This morning should have been a lazy morning at home since the teachers are on strike and the kids are home for a few days. But I found myself rushing a bit as I was getting the kids out the door so I could attend the last in a series of Social Media workshops I’ve been taking. Thankfully my brother in law was able to watch the kids for me for those few hours.

I noticed that my son was looking a bit droopy. Actually, a lot droopy. Now, he has been sick for the last week but he’s been on the mend and he’s usually very talkative in the mornings. So I was compelled to ask him “Why the long face?”

He answered “It’s Monday, Mommy!”

Now, I’m not the type of mommy that takes that at face value. A day of the week is no reason to be droopy and sad looking. There had to be more to this than he was letting on.

I asked “What specifically don’t you like about Mondays?”

Him: “I don’t know. Garfield doesn’t like Mondays.”

Me: “You’re right, he doesn’t. So, you don’t like Mondays just because Garfield doesn’t like Mondays?”

Him: “No. They’re boring.”

Me: “Oh! Interesting! How specifically are Mondays boring?”

Him: “We do, like, THREE PAGES of MATH every Monday!”

Me: “Huh, that’s really interesting. So, you know that you don’t have school or math work today, right? Your teacher is on strike.”

Him: “I know! But I still don’t like Mondays.”

My son is nine and his brain is working its magic perfectly. It’s making associations of feelings and events. After a few more questions I was able to paint the whole picture about what he doesn’t like about Mondays even more clearly. He struggles with writing the answer down to word problems because he’s not sure what words to use. Because of this he has a yucky feeling about math and because at school they tend to do math on Mondays, he has a yucky feeling about Mondays. 

So even though he didn’t have school today, just the fact that it’s Monday caused him to feel droopy and long faced.

That’s what our brains do – they learn things we repeatedly do. Whether it’s learning to tie shoes, drive, or eat with a fork and know, or feel or behave a certain way. Our brains learn to link feelings with events, circumstances, people, and things. Then whenever we are faced with that event, circumstance, person, or thing we feel that same emotion. And it’s all unconscious and happens very fast. The feeling comes upon us and all of a sudden we’re feeling really crappy, sad, angry, or happy and we don’t even know why!

Our brains do this so that we don’t have to expend tons of conscious energy to constantly do things like tie our shoes or drive. Once we learn it we go on autopilot and live by habit. It’s a great design with a bit of a flaw because if our brains link yucky feelings with something or someone we will always feel yucky because of that something or someone – no matter what.

I noticed this in myself when my husband would come home from work and I would feel tense and get agitated. When I should have felt happiness and relief about it because he would now be able to help with the kids, I felt the exact opposite. It’s because my brain had linked my high levels of frustration when my kids were babies and I suffered post-partum depression and I would run out the door when he got home. Now I was older, my kids were older and I no longer had depression – but the old learned association remained.

Thank goodness there is an easy way to unlink these associations using NLP. The technique is called a collapse anchor and it takes about 5 minutes tops. You can also consciously focus on happier feelings in those circumstances when you’re aware of your mood changing and after a while your brain will make a new association. I’m going to suggest to my son that I can help him not only with his math problems but also with those yucky feelings about Mondays.

Have you noticed that you sometimes get agitated, sad, angry, or otherwise feel yucky during certain times of the day or around certain people? Chances are your brain has learned to link those feelings with that person, place, thing, or event. I’d love to hear your stories!

Kasia Rachfall is an effervescent speaker, author of Keys For Moms: Enough is Enough! and parenting expert whose grand golden mission is to empower children through releasing their parents from preconceived values, guilt, past hurts, and judgment. Starting at the source, she assists parents to bring conscious responsibility to the future. With tools such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Hypnosis, and Time Empowerment®, Kasia holds your heart while you move forward and take control of your life.

Dr Bruce Lipton says that parents begin programming their children’s unconscious minds even before those children are conceived. This can be a scary thought if you know the circumstances of your own conception. Was alcohol involved? Drugs? Stress? Tough times?  In his book The Biology of Belief Dr Lipton proves that the environment we grow up and live in actually has more bearing on our physical and mental health and our beliefs than our genetics do.

That’s right, according to Dr Lipton, genetics (nature) account a small amount of the way our lives and bodies turn out – the rest is up to nurture – the people who are responsible for raising us.

Baby and toddler brains function at the lowest frequency – the beta waves – which are the same waves that hypnotherapists drop their clients brains to during trance. The beta waves make a client in trance more suggestible. This explains the old adage that kids are like sponges – they literally are! Their brain’s frequency means that everything they hear, see, feel and otherwise experience is soaking right into their subconscious mind and programming them to be just like their environment.

When I read this I felt the pressure of those words as a parent. I consider myself a responsible and conscious parent and yet I know that there is still so much I can improve on.

The worst part for me is that I didn’t know of this empowering information when my own children were conceived. It is only in the last 5 years of their lives that I’ve taken true responsibility as a parent and made better choices and stopped beating myself up. My nine year old sometimes beats himself up and I know exactly where that came from! Yikes! Now what?

The good news is that nurture HAS such a big bearing on how children develop. Dr Lipton writes that love is the main ingredient in a nurturing environment. If the parents love the kids and provide them with the right values and problems solving skills then the kids have a good chance of turning out successful in life. How do parents know what values to teach their kids and if they are loving their kids enough without overcompensating with materialism? Simple! The parents need to check in with themselves to make sure that they love themselves enough.

As a parent the hardest thing I had to face was my own baggage and the realization that I didn’t think I was good enough and I didn’t deserve to love myself. If that’s what was downloaded into my children through the brain waves and unconscious thought patterns in the womb then I am confident that I’ve now reversed that programming. I am grateful for the change technologies I practice because they have allowed me to really step up as a parent and know that I am not passing my baggage down to my kids. I know that I love myself in a way that I want my kids – and all kids – to love themselves. I am enough and I want all moms and dads to believe that about themselves too.

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Kasia Rachfall is an effervescent speaker, author of Keys For Moms: Enough is Enough! and parenting expert whose grand golden mission is to empower children through releasing their parents from preconceived values, guilt, past hurts, and judgment. Starting at the source, she assists parents to bring conscious responsibility to the future. With tools such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Hypnosis, and Time Empowerment®, Kasia holds your heart while you move forward and take control of your life.

I used to believe that bad things always came in threes – I’d heard that saying so many times as a kid. I also used to believe in superstitions. Not anymore – because if I did, that would mean I would be waiting for more bad news this week. And I’m not.

Last week was strange to say the least and not without its learnings. The good news, though? I stayed calm and collected instead of freaking out. This tells me that I am progressing on my spiritual journey and my consciousness is rising. Yes!

I got an email from a colleague saying our website had been hacked and was now redirecting traffic to a very different type of website that focused on selling services that we definitely don’t sell. It was a shock, I won’t lie. It’s not a line of business I ever intend to get into. Thankfully my amazing husband, Bryan, knows his way around a computer and was able to get the site back up and running. My web designer Amanda Farough was also instrumental in supplying directions on what to do. So, here I am blogging again and grateful for my awesome support team.

Last night my family and I met to celebrate my grandma’s 82nd birthday at a great Greek Restaurant. I found out that my grandma’s younger sister – my favourite great aunt – has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and given two weeks to live. Damn – that hurts. Thankfully my great aunt not suffering and she’s taking the news in stride and with gratitude for her good, long life. I’m really sad and the sadness overwhelms me at the strangest times. Like in the middle of a Social Media Workshop I was at this morning. I’m allowing myself to feel the emotions as they come up and I’m grateful that my aunt was part of my life.

So there’s two bad things. Pretty significantly bad, too. My old self would have focused on “nothing good ever happens to me” and “why me?” My new self – the self that I’ve been nurturing and empowering over the last years – responded very differently. I felt compassion for the hackers and chose to send the love and light instead of scorn. The way I see it  maybe they don’t love themselves or they don’t have enough love in their lives and so they are choosing to behave in ways that hurt others. By sending them hateful energy I would be adding to the problem and so I chose to send love. And like I already mentioned with my aunt – I’m focusing on the greatness of her life.

The highlight of last week were my daughter’s table manners at the Greek restaurant. She ordered chicken fingers and fries and proceeded to eat them with a knife and fork. Now it’s tough getting her to use cutlery at home when we’re eating mashed potatoes, so this surprised me. When I said it’s finger food and she can use her fingers she said to me in a very grown up 7 year old tone “Mommy, this is a restaurant!”

There you have it – if it’s a restaurant – thou shalt use cutlery. In all seriousness, though, I’m so grateful that my daughter actually knows how to use cutlery really well and has amazing table manners.

One of my mentors recently asked me to identify my top 5 self saboteurs as a parent and a business owner. Well, I identified waaay more. I checked in with myself every 2 hours to see how many things I had done, thought, or said to myself to self sabotage – and here I thought I was a pretty empowered parent already.

Oops, there I go again! Critical self talk.

The crazy thing is that this type of self talk is so common- especially among parents! Second guessing ourselves, making snide remarks to ourselves, talking down to ourselves…etc. In fact, I’m sure that the way many parents talk to themselves is far worse than the way they would dare speak to anyone else.

Don’t agree? Catch your own thoughts and write them down. What do you say to yourself as a parent? As a person?

My mentor has now challenged me to check in with myself every 10 minutes to identify self sabotaging thoughts and behaviours. It’s been a tremendously eye opening experience and it has taught an important thing about parenting: kindness and gentleness towards myself.

We can’t not communicate with others – even if we’re not speaking words, our bodies are always communicating. Our tone of voice conveys a lot of information too. And when we are speaking to ourselves in a kind and respectful way it impacts our energy. Our kids can pick up on that energy and automatically feel calmer. Kids are very intuitive because they haven’t yet learned not to be.

In order to be more congruent in your communication with your kids it’s important to begin with your own self talk.

Try the 10 minute check in with yourself for a day or two. Every 10 minutes stop and review what you’ve thought and said to yourself. Give yourself permission to be kinder to yourself and practice saying and thinking nice things to yourself. It will probably feel weird at first  – especially if you’re not used to receiving compliments. Try to be honest and gently with yourself and not to minimize your positive traits.

I’ve been setting a timer on my phone to go off every 10 minutes – and no, not all day long. Just for a while so that I can check in with how I still sabotage myself. the more I check in, the less I self sabotage. Yahoo!

So at this rate, I’m going to enlighten in 10 minute increments! And I encourage you to join me. In order to really re-frame your parenting experience and have more fun parenting, love yourself more

Kasia Rachfall is an effervescent speaker, author of Keys For Moms: Enough is Enough! and parenting expert whose grand golden mission is to empower children through releasing their parents from preconceived values, guilt, past hurts, and judgment. Starting at the source, she assists parents to bring conscious responsibility to the future. With tools such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Hypnosis, and Time Empowerment®, Kasia holds your heart while you move forward and take control of your life.

My good pal, Lisa Perry, and I have been having a blast hosting our parenting Radio Show called Family Focus Friday. We take a practical, solution-focused approach to parenting with a bit of the frying pan approach thrown in. This means that we don’t sugar coat things. We face the real issues facing today’s parents and we offer real solutions that really work.

In this episode Lisa and I tackled kids misbehaving and why that happens. What is it about our kids and the relationship we have with them that they seem to constantly be pushing our buttons?  Are they hard-wired to do this or is it your fault?  Listen as we explored the “buttons” we have as parents, how they evolve and what you can do to “train” your children to respect the boundaries that are important to you in a way that is respectful of their growth and development and helps you keep your sanity!

Kasia Rachfall is an effervescent speaker, author of Keys For Moms: Enough is Enough! and parenting expert whose grand golden mission is to empower children through releasing their parents from preconceived values, guilt, past hurts, and judgment. Starting at the source, she assists parents to bring conscious responsibility to the future. With tools such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Hypnosis, and Time Empowerment®, Kasia holds your heart while you move forward and take control of your life.