A
few months ago, I was introduced to Dr. Shefali Tsabary and her book The
Conscious Parent when she was interviewed by Oprah on Super Soul Sunday. Her ideas on Conscious Parenting are so simple
and logical, yet so difficult at the same time.
After the interview, I immediately bought her book so that I could learn
more. That book is now filled with
underlines, highlights and sticky notes.
I shared some of my favorite quotes in earlier blogs, but I knew I had
barely scratched the surface. Now imagine
my excitement when I learned that Dr. Shefali would be speaking at a small
event less than fifteen minutes from my house!
She spoke for about an hour and then spent about thirty minutes taking
questions from the audience. She touched
on so many relevant topics faced by parents every day that it would be
difficult to sum up in one post. Here
are a couple of my favorite topics that really got me thinking.
Dr.
Shefali began by asking a few members of the audience what they hoped to get
out of this talk. After receiving a few
responses, she illustrated that even though each individual answer was
different, they all started with a belief
that led to an agenda that lead to
an expectation that would ultimately
result in a reaction. Not only do we attend a lecture with these
beliefs, agendas, expectations and reactions, but we also project them onto our
relationships with our children. When
our children act out, we think that means there is something that we have to fix. She shared that there is no checklist you can
tick off to change a child’s behavior. At
its core, being a Conscious Parent requires us to look deeper at ourselves and
fix ourselves. It is only in fixing
ourselves that we will fix our children.
Dr. Shefali said it best when
she said “You have to be able to
navigate your own landscape before you can help your children navigate theirs.”
Stop reading and sit with that for a
minute.
How
well are you navigating your internal landscape? What kind of energy are you putting out
there? Dr. Shefali told us a story of a
mother who felt she was protecting her children by not talking about one of her
fears. The mother was shocked to realize
that her daughter had developed the same fear, in spite her best efforts not to
talk about it. The bottom line, kids are
smarter than we give them credit for. They
are observing you at all times trying to learn how to be. They watch your
reactions, your body language and instinctively feel the energy (positive and
negative) that you bring to every interaction.
The next time your child reacts in a way that you don’t like, evaluate how
your energy contributed to the situation.
Another
topic we discussed was how to address body image with our daughters. Our natural instinct is to try to fix it by discrediting
those that said the cruel remarks or talk about the unrealistic expectations of
our culture or to change their diet. Dr.
Shefali emphasized that we must resist all temptation to engage in this level
of the conversation. We do not have to
get caught up in trying to fix what other people say. In doing so we imply that what other people
say matters. What we must focus on with
our daughters is that they feel worthy within themselves. In Dr. Shefali’s words “Don’t give your power away. No
one can make you feel unworthy.” Whoa. How
many of us struggle with this even as adults?
Why should we let what anyone else says or does drag us down? Written out it seems so simple, but this is
definitely a situation that is easier said than done. And more so if we model a behavior for our
daughters where we don’t feel worthy, they will see right through it. However if we can stay centered, if we can
model a behavior where we hold our own power, then we will raise our daughters
to be strong and confident women.
You’re
probably thinking, this sounds easy but in reality is so hard. Dr. Shefali agrees. She describes it as a muscle that needs to be
trained. You build it up over continued
practice and repetition. It may be that
you are only able to be a Conscious Parent for ten minutes a day and that’s okay. Ten minutes where you have broken free of your
fear based beliefs, agendas and expectations.
Within those ten minutes you are able to make a true connection with
your child. You might ask what were Dr.
Shefali’s most powerful words of the day?
“It’s never too late to start.”
Heart-FULLy
yours,
Kacey
No comments:
Post a Comment