Day 120!
Today I have three questions for your journaling prompt, and I will get right to them:
- What do you have to teach other people? What do you think would make the world a better place if you could teach it to everyone?
- As a role model, are you teachable or unteachable?
- Do you prefer to learn from people who can admit when they’re wrong, and listen to other people, or those who never allow themselves to be corrected (publicly and/or in private)?
Every role model loses credibility when he or she stops trying to learn. Why is this?
It’s because there is no one person who knows everything. Kids pick up on this. Kids have this innate understanding that they know more than the adults around them.
That might be arrogance, it might be a lack of awareness of how the world actually works. But what if sometimes it is actually reality?
If you become unwilling to learn, people stop listening to you eventually. They realize that you just want to talk and be heard but you don’t want to hear what they have to say. You don’t want to listen.
This is a huge trigger for people, especially Gen X and Boomers. The idea that you have to listen in order to be listened to.
They feel this sense of entitlement, and when you challenge that they get UPSET. Really upset. The only tool they have in their toolbox in those moments is to punish you, degrade you, humiliate you, attack everything and tear you to shreds so they can regain control of the situation and you stop going against them.
Millenials have learned this too. This is generational trauma, it is a generational curse, and if you are so inclined, it is entirely possible for you to heal it and break it within your lifetime.
At least, that has been my experience. Has it been yours?
You are capable of listening to opposing viewpoints without being swayed in one direction or another. Emotional reactivity is a sign of immaturity, not command.
If you cannot listen to those around you even when your opinions differ, the solution isn’t to shut everyone else down when they try to talk to you. That’s what unhealthy people do because they can’t handle any other way.
The real solution would be to learn emotional regulation and stability. Developing and cultivating that capability rather than regressing into a child, essentially.
That is what makes you untrustworthy in other people’s eyes, even (and especially) children. When you get emotionally reactive when they try to talk to you or share their perspective, when you shut people down because you don’t want to take what they have to say into consideration, that is exactly what they do. They shut down. They walk away. They lock you out. Maybe forever. They have to, in order to protect themselves from your childish ways. Because childish behavior coming from within adult bodies is dangerous to everybody around you.
As an adult, you have a responsibility and an obligation to mature. Maturity doesn’t happen just because you are aging.
Hopefully the people who shut down because of your anger don’t shut down forever. Hopefully the people that you’re doing this to have other adults in their life who actually let them express themselves fully. Who teach them to trust themselves and make their own decisions, especially when it’s scary.
This is why therapy can be really helpful. So can working with a Healer or Guide (www.modernmysteryschoolint.com/certified-professionals).
That is how parents lose their children’s trust, and why children turn to their favorite teachers, or their friend’s parents, for guidance and emotional support instead. Because those people can actually offer stability, when the adults in their life are far too controlling to ever guide them from a secure place.
Parents who punish more than they nurture are usually far more concerned with their own appearances than they are with the health of the relationship with their own children. They are unhealthy and deserve to heal if they so desire.
Again…therapy and healing tools benefit adults more than children because when the adults are healthy the whole family benefits. For one thing, everybody can breathe.
And the kids know this innately. They encounter adults of the same generation as their parents who are actually capable of treating them with respect, dignity, compassion, wisdom, care, and emotional maturity. The adults who hold themselves to that higher standard. Who care about their appearance AND the health of the people and relationships they nurture.
Those Teachers, those adults, they become guiding Lights for children and young adults who are seeking clarity, connection, an opportunity for the good within them to be recognized and acknowledged. Especially when all they’re getting at home is judgment, rejection, criticism, degradation, and being shut out from the ability to make their own decisions (aka being controlled).
The beauty of being raised in an environment where your parents are emotionally unstable, controlling, where they use the Fear of God to raise you instead of Wisdom, patience, and understanding is this: you realize that you cannot control anything but yourself, even if others hold you up as a scapegoat. Because the odd thing about parents who control your every move, or at the very least try to, is they still blame you when things don’t go the way they wanted them to. It’s a very strange and unhealthy dynamic. One that you don’t have to be a victim to forever.
That is why I believe everyone should find a Teacher, Healer, or Guide you can rely on. Someone who can help you discern where you end and where your controlling parents or guardians begin, and vice versa.
Don’t ever stop being teachable. Even today, kids and adults are on two different wavelengths. They don’t see eye to eye on every little thing. And that’s normal. Adults are learning about what problems their children may face in the future from a very different perspective than the kids do. They both have different vantage points, and the adults who respect the fact that their children want to think for themselves can actually help them navigate those issues even if they stumble through them.
Adults who get triggered when someone says you need to respect your child’s viewpoint…they don’t get very far in this process. And then they blame the children.
I’ve been talking about this for a few days now. All of this ties back into the difference between teaching your children to think for themselves and learn from the consequences of their behavior, or punishing them over every little thing as a form of helping them learn. Which one do you think will actually be more beneficial for them in the long run?
And if you’re not feeling successful in what you are doing, who can you ask to help you learn a better way?
Click Here to find A Modern Mystery School Certified Teacher in your area!
Don’t let your own fear of failure, or your ego, stop you from finding the best path for you and your loved ones.
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