DAY #154 HOW TO BELIEVE NEW THINGS (again)

THE LIFE COACH SCHOOL – Episode 35

We talked about the affirmations we give ourselves – both out loud and in our minds, both positive and negative. What about the affirmations we give our children?

After defining and discussing affirmations with my own children, I asked them, What affirmations have Dad and I repeated to you? And the children came up with a list:

• We need you in our family. You belong with us.
• I am a child of God.
• The church is true.
• We can do hard things.
• “Wayna”
• They are doing the best they can.
• Do I love you if … I love you, just the way you are.

When we say “wayna”, it is generally pegging a child as a “problem”. That is something that we decided to get rid of. And the children have called me out on it two times already. Some of these affirmations are just so ingrained in our communication and even our thoughts, it is hard to step away from them. But, conscious or not, our affirmations create our feelings and our actions and our results – our affirmations create our lives.

We teach the children songs. Those are essentially affirmations, right?

Remember the old song from Mr Rogers Neighborhood?

It’s you I like,
It’s not the things you wear,
It’s not the way you do your hair–
But it’s you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you–
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys–
They’re just beside you.

But it’s you I like–
Every part of you,
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you’ll remember
Even when you’re feeling blue
That it’s you I like,
It’s you yourself,
It’s you, it’s you I like.

“(As children) we have to rely on our teachers to teach us about the world and, and my mom was my teacher. She just taught me that I was bright and so I believed that it was true because my mom taught me that. She also taught me that I would always struggle with my weight. I believed her. I never questioned that.

One of my best friends Jodie, her mother told her everyday of her life how beautiful she was, that she was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. To this day, she has this really deep belief in her own beauty. It doesn’t matter how much she weighs, it doesn’t matter what she’s wearing, doesn’t matter anything, she really believes that she is beautiful all the way through.”

Growing up, we are raised to believe certain things. And we are not really taught to questions our beliefs. Our parents don’t generally come to us and say, “Do you want to question that belief? Does that belief serve you well?” But, as we get older, I think we need to get to that point, where we can own our beliefs – question them, decide which ones feels true, which ones serve us well, and then adopt them as our own, and be willing to claim them as our own. There is a lot of power in doing that.

As part of our homeschool hour, I asked the children to do that, actually.

1. Write down something that you believe, something that isn’t really serving you well to believe.
2. Write down what you want to believe.
3. Write down a one-sentence positive affirmation, and practice believing.

“CHALLENGE: If you’re willing to spend at least 30 minutes practicing believing, your life will change so fast, you won’t even know what hit you… I dare you to practice thinking them for at least 30 days.”

And we each committed to the challenge. Every day, at the beginning of homeschool, for the rest of the school year, we will take five minutes (we just couldn’t commit to 30 minutes daily with these little ones, so our floor is five minutes), and we will breathe our positive affirmations. Breathe in the affirmation, breathe out. Breathe in the affirmation. Breathe out.