As a closing Thank You, I think It’s time to lead by good example. If you’re a parent or grandparent, then you know that we have to be intentional about being a presence in our children and grandchildren’s lives. They are watching us, and they see the “roles” each of us adopt. They see where we are strong, and they see our weaknesses.
We need to build a bridge and help them understand. Our youth and young adults need to know why we feel empowered and how we found it. But they also need to know when and why we feel weak, incapable, or less than and how we arrived at that conclusion. Better yet, they need to see, experience, and witness our rise. I believe open, authentic, and appropriate transparency will help break through a level of understanding that was not there before.
Now we cannot miss the opportunity to talk about what should be obvious.
Mom’s, your sons are learning how to treat their wives and what they will expect from a woman. Your daughters are learning too. She is learning what a woman’s role in the home looks like. She is learning what voice she will have. But she is also learning how to provide, how to protect, and how to be a compassionate partner and parent.
Mom’s, your sons are learning how to treat their wives and what they will expect from a woman. Your daughters are learning too. She is learning what a woman’s role in the home looks like. She is learning what voice she will have. But she is also learning how to provide, how to protect, and how to be a compassionate partner and parent.
The year is 2020. Equality is here and needs to continue to empower our youth. This thought, feeling, emotion, belief, and opinion hold extreme value. But it needs to start within.
If you don’t have it, how will they cultivate it?
Here are 6 Tips to Help You Lead by Great Example:
1. Feel, Hear, Say, and Believe
a. What is your internal message? Do you feel worthy? Do you hear that your presence is valid? Do you speak to yourself with respect? Or imposed pressure? Do you believe that you are valuable?
b. I know this is can be an emotional journey. Be easy with yourself. Look for the “what” and “how” you can shift the dialogue to look and sound more in line with what you aspire to attain. A good example is “My thoughts, feelings, emotions, opinions, and beliefs are valid and hold value. I am worthy of being heard. I love myself and will treat myself with genuine love and respect.”
2. Experience Your Intuition
a. This is the coming together of your emotional and rational mindsets. Be connected with your body, observe how it feels when you know something to be “right” and how it reacts when you know something is “wrong”.
b. Intuitively you know why, be honest with yourself and identify when you are residing heavier in your reactive emotional mind or your overly logical rational mind. Now you will want to slow things down. Identify how you can make the truest most beneficial shift in each situation to have them look, feel, be the way you would prefer.
3. Learn the Tactics of Assertiveness – Do you have them?
a. Assertiveness is a skill, a balanced response that is neither passive nor aggressive. It means that you can appropriately stand up for your personal rights, and express your thoughts, feeling, and beliefs in a direct and honest fashion.
b. Being assertive enables us to act in our own best interest, without undue anxiety. It also allows for expressions to be comfortable without denying the rights of others. An assertiveness means encouraging others to be open and honest about their views, wishes, and feeling so that all parties can act appropriately. Do you feel you are an assertive communicator? Identify 3 situations from this week where you feel you were, but the outcome didn’t work as well as you thought it should.
4. Control your moments – especially in times of distress.
a. The ability to tolerate and accept distress is an essential mental health goal for two reasons; #1 pain and distress are a part of life, #2 distress tolerance is a part of any attempt to change oneself otherwise impulsive actions will interfere with efforts to establish desired changes. The distress tolerance behaviors targeted are concerned with tolerating and surviving crises and with accepting life as it is in the moment. Your challenge today is to observe and critique your current methods followed by identifying how and where you can insert effective strategies in a manner that will foster growth leading away from wallowing in pain and suffering.
b. The goal is to find some techniques (hint: I will give you some in the next couple of days) that work for you. Those skills that you can practice until they are part of your everyday life. Skills you can call on whenever you need them.
5. Leave the pain behind
a. Or better yet learning how to observe and visualize letting go. Letting go of emotional suffering associated with negative emotions is not the same thing as letting go of the emotions themselves. However, letting go of suffering is a process we can learn. This does not mean pushing away or sitting on the emotions. The emotions are valid and represent experiences and interactions that were or are painful. What we’re talking about is dealing with these emotions and a new way that will relieve some of the sufferings that go with them.
b. In learning to let go of our emotional suffering we will want to use mindfulness skills. The ‘observe and describe skills’ are effective here because this is how we learn to get some distance from our emotions, by standing back and observing them. If we can get distance, we can see them more clearly. Try getting some distance from a painful emotion that you have, put it over there, and look at it, maybe as if it were on a shelf, screen, or, stage. Now, describe in words what the experience of that emotion is like. This also helps to give you distance and perspective.
For a more complete guide to living free and to launch your desire to lead by good example, click here and watch the release of Mini Leaves, a 30-Day Journal with Intention. A special treat that was created just for you, to live your life intentionally free!
I also want to invite you to schedule a complimentary 30 min consultation or meet and greet. You are not alone.