Burn your luggage!

Being married for more than 17 years I know how bad communication between my wife and I can go.
Even the most positive and praising things we say to each other can be received as criticism or worse.

Why is it so hard to communicate with those you know best?

It really is somewhat of a mystery that when you speak with people who don´t know you all that well, the things you say are much more well received than when you are with people you've known for years - at least sometimes it can be that way...

It's a paradox and I personally wonder how it can be, that the people I share a common history with and thus should be the people who understand me best, sometimes seem to be misunderstanding what I say in a way that does not happen with people I've just met or people I don't see so often.

Your luggage makes you lopsided

The reason for this is rather simple - or it seems to me to be quite simple...
I think it has something to do with our common history.

As two people get to know each other, we move constantly closer to one another. And as time passes and as we tend to open up more and more to the inner chambers of our heart, we let that other person see more and more of who we really are. The daily face we put up in public to let other people see only our most positive sides isn't worn at home or when we are in such company that we feel at home. Then our mask falls and the people closest to us get to see our less benevolent character. They get to see the darker sides of our personality.

Don't misunderstand me here: this is a good thing! We must open up to someone or we will die inside. And even more importantly: opening up to someone is a way of telling that someone how much we trust them.

The flip side of that coin, however, is that when we show the people closest to our hearts that we can be nasty and angry and unreasonable, it does to some extend open a gap between what they see when we are alone with them and what they see when we are out in the public.

This gap can create some sort of confusion in the other person and make them uneasy as to what we really think and what we really mean when we say the things we say.

Imagine it as if we all have luggage in our hands. An empty suitcase without wheels. As we get to know someone, we put our experience with that person in the suitcase and we carry that suitcase around every second we are with that person. And as we put more and more heavy stuff in that suitcase: anger, critisism, shouting and the likes; those darker sides make the suitcase so heavy that our whole body gets lopsided. Following this we will find it harder and harder to focus our eyes in the other persons heart. The heavy suitcase simply takes our focus away from what we share in this particular moment and instead we tend to focus on the contents of the heavy suitcase...

Burn your luggage!

What to do? - Well, I think opening the suitcase from time to time and dealing with it's contents can be a good thing. This way you and your spouse or friend can talk about these darker sides of your personalities and maybe find out that some of the content in your suitcases are more based on your own misconception than it was based on what really happened and what was really said...

But still, I don't think this will be enough...

Sometimes you need to burn the contents and the suitcase along with it. Make a decision to burn your luggage and start over with a fresh suitcase... Some of the contents of the old one will quickly jump inside the new suitcase almost by itself, but the new suitcase will in itself help you to focus on each piece you put inside of it and give you time to wonder if it really belongs in that suitcase... 

Dictator or Father?

- raising kids is a discipline in itself

In my latest post about raising children, I was talking about the strange notion some people have that violence is not only a way to raise kids, but that it is needed to maintain discipline and respect. I was (I hope) very clear on this point: spanking is violence! Violence is a no-go!

Today I want to present an alternative to spanking. Or rather, I want to present an idea of what disciplining your kids really means. Remember, spanking is a no-go AND - very important! - IT DOESN´WORK! All you will achieve by spanking your kids is alienating them and making it impossible for you to help them in their adult life.

If you spank your kids, you won´t be able to share your wisdom and experience with them, neither when they are kids, nor when they are all grown up; because the day they leave your house to go live for themselves is the day your influence is declared null and void!

So, what to do, if violence doesn´t work? Do we not need some kind of power as parents? Some kind of leverage to get our kids to do right?

Force is a tool for change, not learning

Well, yes... - and no! - The basic mistake is this: the use of power is not - and I repeat: NOT IN ANY WAY - a tool for teaching your children anything. And I really mean *anything* - the use of power is a tool to get their attention, nothing more, nothing less. That makes power the last tool to grab from your parenting tool box, not the first or even the 10th.

I also need to emphasize that mentioning 'the use of force,' I´m not just talking about spanking. I´m talking about every and all uses of force, that is: any kind of action, where you as a parent use your power to make your kid do (or not do) what he/she doesn´t want to (or want to) do!!!

I just stated that the use of force doesn´t teach your children anything in itself. The reason is quite simple. No person in this world can truly learn anything important, if it is not learnt by heart. That is: true learning is not something going on in your brain. It´s not knowledge alone, it has to be combined with what you might call wisdom. It´s not a coincidence we use the term 'learning by heart' because really learning is about taking the knowledge in and implementing it in your life - willingly!

Let me give you an example from the adult world:

When ‘the coalition of the willing’ invaded Iraq, some of the most hard core politicians genuinely thought they could force Iraq into modern day democracy. Did they succeed? I think not... But! - what really *was* a success was the fact that a democracy was born from the ruins.

Not a democracy like we know it in the western world, but this is where we should remember that our democracies weren´t exactly free democracies in their childhood either. For instance, it wasn´t till the 20th century women were eligible for governing organs and neither did they have the right to vote in most western democracies before 1930 (in fact, the final canton in Switzerland to give women the right to vote didn´t till 1984!)

Iraq began its journey toward democracy following the invasion, but the Iraqi people have to find out the rest for themselves...

The same goes for children. You cannot force upon them the complete understanding you have gained from experience. They need to figure it out for themselves. But what you *can* do is force them to stop for a moment and think. And when they stop to think, they just might come to the conclusion that it is better to start listening to you.

Here there is something very, very important to understand about the use of force: you have to let go of that tool as soon as you see them stop and think. If you don´t, you shift the focus for learning from 'learning best way' to 'learning how to make mum and dad happy.' 

I probably don´t have to say this, but I´ll do anyway: This is just as useful in the discipline of raising kids as Burgers and fries as the main meal is good for your health.

The use of force is ONLY to be used as a wakeup call, nothing more. If you continue the use of force after they start to listen, you will force the child to replace their own thinking with an escape plan: ‘how can I get mum and dad to like me again?’ And this is never good.

Instead, as soon as you see the child stopping to think, let go of the power. Give the kid a chance to make up his/her mind and figure out that the best course of action right now is to listen.

Fear the right thing

My second point is about fear. Having a basic understanding that children are human beings with less experience and equally valuable to any adult, the intuitive understanding of fear is that if the kid experiences fear, it can never be a good thing... However, it´s a bit more complicated than that.

All human being experience fear and in modern society fear is one of the most common barriers for success. Fear can make us hide when we need to stand tall and fear makes us bend to other people´s will, when we need to make up our own minds. For those reasons (and many more) the popular understand is that fear is, per definition, ‘bad’ - but really that´s not the case. Fear is neither bad nor good. It´s how we react to our fears that determines good or bad.

My father-in-law was a farmer and the first time I entered the stable I had somewhat of a chock. The sight of 50+ milking cows´ rear end lined up on each side of me made me freeze right there on the spot. This was new to me and I was struck with fear, because I didn´t know how to handle these animals. Fear made me cautious; a good thing. My response to this fear was to observe, how my father-in-law handled the cows and little by little, I learned how to handle them as well.

I feared the cows and looked to my father-in-law to learn how to handle them and this is exactly what your children need to do in their lives: they need to understand that listening to you and observing how you do things can benefit them.

In other words: if your kids fear you, it´s a bad thing - but if your kids fear not listening to you, it´s a good thing!

Let´s sum up this post:

#1 - Force is a tool for change - As a parent, if you want your children to learn from you, power is to be used with caution. You cannot force your experience upon them and if you try, they won´t gain any wisdom. They will only become experts in making mum and dad happy. And even more importantly (though this is not very clear in the above due to my wish to economize writing space) if you try to force your experience on them, their focus will be on weither mum and dad loves me or not as opposed to mum and dad knowing best.

#2 - Fear the right thing - The use of power is a tool for getting the attention of your kids, but it´s important to let go of that tools as soon as you reach that goal - if you don´t, your kids will fear *you* instead of fearing their surroundings and look to you for help and wisdom. However, using force in the above mentioned way, you can get their attention and as they experience over and over again, what happens if they don´t listen to you, they will learn that one important lesson: listen to mum and dad, because they have been around for some time and most of the times, they have a few things to teach me.


For a tool using these principles, see this

Now, it´s your turn.  Do you have experience you want to share?

Parental blessings

Today´s post is very different from any other, I´ve posted before, but I just think this is too good to not share with you:


I am so PROUD, PROUD, PROUD! Of my children!

As a father of four kids, I sometimes wonder, if I´m doing an okay job raising them. If you´re a parent, you will most likely recognize this feeling of being inadequate forever hanging over your head. Constantly worrying if you´re too hard on your kids or not hard enough, too commanding or too listening, treating them all equally enough without treating them so much alike, that you really haven´t dealt with them according to their personalities.

I suppose this is the case with a variety of things. In a business you have to always be on your toes to keep up with the market and changing strategies whenever necassary, but there is one huge difference between business and raising children (there are more, of course, but try following me here to catch my point) and this difference is that the reward from your investment is long due. Very, very long due! That´s why parent´s worry so much, I think... You have no clue as to weither you´re doing things the right way, because you haven´t reaped what you´ve sowed yet.

But yesterday was a real page turner for me and for my wife. We sometimes have these 'page turner' experiences, but this one was very special indeed. Here´s what happened:

It had been a long day (good day, but long) with my side of the family visiting for a three-kids-birthday (three of my children are born within the same week - two years apart, but in the same week) and we were tidying up. My wife and I had gone for 10 minutes to bring back some chairs, we´d borrowed and came back, tired and weary from a full day. All I wanted was to relax and do absolutely nothing!

But when we came in after bringing back the chairs, the three youngest (a boy at 7 yrs. and two girls at 8 and 11yrs.) had prepared a meal for the both of us. They´d set the table in our living room with flowers and candles and three bottles of various spirits (although a Bailey, a schnapps and a liqueur wine is not the most common drinks for a good meal, their intentions were impeccable) and they´d even taken the time to fold some napkins.

There they stood on a row with a towel over their wrists waiting to serve us as proper servants and my immidiate thought was 'oh, no, I cant cope! no more, please!' but nevertheless I decided to go with it. After all, who could bring themselves to reject such a declaration of love?

We sat down and had a marvellous time and the children had decided to eat in the kitchen to give us some couple time! How amazing is that??

I was SO PROUD! (My wife says I had tears in my eyes, when I praised them, but I´m sure I just had something in my eye... or something...)

I wish I´d had a camera, but then again, some things are just not meant for picture shooting, but are to be savoured in our hearts and taken up in our memory to look at when thinking of all the good times, aren´t they?

Right now I´m full of joy and love in my heart and I wish you all a fantastic day!