Influence - A new consideration
Terri Poppins, poppin’ in for a deep dive Sunday. So put your diving gear on...
What parent isn’t concerned when a child wants to be friends with someone who may not be the best influence for their child. We know from past experience that forcing and demanding no interaction with such a friend may temporarily work but most often creates the opposite effect. We also know that we can’t be by our child’s side 100% of the time. What then is one to do?
We need a new approach, a new understanding of how things work within us. One approach that has been used over the years is where a parent discusses the delicate subject with the child wherein the friend that is considered to be a negative influence, is most often implied as “bad” or “the enemy”. The parent customarily presents reasons why that friend should be avoided or unfriended.
But what lacks in an approach such as that, is that it doesn’t address why your child is attracted to that specific friend in the first place. That is what needs to be brought to the surface and investigated. Otherwise, if a parent just lays out reasons why the child shouldn’t be friends with a certain friend (and has the child terminate that friendship), the parents have made the decision for the child without the child truly understanding FOR THEMSELVES and WITHIN THEMSELVES why. The child may even appear agreeable, but if there isn’t an understanding of why the relationship with that certain friend was brought to the child in the first place, another relationship will most certainly come into the child’s life that brings the same lesson to be learned.
How many times have you left a job, a friendship, or even a marriage because you didn’t like a certain quality or characteristic about a person, only to find out that another person appeared in your life with a very similar quality? It’s the same kind of thing I am speaking about here.
What we need is a new understanding, which includes a new way to see Life.
A parent may start out by asking a question such as “What do you like about your friend Cindy?” The child may respond with something like “She is so confident” or “Everyone likes her”. Listen carefully to what your child says about that friend, because what a child states that they like about another, is usually something they believe is “missing” or “lacking” in themselves. That is a false belief that couldn’t be further from the truth. There is nothing missing or lacking in us. It just feels that way because we currently live from voices in our heads that speak untruth to us.
The only way to know the truth that nothing is missing or lacking in us, is to help your child learn to observe the thoughts that move through their own mind. Identified thoughts create. So here comes a thought in a child’s mind “Gosh, Cindy is so confident. I wish I was confident like that”. Without the observation of thought, thoughts are automatically agreed to by a certain part of us. When there is an agreement to a thought such as “I wish I was confident like that”, it is the same as the child believing that are lacking or missing something (such as that confidence) within themselves. The child then seeks outside of themselves for that quality or characteristic that they believe is missing.
And if you are willing to take it one step deeper, I will share with you a hidden secret that can help transform you and your child’s life.
When we believe we are missing or lacking something, there is a universal law, a certain grace, that brings to us relationships and circumstances in our lives that embody the very thing that we believe we are missing. That is what I meant when I said “identified thoughts create”. They are a part of a certain life principle that is vital to understand, but rarely discussed in this world.
The minute we identify with a thought belief that we are lacking or missing something in ourselves, we instantaneously create and guarantee that a relationship or circumstance will be brought to us in our lives that will embody that very belief that we feel doesn’t exist within us, because that is the reality that we created in agreeing to that very belief. Those relationships will continue to come around again and again until we see them for what they are. They are mistaken beliefs that we agreed to unknowingly.
In working with our child in helping them learn to observe their thoughts, they can learn to observe them without believing or identifying with what those thoughts are stating. When we don’t agree to believe our thoughts and don’t take action based on what they say, we create a new and better world for ourselves and others too. We find that we no longer want these wrong relationships and circumstances to recreate in our lives. Instead we wish to learn for ourselves the wholeness of our true nature that Love has always been trying to teach us. But we can’t come to learn and know that for ourselves, without agreeing to see and dismiss thoughts that are trying to convince us otherwise.
To end, I would just like to add that I’m not discounting the fact that there are situations where a parent needs to take intervention, especially when it comes to a life-threatening relationship. The information I am sharing can supplement that intervention in a truly helpful way.
Exercise for the week: At least 3 times this week, start your day with your child by challenging him or her to observe their thoughts throughout the day in their interactions with their friends. You can do the same with your co-workers or friends. At the dinner table, share together what you saw and let the magic of the present moment guide you from there. Make it a lifetime practice.
Image Courtesy of: https://unsplash.com/photos/AWidiBoRO08