…if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made? Barack Obama A Time for Change Barack Obama says this is “the time for change” and the United States of America has responded that we are ready for that change; our first step to change was in electing Barack Obama to office as our President. We have spoken. What are we going to create? Each of us has the ability to create the life we desire. The NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) model explains that we can create transformation from the outside in. Language leads to a picture or representation in our mind of what is being said. The internal representation creates our state of being or emotions. From our state of being we change our physiology which may change or create our behavior or our state of being can directly impact our behavior. According to Richard Bandler and John Grinder who developed NLP we create our life through this process. What this means is if your intention is to be kinder than changing your language to kind words will result in a kinder behavior. I’ll give you an example. Recently my daughter (9 years old) had a meltdown over her homework and she yelled at me. Now I could have focused on the yelling and yelled back or simply walked away. Neither would have been of any help to my daughter. Instead I told her to take time out and come back when she was ready to speak nicely to me. I did not leave the room and waited for her return. When she returned we calmly reviewed the problem and she was able to process the information and come up with her answer. After we were finished with her homework, I told her that her earlier behavior was not okay and that I believed lack of sleep due to many nights in a row of sleepovers and parties was a contributor. I said that I would like for her to go to bed hour earlier for the rest of the week to give her body an opportunity to recover. Guess what, she went to bed early each night without an argument, she felt better and was not nearly as emotional. What changed for me? Remaining calm in the moment was huge. Trust me it was tempting to get upset with her when she yelled at me, I kept telling myself it wasn’t about me and I wasn’t going to get sucked into her emotions. It worked! Not abandoning her was important, too. I gave her an opportunity to cool down and she chose when she was ready to return and I was waiting for her. I was careful with my words. I did not tell her that she was terrible, I did let her know that I did not deserve to be yelled at and that I believed it was lack of sleep that was the cause. At no time did I make her feel like she was a bad person. In the 15 minutes that all of this took place I created what I intended…peace within my home. You are capable of doing this too. Try it. Calm your voice, choose your words, let go of the anger or frustration and say, “Yes, I can.” It is a new day. Share your successes with me at denise@parentandfamilylifecoaching.com. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there. Barack Obama