HOW TO ENCOURAGE OUR CHILDREN'S CREATIVITY

The first MISTAKE we make in relation to our children (whether they are our students our own kids) is that we RUIN their self-confidence by CRITICIZING them and by means of our NEGATIVE EVALUATIONS. Our children are, ALL, as a Romanian psychologist, Pera Novacovici, said, great TREASURES bearers. These treasures are covered by our negative evaluations, our discontent, our criticism, our expectations. We expect them to be better than us, to accomplish all we wanted from life, to become a better variant of us. But THEY, our children, are OTHER PEOPLE. They are all people with great potential and our role is fairly simple: TO ENCOURAGE THEM!They need only SELF-CONFIDENCE. If we cultivate positive evaluation towards every successful action, as little as it may be, they will continue to succeed.

Could we stop "guiding" them? IT'S VITAL TO! Success, no matter under what form, occurs when a person finds pleasure in doing something. The positive energy and the good mood help us get access to our subconscious mind which is the bearer of CREATIVITY which helps us find solutions, opportunities to grow, it practically offers us solutions to any dilemma we might have.

Keep in mind that we live in a society in which our children have an infinity of opportunities, in which there are jobs which we do not know they exist, so it is completely wrong to PROGRAMME our children to become something. If we have a look at our own greatest achievements, we will see that they are those things that we liked, we were motivated to do, and for which we were rewarded.

Successful people are not those who get hired in a factory or institution and work there until they retire, but are those who are SELF-CONFIDENT, CREATIVE and have a VISION. They are not all genial, we do not even need genius children, but people who found joy and satisfaction in what they did....and yes they found material rewards too.

There are many other things to say on this topic and I will continue on another occasion, but a first message for you, parents, is to start to VALUE your child starting with TODAY. Tell them that they good whenever they do something they like, and here comes the beautiful part....DO NOTHING ELSE. Any person who is self-confident has the resources and creativity to find solutions, to adapt, to create, to innovate regardless the domain.

I am looking forward to your questions on any topic referring to education, communication and learning and I will try to put my experience, knowledge and words at your disposal to help you be the parents your children need.

NLP TECHNIQUES FOR DEALING WITH THE PAST

My favourite quotation about that is that of dr. Richard Bandler, the co-creator of NLP: "The best thing about the past is that it is over".

I think that psychology and psychoanalysis obsess too much on the past event. The saying that 'a person's past is a good indicator of the future' may be valid if we deal with a limited person who relies on the same patterns all the time, but it isn't for sure the case of my readers or of the people who develop personally.

If people were obsessed with the successes they had in the past, it would be a good thing, but they repeat over and over again the bad feelings they had, or the voices telling them bad things, or the films of the actions that made them feel bad, hoping to get rid of those feelings. Re-living the past does not make room for the future, I am afraid, or has a bad influence on the future.

The best thing you can do about the past is to leave it behind, and to do that, I learnt from dr. Bandler some very efficient techniques:

1. when you deal with a bad feeling you got, if you close your eyes, you will notice that it rotates inside you. If you spin it faster, it will make you feel even worse. What you can do, is spin the feeling in the opposite direction, and you will notice that it weakens. You could continue by remembering a time when you felt really good, and if you don't, imagine one. Take the feeling of well-being and rotate it faster and faster until it fills you with joy.

2. if the bad feelings are produced by a voice repeating bad things to you, make sure that you take that voice out of your head and you make it speak like Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse while it tells you the bad things. It will certainly make you laugh and change your perspective and feelings.

3. if the past is coming back to you by means of huge 3D motion pictures, first, you need to gradually shrink the film until it is as big as a coin, blink it black and white several times and turn it off by means of a big button from an old TV set (the kind our grandparents had).

Using these techniques, I was able to stay out of conflicts,  delete from my memory  such sad events as the funerals and was able to remember those people as they were during their life, the bad times when I was sick.

In conclusion, learn the lessons of the past, but quickly move to the present moment and imagine big successful films about you in the future.