Taking control: Happiness is your choice and a secret of wholeness living!

Happiness is a positive emotion a person displays, which reveals the nature of thoughts through words and actions. It is a necessary ingredient that supports longevity and harmonious living with other inhabitants of planet earth. It is an assurance of the Creator’s purpose of creation and therefore a prerequisite of holistic wellness.   

Happiness is a main ingredient of self transformation.

Naturally we all seek happiness in varying degree of needs in one or all three categories that symbolize necessities of life: We are happy when we experience good health; when we have good relationships within family, community and other social institution and most importantly when choosing a mate. We are happy when we successfully attain financial prosperity. Let us highlight how happiness transcends the grave:

1.      Pre-birth and early years: A happy couple prepares before having a baby because it will enable them individually and as a couple to avoid any harm to their offspring. The most important step is eating right foods and avoiding any lifestyle hazards that could negatively affect the brain development during pregnancy. After birth parents have to adopt coaching versus military approach to parenting style. Impartation of informal education from birth throughout the first eight years is laying a lifelong foundation which will determine the level of happiness and ability to manage emotional, social and spiritual challenges.  This is happiness in action.

2.      Youth and adult life: Happy youth are able to communicate their confusion during their adolescent stage and therefore avoid many life changing wrong choices. Happy family environment enables a child to trust both parents with challenging experiences of interacting with people of opposite sex for example.  First a child learns love and happiness from parents and is able to emulate them; thus encountering fewer relationships issues. As a happy couple, a man and woman individually avoid taking each other for granted: they address their own emotional challenges so that they limit hindrances to building intimate relationship. They continue to find ways of igniting passion by choosing to support each other to climb their personal ladder of personal growth toward self actualization.

3.      Senior life: Happiness support longevity and this denotes a mature person with a mellow approach to life challenges. As a senior citizen, a person becomes a resource to both young and colleagues. Such contentment seeks to empower through both formal forums and community dialogue wherein knowledge is imparted for the benefit of those seeking it and the improvement of the community at large.

Toxicity of lack of happiness!

For clarity of this subject, note the common disruptive behavior and lifestyle of those who lack happiness:

1.      Obsessing on past negative experiences: Unhappy person maintain the pain by rehearsing the experience that caused it.  This self-injury is caused by low level of awareness that the mind does not know the reality. Its function is to process and store information whether a myth or truth, and to support actions that correlate with its meaning.

2.      Victim minded: Happiness is a choice which is based on what a person wants in life. For example, if you know that nothing can cause you prolonged pain if you do not allow it; you will discard anything that steal your happiness during the first few seconds. It is a learned behavior which empowers you to soar over any storm. It is responding and not reacting to your environment.

3.      Lacking empathy: Happiness motivates you to think about others and lessen their pain by physical actions or emotional support. Unhappy person is selfish and lives in bondage of self indulgence which leaves him/her too poor to give anything away.

4.       Overly sensitive: Happy people also focus on other people’s strengths and naturally ignore their moment of weakness when they display self injury in its various forms of negative emotions.

5.       Obsessing over winning: Happy people seek peace versus winning the battle. Unhappy person will huff and puff over a tiny offense and continue to rewind the incident for a long period.  

6.      Do not know how to love – If you obsess on negative thoughts it means you do not know how to love yourself. Logically, you cannot give what you do not have. Unhappy people are ill and the majority end up in prisons because they act on their negative thoughts.

Being happy is a conscious decision that support loving self and ensuring that you prohibit anything that seeks to cause emotional and physical pain. You maintain happiness by being present; that is, being aware of your environment and having emotional intelligence which enables you to know and manage yourself adequately. Note that you are not your mind! Your own mind can torture you and destroy you if you let it operate on auto-pilot mode.  

Taking control: Use Emotional Intelligence to increase your circle of influence!

Emotional intelligence is an ability to pay attention to who you are for the purpose of improving your content -learned emotions, behavior, beliefs and values  and reconfigure yourself to operate at optimum level. It is a process of effectively removing clutter and learning to become conscious of the nature and power of your thoughts, words and actions on you and others.

What is an Emotional Intelligence?

Is behavior model that seek to guide a person to identify and understand the underlying motivation of the cognitive processes which enable a person to relieve stress, improve communication, empathize with others and most importantly, resolve conflict.

Why do you need emotional intelligence?

Mankind is a social being. At birth you have minimal hurtful nature but your social environment equip you during the first eight years with both good and bad information and experiences to become a person you are.  There are fewer good people who have compassion and seek to nurture others and have charisma to attract others.  When you look around you will notice that crime is prevalent across age groups: For example, an adult experience fear when passing young boys at street corner because moral values have declined so low that people hurt each other without reason.  Crime is a deciding factor concerning where you want to live; how you design your house and demand that you keep your gate locked.  Fear is a negative emotion and is bound to affect you deeper and exude a negative energy which repels people. Emotional intelligence is a tool for you to measure the quality of your content and has also become helpful as a recruitment tool for lead positions.  

How you can use Emotional Intelligence!              

Emotional Intelligence has four attributes: self-awareness, self-management; social-awareness and relationship management. When we seek to address community issues; the most effective approach is to educate individuals on the principle that, you can only change you and also change what you have identified as needing change. Self-awareness is a starting point for any change. It entails becoming conscious of the quality of your thoughts, your words and actions. Emotional intelligence enables you to focus on your emotional patterns; responses and reactions to your social environment. Knowing your personality type will help you to review your short and long-term plans. The most practical way to use emotional intelligence is to learn who you are by writing down the following basic questions and answers:

1.    What am I thinking now? Ask yourself this question and attempt to answer it without editing your thoughts. Remember you want to identify the underlying motivation for thinking what you are thinking?

2.    Do I love myself and family?  Some people are not aware that they do not love themselves. List all members and indicate reservations if any. These remarks will help you to evaluate your emotional issues.

3.    What experiences (good and bad) do I recall?  The purpose is to identify any discomfort which may indicate harboring anger, resentment and other negative emotions.

4.    What personality type am I? (Write your strengths and weakness). This will help you to see the pattern of response and reaction – how you impact other people.

5.    Write down what you recall about your parents and grant parent. You will be amazed how little offenses tend to linker in your subconscious mind. Do not judge them; simply note how you feel about each one of them. Remember you want to off-load negative energy!

6.   Write down the name of your friends, and what you like or dislike about each one of them?

7.    Highlight your short and long-term goals: Do you have a vision?  What is your burning desire? Are your current activities parts of your vision? What resources do you need most to achieve your goals. This will show you how confused or focused you are and indicate your anchors – expressed and implied hindrances.

Emotional intelligence is a tool that can assist you to be alert about who you are; and accurately point at your temperament.  When you know your emotional issues, you will successfully learn to manage them; thus empowering you to operate from your strengths. You will be able to see these in others and learn how to approach them. This knowledge will display charisma and attract influential people to your circle. 

 

Taking control: Guidelines on addressing destructive behavior!

Destructive behavior is a range of actions that display negative emotions, characterized by non-compliance to the norms and values of the family, community and other social institutions. It is an irrational response to the environment which denotes absence or low level of consciousness.

Factors of destructive behavior

Behavior is a learned response to various stimuli which become habits over time. At birth an infant have few inherited characteristic which are subject to change depending on an environment.  This denotes that an infant has no skill to understand most of what is going on around it; nonetheless all that is archived in a unconscious mind. Information in the unconscious mind is not accessible to the conscious mind, but influences your thinking patterns and behavior throughout your life. The following are contributing factor of destructive behavior:  

1.    Socialization: An infant is socialized by parents first, then the community, school and the church; thus laying foundation to be a prosperous member of the society. The nature of this important foundational education will shape observable and non-observable behavior which could be positive or destructive. Socialization encompasses a dissemination of knowledge information and functional skills.

2.    Dysfunctional family: Denotes a family unit that is broke and not performing optimally. Parents are role-models and can only produce ideal results if they display ideals that are based on standard specific moral principles. Dysfunctional family impacts a child negatively because it fails to maintain a sense of belonging and holistic emotional and physical security.

3.    Environment: Is a surrounding and has an overwhelming effect on a child at various stages of development. The media teaches children both good and bad behavior; and parenting has become a challenge especially with regard to deteriorating moral standards.  

Common destructive behavior

Destructive behavior manifest early in life. Children beat others intentionally and parents ignore these; yet it is a cue that should raise a red flag. Note the following common destructive behaviors:

1.    Anger – displays aggressive behavior that threatens others verbally and physically. It does not attract people to you.

2.    Argumentative – is a form of controlling behavior, where a person seeks to overrule others through forceful logic. It destroys interactive communication.

3.    Manipulation – is a devious and purposeful false display of love or positive attitude with intention to abuse trust and usefulness of other people’s possessions and skills.  People must choose to love and offer their emotional and physical support willingly and not because they are deceived.

4.    Inconsiderate – is choosing to think and do things that benefit self regardless of a plight of others. This is the opposite of love.

How to address destructive behavior

 A behavior is a manifestation of a thought which could be triggered by information received through all sensory portals. Your mind process a lot of information at any moments and the process slows down during your sleep. Most people are not aware of their behavior because their mind is on auto-pilot mode and over active. They key to identify any destructive behavior is being present – paying attention to what you are thinking NOW. This will enable you to attempt to analyze the motivation for your behavior as follows:

1.    Evaluate daily activities: Ask yourself: What did I do today? Attempting to answer this question will rewind what you did; people you met and what transpired. Analyzing your constant underlying emotions of the daily activity will highlight emotional blemishes. This is the beginning of reclaiming your consciousness – ability to control yourself.

2.    Write down incidents that disturbed your peace: Recording activities where you did not act rationally is learning to be objective about your observation. The purpose is not to judge yourself; but learn to look from a third person’s perspective. You will be amazed of how unconscious you could be! You may find yourself reacting and not responding in most cases.

3.    Empower yourself:  We all have a lot of room to change. The question is; do you want to change to be a better person?  While you cannot access unpleasant information and experiences stored at unconscious level, you can increase the positive ones consciously as follows:

v  Stop any negative thought as soon as it occurs and replace it with pleasant one including praying or singing. Develop a new hobby of reading spiritual books; listening to audio on quieting you mind.

v  Learn to meditate. You already know how to dwell on negative thoughts; so you can intentionally think and speak to yourself; thus reinforcing your self confidence and ability to prosper in relationships, health and wealth.

v  Learn the principles of Emotional Intelligence. You can only change what you have identified as needing your attention!

v  Seek professional help. If you feel you have too much on your plate and have no skill to unlearn unpleasant behavior, seek a life coach or counseling.

Taking control of your life is being proactive about reshaping a new you. It is not seeking to shift anything anywhere; but reinventing a genius in you according to your talents and spiritual gifts. You owe yourself a chance to live your life without blaming!

Taking control: Ideal parenting comes with effective communication!

Parenting is generally challenging for many parents and has become more so in the 21^st century with the advent of United Nations intervention to regulate child protection. This has led to complications of striking ideal communication in parenting styles.  Often parenting teenagers carry even heavier challenge when it comes to enforcing discipline.

What is parenting?

Parenting is an overall nurturing of an infant with a purpose to gain optimum health and successful experience of all developmental stages. It entails empowering a child with social skills as well as communication and decision making; and finally, providing necessary resources to enable a child to access both non-formal and formal education of choice.

How important is communication in parenting?

Communication is an important tool of parenting because it is a medium through which a child learns during the first eight formative years. An infant’s first need is to bond with both parents through all forms of communication; then other members of the family in order to feel safe psychologically and physically. Most harm is done at infancy and manifest in adolescence and throughout adulthood stages. Parents often get a shock when their children act-out their feelings; and hearing expressed anger on incidents which they overlook as insignificant. An unborn infant develops hearing sense very early and starts experiencing harsh environment when the mother exchange hurtful words or is in similar situations.  The current information explosion is making parenting even more challenging. For example parents spend shorter period away from the computers, newspapers and television at home; thus depriving their children quality time to communicate and most importantly listening to them. The situation widens the communication gap, which makes parenting a daunting task when parents attempt to assert themselves on compliance to family rules in general. The following parenting styles demonstrate the levels of communication and the impact:

1.     Authoritarian parenting: It is a form of a military approach where communication is one way and punishment is a form of regulating behavior.  The disadvantage of this approach is to produce stereotype behavior in which a child learn to suppress own ideas so that it could be easier to follow the leader. This is disrobing a child of any ability to communicate in various groups and therefore become a follower and not learn to be competent to lead.  

2.     Authoritative parenting: Is said to be an ideal approach of parenting where parents communicate clear rules and expectations for compliance.  In other words while parents demonstrate the role of authority and responsibility within a family, they also allow free expression. This approach prepares a child to fit in a real world where a child learns to recognize authority in various social institutions. Communication in its various forms enable a child to learn how to address various social groups appropriately as well as knowing the importance of applying respect and not fear in all levels.

3.     Permissive parenting: Is also referred to as indulgent parenting where there are fewer guiding regulations and therefore little behavior shaping and compliance expectations. This form of parenting has little communication and leaves a lot to be desired in terms of preparing a child to interact successfully with various social groups.  This parenting style is prevalent in modern society and has unpleasant results. The impact is increase on school riots because student simply does not have skill to communicate their grievances constructively. The same applies to marriages. Intolerance is high at workplace and political arena.  

4.     Uninvolved parenting: This style of parenting is also common in developed countries where a child is exposed to unsupervised television viewing because both parents are working and have very little quality time with their child.  The danger here is:

§  A child does not develop listening skill because television robs a person of the need to listen attentively.

§  A child is exposed to witchcraft through the so called ‘kids programs’ which have this negative spiritual content.

§  Most games are violent and therefore reduce the ugliness of violence in the child’s morale values archived information. Uninvolved parenting allows a lot of freedom which is like unattended garden.  Weeds often grow faster than crops and this is doom and despair for children. The evidence is increasing rape because a child has no skill to communicate and form acceptable relationships. In general, they have never learned the value of delayed gratification.  

Communication is a catalyst of change from early life - before birth - and transcends the grave. It is key in informal, non-formal and formal education. Communication prepares a child to experience ideal life through successful interaction with others in various social institutions.