Lessons from a Child
It’s 7:30am and my daughter wakes up with her dishevelled bed-head hair. I walk into her room and she is standing up in her cot and starts pointing at a beautiful alphabet framed print on the wall, gifted by her Godmother for her second birthday. She starts singing the alphabet song to me (a proud mummy moment).
I pick her up, out of her cot, so she can get closer to the print. I start pointing and reading out aloud the words attached to each of the letters.
I say:
A- Be ADVENTUROUS
B- Be BRAVE
C- Be CURIOUS
And so I go on to…
V- Be VERSATILE
W-Be WILLING
All the way to Y- Be YOURSELF and Z- Have ZEST.
As I read this with her, I started thinking to myself when was the last time I was adventurous? When have I shown bravery? When have I demonstrated my versatility? Have I shown any zest recently?
Am I being a hypocrite of a parent? Am I a fraud? I am telling my daughter what she should be doing and here I am questioning myself and my own behaviour.
We are very good at telling children or the people around us, or whom we manage, about what they should be doing; but are we actually demonstrating it in our own lives?
“Do what I say, don’t do what I do” comes to mind.
Our children, the people around us, the teams we manage, learn from us and our own actions. They pick up on OUR energy, our words, our feelings, our body language.
With children, they’re the TRUTH seekers. Nothing can get past them. They know when you have just snuck a chocolate biscuit or some crisps in, even if it’s in a different room; they just know! They have “super spider senses”, I’d like to call it, but commonly known as intuition.
Those closest to us, know when we are holding something back, due to their own intuition and can sense when something fishy is going on.
I do believe babies and children do have heightened senses and can read emotions of a room better than most adults.
I think we lose some of it as we get older because our senses are clouded by other distractions and our own thoughts (but that’s for another blog post).
My point- there is no value in saying to my daughter to be adventurous, be brave and be curious if I’m not demonstrating it in my own life. She will see right through me.
She is constantly learning and picking things up from me. The best way she will learn is from her seeing me BEING and DOING all of these things too.
If I asked you, what do you admire about your parents or caregivers?
What would you say?
Take a moment and think about it.
Now that you have answered; what did they do to demonstrate that in their own lives? Are you noticing their behaviours influencing your choices in your life now?
So, if I would like my daughter to be brave, I need to show bravery myself. When was I last CURIOUS? I mean really curious; where there were no preconceived judgements, I was just genuinely curious about someone or something.
Having a child has taught me so many life lessons. To live a life where I want to be joyous, content and inspired I need to be exactly what that alphabet print is telling my two year old child to be. I need this alphabet print in my bedroom too; to remind myself on what I can be and what I can do.
Even with this pandemic where it has been a testing period for everyone; many of us HAVE been brave this year. For me, I feel I am showing more versatility and I have committed through my journey with coaching, to keep trying and experimenting, without the fear of failure. This was a BIG lesson I needed to learn.
Being a coach, I am naturally curious. I also need to be brave, and fiercely courageous for my clients to truly serve them properly.
I have therefore come to the conclusion that I am not a fraud or a hypocrite. Phew! However – there are still many letters on this alphabet print I would like to continue to work on and conquer.
I think I will take on ADVENTURE for 2021, Covid-19 permitting.
What letters would you like to take on now from this print? Unsure on where to begin? Do you need help to jump start this?