“Are you paying attention to what you are teaching your children? They come onto planet earth with clear minds and clear intentions but once they are here, they depend on their humans to guide them through their early learning years. You might want to pay attention to the messages they are receiving, simply by what they hear you say and what they see you do.” – The ELF – from “Go to ELF”, a romantic novel with a Spiritual twist.
If you have, (or ever have had), little children in your life, haven’t you often been surprised by the thoughts they share with you? “Where on earth did he/she hear that?” we wonder. The answer is most often directly from you and even a chance comment can have a very long-term effect on the future of one whose little ears and eyes are always open.
Mary was a very smart little girl and always brought home a report card with straight A’s. Her sister Debbie did not. Their mother, (and God bless most mothers, we all do the best we can with the tools we have!), tried to make a real effort to reinforce her girls individual strengths..
So whenever Mary and Debbie brought home their report cards, she would pat Mary on the head and say, “You’re so smart, Mary.” And to Debbie she would say, “Debbie, you’re so pretty.” According to Mary, the two of them grew up with these “critiques” tattooed on their little psyches.
Mary, believing she was smart but not pretty, never thought about getting married. Instead, she went to college, completed a couple of degrees and found a good job. It wasn’t a job she loved but it paid well and, after all, she was going to have to support herself for the rest of her life.
Debbie, on the other hand, never even thought about going to college. Instead, she worked on her social skills and her appearance in order to land a good husband who would and could always take care of her.
When Mary was in her 40′s, she read something about how the power that words we heard in our childhood could influence the way our lives evolved as adults. She could just hear her Mother’s voice saying: Mary, you’re so smart. Debbie, you’re so pretty. She talked it over with Debbie and they decided to redraw those mental pictures their Mother had painted of them years ago.
Not very much later, Mary met and married a wonderful man and also landed the job of her dreams. Debbie, who already had a supportive husband and a good marriage, went to college and earned not one degree but two. How many of us, like Mary and Debbie, go through life without ever realizing we’re living, (existing), within boundaries that never really existed?
In the book the Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz tells about a single mother, holding down two jobs, who came home from work with a blinding headache one day. Her little girl, filled with joy because her Mother came home unexpectedly, was dancing and singing, and her Mother said, “Please doesn’t sing, Honey. It makes Mommy’s head hurt.” The child never sang again—not even as an adult!
I found Ruiz’s languaging as he told that story – gripping: “She developed a whole complex from one spell”, he wrote, “the spell cast upon her by her own mother, who loved her most of all.”
Actually, we start out inadvertently “casting our spells” pretty early, simply because we’re not AWAKE to our own power.
When our children are babies, we croon to them: “Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop / When the wind blows, the cradle will rock…” Isn’t that a lovely picture? Then – “When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall / And down will come baby, cradle and all.” No wonder little ones don’t want to take a nap! We wouldn’t either if we held that picture in our heads!
Years ago, when I was working at the Unity Village Chapel, Reverend Chris Chenoweth, who was serving as the Minister there at the time, was writing his Sunday talk. All of a sudden, he came bounding out of his office (as we have since found ministers with bright ideas tend to do), asking, “Whatever happened to the old lady who lived in the shoe?” I thought he was rehearsing a joke and so I said, “Ok. I’ll bite. What did happen the old woman who lived in shoe? “No, no,” he said. “I’m serious. I need to know happened to her. You know, ‘There was an old lady who lived in a shoe / She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do …’. Then what?” I couldn’t remember either, when put on the spot like that, so I said I would run down to the library and get a copy of Mother Goose.
On the way to the library, I suddenly remembered the rest of the verse. “She gave them some broth without any bread / then spanked them all soundly and put them to bed.”
I was pretty sure Chris wasn’t going to want to use that in his talk, but since I had already called to reserve the book, I continued on to the library. When I got there, I explained to the librarian that the minister probably wouldn’t want to use the Mother Goose rhyme after all. And the librarian asked, “Did you happen to look it up in ‘Positively Mother Goose?’ ”
This is the version of “The Old Woman Who Lived In a Shoe” from “Positively Mother Goose”: “There was a bold woman who lived in a shoe, / She had many children and knew just what to do. / ‘You all are lovable with special gifts,’ she said, / Then she hugged them all fondly and tucked them in bed.” In “Positively Mother Goose”, “Rock-a-bye Baby” is written: “Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop, / When the wind blows the cradle will rock, / Birdies and squirrels will all be at play / And you can watch them throughout the day.” Not surprisingly, “Positively Mother Goose” became my favorite baby-shower gift. (Unfortunately, it is now out of print, but there are a few new and used copies for sale on Amazon.com and perhaps on E-Bay as well.)
Here is what Don Miguel Ruiz says about the importance of making an effort to choose our words carefully. “A ‘word’ is not just a sound or a written symbol. The word is a force. It is the power you have to express and communicate, to think and thereby to create the events in your life. You can speak. What other animal on the planet can speak? The word is the most powerful tool you have as a human. It is the tool of magic. But like a sword with two edges, your word can create the most beautiful dream, or your word can destroy everything around you.”
In his book “Smile for No Good Reason”, Lee Jampolsky includes a chapter entitled “Watch Your Language.” Jampolsky said that when he was learning a new language, he had the opportunity to “not learn” unpleasant words, and therefore he didn’t.
The same thing happened to a German Seminary classmate of mine named – Gunther Planeth. He’d learned the purest form of English, and his English was impeccable. But he didn’t understand our idioms. I sat next to Gunther in class every day, and when he didn’t understand a word that someone used, he’d ask me a questions like: “Lauren, what do they mean potluck?” Usually it was an amusing idiom he missed the meaning of but sometimes the word he was questioning, derogatory. I would say to him, “Gunther, that’s a mean word.” “Don’t tell me,” he’d reply. “I don’t want to know.”
Some words, according to Jampolsky, are limiting, and he suggests we use them very sparingly: words like “can’t,” “impossible,” “never,” “stupid,” “weak,” “inferior.” Others are labeling words, like “hopeless” and “useless” and “dumb”.
To help his students discover the impact of words, Jampolsky asks them to sit for five minutes and quietly repeat a group of limiting words such as “hate,” “impossible,” “afraid,” “frown,” and “separate.”
Then he asks the students how they feel. Jampolsky says “awful” is the word they usually use to describe their feelings. In the next part of his lesson, he has his students sit for five minutes and quietly repeat these words: “forgive,” “possible,” “love,” “smile,” and “one.”
That segment of his class leaves the students feeling much better. This exercise is very telling. You might want to try it. It proves that we really need to AWAKEN to the words we choose because they directly affect the way we feel every day.
Jampolsky also asks each of his students a very interesting question. “If you were marooned on a desert island and your speech was limited to only one word, what would that word be?”
Jampolsky chose LOVE. – I chose GOD. – My husband John chose FREEDOM.
If you could have only one word to use for the rest of your life, what word would you choose?
I was recently a guest blogger on talk-show host Petey Silveira’s blog – New Pathway for Healing – this week. Enjoy: http://networkedblogs.com/tTZTQ
*The ELF is an acronym for The Eternal Life Force, from the novel “Go to ELF!” by Lauren McLaughlin. To read the first three chapters of “Go to ELF FREE”, go to http://www.gotoelf.com
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“Go to ELF!” by Lauren McLaughlin is available on Amazon.com as a perfect paperback or on Kindle for electronic transmission.
