Why Do You Have Your Hair Like That?

Every single action you take throughout your life can either be a move towards your values or a move to avoid painful thoughts or feelings.

The place that this choice (and all the other small choices we make) comes from, makes a big difference to the quality of our life. Choices that are mainly about expressing our heart's desire about who we want to be in the world and what we want our lives to stand for, will tend to lead us in the direction of vitality and emotional well being. Choices that are mainly about avoiding social disapproval will tend to lead us towards a narrow and constricted life.

From the outside it can be hard to tell which it is. Take these two very different women:

  Kim Kardashian and Martine Batchelor 

 

Just looking at photos of them, we have no way of knowing whether they are expressing their values through the choices they have made about their hair or whether they are just trying to avoid social disapproval from the very different communities that they inhabit.

So if I can't tell which I am doing just by looking at my behaviour, how do I choose?  Well, I can ask myself this question:

If everyone important to me approved of....(insert area of your life here - from your haircut to your choice of career) ...whatever I chose to do, what would I choose?

To explore this further, I recommend the personal values questionnaire.

Why Telling Children What to Do Is Often A Bad idea

Adults teach children how to behave. One of the things we teach kids is that they need to follow instructions: 'Go and wash your hands and come and sit down for dinner'; 'Say, 'Thank you' to Grannie'; 'Come and help me with the washing up'. We praise kids when they do as we ask and punish them in some way when they don't. Eventually they learn that it is a good idea to do what people in authority ask you to do.

Following instructions with good grace is an important skill. We all know kids (and adults) who haven't learnt that skill and they are painful to be around - everything feels like a battle.

However we want our children to be discerning about this. We don't want them to blindly follow instructions. We want them to question authority. We don't want them to be trapped into being a people pleaser. We don't want them to just go along with peer pressure. ( If you are in doubt about this then read Philip Zimbardo's works on the dangers of compliance.)

So we need to teach them another more important skill. This skill involves being in contact with what is going on in the present moment (How do I feel? What is really happening here?); being able to consider the longer term ramifications of their actions; draw on some values that feel personally meaningful and then making a decision how to act.

This skill is psychological flexibility and it is strongly associated with well being.

Which is why we often need to pause when we have the impulse to just tell our kids what to do and instead coach them to come to their own decision. So when Grannie gives them a present that they don't want, we might take a moment (whilst Grannie is in the garden) to talk through how they feel (disappointed), how Grannie might be feeling (worried that she has got it wrong?), what they want their relationship to be like with Granny and then help them decide the best approach to this. Which might be to give Granny a big hug and a thank you now and perhaps on another day have a conversation with Grannie about how they would love to go shopping for their next present with Grannie and choose it together.