The Absolutely Best Way To Help Your Children Grow Into Exceptional Adults

We send our kids to the best schools we can afford. We send them to immersion courses during the summer in other countries to perfect their foreign language skills. We make sure their food is nutritious, we organize tennis lessons, piano lessons, private tutors and if they need it, we send them to expensive dermatologists to help with their acne. We buy over-priced school and sports uniforms; we give in to their pleas for the latest fashion or technology craze, and it is abundantly clear that we love them very much and want the very best for them.

Yes. Not a doubt in my mind about it.

But today I wanted to discuss other aspects of helping them grow up well. And all of these have to do with us. Not with them.

Happiness

What does your own happiness depend on? Do you need your external circumstances to be just so in order to be happy? Or have you found the way to being happy no matter what the external circumstances? In other words, have you worked on yourself enough to depend on yourself for your happiness? What a wonderful gift to give your children! Can you do this?

Self-Awareness

How self aware are you? How well do you really know yourself? What are the buttons that trigger your reactions? Do you then act on those blind reactions or are you so self-aware that you are able to choose to remain conscious? If you do not remain conscious when your buttons are pushed, and you become reactive (you react blindly), you are teaching something as harmful to your children as you would be if you were giving them drugs.

Making Choices & Self Responsibility

What kind of choices do you make? How much responsibility do you take for resolving your own issues? When you make your choices – every day – during your entire life, do you remember to be aware in order to recognize that at each step of the way you always have alternatives? Do you remember that you are responsible for everything you feel, think, say, and do? In other words, you need not yell, you need not cry, you need not despair, you need not fear, you need not resort to anger, because you always have another alternative. Do you know how to live in such a way that the alternative you choose is the one that creates most well-being for you, and hence – by ripple effect – for those that live with you? If you do this – and consistently show it to your children – you are giving them a great gift.

Healthy Boundaries & Loving the Self

Are you free of codependence, manipulation, and enmeshment? No? I really did not expect you to say yes, you know. But it is very important that you recognize that some or all of these continue to form part of your life. That’s called being aware. Then, deciding to do something about them is called making choices and being responsible for the self.

Here’s how it works: you fall into some of your old traps, like noting codependent behavior with your spouse, sibling, parent, or anyone else, or like realizing you have once again attempted to manipulate someone … perhaps your child, in order to create the behavior you desire in a specific situation. If you are doing this, and if you are aware of it, recognize also that you are teaching your child behavior that will fetter him to self-destructive and negative ways of dealing with life. You can change this by giving your child the gift of your change. Working on yourself will bring this about.

  

Blaming Others & Being A Victim

Do you tend to blame others? Are you a victim of events or people in your life? Can you forgive? What you show your child by one or the other mode of behavior, will, in some ways, determine his/her chance at happiness now and in the future. Learn not to blame – no matter what - stop being a victim – no matter what - and begin to forgive – no matter what - in order to teach all of this to your child by virtue of your own example!

Walking Your Talk

Do you walk your talk? Do you say one thing and do another? Are you authentic? Are you really the way you portray yourself to be? Do you actually know who that is? This goes back to self awareness. It goes to meaning. It is implicit in happiness. Discover yourself because only if you do that, can you really walk your talk and in the process show your child what it means to be authentic.

Is There a Meaning In Your Life?

What is the central meaning of your life? Is there passion in your life, in that which gives meaning to it? Does your energy soar (not only your physical energy, but in particular, you inner energy, your psycho-emotional energy, the way you feel yourself vibrate inside) when you involve yourself with whatever it is that gives meaning to your life? Having this; finding this, implementing this, and then truly living it is one of the greatest gifts you can give your child as a role model he or she can follow.

Living in the Now

Are you always reliving past glories? Or past hurts? Or are you always counting the time until something special will happen – that raise at work, your vacation, the weekend, etc.? In other words, are you always living at any time other than the present? If so, recognize what you are teaching your child. This is the cause of much unhappiness in the lives of so many. Don’t let your child be one of them. Teach him/her something different by learning to remain in the present yourself. Become aware of all the now moments you are losing and begin to systematically change this in order to make your life so much better and in the process give your child the gift of the now.

Transparency

Be open with your children! Show them that you can make mistakes, or that you can learn from them. Show them that you are open to being open, and that you invite openness from them, no matter what they want to confide in you! Doing this is both easy and hard. It’s easy because it is really just a question of choosing to be like this, but it’s hard because in order to be like this, you must also choose to become self-aware and conscious at all times, choose to make yourself responsible for all that you feel, think, say, and do, and hence choose to work on all the those aspects that complicate this as discussed in previous sections of this article.

Love Has the Greatest Priority in Your Relationships

Remember this: the love you have for your child (newborn, toddler, teenager or adult child) must come before all other considerations. When there is a problem, in particular, an ego problem, for example, where one of you insists on being right, and as long as the other does not acquiesce to the rightness of that one, the relationship is on hold, you must remember that the love you have for each other – or even just the love you have for your child (in the event that at this particular moment your child has forgotten he loves you) – must be greater than the need to be right, or than the need for the problem to be resolved the way you think it ought to be.

Putting It All Together

Look within, work on yourself, become congruent, love yourself and realize that every positive thing you do in order to improve yourself will have a ripple effect on the lives of all those you touch.

You have so many gifts to give your child. No one expects you to be perfect. But you can start the road towards the goal of growth, self awareness, and loving yourself by beginning today with the first step. That first step is simply remembering to be conscious, and when you forget, forgiving yourself for forgetting, but praising yourself for at least having remembered that you forgot to remember to be conscious. And then doing it all over again … the more time you spend being conscious, the more quickly you will reach the goal of your own inner freedom, and the more quickly you will reach the goal of being able to offer your child the gift of your example with all of this.

For more about your relationships with your children, but most importantly, your relationship with yourself, and how awareness about this can move you into a life of greater inner peace, well-being, and joy, have a look at my book Rewiring the Soul: Finding the Possible Self (paperback or Kindle).

To download the first chapter, click here
To see the Table of Contents click here

Reviews From the Back Cover:

"The masterwork of a profoundly gifted healer of the soul. Dazzling, challenging, wondrously useful." Peggy Rubin, Director, Center for Sacred Theatre, Ashland, Oregon; author: To Be and How To Be, Transforming Your Life Through Sacred Theatre

"Rewiring the Soul is one the best introductions to the spiritual life I've ever read. Not esoteric but real-world & practical. The implications are profound." Peter Shepherd; Founder Trans4mind.com; author: Daring To Be Yourself 

"The human being's directory to the soul. A breakthrough for those seeking practical assistance, those of a more mystical bent & every soul awaiting discovery." Toni Petrinovich, Ph.D.; author: The Call: Awakening the Angelic Human

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The Tao of Spiritual Partnership: Background Music in Daily Life That Can Enhance Your Growth


The Tao of Spiritual Partnership is also available in print and Kindle formats.

To download the first chapter, click here
To see the Table of Contents click here

From the Description on Amazon: More exciting than any other kind of relationship you have ever known, spiritual partnership is a path, a Tao, available to you so that you may transform your life. Spiritual partnership becomes background music to daily life allowing you to enhance the process of your growth and evolution.

This ground-breaking book addresses:

• relationship patterns that hold you back from a truly fulfilled life
• the strong connection between sexuality and spiritual partnership
• communication leading to true connection & lasting transformation of your relationship

It is precisely at the problematic crossroads so often encountered in relationships that we are offered the opportunity to create a new foundation based on mutual complementarity rather than need; a free relationship between two people who want to be together, rather than two people who need to be together. Needing another, we are told, is the measure of love, but for a fully conscious individual nothing could be further from the truth. And therein lies part of the secret and healing power of spiritual partnerships. 

Praise for The Tao of Spiritual Partnership 

“All humans seek the illusive touch of another's Soul, which opens us to the sense of belonging to something bigger than the self. Dr. Kortsch has given us the true "tao" of relationship in this brilliant exploration of emotional tapestry. We will be grateful for this illumination of spiritual partnership for generations to come." 
Chris Griscom: Spiritual Leader, Author 

“Eloquently and comprehensive, showing how your primary love relationship may be a sacred vessel that transports you and your partner to a place of mutual healing and expansion.” 
Robert Schwartz: Author of Your Soul’s Gift: The Healing Power of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born 

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The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self

My new book: The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self, is due out later this year. Here is a brief excerpt from the Introduction:

It is your right to live a life of love. It is your right to understand that loving yourself first is not a selfish way of behavior, but one that allows you to live that life of love. However, it's highly probable that you never got the instruction manual explaining exactly how to accomplish this. Possibly your family - and it may have been a loving family - considered loving the self an act of selfishness. Or perhaps the members of your family simply didn't practice loving the self, and of course, what you didn't see - what was not shown to you - while you were growing up, meant that you just didn't learn how to apply it to yourself. The closer you are able to move towards loving yourself, the closer you will be to living a life of love - quite independently of whether you are in a love relationship or not. A life of love can be lived with or without a partnership, because a life of love implies that you know that it all begins with you by loving the self. The more clearly you understand how to love yourself, the more clearly you will see that it is very hard - if not impossible - to love others in ways that are unrelated to fulfilling any of your needs. Loving yourself first is - for so many of us - one of the hardest things we will ever learn how to do. But know this: the benefits affect you in every particle of your being - body, mind, and soul - and are greater than you will ever be able to imagine.

Note: If you are wondering why this blog is now only appearing on alternate days (excluding Sat/Sun), it is because I also post on my other blog on the others days. That other blog is The Tao of Spiritual Partnership, so named for my new book. Click here to visit the blog and/or to sign up for the feed.