Time waits for no family!

I'm late! I'm late! How often do you hear this in society today, especially where family life is concerned? Why are we so stressed about time in the modern world? It seems that the more one focuses on time, the less time one has!

Everywhere I go at the moment, I’m constantly bumping into people who don’t have time; their words and not mine! No time to meet, no time to relax, no time to take time, with crazy claims like we are running out of time. How is this possible when many psychologists believe that time is actually a mind created illusion?

So let’s solve this time riddle once and for all in practical family terms. The first thing to understand is that man-invented time and it’s not something that naturally exists, except in our minds. In fact most people on planet earth today perceive time in Newtonian Physics terms. Sir Isaac suggested that time is like a river flowing uniformly forward. Where we are on the river right now is the present; where we are heading is the future and what we have left behind is the past. If you are nodding to this explanation, then we have a problem Houston, because this is a description of time, which is a 200+ years old out of date concept and proved wrong by Einstein’s theory of special relativity, whereby time is looped. Now this is a rabbit hole that I do not want to get further into, but if you want more information read the book “In search of time” by Dan Falk, who in my view has made the best contribution to explaining the complex history of time in simple terms. The only point you need to take out of this is that we perceive time wrongly and it’s a mind created perspective.

Solving the issue of family time management is not a matter of ABC systems, or being extremely efficient. In today’s world, regardless of how efficient (this leads to stress) you are, you will never be able to meet all your objectives, assuming you have a moderately active life. We are living in the age of information overload and all of our time saving devices actually generate more tasks.

The secret is to look at the big picture and to understand the importance of priorities. The Godfather of prioritization linked to time management is the “Pareto Principle”. Pareto was an Italian economist who studied real life in combination with the economy and through thousands of research papers he discovered a general rule, which states:


· There are a significant few activities from which we gain most value and results

· There are a trivial many activities from which we gain very little value or results

· The “significant few” take up 20% of our activities and time

· The “trivial many” take up 80% of our activities and time


Rigorously applying this principle to family life makes us think very carefully about what activities really matter! It is, therefore, important to identify the significant 20% of our activities or topics that make all the difference to our lives and to focus on them to bring about the best life changing results.


Here are some simple examples for guidance:

1. 20% of our daily activities bring us 80% of our joy

Identify what these activities are and pay more time and attention to them, while reducing the activities, which make little difference. Now apply a similar response to the remaining examples.


2. 20% of our friends give us 80% of our social happiness


3. 80% of our financial results comes from just 20% of our working activities


4. 80% of our daily stress comes from 20% of life’s potential triggers


To conclude, I urge all parents reading this article to reconsider what really matters most to your family and to devote more time to it. In parallel, try to spend less time on the activities, habits, customs and social conformities that bring you little value, because cramming too much unnecessary clutter into life dilutes the essence of the family experience.

Sharon Holmes

www.larnacaparentsnetwork.com

Creative little minds

Please do not mention Gina Ford to me, as she literally drove me stir crazy during my pregnancy. By means of pregnancy planning I invested in every book she wrote as follows and in no particular order:

The Contented Pregnancy

The Contented Mother's Guide

The New Contented Little Baby Book

The Contented Baby's First Year

The Contented Baby Goes to School

The list is actually endless, however dear Gina forgot to write about the “Contended Mother” as my experience was more like “Demented Mother”, upon applying the Gina Ford techniques to bringing up a baby!

After my brief brush with Gina, I decided to assume control of training from the perspective of a loving mother. It was then, I started applying some of my professional skills as a cruise ship trainer, coupled with the of teachings of my husband at Progress International www.progressinternational.info to my one and only son Alex :0).

In essence, Human Beings are 4 dimensional, meaning, there are 4 parts to our nature and this goes for kids too!

1. IQ Mental Intelligence: Mind

2. EQ: Emotional Intelligence; Heart

3. PQ: Physical Intelligence: Body

4. SQ: Spiritual Intelligence: Spirit

For simplicity, let’s focus on the first intelligence; our mind, which possesses the ability to be logical, think abstractly, count numbers, visualize, create, articulate, decode music and a million things besides. When you look at the brain from a physiological perspective, it’s clearly divided into 2 parts; which are commonly referred to as “Left Brain” and “Right Brain”.

The Left Brain acts like a serial processor within a computer; it’s logical, mathematical, procedural, functional, pattern orientated and it’s what most of us associate with the 2 letters of IQ, although this is actually a misconception. The easy way to remember the Left Brain function is “Left for Logical”. The Left Brain scans the present moment and extracts specific details and more details of those details, then organizes and categorizes the information, associates it with the past and projects it towards the future. This is sadly how we educate most of the children on planet earth today using a “Left Brain” academic style of learning, which is largely based on symbolic reasoning of letters words, numbers and other patterns or archetypes to facilitate so called “Logical thinking”. For now, let’s leave the symbols for the symbol minded!

Conversely, the Right Brain thinks abstractly, innovatively, artistically and reaches out with human expression. It joins human feeling with creativity and the easiest way to remember its function is by the phrase “the Right Brain Reaches out”. Incredibly, the Right Brain views the present moment as one big picture collage that is connected to our sensory receptors of what it looks like, sounds like, smells like, tastes like and feels like. It sees everything as one and dwells in the magic of the now.

When we as adults speak of the Right Brain and its amazing attributes, we are in a sense reminiscing of how wonderful life was in our youth or the inspiration of past creative or eureka moments! Our children start life untainted by the norms of society and expectations of culture. They see the world with a sense of oneness and wonder. They laugh, play, live life in the present moment and connect with other happy souls without prejudice, guilt or judging, until we teach them otherwise.

Yet sadly, in the words of the 1970’s song by Styx “The Logical Song” we send our children away and teach them how to be sensible, logical, responsible and practical. We show them a world to make them so dependable, Left Brain intellectual, cynical or perhaps to be a modelled after a certain size or colour of vegetable.

The interesting thing here is that when one of the world’s greatest ever minds “Einstein” ceased to exist, it was discovered that his brain was no larger in size, no heavier in weight, or greater in diameter than the average human brain. The neural pathways however between the Left and Right Brain were considerably more inter-connected than any other human brains experimented on previously. After all it was Einstein himself who once said “I never invested anything logically”.

Surely, as loving parents we can learn something from inspirational all of this this. The true essence of life requires thinking and feeling or logic and creativity to be truly happy, motivated and successful. The vast majority of our educational institutions however follow largely Left Brain curriculums and our children are taught not to reach out and question, but to copy templates, patterns and various forms of symbolic reasoning, which hardly contribute to critical thinking or living joyfully in the present moment. It’s no surprise then that most of us in the western world are suffering from some kind of stress disorder.

So as a humble mother of one creative little brain, I have learned to question more and balance his needs to counter the institutional way of thinking and to stimulate both sides of his emerging mind.


Sharon Holmes
A now contended Mother & Founder Larnaca Parents Network

Don't jump on the sofa!

If you can't do it at 4 years old, when can you do it?

My mother was a nightmare quite honestly, when it came to our sofa. She took cushion fluffing and sofa puffing to a whole new pedantic level. My brother and I consequently avoided the sofa like the plague and were deprived of the fun it could bring, as our mother ranted on, while constantly re-arranging the items on the sofa, to a specific patterned set up.

So I swore to myself, that if ever I have children, they could jump on the sofa as much as they wanted and whenever they wanted :0).

The games I witnessed in the past couple of years were nothing short of amazing, from jumping monkeys and creating ships to piling cushions high to make pyramids. I subsequently reliably conclude that sofas can become a great source of imagination, when children are left to play to their own devices without any parental pressure.

I recently experienced a dejavu moment on a play date at an “Ultra Glam” apartment and as soon as the front door opened, I spotted a rather special sofa. This was no ordinary sofa; it was huge, extremely scrunchy and deliciously velvety. In other words, perfect for jumping on from the eyes of a child! You guessed it, the first thing the mother of the house said was “don't Jump on the sofa”. It’s truly the worst thing she could have said for me and of course the kids flew towards the sofa at ground breaking speed and started to dismantle the show piece of the residence.

This torturous dejavu moment actually disclosed a greater truth, which is commonly known as the “Law of Attraction”. In other words, whatever you focus your children on, they will be attracted to it, especially if you tell them not to do it, as this increases the interest factor.

In essence, the best way to describe the law of attraction in motion is “where the attention goes, the energy flows”. The critical element to understand here is, that our children’s subconscious and unconditioned mind does not necessarily distinguish between do and don’t, because the laws of the universe state that life just is. Our perception of do, don’t and context of where something is appropriate or not, is learned, conditioned or even mind controlled over time. Our children instinctively follow the laws of the universe, however as they develop we train them towards being accepted within the so called values of society, rightly or wrongly.

The same is true for the thoughts in our minds. For example, if we focus on the problem, criticize the problem, complain about the problem, discuss the problem and share the problem, we become part of the problem! Our thoughts and energy flow should therefore only be focussed on the solution to attract a solution to come about.

So, if you would rather keep your children away from a precious china plate, the very last thing you should say is “don’t touch the china plate”. This statement actually focuses your child’s energy flow directly on the china plate, sofa or whatever the point of attention is. Instead, focus your kids on something you do want them to play with and make it interesting or tempting, without forcing to avoid getting caught up in the “Law of Inversion” (we will keep that for another day).

Whatever your age, give it a go, it's really fun :0) and you just might feel the energy of a child again!

Sharon Holmes