Our hats are off to Dr. Harvey Karp! On page 59 of a wonderful book called “The Happiest Toddler on the Block,” Dr. Karp shares a table of “Labels that Hurt – Descriptions that Help,” which depicts the very fundamentals of re-framing. How we can build our children’s self-esteem, just by being aware of the language we are using and what words actually inspire.

He points out that when a child appears to be bossy, they may be destined to leadership. He promotes the idea that most words we use which have negative connotations such as “hyper” can be easily replaced with their positive counter parts such as “energetic or passionate”. A very negative “nosy” is quite an endearing “curious”.

His list continues but instead of posting it here, I challenge you to add a comment of your favourite one word re-frames.

See the comment below to get you started!

-B

Rosy Re-Frame: It’s all in the getting there.

The things we learned from Puppets, who knew? I can recall a stuffed green frog, peddling a bicycle, singing “Moving Right Along, do do do, do do do” and although I don’t remember all of the lyrics, I can remember the “getting there is half the fun” part.

It is kind of funny that in an existence that is essentially made up of a series of journeys, we always seem to be in a hurry to get to the next thing (whatever that may be). We know how important it is to be mindful, be present. You don’t have to stall out your day to be present in a moment, you simply need to take note of the smaller bits –

there were probably 30 or more moths on my front door this morning. Which was kind of cool, as they were sitting, not flapping their furry little selves around my face, the sunrise was gorgeous and so were the two deer I allowed my-self to take note of on the way to work. Curious how the day didn’t change, I still made it to work on time, and went about things the same way I would had I not stopped to count the moths, or notice the deer.

When we are cooped up, travelling along by plane or bus or car, we can fuss and fume and be impatient for the goal, or we can enjoy the scenery, catch up on sleep, reading, laugh and talk, isn’t that valuable time?

Maybe the destination is not what is intended to be the reward, perhaps it is the richness along the way, the fall colours, the smile of a friend or stranger, the time spent with family in a vehicle.

If we think about the ultimate journey that we are all on, it is not the destination we crave, it’s really each moment along the way.

-B


Photo credit @jdmytruk