Did you know that the state of gratitude is its own energy field, one that is a higher vibration than many of us live at on a daily basis? When we are upset or worried about a situation, our energy is at a much slower vibrational level. You can feel the effects of this slower energy because it can often feel like a dark cloud is hanging over you.
When you or your child is faced with a frustrating situation, you often feel stress, anger, or worry. However, these emotions can be greatly diminished and you can move to a place of acceptance and peace by shifting into the calmer, higher vibrational state of gratitude. And when we come from a peaceful place, solutions to our problems arrive much more easily than when we are upset or angry.
So how can we teach our children to move into a state of gratitude so that they can more easily deal with problems and effortlessly identify solutions? Here are four simple steps I have been using successfully with my son:
1) Talk to your child about the problem
It can be therapeutic for your child to let him express the situation in his own words. Ask him how he has chosen to feel about the situation. This helps him to get in touch with his feelings, and to know that regardless of what happens on the outside, we are responsible for choosing our own feelings.
2) Acknowledge your child’s feelings
Say something like, “I understand why you might choose to feel this way. Sometimes we choose to feel sad when things like this happen.” By acknowledging your child’s feelings, he feels understood.
3) Move your child from the negative to the positive
Ask your child, “If you didn’t have this going on in your life right now, what are 3 things that make you really happy?” When I follow this approach with my son, he initially takes some cajoling to think of a happy response. But the time I have gotten 3 responses out of him, he is usually much calmer, and doesn’t seem as bothered by the initial issue.
4) Determine a solution with your child
When you child is calm, ask him how he would like to handle the situation. See if he can tell you what he thinks he should do. If I ask this question of my son when he is in a calmer, more receptive state, he almost always provides me with an answer well beyond his years.
“Switching off” the negative energy by moving into the energy field of gratitude can clear our heads and help make any answer required by the situation come much more easily and from a state of acceptance rather than frustration.
The next time you or your child has a concern or problem, try to shift from focusing on what’s going wrong to remembering what’s going right. Once you slip into the higher vibrational field of gratitude, the problem will lessen its grip on your emotions, and the answer will come with more ease.
Guest Writer – Jill Hope
Jill Hope is an international parenting coach, author, and founder of I Shine (http://www.ishinekids.com). I Shine offers programs and educational curriculums that facilitate character-building, self-esteem, and inner development in children, as well as tools and teleseminars for parents that emphasize a conscious approach to solving parenting problems.
For more information about I Shine, and to download a copy of Jill’s free report “7 Secrets Conscious Parents Know..and Every Parent Should Know.” go to http://www.ishinekids.com.
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