Liar, liar, pants on fire. Instill the principle of truth and fight back against lying in your family!

Not again! Your child has just lied to you, and then compounded the situation by denying it. You’re angry and frustrated. What do you do?

Don’t freak out – lying is a natural stage that every child goes through! It is normal for a child to test the limits to get attention. Most children lie because they are afraid to tell the truth – just like adults they have already formed beliefs about the “okayness” of the truth”.

If a child doesn’t learn to get positive attention, they will surely seek out negative attention. So give them the positive attention that they crave. Underline the positive moves that they make and the things that they do well. Ask them open-ended questions about their answers, such as “tell me about what’s underneath the lying”. Create a safe space for them to learn about telling the truth, and give them lots of positive reinforcement for “fessing up” to a lie they have told.
Share your journey with the truth with them and what’s underneath lying for you – it will create a sense of mutuality with your child that will open a more open and honest dialogue that may continue for years to come.

Want to know more about being a great parent? Visit www.wrightliving.com/programs/parenting and find out.

5 Ways to Reawaken Your Deepest Desires -By Beryl Stromsta

Lost your passion (or zest) for life? Having trouble staying focused on what’s in front of you? Spending too much time worrying about the past or the future? If you have trouble focusing on what you need to do and have a hard time staying in the moment, don’t despair. You may just need an “urge booster”!

Urges – believe it or not – are our friends. They tell us what is really going on inside us – our desires, our passions and our yearnings—and allow us to more fully experience the every moments of our lives. However, in reality, most people confuse real urges with “counterfeit” urges – those habits or behaviors we engage in for immediate gratification that don’t bring us any real satisfaction – such as chocolate, overwatching television or impulse shopping.

What’s the difference? Real urges meet deeper needs and get you engaged in the moment. People who follow their urges are more satisfied and more productive. So be ready to recognize your counterfeit urges and embrace your real urges. Here’s how to embrace your real urges and live more fully in the moment: 1. Ask Yourself What You’re Feeling. Knowing your emotions will help you be more engaged. 2. What do you really want? Look underneath the urge to the deeper need that you could be meeting. It could be you are wanting comfort or to be appreciated and affirmed. 3. Notice what beliefs are holding you back from expressing your urge. It could be that you think you’ll look stupid or silly and be embarrassed. 4. Take a risk and follow your urge. Risks are a necessary part of full engagement in your life, leading to more satisfaction and fulfillment.

Want to learn more about following your urges? Visit www.theonedecision.com and find out.

Raising a Billionaire – Parent Advice from Bill Gates, Sr.

Guess who gave this response when asked what the best advice he ever got was?

“Well, my dad and my mom were great at encouraging me as a kid to do things that I wasn’t good at, to go out for a lot of different sports like swimming, football, soccer, and I didn’t know why. At the time I thought it was kind of pointless, but it ended up really exposing me to leadership opportunities and showing me that I wasn’t good at a lot of things, instead of sticking to things that I was comfortable with. It was fantastic, and now some of those activities I cherish. They had to stick to it because I pushed back a lot, but it was fantastic advice.” (Fortune, July 2008)

Unless you saw the article in Fortune magazine I doubt you would guess it was Microsoft billionaire, Bill Gates. I know I would not have because I would think someone so successful would say the best advice he got was more directly business focused. But as a mom I am really struck by both the simplicity of it and the power of it. To me the point isn’t so much that his parents just put him in a bunch of activities. I see it as guiding my children to develop as many aspects of themselves as they can and to stick with the ones that are challenging and not give up.  I like remembering that I can be strategic and set standards for my family around participating in diverse activities.  We have said things like you will play so many different types of sports and you will master one of them. We also expect challenges and failures and strategize how we are going to deal with them ahead of time. As I am writing this I am bubbling with just how rich the “advice” from Mr. Gates is. Let me know what you are thinking and I will add more in my next blog.Gertrude

We Are Liars.

How many times have you lied today?

I’m betting you’re probably lying to yourself right now about that number. Most lying is unconscious and the best liars actually believe what they are saying!

Here’s the truth about lying…

• We are lied to 200 times per day – (meaning one untruth every 5-8 minutes!)
• We deceive 30 people per week
• We lie in 30-38% of our interactions
• College students lie in 50% of conversations with their mothers
• 10,000,000 people lie to the IRS each year (No shock there….)
• 80% lie on their resumes * 70% of all doctors lie to insurance companies
• 100% of dating couples surveyed lied to each other in about a 1/3 of their conversations

http://www.geocities.com/changes1611/sins22lies2.html

Yikes. Looks like we are so focused on maintaining our fake personas and false perceptions of ourselves that not only will we lie to others but we’ll even lie to ourselves.

Honestly, I was never a person who put a high value on the truth. I was more a sweep it under the rug, avoid the problem kind of girl. When I came to the Wright Institute (www.wrightliving.com) where they put this huge value on the truth I disregarded what they said—why not lie? It seemed to make for an easier life—less problems, less fights, and people seemed to like me a lot more when I lied.

But…I was a liar. As I started to really look at the cost of my lies I saw the lost relationships and the loss of my own direction and purpose. How can I know who I am if all I do is lie?

I haven’t changed over night and I’m not saying I don’t lie anymore but I have begun to make a conscious effort to tell those harder truths—and the truth is that rather than worrying about what others want me to do, say, or be I’m slowly getting my own voice back and remembering who I am.

As they say, “The truth will set you free…”

Smoking kills, but we don’t care…

I had been smoking cigarettes for about 9 years before I decided to quit. I had several attempts before I figured out what would work for me, and I was surprised that the reasons it wasn’t for my health. I just read this article http://www.buzzle.com/articles/reasons-to-stop-smoking-why-should-you-quit-smoking.html and was surprised that many of these reasons were health related. I did not quit because  smoking is bad for my health. THe extreme warning on a pack of cigarettes does not deter from the millions of addicts’ desire to have another cigarette.

My reason for quitting was because I wanted to know myself, and every time I had a cigarette I was taking myself out of the game of life!  Through tracking every time I had a cigarette, I realized that most of the time it was because I was having a feeling – mad at someone, hurt by someone’s comment, needing a break, and even wanting to celebrate. But getting away to have a cigarette was actually squelching all these feelings, and I never got to know why I was feeling the way I was feeling. I just formed this habit that  kept me feeling wired, buzzed, and numb.

 I made my One Decision (see www.judithwright.com)  to know myself and to know what I was feeling. I realized that if I wanted to live a life of any meaning and significance, I had better be aware of what I was feeling from moment to moment. This is what I focused on, and using tools to help me quit smoking, I was able to do this with success.

The powerful decision I made to know myself worked better for me than worrying about getting cancer in the future. This is one of the moments in my life that I remember as a milestone in my growth and I also remember how difficult it was. If I made it through quitting, I can make it through anything.

If there are any people who have quit smoking, why did you do it? Is anyone with me in not doing it for health?

My Quarterlife Crisis

What are you going to do? Where are you going to go? Who are you going to be? What do you want?

All these thoughts floated through my mind as I read an article on the newest issue for 20-something’s – The Quarter Life Crisis. After reading this particular paragraph, “They (20-something’s) can’t make any decisions, because they don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what they want because they don’t know who they are, and they don’t know who they are because they’re allowed to be anyone they want,” I realized that this article (http://www.eyeweekly.com/article/55882) was hitting way too close to home.

I seem to have all this freedom – to  work where I want, live with who I want, spend money on what I want – the possibilities seem endless, but the ultimate problem is I don’t know what it is that I want! I already have food, shelter, freedom, political rights and all the other stuff – so what’s missing? Why am I not satisfied?

By the end of the article I realized that in order to steer clear from this crisis I needed to change my frame of mind—and stop doing the same thing I have always done—beginning with exposing myself to new ideas.

Since starting work for the Wright Leadership Institute (www.wrightliving.com) I have been pushed for the first time in my life to think about what I want. Instead of following the prescribed path I have been given the chance to think about things for myself.

A big part of this has been learning to be honest with myself, which is far from fun most of the time.

But hey…no one said that self-actualization was easy and isn’t that ultimately what we’re all looking for?

Deciding to be less of a crank!

I attended Judith Wright’s Soft Addiction Solution training weekend this past weekend. It was a lot of fun. I was able to have a sense of humor about my soft addictions. The humor also allowed me to have all my feelings. I felt sad as I discovered the lost opportunities I had because of engaging in soft addictions. With the context Judith set, my sadness didn’t bring me down into despair or victimhood but it gave me hope.

It was easy to want to take the next steps. Breaking it down to look at one step at a time to be able to be more genuinely me started to seem doable. I had given up caffeine for over 8 years now and pop naturally was eliminated from there. This time, I am ready to look at the more challenging soft addiction for me that she referred to as the mood addictions. I am pretty darn cranky most of the time.

I was able to understand more about the physiological reaction and the looped thinking. I understand how my brain has come to crave my mood addicted state. I can be a grumpy son of a gun and it has cost me many relationships and I want that to stop. However, with her data, her compassion, her 8 key skills, I feel I am on the way to a better start than I ever have been. I am starting with just simply saying hi as I see people and if I know them to use their name rather than quickly walking by because I have to get somewhere. You can link here for more information about her work.

 http://www.softaddictions.com/

Maturation, a friendly concept for food lovers

I have been either on a diet, absolutely NOT on a diet, or thinking about what diet I should go on since I was in fourth grade. As sad as that is, I know I’m not alone, yet what a seriously crazy way to live. It’s odd that there is so much obesity, and the answer is to diet or maybe have plastic surgery, but it doesn’t really work. There is something clearly so wrong this is picture.

I’ve been reading the book “Food Swings” by Dr. Meltzer http://www.amazon.com/Food-Swings-Life-Changing-Connection-Well-Being/dp/1569246823 and things that I am currently learning and have known for a while clicked in place. The past three months I had made a conscious decision and declaration to transform my relationship with food, and so have been applying neuroscientific concepts to my eating patterns, examining my habits, and reading about the development of psychological coping responses (Anna Freud’s mature vs. immature responses).

Dr. Meltzer wrote about the Mommy – Daddy diet, or, the foods and ways that we were trained to eat as children. By trained, I mean that these ways of eating are HARD-WIRED into our brains and it takes huge conscious intention and coaching to RE-WIRE our brains. The Mommy – Daddy diet is immature, it is from our childhood, we need to grow up and make different sorts of food choices and have different reasons for eating than we did as children. I ate for soothing, comfort, reward, and for control.

Now, I’m all grown up, and, well, have been doing the same thing to my own dismay! So, I have started rewiring my brain to make mature decisions. It is totally awesome. I have been thinking entirely different about the my patterns and reasons for eating. It’s lunchtime – do I go to the nasty Flamingo greasy grill for a patty melt and fries? Well, I used to when I was feeling angry for not having a break and wanting to reward myself for a long work morning. But, wait, when I think about it, it is so not a reward as I always feel bad about myself after I eat that food, resentful that I had it, and in a slump from the grease and carb overload. So, I walk on by to the Fox and Obel and get a deliciously prepared salmon burger with sweet potatoes in a lovely environment with a friend. That is a break. The added bonus is the food is better and makes me happier, the food lover that I am! And when I want chocolate, my old pattern would be to acknowledge that chocolate will make me fat so I shouldn’t have it (as my parents might have told me), so I buy it anyway and gulp it down quickly in a sort of odd hiding manner. Now I have learned about the benefits of chocolate that is not processed and how it affects the brain (see the Food Swings book), and so I buy a high quality piece and enjoy it and notice the effects in my brain and it enters my body. Yum! Chocolate!

Oh, and the other cool thing is that my clothes are looser…but since it’s more immature to obsess about the number on the scale, I’ve chosen to not weigh myself and just enjoy what I’m learning!

Has anyone else made a shift like this, or want to make a shift like this?

a Growth Spurt for mom!

My son just turned nine months old and the last nine months has been such a big growth spurt – not just for him, but for me! Yesterday I just went to my second music class with him. I cried after his first class – not because anything bad happened and not because I was so moved by his musical genius.

Here’s how it went. About a dozen moms, dads, or couples circle around with our little darlings on our laps as the group leader takes a quick inventory of babies names and ages and launches right into the first introductory song where we’re all singing together incorporating each baby’s name.

My mind is off to the races. Will he….. interact with the other babies? Shake the shaker? Interact with me? Have fun? Will he love music and his mom and think fondly back on these memories for the rest of his life? Oh, look at that girl over there she can hold a beat already and bounces to the music and looks really happy. My child is crawling away and looking out the window. They must have trained her better with music since she was born. They were probably playing Baby Mozart. I meant to get those things and play them but I never did. In fact, I bet they have music going on in the house all the time. I should have played classical while he was in the womb. In fact, we never did read to him in the womb either. The neighbors did that with the newspaper. They will probably have a smarter child because of it. I hope I haven’t ruined his chances to be a genius.

The leader takes off on another song with hand puppets where she interacts with each baby one by one. Oh, she’s coming this way and he’s not paying attention. Those other kids are smiling or laughing. Maybe he’s going to be socially maladjusted because he hasn’t been exposed to other kids as much. What if I made a mistake having a nanny instead of daycare. Here she comes, come on Brian, come on. Smile at her. Do all that giggle cute stuff you do when you are home with me. Ok so he’s staring off into space and not even making eye contact. How can I let them know that actually he is the cutest baby in the world, that people comment about it all the time, that I fully expected him to be the class darling, that he must just be having an off day…..

Thank God for support and for my personal growth training at the Wright Leadership Institute. On the drive home, talking through all of this with a friend, I realize that I just had a lot of projection going on with my son. I was projecting on to him all of my little kid fears and disappoints.

He was just doing his thing in a new environment and checking it all out. I, on the other hand, was right back at the first day of kindergarten wanting to be liked, to make new friends, to be recognized, to feel special, and to belong. I was upset that the “teacher” didn’t ask my name, ask me to talk, have us introduce ourselves to each other, etc. In reality I’m a grown up kid still afraid of introducing myself to people, making friends, and facing rejection. Class #2 came and went yesterday and I’m proud to say that I took the initiative to introduce myself, ask people about themselves, and even offered to exchange information with one of the moms. I’m excited to see what the next part of my growth spurt will look like!