Posts Tagged ‘Self Improvement’
Each “Now” Moment Is a Raindrop
July 14th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari
A.J. Mahari, an author and Life Coach, talks about the importance of now and how each moment is like a raindrop. What is, is now. Goals and dreams are important but what is it that keeps people blocked from their goals and dreams in ways that take them out of the now?
Do you separate out your goals and dreams and your experience in the here-and-now of your life? This can be a major contributor to being blocked and/or feeling stuck. What you aren’t aware of, in the here-and-now, can help you so much in further understanding yourself in ways that can and will help you get unblocked and unstuck – into action – and be the catalyst that propels you forward into to taking necessary action-steps to achieve and realize your goals and dreams.
- Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life – 19 Coaching Exercises – End Negative Thought Patterns
- Self Help for Change – Healing and Recovery
- Loneliness is a Teacher
- Beginner’s Guide To Yoga and Meditation
- Achieve Your Goals
- Law of Attraction – Thoughts Determine Destiny
© A.J. Mahari, July 14 2010 – All rights reserved.
Where is There?
July 14th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari
Author and Life Coach, A.J. Mahari, in her Life Coach Zen series of videos, asks the question, “Where is there?” Is there some “there” you are trying to get to that you think is the destination that once arrived at will make everything okay? Do you think that what you are needing or wanting, desiring, and looking for is out “there” somewhere?
Will make you better? Will make you happier? Will mean you finding the place at which all your goals and dreams are realized?
- Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life – 19 Coaching Exercises – End Negative Thought Patterns
- Self Help for Change – Healing and Recovery
- Loneliness is a Teacher
- Beginner’s Guide To Yoga and Meditation
- Achieve Your Goals
- Law of Attraction – Thoughts Determine Destiny
© A.J. Mahari, July 14, 2010 – All rights reserved.
Acceptance
July 13th, 2010 | Author: Coach A.J.
Acceptance is a very significant measure of your experience in life. If you can radically accept what is, you will find less resistence to the flow of who you really are, from the inside out.
The degree to which you resist practicing acceptance, letting go of judgment, thinking negative thoughts or taking action on negative feelings, will be the mesaure of your unhappiness.
Acceptance of what is right now, as it is, and simply because it is what is, is authentically empowering.
Radically accepting and surrendering to that which you do not have control over, awakening to that awareness, is the middle-way to the power of now.
© A.J. Mahari, July 13, 2010 – All rights reserved.
Patience
July 12th, 2010 | Author: Coach A.J.
Patience plays a central role in achieving and realizing your goals and dreams. Patience is a gift that you can actively give to yourself in each unfolding moment, over and over again.
Patience is a virtue. A virtue that finds its own rewards. Patience goes hand in hand with an attitude of gratitude.
“Patience makes lighter What sorrow may not heal.” – Horace
Even when the change you seek isn’t unfolding perhaps as quickly as you like it to, a patient attitude and mindset can lighten the intensity of what you feel. Sometimes we will find challenge in what blocks us. That challenge is such a growth opportunity when we meet it and engage it from a patient mindset.
Having patience is an action undertaken in and of itself. Undertaking patient action will move you in the direction of your goals and dreams.
Patience is a gift that you can actively give to yourself in each unfolding moment, over and over again.
© A.J. Mahari, July 12, 2010 – All Rights Reserved.
Are You In The Now? – Life Coach Zen
July 11th, 2010 | Author: Coach A.J.
Are you in the now of the flow of your life? Are you mindfully and actively engaged in being fully present and aware to the moment? Being is very different from thinking about being. Being is very different from being trapped and wrapped up in thought. Thought takes you away from who you authentically are in the sense of just being in the flow that is being in the now.
© AJ Mahari, July 11, 2010 – All rights reserved.
Life Coach Zen © AJ Mahari – You Are a Gift To The Universe
June 19th, 2010 | Author: Coach A.J.
You are an unfolding gift to the universe just the way you are right now. Be mindful of what that gift that is you consists of. You are precious and unique child of this universe. You matter because you are. All feelings and experience in life unfolds to increase our awareness. Open to the unfolding gift to the universe that you truly are.
© A.J. Mahari – June 19, 2010 – All rights reserved.
Why Life Coaching?
June 11th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari
Many people might be wondering what life coaching is all about. You may be wondering, why would I want to work with a life coach? What would actually be the point of life coaching? Life coach A.J. Mahari talks about how life coaching can play a central role in many facets of people’s lives, self help, personal growth, self improvement, mental health and wellness. Life coaching helps people to gain more awareness about what they need and/or want to change in their lives to have more peace, balance, and happiness. Life coaching with A.J. Mahari is client-centered and based in humanistic positive psychology. It is a sacred process between coach and client.
A.J. stresses the importance of her role as a compassionate, supportive, and non-judgmental listener. Life coaching supports the client and validates the client’s experience and concerns. A.J. sees her role as being a touchstone for her client’s personal growth. She reflects back to each clients what she hears them saying. She gives feedback and is also an educator. Life coaching is about living an examined life and learning new tools and skills to help you live a more authentic life. Life coaching also supports the client’s quest to identify goals, map out strategy to achieve those goals.
If you are asking yourself, what is life coaching, and or why life coaching? This just might mean you are interested. That you see potential to gain valuable insight and awareness into the kind of change you need and want to introduce into your life to achieve your goals and dreams. Asking about what life coaching is and why life coaching is a great beginning to taking the next step. An action step. Booking a session and finding out how A.J.’s life coaching can be helpful to you.
© A.J. Mahari and Touchstone Life Coaching, June 11, 2010 – All rights reserved.
Radical Acceptance – Your Zen to Change
June 7th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari
Everyone, really, whether they want to admit it and think about it or not, has goals and dreams – has desires, wants and needs. Most people understand what it will take to realize their goals and dreams – to fulfill their desires, wants and needs. Many people, at some point, tend to become resigned to a way of thinking wherein they start believing and reinforcing that they probably won’t ever get to achieving their goals and dreams. Many give up hope. Thinking that was once hopeful becomes pessimistic and negative. Why? Because all-too-often people don’t realize just how much the ways that they think create a self-imposed reality that they are actually choosing, often unconsciously – without awareness, to live from. The pain of uncovering these negative thoughts, negative core beliefs, and obstacles to change seems impossible. It is not impossible, however, to uncover, become more consciously aware of obstacles that are keeping you stuck and blocking you from realizing your desires, needs, wants, goals, and dreams. It is actually very possible. You can choose to embrace, one moment a time, a Zen philosophy of change that isn’t just a philosophy to be contemplated intellectually or spriritually.
Life Coaching Supports You
Your Zen to change is active practice that motivates, inspires, and promotes moving forward and finding the pathway to your goals and dreams.
Throughout our lives we are nudged by experiences that we begin to notice contradict or challenge many of the ways that we are thinking. Self-defeating ways of thinking. There are opportunities all around you to become more aware of what you are investing in – what you are focusing on. What are you resisting so strongly and why?
“What you resist will persist” – Carl Jung
Negative thoughts and negative patterns of behavior tend to repeat themselves. Unhealthy and/or self-destructive choices in relationships, reactive and defensive behavior to constructive criticizism, lack of friendships, disinterest in things that should matter are ways of resisting that only reinforce the persisting of that which you seek to escape or avoid. You may be becoming more aware of a pattern in the ways that people give you feedback or describe you. You may hear from others that they experience you as cold, controlling, difficult, inconsiderate, self-absorbed, or irresponsible. You may lose friends and relationships and not be aware of your responsibility in those losses. Negative and painful experience will continue to be the result of negative thinking and negative forms of relating or behaving.
No one grows up wanting to be described or experienced in these ways. No one wants to lose friends and relationships. It can be difficult and painful to take an honest look at what your experience, and/or other people’s feedback is trying to bring to your conscious awareness about you. You may want to just avoid or deny what is painful or not well understood. You may want to justify your behavior as having more to do with other people’s misinterpretations, insensitivity, judgment, or jealousy. The truth is that when enough people repeatedly give you the same feedback, directly or indirectly, you are being presented with a wonderful growth opportunity.
Your Zen to change involves a paradox. First, you will benefit from radically accepting yourself, as you are, right now in this moment, one moment at a time. If you feel hopeless, just radically accept that. Don’t judge that. Don’t judge yourself for that. Be with that. If you are a lot heavier than you want to be, stop resisting that. Radically accept yourself at the weight/size that you are. Be with that. If you feel lost or totally stuck and are thinking negatively, that’s okay, that’s what is. Radically accept that and be with that. No matter what you think or feel, radically accept it. Stop resisting it. Detach from the thoughts and/or the feelings. Observe them. One moment at a time just let them be what they are – what is – without reacting to them. Resisting what is in your life right now will reinforce it persisting.
The Zen dialectic or paradox that is the first step to moving forward is one that involves shifting your thinking from judging, over-focusing, ruminating,and negativity, to simply accepting what is – being neutral with what is because it is what is. Not attaching positive or negative meaning or interpretation to what is but instead just radically accepting it because it is. Embracing the moment in the here-and-now and letting the moment contain whatever it contains in a non-engaging way is the first step in your Zen to change.
The way to begin to free yourself up in ways that can get you on the road to achieving your goals and dreams and creating desired change in your life is to radically accept what is first. Stop resisting what is. Resisting what is, is how you keep yourself blocked or imprisoned in what blocks you from moving forward. Stop trying to be free in self-defeating ways that only pull you back to your emotional ground zero eventually. Your Zen first step to change is to just notice how you are imprisoning yourself in this very moment, right now, without judgment. Just observing that is the beginning of the freedom you want.
Then, radically accept that you are imprisoning yourself safe in the knowledge that as soon as you understand more about why and truly let go of resisting what is – the more you radically accept that you have imprisoned yourself in, for example:
-
your pain
-
in being obese
-
in being self-critical
-
in being alone
-
in feeling shame
-
in feeling unworthy
-
in low self-esteem and a lack of self-worth
-
in acting-out
-
in settling
-
in living up to a label, a diagnosis, or fear of abandonment, fear of being known
-
in fear of being loved and fear of loving
-
in old negative tapes from your past kept alive in your self-defeating patterns of negative thinking
-
in fear of not being liked
-
in not knowing who you are
-
in trying to avoid loss
Radically accepting that you have continued to resist the very change, growth, and/or healing you really do want will provide you with new questions, the answers, as you live your way into them will provide you with the awareness that will invite you to stop resisting all that you have resisted for so long. This will make it possible for you to begin to work toward identifying and achieving your goals and dreams.
Radical acceptance is the beginning of your moment of Zen to change because the moment you let go of trying to be free – resisting all that isn’t – by radically accepting and surrendering to all that is – to what is – you will realize that just as you have had the power to imprison yourself so too do you have to power to empower yourself to the freedom from ___________ that you so long for, and that you so deserve.
Your Zen to change awaits your becoming aware of your role in what is right now in your life. What is, is just what is. It is okay, simply because it is. Let this moment of realization and newly-found acceptance and surrender sustain you just as you are, because you are. You are enough, right now, just the way you are.
© A.J. Mahari, June 6, 2010 – All rights reserved.
About
June 5th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari
A.J. Mahari
G’day, my name is A.J. Mahari and welcome to my Mental Health and Life Coaching blog with a focus on providing information to increase your awareness.
I have been life coaching now for just over six years. I have learned a lot about life the hard way and bring a tremendous amount of my own life experiences with loss, abuse, mental health challenges and subsequent recovery, to the work that I do with my mental health and life coaching clients.
I hope you will find something on this site and/or my other sites and blogs helpful and/or interesting. If you are interested in my coaching services please be sure to read more about what I have to offer. Reading my various blogs and web sites will also give you a strong sense of where I am coming from.
Whatever might have brought you to this site, I hope that you are open to the change that might be trying to get your attention. You deserve to give yourself the very best opportunities you can to learn more about yourself and to continue to grow in ways that will create an increasing awareness of how change will enhance your experience in life.
More Touchstone Life Coaching Information
As a Life Coach, BPD and Mental Health Coach I have an open, in depth, and inclusively diverse philosophy about Life Coaching and the process of its unfolding between myself and each client I work with.
New beginnings beckon to us from what are experienced first as losses, failures, and painful experiences. There are times in life when transitioning from one phase to another the journey can be augmented positively by sharing part of it with a life coach like myself. Someone to walk a few steps of this explorative transition with you in a supportive, compassionate, and caring way.
Life coaching is a collaborative process with between the coach and the client with the mandate of supporting the client in achieving his or her personal goals. The process of life coaching, unlike psychotherapy, does not focus on the past or involve delving into one’s past. Life coaching focuses on effecting wanted and needed change in a client’s current and future thinking, attitude, feelings, and/or behaviour.
Personal Coaching, whether it is general life coach, BPD (BPD loved ones) coaching or mental health coaching is a process of supporting the client in his or her learning more about him/herself. In my experience, as a life coach, asking the client questions in a reflective way that is in response to what the client shares encourages the client to seek his or her own answers. Answers that will make themselves known through the kind of self-examination that produces both a deeper self-awareness and an increasing personal insight. Personal coaching is a learning experience.
Most clients seek me out as a life coach because they have come to some type of crossroads. They have come to realize that there is change needed in some area of their lives. Change is not easy for anyone. In some cases, where change is not possible, clients are exploring ways of coming to terms with challenges. In other cases clients are in search of more effective coping skills and techniques. And some clients face certain life challenges that call for adapation and strategizing when change itself isn’t the goal or is not a possible solution. Many clients seek support to find their way to the kind of personal understanding that enhances their confidence in being able to identity their needs and wants in ways that are the harbingers of the taking of the action required to create desired change or enhance personal coping strategies and to achieve personal, relationship, or career goals.
What you need to know about A.J. Mahari as a Life Coach as she describes in her own words along with visting the many links to her sites and online work will hopefully give you a firm idea of what A.J. has to offer to you as prospective client.
-
I am not a mental health professional
-
I have taken university courses in social work, psychology, religion, philosophy, sociology, communications, journalism, to name but a few
-
I have not pursued a degree because I believe in being a free-thinker
-
Not pursuing a degree has meant that I have been able to maintain an out-of-the-box experiential way of learning
-
I have extensive first-hand life experience in what change requires
-
I have extensive first-hand life experience in coping effectively with grief
-
I have failed enough times in my life to truly know that success is failure turned inward out – failing is a necessary prerequisite for true success
-
Failing and making mistakes are the growth opportunities that are gifts disguised as hard-times
-
I have learned to heal from childhood abandonment and how not to be blocked by the past
-
I have extensive first-hand life experience in recovery
-
I have extensive first-hand life experience in learning to compensate for what cannot be changed and in learning to change what can be changed and accept and compensate for what cannot be changed
-
I believe a down-to-earth personal approach – humanistic positive psychology
-
I am extremely well-read and have 8 years experience life coaching
-
I have been writing online for 15 years.
Some people do learn more from courses and getting degrees and others, like myself, become students of life and live and learn very experientially. You have to decide what is most important to you when thinking about working with a life coach. Do you value someone with a degree simply because they have a degree? Do you value someone because they have “professional” backing or testimonials in a given area of coaching or do you value what I have to offer?
What I have to offer is over 5 decades now of learning. Over 50 years of trial and error and putting to work in my own life, healing, recovery, change, grieving, forgiving , transforming myself into a healthy functional human being with compassion and empathy. I am a person of substance and character – not glitz, glamour and all the “right” promises or “catchy sales-pitches”. I give all I have to give to each and every client, each and every time we work together. I have 8 years experience coaching. I am extremly well-read and that coupled with a rich history of life experience – most of which was the you- have-to-learn-fro- it type of difficult life experience.
I invite you to listen to my Podcasts and to watch my Videos to give you more of an idea of what I am about and where I am coming from. This, along with all that I have written online, will provide you with a sense of whether I am the coach for you.
Life Coaching Involves Strategy
June 5th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari
A.J. Mahari is a Life Coach who also understands that strategy is important to the client’s work. Developing strategy is part of the journey between the client and the coach as the client searches to identify what he or she needs. This means that as part of the coaching process I assist you in not only identifying your needs, goals, desires, and your dreams, but I also help you to plan a personal strategy that will work for you as the individual that you are. Strategy that works for you, that feels natural for you, that has meaning to and for you and that can help you to implement and design your strategy going forward.
In the life coaching process it can be very important to work with a coach, like A.J. Mahari, who is very skilled in the reality that change takes strategy to identify, implement, and support. Strategy involves the action steps that will drive your process of self-improvement, personal growth, coping more effectively, change, and/or recovery, moving forward.
“Water is never tired of flowing” You need not tire of growing. Believe in yourself and in what you know you want/need to change. Strategy is but one method of learning skills and of learning to use your strengths as tools to help you unblock yourself, and like water, that’s never tired of flowing, navigate your way effectively around the rock-like obstacles that are blocking you at this juncture of your journey.
For some clients it will take a little more time to awaken to actually strategizing – to be ready to do the work necessary to actually map out strategy. Some people really need to further explore where they are right now gaining more insight and awareness in the here and now. Your first action step is to purchase a coaching session. From there we can explore your next steps together.
Life coaching supports the client’s self-affirming strategy while also mirroring back to the client any negative or self-destructive and goal-blocking patterns, habits, ways of thinking that block the client’s ability to more clearly and productively implement an effective strategy to meet his or her goals.
© A.J. Mahari – All rights reserved.
The Positive and the Negative of Control
June 5th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari
A.J. Mahari, an author and a life coach, talks about the positive and the negative of control and how emotional mastery can teach you to implement positive constructive control in your emotional life. Do you think that you first need to control your thoughts or your emotions? Is there a connection? Can controlling one or the other control both?
Emotional mastery can help you to learn to address self-defeating and self-destructive patterns of trying to controls others in wayward attempts to meet your needs. Emotional control exercised upon one’s self with an inner-focus will lead to positive understanding. Whereas being internally out of control emotionally and attempting to exert control over others is a negative form of control that keeps people stuck feeling as if others are victimizing them. Control is a two-edged sword, emotionally. The more you can surrender the need to control externally, the more you can learn, through the emotional mastery techniques that I teach, to empower yourself toward consistent emotional control internally.
Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life
Achieve Your Goals
Emotional Mastery Intro Audio
Change Your Thoughts – Change Your Life
Achieve Your Goals
Emotional Mastery Intro Audio
© A.J. Mahari, December 24, 2009 – Updated June 4, 2010 – All rights reserved.
Accept Thyself
March 15th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari
By Tal Ben Shahar,
Author of The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life
“I am a human being: nothing human is foreign to me.”
-Terentius
It was when I welcomed unhappiness, that I became happier. My most significant psychological breakthrough came when I realized, truly internalized the notion, that it was OK for me to be sad, that there was nothing wrong with feeling dispirited, stressed, lonely, or anxious — that it was just fine to be human. Allowing myself to freely experience negative emotions did not only weaken these sentiments, it also intensified the positive ones.
Acceptance is a prerequisite for a healthy emotional life. When we accept ourselves, when we welcome everything that is human about us, we open up a space within which we can act, and feel. If we repress an emotional reaction and refuse to accept it — whether anger or disappointment or joy — we create a knot in the channels that make up our emotional system. The same system is used for the flow of all emotions — positive and negative — and if we block the flow of one emotion it affects our ability to experience other emotions. For example, if I do not accept my agitation after having made a mistake I will hinder my ability to experience joy when something good happens to me.
At the onset of negative emotions we have a choice — to stifle and reject or to accept and experience. What we choose to do at that moment affects our emotional life in general because the emotional system as a whole is affected. Closing off the emotional valve to the flow of negative emotions inevitably restricts future flow of positive emotions. We cannot eat the cake (deny the free flow of negative emotions) and leave it whole (enjoy the free flow of positive emotions). Pain and joy are two sides of the same coin and there is a symmetry between our capacity to experience one and the other. In the words of psychologist Abraham Maslow: “By protecting himself against the hell within himself, he also cuts himself off from the heaven within.”
We can’t have it both ways — stifling negative emotions while expecting a free flow of positive ones. We have to choose whether or not to allow ourselves to fully experience our humanity — its sorrows, at times, but also its joys.
To accept ourselves is not necessarily to like what we did or to approve of it, but rather to forgive ourselves. To forgive, in Sanskrit, is to untie — when we forgive we untie an emotional knot and unclog the emotional system. And it is when we allow our emotions to flow freely — when we experience the lows and the highs, the pain and the pleasure, the sorrows and joys — that we are, as we can and ought to be, fully human.
©2009 Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D, author of The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life
Author Bio
Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D., author of The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life, is the New York Times bestselling author of Happier. He taught one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history, and he currently consults and lectures around the world to multinational organizations, the general public, and at-risk populations. He obtained his Ph.D. in organizations behavior and his B.A. in philosophy and psychology from Harvard.
For more information, visit www.talbenshahar.com
Email This Post
Who or What is God?
February 17th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari
The following is an excerpt from the book Life Lessons for My Sisters: How to Make Wise Choices and Live a Life You Love!
by Natasha Munson
Published by Hyperion; May 2005; $11.95US/$15.95CAN; 1-4013-0805-8
Copyright © 2005 Natasha Munson
In the same way that all things in nature complement one another, humans are also here to complement one another. That means that life is about learning and about giving. All you have to do in this life is learn about yourself and give what you know. Life is really not difficult if you look at it in the simplistic terms God has given us.
You learn in this life through your experiences. Those experiences shape your life, your character, your values, your beliefs, your goals, your love, and your reality. While you are going through your life lessons, there will be a goal you want to fulfill. This goal is your reason for being, because, while you are here to learn, you are also here to fulfill a purpose. Fulfilling that purpose is like completing an agreement with God. He gave you a desire and you have to achieve it.
When you fulfill that dream, your spiritual purpose, you are giving the most beautiful thing to the world. You are giving yourself as a completely fulfilled person. This is the reason you are here: to learn, to give, to fulfill your purpose.
Your purpose is what you most desire. Any ambition, any goal is acceptable. Whether it’s to start a day care center or become an entertainment lawyer. The outcome is still the same — you are in a position to help others.
To always remember your purpose, you have to remember that God is within you. Since God is the creator, this means that you are, in a way, the co-creator of your life. You can create the life you want by simply believing you must and can achieve it. Whatever you focus on and work toward, you will achieve.
Fulfilling your purpose is a spiritual act. Spirituality is about looking within and looking at the world. The world is beautiful. You will see it if you take the time to truly look at the world. It’s easy to see just the negative things and the bitter people and think of the world as ugly. But the world becomes ugly because people don’t realize that they are the co-creators of their lives. No one has to remain miserable or unhappy, it’s all a choice.
Really look at the world, the trees, the oceans, the mountains. All of it is beautiful and designed for a specific purpose. Everything automatically works well together. Your responsibility is to fulfill your purpose so that, in some way, you contribute to how the world works too.
One person can make a difference, and that is what you are here to do. If you touch the life of one person, you are creating a domino effect. That person will touch the life of another person, and so on. So always know that you fulfilling your purpose is necessary to the world.
LESSON
God is within you and therefore you have the power to create the life you want. When you create the life you want, your inner fulfillment and happiness will be passed on to others as an inspiration.
Copyright © 2005 Natasha Munson
For more information, please visit www.sisterlessons.com
Email This Post
The Five Keys to Infant and Child Development
January 14th, 2010 | Author: A.J. Mahari
By Paul C. Holinger, M.D., M.P.H., author of What Babies Say Before They Can Talk
Human beings appear to have approximately nine built-in feelings at birth. These findings are based on the work of researchers such as Darwin, Demos, Ekman, Izard, Nathanson, and, especially, Tomkins. These feelings later combine with each other and experience to form our complex emotional life. Understanding these feelings and how they work can make a world of difference for you and your baby.
The two positive feelings are interest and enjoyment; the feeling which resets the nervous system and gets it ready for other stimuli is called surprise; and the six negative feelings are distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust (a reaction to bad taste) and dissmell (a reaction to bad odors). Each of these feelings is signaled by a specific facial expression in your baby. These facial expressions provide the signals which help you understand what your baby is feeling. These nine feelings operate on a scale from low to high: interest-to-excitement, enjoyment-to-joy, surprise-to-startle, distress-to-anguish, anger-to-rage, fear-to-terror, shame-to-humiliation, and varying levels of disgust and dissmell.
There are some easy ways to use this information productively for you and your child. We call it the five keys in infant and child development. These keys can help enhance potential and prevent problems.
Key #1 – Allow the Full, Reasonable Expression of All Feelings
Allowing – and encouraging – the expression of these feelings is one of the most important aspects of establishing good communication with your child and nurturing healthy emotional development. By encouraging the baby’s interest, you learn what your baby has passion for. Interest – or curiosity – is at the root of all our exploratory, learning, discovering processes. Understanding where his/her passions and interests lie will enable your child later to make decisions about education, career, and spouse much easier with much more self-awareness.
We also want the child to express the so-called negative feelings – distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust, and dissmell. These signals are like an S.O.S. They tell us when a baby or child – or adult – is in trouble and needs help. If we somehow tell the baby or child not to express these feelings, the feelings will get bottled up and cause mischief inside, possibly resulting in a chronic sense of being misunderstood, not heard, not being able to trust the environment, angry, and despairing.
Key #2– Maximize the Signals of Interest and Enjoyment
It is especially helpful to recognize and support a child’s interest. In this way, you learn about your child, and your child learns about herself. Supporting a child’s curiosity enhances his/her exploratory and learning activities. Even if the child is interested in doing something disruptive – like noisily pulling out pots and pans and playing with them – there is usually a way to redirect the behavior to fit the child’s interest and the parent’s sanity. Remember, a child’s “misbehavior” may simply be the interest feeling at work.
Key #3 – Remove the Triggers for the Negative Feelings
The negative signals – distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust, dissmell – are simply S.O.S. cries that something is wrong… “please help!” By responding reasonably to these signals, you show your baby you understand him/her and that help is near at hand. This enhances tension-regulation. The major triggers of the negative signals in babies are hunger, fatigue, and pain (e.g., dirty diaper, illness, etc.).
Key #4 – Use Words, Even with Newborns, to Express Signals
By using words early to label feelings, you give your child a head start on the important process of putting words to action. This allows for greater awareness and thoughtfulness and decreases impulsivity. “That car horn surprised you, didn’t it?” “You are angry, aren’t you?” “You sure are interested in this.”
Key #5 – “Be Aware Your Child’s Desire to Be Like You”
Infants and young children are eager to be like Mom and Dad. This is a powerful tool in helping your child with tension regulation and polite conduct. Speaking and acting calmly, putting feelings into words, not hitting or spanking under any condition, saying “thank you,” “please” and “I apologize” to your child – all this will result in your child following your lead.
These are the five keys of infant and child development. They are based on the nine signals. These easy keys will help enhance your child’s potential and prevent problems.
Copyright ©2005 Paul C. Holinger, M.D.
Author:
Paul C. Holinger, M.D., M.P.H., is the author of What Babies Say Before They Can Talk (Published by Fireside/Simon & Schuster; August 2003; $14.00US/$22.00CAN; 0-7434-0667-2) Dr. Holinger is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has been working with children and adults for the last twenty-five years. He is Professor of Psychiatry at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center and is Training and Supervising Analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. He earned a Masters of Public Health from Harvard University School of Public Health and has held fellowships in both Psychiatric and Psychosocial Epidemiology. He is a reviewer for the American Journal of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, Psychoanalytical Psychology, along with the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, to name a few. Dr. Holinger resides in the Chicago, IL area.
For more information, please visit the author’s Web site www.paulcholinger.com
Email This Post
A.J. Mahari's Daily Meditations and Thoughts Audio Podcast
December 6th, 2009 | Author: A.J. Mahari
Author and Life Coach, A.J. Mahari, has a new Daily Meditations and Thoughts Audio Podcast available now. Mahari offers her thoughts and motivating insights on a wide variety of topics including, but not limited to, self help, personal growth, self-improvement. She also talks about the various challenges of change and on-going self enlightenment that her coaching clients often present to her in their sessions.
Born out of my past experience in my own life, my experience as a life coach, and my writing background from years of writing my Soul’s Thought of The Day, I hope you will find my newest audio podcast gives you food for thought.
If you like to think and reflect about various aspect of life, spirituality, faith, and hope I have an ebook available that offers my top 80 Thoughts of the Day entitled, Phoenix Rising Reflections
This audio podcast will be up-dated daily (most days) Monday – Friday with the exception of holidays. I have had many emails over the last while asking for more of the type of thing I was offering in my Soul’s Thought of the Day and I hope that this audio podcast will provide that.
© A.J. Mahari, December 6, 2009 – All rights reserved.
