Color Your World- How Do You See The World?
The way we see the world, in turn, colors the way we feel, which in turn colors the way you act. This happens to us all the time, and it’s what happens with our kids. We are all looking out of different colored lenses and acting “as if” what we are seeing is the way life really is.
If you have ever put on a pair of strangely colored glasses, such as yellow, at first the world looks very strange. But if we keep them on for a long time, we begin to get used to it and that vision of the world begins to look “normal”. This is what happens with our habitual thinking.
Everyone sees the world through a different pair of colored lenses that they aren’t even aware they have on. Yet they think what they’re seeing is the way it really is. And for everyone it’s different.
This explains why there are so many fights, arguments, and disagreements. Everyone is living in a separate world, a separate reality, that they each think is right.
So are our kids. Our kids live in separate worlds from us. Therefore, they think differently, feel differently, and act differently than we do. Just as we think our world is right, so they think theirs is right.
No wonder there are so many conflicts!
We and our children may have some similarities in our ways of thinking, but we all have different experiences and interpret those experiences very differently.
What Do We Do When The Way We See The World Is So Different?
First, we want to be careful about how seriously we take our own thinking. If we pay very close attention, we might be able to tell when a habitual pattern has become programmed in us and rears its head.
If we see it, we may want to be a little more careful about what we lay on our kids, because it comes from our own “reality” of what we think is important.
Second, we want to understand that when we react to children in a negative way that becomes a pattern, our children can pick up similar thinking patterns for themselves. They than act out of that pattern.
So if we want kids who behave well then we might want to watch how WE think and behave. For example, if we tend to react with anger to whatever they are doing wrong, our kids may pick up a tendency to react with anger when they encounter something they don’t like.
If we go out of our way not to program negativity, what’s left? What remains for them? What remains is their natural health and wisdom. If we don’t inject negativity the natural well-being and self-esteem rises to the surface because it never went anywhere in the first place.
Negative thoughts are the only thing keeping the naturally positive feelings hidden.
We don’t have to go out of our way to think positively because if we aren’t thinking negatively, the positive will automatically be there.
It also helps to be mindful that our kids act based on their thinking and much of their thinking stems from what they have been exposed to and learned. We are all caught up in a web through which we now see the world.
It’s helpful to realize that the less we treat our kids in ways that breed negative, unhealthy, destructive or problematic thinking, the less our children will have a tendency to act out of what becomes programmed, habitual thinking for them.
It’s also helpful to watch our kids in their thought patterns. And watch ourselves in our thought patterns. We don’t have to take either so seriously because those patterns are only “real” to each us because of the different ways we both happen to see the world.
Suppose you are bothered by what your daughter was doing and you get annoyed and started yelling at her. That’s real, right? Now suppose in the middle of yelling at her, she fainted. Would your thinking about her and what she had been up to change dramatically in that moment?
Or what if you found out your son only had another year to live? Suddenly leaving clothes scattered around the house doesn’t bother you so much anymore.
We only have thoughts that bother us when we’re not thinking about something else. That’s how “real” it is.
It’s really an illusion made up by the way we use our thinking. The way we see the world is different for each of us. How can you change the way you see yours?