Family is available in several flavours: our parents, our kids, siblings, and the wider world of cousins, uncles and aunts, grandparents and grandchildren. As it's our parents, children and at times siblings that typically provide the best possibilities for an upsurge in our Happiness levels, I hope you'll forgive me if I concentrate on these.
Few people have very deep feelings regarding their parents, either positive or bad, which is seldom startling, because most of us spent several years - our formative years - hanging round with them. Not just that, but parents are usually more than glad to try to influence our lives, for better or worse, after we leave the nest. At times we also continue to try to have some bearing on them, taking on the parent role in the course - a potential minefield!
The key to a happy parent-child relationship is simple: A willingness to fully accept another person's world, and to do so with love.
Parents and children may share a home, but they do not always live on the same planet. The question is, are you willing?
I ask as you're perhaps keen to fly to a faraway nation where the people have a unique language, diverse clothes, diverse food, maybe a unique religion. You may be eager - enthusiastic even - to respectfully join in their customs and traditions. You may be eager to read up and do your investigation to get the most from your trip. You do this as, probably, you want - and expect - the best from the experience.
But are you keen to make the dangerous journey to the tribe that stays in another world across the breakfast table? Or does that place appear to be like a ruthless desert, inhabited only by dangerous savages, a place so unwelcoming that you're positive that no guide book might have been written about it? Because that can truly be the trip of a lifetime.
Now, while it is traditional to improve our relationships with others by listing the issues that need to be resolved, I'm a bit of a rebel, so I ask coaching clients to start by listing the positive aspects of their relationships. And as we've built up an awareness of that solid foundation in advance, when the time arrives to look into possible challenges we have a full ton of goodwill to build on - if we choose to.
There was a time a few years ago when, as it happened, mothering became my coaching "flavour of the month". Of course, I'm no mother, but I had a very vital role - ensuring those clients gave themselves sufficient credit for how well they were doing the #1 most significant job in the world. Curiously, seeing the good parent in themselves made it a lot easy to realize what amazing children they had, and looking at their great kids assisted them confess that, somewhere along the line, they'd been awesome mothers J
Author Resource:-
Live the difference Life Coaching is based in Melbourne which offers transformational one-on-one coaching both face-to-face and on the phone. People come from all walks of life and live in and around Melbourne, interstate and overseas. Visit http://livethedifference.com.au for more information on Life Coach
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