Bullying - School violence

Whether a child is the victim of name calling or physical abuse, bullying is devastating to a child's self esteem.

Is your child the victim of bullying? Sometimes the signs are hard to spot, but kids who avoid school, complain of stomach aches or headaches, change their route to or from school, come home disheveled or missing possessions, may be victims.

Bullying in schools is a worldwide problem that can have negative consequences for the general school climate and for the right of students to learn in a safe environment without fear. Bullying can also have negative lifelong consequences--both for students who bully and for their victims.

"If your child tells you he is being bullied then it's very important to believe your child, to learn more about the situation and become a very good listener, even if your child just insinuates that something is happening." It's important not to over-emotionalize your response because children will feel responsible for, and overwhelmed by your emotions, and in turn will try to minimize the bullying. So stay on a very even keel.

And don't expect your child to come home sporting a black eye as proof of bullying. It isn't always physical. Emotional bullying like name calling and threats, and social bullying like exclusion, can totally undermine a child or youth's self esteem. While both boys and girls use these bullying tactics, it is more common among girls. 

"Because girls are typically more verbal than boys, there seems to be more of a leaning towards verbal violence and intimidation and behavior that is intimidating, particularly exclusionary. And that has to do with being able to put things into words. Boys are more direct. They'll just smack you."

when a girl is bullied, she finds herself at the receiving end of nasty gossip and rumors. "They will create factions, groups or small cliques. And they will begin to character assassinate by creating rumors and gossip and building a consensus that a particular girl is in the wrong and deserves to be beaten and have retaliation. At the very least this will show up as exclusion or shunning. A girl will come to school and suddenly find herself excluded from a group that she once found she belonged to and she won't be told what it's about."

No matter what type of bullying is being carried out and no matter whether it's being perpetrated by a boy or a girl,

Parents must step in and "work closely with good allies, perhaps a good school counselor, principal or vice-principal who is enlightened, and begin to work in a concerted way. And stay with it until you've found a conclusion you can live with."

Understanding Family Relationship Problems

One of the most difficult matters to confront with respect to family relationships is that you don’t control the entire relationship yourself. Whether the relationship thrives or withers isn’t up to you alone. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango.

When major family relationship problems are encountered, it’s common to attempt a control strategy. You try to get the other person to change. Sometimes this approach works, especially if your request and the other person are both reasonable. But many times it just leads to frustration.

On the other hand, if you can’t change the other person, maybe you should just accept them as they are. That’s another strategy that sometimes works, but this one can also lead to frustration and even resentment if your needs aren’t being met.

There is, however, a third alternative for those times when changing the other person and accepting the other person as-is are both unworkable for you. And that option is to change yourself in a way that solves the problem. This requires that you redefine the problem as an internal one instead of an external one, and then the solution will take the form of an expansion of your awareness and/or a change in your beliefs.

An internal way of viewing relationship problems is that they reflect back to you a part of yourself that you dislike. If you have a negative external relationship situation, it’s a reflection of a conflict in your own thinking. As long as you keep looking outside yourself for the answer, you may never resolve the external problem. But once you start looking inside yourself for the problem, it may become easier to solve.

What you’ll find when you tackle such problems is that you harbor one or more beliefs that perpetuate the relationship problem in its current form. Those beliefs are the real problem — the true cause of the unhealthy relationship.

For example, consider a problematic relationship between yourself and another family member. Suppose you hold the belief that you must be close to every family member simply because they’re related to you. Perhaps you’d never tolerate this person’s behavior if it came from a stranger, but if the person is a relative, then you tolerate it out of a sense of duty, obligation, or your personal concept of family. To push a family member out of your life might cause you to feel guilty, or it could lead to a backlash from other family members. But genuinely ask yourself, “Would I tolerate this behavior from a total stranger? Why do I tolerate it from a family member then?” Exactly why have you chosen to continue the relationship instead of simply kicking the person out of your life? What are the beliefs that perpetuate the problematic relationship? And are those beliefs really true for you?

I love my parents. I don’t recall anyone in my family ever saying, “I love you,” while I grew up. Even though this is the family I grew up with and shared many memories, our core values are so different now that it just doesn’t feel like a meaningful family relationship anymore.

Despite all these differences, we’re all on good terms with each other and get along fairly well, but our differences create such a big gap that we have to settle for being relatives without being close friends.

If you operate under the belief that family is forever and that you must remain loyal to all your relatives and spend lots of time with them, I want you to know that those beliefs are your choice, and you’re free to embrace them or release them. If you’re fortunate enough to have a close family that is genuinely supportive of the person you’re becoming, that’s wonderful, and in that situation, you’ll likely find the closeness of your family to be a tremendous source of strength. Then your loyalty to family closeness will likely be very empowering.

On the other hand, if you find yourself with family relationships that are incompatible with your becoming your highest and best self, then excessive loyalty to your family is likely to be extremely disempowering. You’ll only be holding yourself back from growing, from achieving your own happiness and fulfillment, and from potentially doing a lot of good for others. If I retained a very close relationship with my birth family, it would be like putting a lampshade over my spirit. I wouldn’t be the person I am today.

My way of dealing with my family situation was to broaden my definition of family. On one level I feel an unconditional connection with all human beings, but on another level, I see people with whom I share a deep compatibility as my true family. When I see people who are living very, very consciously and deliberately and who’ve dedicated their lives to the pursuit of a worthy purpose, I have a strong sense that on some level, those people are members of my family. And this connection feels more real to me than the blood relationships I was born into.

Loyalty is a worthy value, but what does it mean to be loyal to one’s family? Since loyalty is very important to me, I had to refine my view of this concept to place loyalty to my highest and best self above loyalty to the people I was born with. That was a difficult mental shift to make, but in the long run it has given me a sense of peace. I realize now that family is a concept which is capable of extending far beyond blood.

What I’m suggesting is that in order to solve family relationship problems, which exist at one level of awareness, you may need to pop your consciousness up a level and take a deeper look at your values, beliefs, and your definitions of terms like loyalty and family. Once you resolve those issues at the higher level, the low level relationship problems will tend to take care of themselves. Either you’ll transcend the problems and find a new way to continue your relationship without conflict, or you’ll accept that you’ve outgrown the relationship in its current form and give yourself permission to move on to a new definition of family.

You see… when you say goodbye to a problematic relationship issue, you’re really saying goodbye to an old part of yourself that you’ve outgrown. As I became less compatible with my birth family, I also gradually dropped parts of myself that no longer served me. I drifted away from rigid religious dogma, from fear of risk-taking, from eating animals, from negativity, and from being unable to say, “I love you.” As I let all of those things pass from my consciousness, my external-world relationships changed to reflect my new internal relationships.

As within, so without. If you hold onto conflict-ridden relationships in your life, the real cause is your inner attachment to conflict-ridden thoughts. When you alter the mental relationships within your own mind, your physical world will change to reflect it. So if you kick negative thoughts out of your head, you will find yourself simultaneously kicking negative people out of your life.

There is a wonderful rainbow at the end of this process of letting go, however. And that is that when you resolve conflicts in your consciousness that cause certain relationships to weaken, you simultaneously attract new relationships that resonate with your expanded level of consciousness.

We attract into our lives more of what we already are. If you don’t like the social situation you find yourself in, stop broadcasting the thoughts that attract it. Identify the nature of the external conflicts you experience, and then translate them into their internal equivalents. For example, if a family member is too controlling of you, translate that problem into your own internal version: You feel your life is too much out of your control. When you identify the problem as external, your attempted solutions may take the form of trying to control other people, and you’ll meet with strong resistance. But when you identify the problem as internal, it’s much easier to solve.

If another person exhibits controlling behavior towards you, you may be unable to change that person. However, if you feel you need more control in your life, then you can actually do something about it directly without needing to control others.

I’ll actually go so far as to say that the purpose of human relationships may be the expansion of consciousness itself. Through the process of identifying and resolving relationship problems, we’re forced to deal with our internal in congruencies. And as we become more conscious on the inside, our relationships expand towards greater consciousness on the outside.

Stop complaining....

 

Have you ever thought of complaining as a habit? Complaining is actually an addictive behavior. One complaint leads to another and another. After enough complaints your mind begins to desire and crave those thoughts.

It's very similar to the way your body works with other things such as food, exercise and even drugs. If you eat healthy foods and exercise regularly your body will want more of that. If you eat junk food and your only exercise is pushing the buttons on the remote then your body will crave that as well.

How much more true is this for drugs and other stimulants? If you are used to a daily caffeine fix what happens when you skip a day or decide to go cold turkey? Your body will fight back, you will probably get headaches, you will be tired and grouchy and perhaps even get the shakes depending on how much your body craves the caffeine.

Complaining can actually become a habit that can get so bad that it can ruin relationships. If you make a habit of complaining you will find that people won't want to be around you. You might even find that you don't want to be around yourself.

If you have ever spent time with someone who makes a habit of complaining I'm sure that eventually you did not want to spend much time with them. I know that I don't enjoy spending time with people who want to find the one little thing to complain about in every situation that comes their way.

One problem that people run into with complaining is that they believe that they can't stop complaining. They hold one or more false beliefs:

* They believe that the way they see things is reality and that any other thinking is belittling

* They believe that they have no control over their thoughts

* They believe that they are stuck in this pattern and feel helpless to get out

The good news is that as with any other habit or addiction it can be beat! As with anything worthwhile it will take some effort but it will be well worth it! There was a point in my life when I was certainly a chronic complainer and it took effort and work but I can tell you without a doubt that it was more than worth it. I would not want to go back to my complaining mindset for anything! What a miserable place to be.

Steps to kick that habit to the curb:

1. Accept Responsibility for Your Thoughts. You are not a victim to your thoughts, they do not control you - you control them!

2. Call The Thoughts What They Are. As soon as you recognize a negative thought passing through your mind or your mouth stop and call it out as a negative or complaining thought. It will lose some power just by being named.

3. Throw Away Negative and Complaining Thoughts. After you have named the thought discard it and don't let it back into your mind even if it tries to come back, which it may very well do.

4. Replace it With a Positive Thought. The negative thoughts will have a much harder time returning if they have been replaced by something better. If it hasn't been replaced it may even come back with some of it's buddies giving you an even harder time.

5. Focus on the Positive Thoughts. Repeat them to yourself at least five times but as many times as necessary. Don't just say them once and think that you are done with that negative thought. You will really need to focus on them and you will need to believe them over the negative thoughts.

6. Keep Positive Thoughts Written Down. Be prepared! Write down some positive thoughts on note cards and keep them close by. You know what negative thoughts you struggle with the most, come up with positive thoughts that will fight the thoughts you know you struggle with the most.

7. Rinse and Repeat. Keep it up each and every time that you have a negative thought and complaint. Keep in mind that the hardest work will be at the beginning. Once you build this habit of positive thinking this whole process will become natural! That's when the hard work pays off!

You can do it! You can have all new thoughts and feel like a new person if you diligently follow these steps! Also, don't beat yourself up if you fail. Failure is not permanent. Dust yourself off and start over again!

M°

Never Give Up

Maybe you are experiencing a very tough time. These days that isn't unusual. We have uncertain financial times at every level of government, banks and financial institutions have collapsed or merged, major military conflicts in several parts of the world, and we all see people we know who are unemployed or financially traumatized. And then we layer our personal challenges on top of these. The result is these are times can appear to be so tough that every fiber of your being may be wanting to give in and just wail out loud. What to do? Giving up isn't an option!

If you have faith in a higher power, you will find it easier to be strong and not give in to the despair that the daily news strives to foment or give up and just sit around in a depressed stupor. I use my faith as a shield to fight off the negative thoughts, toxic environments, and mental vampires who knowingly or unknowingly suck the life out of your dreams. With abiding faith, your greatness asserts itself and you tell the world you will never ever give in to failure.

My Approach

Be moral – the end does not justify the means.  If you operate under a moral and ethical code through the tough times you will be in a better position not only to defend against negative influences but also to succeed without baggage that weighs down your conscious.

Have a method or approach – have a way to operate and systematically move toward your goals and objectives.

Have the means – prepare yourself for change by gathering the appropriate resources to resist down times or begin a new journey.

Be a good manager – just because your dreams have come true doesn't mean you don't have to manage the blessing.  If you don't manage the blessing the chances are it will evaporate, leaving you wondering just what in the world just happened.

Let everyone else give up but not you.  Recall those famous works spoken by Gene Kranz during the Apollo 13 mission, "Failure is not an option."

By the way – I know this approach works because I haven't always used it and the opposite didn't work well at all.

It is easy to get depressed and worried in the following situations. Let's say you were fired, passed over for promotion, fell behind in a race, got a bad news call, work in a negative environment, lost your business, or going through a divorce. These are all tough times, but none of them should have the ability to completely floor you. Instead, look for opportunities to learn from these experiences, re-visit your faith and then tell yourself that you will be back because you will not give up!  You intend to be strong and courageous and work it out to your best advantage.

Living to work or Working to live

I remember the long hours I would work when I was in corporate Singapore to obtain nice things and live a "successful life." The challenge in all ofthis was my reality of arriving at work when the sun was coming up and leavingright before or simultaneously as the sun was going down. I was like a welloiled machine programmed to operate in a system of revolving situations thatwere beneficial to my corporate powers that be and detrimental to my internalwell-being. I often wondered what the point of all of my hard work was...Did Iwork for money? Did I work to acquire things? Did I work because it waspurpose? or...Did I work because that is what a college educated Singaporeis suppose to do?

I pondered these questions often realizing more and more with each passingday that I was working for things I couldn't enjoy because I was too busy.There is nothing wrong with having nice things and working to provide, but whenthe process has more value than the product something is wrong. Simply put whenworking to provide becomes your life instead of supports your life, there isdefinitely something off balance.

 

I was living to work instead of working to live. This is a predicament thatmany of us find ourselves in. We work so hard to provide for our families thatwe rarely get to spend time with them. The process has become more importantthan the product. What is the product?

The product that is the end result from the process of working hard shouldbe a more enjoyable life. It should consist of more time with the family, moreenjoyment for those you love and more time for the things you are passionateabout. Too often, this is not the case.

M

I QUIT!!!

How to quit smoking with drugs? This post is dedicated to all you those who think that quitting smoking with drugs is a good solution to get rid of this life killing addiction. Many people still don’t understand that the problem of smoking is making the human kind more ill each and every day. Cancer is one of the most wide spread disease related problems that literally murders thousands of innocent people almost every year. So what can be done about it? If talking seriously, there are too many different kinds of interests that make the cigarette and tobacco market extremely profitable. It’s impossible to make the smoking addiction disappear once and for all from this world.

However, the other part of the smoking puzzle is also growing extremely large with the new health market products which make quitting smoking much easy and claim that the unique and only answer for this is acquiring the latest quit smoking pill, getting the awesome quit smoking medication and generally buying all the quit smoking drugs when they are possible to be acquire on this market. In my opinion this is extremely naive. People have to understand that the real solutions about quitting smoking is hidden in one’s desire to change something about his or her life, not in the so called ultimate product that can ease your pain.

Cravings are something natural when trying to quit smoking. If you are a serious smoker and while trying to make this addiction go away by reducing the nicotine dose on a daily basis and you simply don’t feel any cravings it means that something is terribly wrong because a normal person would simply die off some incredible pain that is making one go nuts. No folks, I’m not trying to scare you I just want to say that quitting smoking has to be hard in order for that person to realize the big step that he or she is actually making. It can be easy, because if getting rid of tobacco addiction would be so simple than coming back to it would be as easy as quitting so there must be a great balance in order to produce the necessary harmony.

So why do you think that people continue to purchase quit smoking drugs so often, especially on the internet? Do they actually believe in all that is being told to them about the huge effects that are going to help every smoker out there quit smoking without experiencing at least the basic nuances of cravings? Well, I can’t surely say much about this but it seems so. People actually are afraid to take important decisions in their life and when doing something that important as overcoming the tobacco addiction then just want to secure their success and not to feel any pain. Being afraid is not an option and you should be that person that understands it if you want to succeed in your smoking cessation attempts. You should be paying more attention to natural ways to quit smoking.

That’s why most drugs to help you quit smoking are probably going to reduce the usual pain that a smoker is feeling, but won’t solve the whole addiction problem in the long run. I would like to suggest that before purchasing any quit smoking drugs you have to carefully analyze all the secondary effects about that particular medication. Search for reviews on the internet because you’ll be surprised about how people write about these issues. Those who are trying to sell you stuff will be hyping it up like always but you can also stumble upon many different honest reviews that will show you the right way. Anyway, quitting smoking is about not giving up and continuing to struggle until success

What’s It Going to Take to Make You Happy?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately. What does it take to be a happy person? Obviously the answer is going to be different for each person, but what worries me is that, as far as I can tell, most people don’t even ask – and those that do don’t have a very good answer.

Ask someone what would make them happy, and their answer is likely to be pretty vague. “A good career”,” they might say. Or, “Family.” “A strong relationship with my partner,” they might add after a moment’s reflection.
There’s nothing wrong with these things, of course, but there’s not much meat to them as answers. They don’t give us much to chew on – which is to say, they’re not really actionable.

And I think that’s because we don’t give much thought to the question. Maybe we’re a little suspicious of the very concept of “being happy”. After all, our grandparents/parents/[insert fabled ancestors here] came to this country with nothing and scraped and toiled to build a better life for themselves – they didn’t sit around thinking about whether or not they were happy. They were miserable and they liked it!

There’s no dignity in happiness, not in this worldview anyway. Happiness is frivolous, fleeting, ephemeral. Dignity is found in the grave and serious, not the frolicking and joyful.

There’s another reason I think we aren’t willing to face the question of what makes us happy: we’re afraid that the answer will prove to be something out of our grasp. Maybe you need a million dollars to be happy, and you only have $3.62. Maybe you need a better job than you’re capable of holding, or a bigger house than you can afford, or a prettier wife or more handsome husband, or better-behaved children. Maybe you need to be smarter, better-looking, more outgoing, taller, healthier, more disciplined, thinner… someone else

I don’t buy it. There are unhappy people in all walks of life. If it were brains, there wouldn’t be unhappy smart people – and there are. If it were money, there wouldn’t be unhappy rich people – and boy are there! If it were looks, there wouldn’t be unhappy beautiful people – and Marilyn Monroe wouldn’t have taken her own life.

And vice versa – there are unhappy dumb people, poor people, and ugly people as well. Just as there are happy rich people, happy poor people, happy dumb people, happy smart people, happy beautiful people, happy ugly people – happy people of every stripe.

What makes them so special?
I think the answer has to be self-knowledge – facing the question of what it will take to be happy head on. It’s obviously not something external to us that “makes” us happy; we make our own happiness. But it’s not so simple as just deciding to be happy. We make our happiness by determining what it will take, according to our own individual taste and character, to be happy, and chasing after those things and only those things.

Maybe you need to be rich to be happy – that’s the kind of person you are. Or maybe you just need to be comfortable, to not have to worry. Or, quite possibly, you need the edge of poverty to come really alive – stranger things have happened! You can’t know if you’re not willing – or not able – to face yourself and figure out what money means to you. Not whether rich people are shallow or profound, whether poor people are lazy or victimized by a social system that needs poverty to secure cheap labor – but what money means to you.
Or maybe you need a different job. But what job? Maybe you need to move – but to where? Maybe you need to get healthier – but how? In what way?
The trick here is to move beyond empty platitudes and hollow stereotypes and really look at our own lives. That’s where happiness starts to take root.

Your assignment – and mine, too – is to figure all this out, to sit down with a pad and paper and start writing out our answer to the question: what’s it going to take to make me happy? Be specific – what exactly do you want from life? How is each thing on your list supposed to help you create happiness in your life? Most important, are you sure these are your answers, and not society’s, not your friends’, not your parents’? It’s so easy to internalize everyone else’s talk about what makes people happy – but the proof’s in the pudding: are they happy? If not, what are you doing listening to them.

Sit down, write your list, and tuck it away somewhere safe. Then go out and do the things on your list, and let me know how that works out for you. Let’s see if we can’t all figure this out for ourselves, ok?
Regards
Stanly