the urgent payment, let the important opportunity leave your grip. She had a great stock of excuses that I could easily borrow with no charge but self-reproach in ex post facto manner.

Fixer or Controller Vampires walk in your life without knocking and start controlling and dictating what you supposed to do and how you are expected to feel. They do not quite put their finger on the opinions you have, because they always have their own — and those are indisputable.

Strategies for Survival

In a company of these people, I became almost not real anymore. This wretched book club made me forget all my responsibilities toward my family and friends. They had been quite ‘blowing my trumpet’ to win my confidence at the beginning. And at the end, I became a person on which they exercised their revolting abilities to drain and drench.

That was a lesson to learn and never to be forgotten. I learned to stay positive no matter what happened, and what others thought about me. Now nothing can shake the step of my intellectual pace. I believe in myself and in people I love and care about.

Assess your emotional capacity and strengthen it.

Your understanding of yourself should be a gambit in the game of life. Self-reflect with genius and do not let self-love be a theoretical feeling — do that in earnest. Only this way you will know how much of a particular person you can take. A privilege to choose what and whom to let into your life reserved to you alone.

Determine how much of a threat to you the energy vampire is.

Determine what kind of a threat is in front of you and how much of it you can take. If you still feel that your head aches, your dry sleepless eyes feel as though they were bruised from behind, and the blood is beating within your ears — the intercourse with some person was too much and you need to remove the danger.

Vampire identification.

It doesn’t quite come home to these drainers that the entire world does not revolve around them. They seem somewhat afraid of responsibility and are in constant search for victims to put the weight of it on. One distinguishable feature of their personalities is a pessimistic approach to life.

The decision to make.

Has it flashed upon your vision that we attract in our lives what we haven’t improved in ourselves? Once you embrace with strong arms the issues in yourself, address them, work through — you will feel the fragrance of freedom. Every ‘Dracula’, deprived of the opportunity to prey on you, will leave you in peace searching for a more drainable victim.

Recognize when you’re being drained by an energy vampire. Take control of your nervous organization, follow your breathing, visualize a shielding barrier, a buffer zone, where no negative influence can penetrate.

Stay tuned…