Make it so easy a child could understand it!

Welcome to another exceptional week.

This week I'd like to relate a conversation that I had with my eight year old son Robbie on the weekend about changing our thoughts to change our emotions, now I know what your thinking pretty heavy conversation to be having with an eight year old and to be honest it was so I should give you all a bit of background on why I was having this Father Son talk with my little bloke.

A bit over two years ago his Mum and I split up and these situations are always hardest on the kids and unfortunately it has affected Robbie's self esteem and as a result he often becomes quite sad and suffers from pretty bad anxiety. Last weekend the little fella was having one of these moments so I took the time to sit and have a chat which is not easy when he gets in this sort of mood but I persisted.

I won't go into all the details of the situation but after a little while he began to get involved in the conversation and I asked him how he was feeling and he said "I'm angry"  I then asked him do you like to feel that way and he replied "No but I can't help it" then I said you know you can change that right now if you want to!

He looked up with a frown and said How?  I explained in the simplest terms that our feelings are controlled by what we are thinking about. He looked at me and said I don't believe you Dad we can't change the way we feel that's just how we feel if I hurt myself it's not going to not hurt just because I think it's not. I went on to explain that I wasn't talking about physical pain and he was right if you put your hand in a fire and think about it being cool your going to get your hand burnt but feelings like sadness, anger and happiness can all be changed by what we think and we can change them anytime we want.

I asked him to try something and he said What?  I asked him how he was feeling now and he replied I'm still angry so I said OK I'm going to do some things and you tell me how I'm feeling, he reluctantly said OK. So I sat up straight put my shoulders back and chest out and grinned the biggest cheesiest grin I could and said so how am I feeling?  He answered happy. Next I slumped my shoulders, lowered my head and let my face go slack and said How do I feel now? He answered Sad. Lastly I crossed by arms and put a frown on my face and said How do I feel now? He answered angry.

I said OK mate so how did you know I was happy? he said your were smiling, OK how did you know I was sad? he said you put your head down, OK what about angry how did you know I was angry? he said your eyebrows.  Hmm I said so now I want you to do something. At first I was met with I don't want to Dad I'm not in the mood but eventually he was up for it. I asked again how are you feeling? annoyed he replied I told you Dad I'm angry. I said to him sit up straight , put your shoulders back, chest out and smile, no bigger c'mon really smile. He did and I asked again and straight away he slumped and went back to his angry posture and said I'm still angry. No I said you need to stay up straight and smiling when you answer after about four attempts he was able to stay in his happy position when he answered and this time the answer I feel a little bit less angry.

Next we spoke about what he thought about when he felt bad and I asked him when you feel sad or angry do you think about the things that made you sad or angry and he said yes. So I well if sad thoughts make you sad how do you think happy thoughts will make you feel? He answered with a cautious Happy?

I went on to tell him his mind was like the bush and when our thoughts travel the make tracks. I then asked him whats the easiest way to get through the bush and he said "The way you know" OK but what do you walk on? he said the tracks. Uh Ha!

I explained that because he thought those negative thoughts a lot that this made a big wide track that his thoughts found it easy to go down so I said we need to make a new track and stop using the old one and explained that if we did this with good thoughts to make the new track and stopped using  the old track by thinking bad thoughts that the bush would grow over the old track which we named "Cranky Road" and his mind would get used to driving down the new one called "Happy Road" He looked at me and I could see his young mind grasping the idea so we had to create some happy thoughts that he could use and we spent a while talking about all the fun times we've had and he got his first lesson in visualisation. We then agreed that it's always more fun driving down the road with some great music so I told him we need to take his old C.D. of sad songs out and we did, we then got a knife and scratched the C.D. so it couldn't play anymore then  we made up some silly funny songs to go on the new C.D and I got him to pop in back in the top of his head and I pressed his nose for the play button and sang the silly song, he found this hysterical and really began to laugh.

I then asked him was he still angry and he looked at me and said oh yeah I forgot about that.

Have an exceptional Week...

Rob Larney
Director and Life Balance Mentor
Exceptional Life Balance
http://exceptionallifebalance.com