X for Love XXX
How your love for your child helps you solve every parenting dilemma XXX
I've had a lot of favourites in my A to Z of happiness so far, but this one, and I say this again for another one, is my favourite. And so we've got to X. And I thought, well, what can I talk about with X and I thought we know about Xs as in the kisses on that on a card or an email or letter that we send to those that we love.
So this is the ultimate solution to any dilemma that you find yourself in. And what do I mean by that? It surely can't be one ultimate solution to everything. Isn't this the silver bullet that we're looking for? As parents, as children, as husbands, as wives? Yeah, it's love. So, I speak to a lot of parents who are in a lot of a lot of pain. And they're in a lot of confusion during a lot of anguish. They love their kids. And the kids are suffering for whatever that reason may be. At the moment there's a lot about kids not wanting to go back to school. Kids not wanting to go back to school because of COVID or because they were bullied last year and before COVID happened, or they're worried about bullying in the future, or that they're off school and they're missing the friends and missing that and parents are struggling.
Here's the thing. The biggest thing that we can do for ourselves is love ourselves no matter what. So I see this time and time again, with parents and their love for their child. Their love for that child is totally unconditional and yet they can't give themselves a break. They can't come with guidebooks and COVID doesn't come with a guide out of it. The science is unknown, we're all looking for answers and they they're not there. But most politicians can’t tell us that because they know that we're afraid. So they've got to tell us that there is a solution, a scientific solution, that is that they are working on the science. Well, the only solution is love.
There's no science to love. There's no reason to love. There's no logic to love. Love’s here in the heart. Here in the heart, you know, people talk about emotional intelligence, well, emotions are in the heart. In the head - knowing stuff isn't the answer. The answer is loving ourselves, no matter what. No matter what's going on loving yourself like you love your child. Sure you have your moments. You have your moments but what I see is a lot of parents giving more love to their kids than they have for themselves. And so, parents will often say I'm as happy as my least happy child. I think it works the other way around, you know? They’re as happy as you are there.
If you can love yourself no matter what, if you can give yourself a break, give yourself a break. Stop trying to figure it out. You know, I've been trying to figure out stuff. I'm trying to figure out stuff with my work with kids for like, seven years. The kid stuff is easy. Figuring out how to talk to partners, I'm talking about partners for the social enterprise, not my wife. I had to figure out how to talk to you as parents, figuring out how to talk to schools, figuring it out. You know, that when we're working on it, when we're working on a problem like that, as hard as that as incessantly is, as I do, sometimes, we don't get to a solution, the solution comes out the blue. The solution comes from love.
So take the pressure off yourself, it's not you that's putting pressure on yourself, is it? It's that it's that societal expectation, you know, we weren't born putting pressure on ourselves. And you are not putting pressure on yourself, like, you know, how can we be more self-confident? How can we have more self-esteem? Well, that self isn't the truth. That isn't our true self that we were and the person that we were when we were born, that big bundle of love and purity and perfection that you saw in your child, is what your parents saw in you, and that's who you truly are.
And that perfection - not, not this whole- you know, we all strive, don't we? We're all striving to meet it, to be the best that we can and we're comparing ourselves. Who's the we that's comparing ourselves? It's that voice in our head. It's not us, it's not who we truly are. So give yourself a break. And if you can't give you a break, give me a call and now I'll help you. I'll help you get into that position where you're giving yourself a break. Because that's where the answers come from. That's what I love doing. I love to help people calm down enough to see their own answers. Because I don't have your child, you know your child best. And all I've got to do is calm you down.
You know mums come on the phone, dads come on the phone and this and that and then there's a whole dialogue, a history of trouble and, you know, that this was no good. We're always, all of us are- you know when we can't see the wood for the trees, that's what I mean. And love is what gives us the fuel, is the fuel that helps us see the wood for the trees. But we can't see that sometimes. We need somebody to point us to the place where it is and then we see it. That's all I do. I put you to that place of love and I help you put your child to that place of love, that place before they had the concerns that they have at that moment. The place before they picked up, you know, this and rubbish from school that we're not good enough and we're not good enough maths, not good in English. We're not good enough for football. We're not. We're not good enough. And all that negative voice in my head. It isn't us. Believe me. I thought it was me for a long time. I'd still get lost in it. But I've got a safety net. And that safety net is love. And I want to show you that safety net. See you soon.