Do you remember when you where little and the flood of self doubt came rushing through your head? The bounding of your little heart, the sweat you noticed pooling in the palm of your hand? Or maybe the first time you fell in love and wanted to ask that special someone to go out with you? The thoughts of “am I handsome or pretty enough?“ “What if they say No?”
Do you remember that interview you spent weeks preparing for and still had a flood of nervous emotion? The possibility of what life would be like with that new position? But wait, what if you don’t get it. What will you do then? The flood of hopeful and fearful thoughts play tug of war in your brain.
We’ve all seen the movies where a character is faced with a choice and has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other trying to convince them what to do. They have to choose which one to listen to. Well we have the same problem except we are just trying to figure out how to think.
Everyone walks around with internal conversations buzzing constantly in their mind. One common characteristic of a confident leader is their ability to conquer the inner territory between their ears. Leaders are the people who have learned to use that internal dialogue to propel their lives forward with the purpose of helping others to become their best.
These tens of thousands of thoughts have the power to create and produce incredible lives full of potential, purpose, and blessings; or to destroy the dreams growing inside our children.
As parents, sometimes we start noticing in our children the external effects of negative internal dialogue long after the damage has been done. Thoughts turn into choices and words. Choices and words turn into actions. Actions turn into habits. Habits determine our level of success. So if we control our thoughts we control our success. Our goal is to assist parents on detecting thought trends early so they can nurture the positive pool of self-talk in children and grow it into a rushing river of success.
Let’s take a closer look at some concepts that will help our children in controlling this avalanche of thoughts.
The Power to Choose
Wow, don’t we all love to see the light bulbs that go off in a child’s face when they really understand THEY have the power to choose their thoughts and therefore determine their destiny. They have power over their thoughts. But they must exercise that muscle by choosing to look for the positive in themselves, in others, and in their circumstances.
Replacing the Negative
If our child starts to listen to the voice of fear, we need to help them speak the voice of courage. If they listen to the voice of self-doubt, we have to teach them to speak the voice of endless possibilities. If they start to listen to the voice of resentment we must teach them to speak the voice of “I’m good enough”. This will start an upward spiral of empowerment and influence. Teaching our children they can reverse their thoughts is vital to their happiness and success.
Easier said than done right? Especially when we as parents are sometimes wrestling with our own self-doubt. So, how can we make this a fun yet powerful revelation for our children? Here are some ideas for children of all ages:
Call A Spade A Spade
Take a deck of cards and separate the hearts and the spades out of the deck. Take these two suits and flip over two cards two at a time. The object is to shout out the number of all the hearts, completely ignoring the spades. Then talk to them that what we think goes to our hearts. That its ok to discard all the negative thoughts out of our head.
Teach them how to replace negative self-talk with positive self-talk.
Family Commitment
As a family, write a verbal constitution – something they say to themselves every morning, full of true, positive self-talk.
Flip That Thought
Give your child some negative statements on purpose and have them think through how they could make these statements positive. Have them think about the best possible outcomes, or how they could find the attitude of gratitude in the negative statement.
“I can’t do that” becomes a, “yes I can” attitude
“I’m no good” turns into, “I have everything and more then it takes!”
“That’s too hard,” changes to, “Nothing is impossible. I will find the help I need to overcome this.”
“I’m not smart enough” becomes, “I will learn and overcome all challenges.”
Helping our children learn to recognize their self-talk gives them a healthy head start on the road to success in life. When we start controlling our thoughts, we begin to control our destiny.
Thank you so much for joining us as we continue to explore the concepts surrounding sincere communication that connects us to others.
Comments