With all the worry and pressure in today’s world, with the financial news going so bad, talk of taxes being raised, and more, who isn’t feeling huge stress and trepidation in their daily lives? How could this stress and pressure not be affecting our businesses as well as our personal well-being and family lives? This sort of stress cannot be good for our mental health.
It is the unusual person, indeed, who can shake off the troubles down at the company or office and leave that luggage outside the front door when they come home to their loving family.
Could you inadvertently be taking this stress out on your children? Have you found yourself getting a bit short-tempered recently? Have you gotten angry with your wife and kids and shouted or raised your hand only to later regret that you couldn’t control yourself better? Have you considered that this bad temperament at home could be due the inability to control stress from work? And that this stress is affecting you 24/7 whether you want to admit it or not?
Today’s short article will be about a simple and quick way that I guarantee will help you to control your stress and temper at home and become a better parent. All you need to do is spend 2 minutes a morning, every morning, writing down some quick notes in a notebook. And, no, 2 minutes is not a lot of time compared to what happens when you lose your cool and make a scene.
I used to have a bad temper, and I would get mad and shout, sometimes even raised my hand to my children… But since starting this method, that I will recommend today, it has been well over 2 years since that last happened. I haven’t even raised my voice once…. Every time that I did get irritated, something in my subconscious kicked in and I immediately calmed down. This worked for me and several other friends that I have recommended it to. It will work for you. Let me take a moment now to highly recommend a book that has actually led to all of this. This book helped me greatly at work (and now at home) since the first time I read it and that is Brian Tracy’s Goals!
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In Goals! Tracy talks about how, if you are to succeed in life that you need to write down your goals in order to be able to achieve them. “Sure!” A lot of people say they’ve heard this or know this, but few actually do this. Trust that writing down your goals down does help your subconscious to actually remember and activate your brain to achieve those goals you set forth for yourself.
I write down my goals every day religiously in the morning when I wake up and, not only does doing so help me to achieve them, it also helps me to relax and stay much more focused through the day. Who doesn’t want to stay more focused in this day and age when our “in-box” includes, for most people, several e-mail accounts that are constantly filling up as the day goes by and consistently altering our priorities? Add on an Internet world filled with Social Media like Facebook and Linkedin accounts to attend? Twitter is no longer for just sending messages to your friends, but it too, has been co-opted into the business world and your boss orders you to use them, or blogs and SNS, to get the company message out…
How in the world can anyone today get ahead of the pile in the “in-box”? Any person in their right mind would be stressed.
Goals! promises that you will “Get everything you want, faster than you ever dreamed.” Sounds like grandiose claims but let me point out that writing down your goals and purposes is like having a sort of road map to where you want to go. When you write them down, they enter your subconsciousness and they cause your inner brain to focus upon the Law of Attraction. If you do not write down where you want to go — if you do not have a map — then how will you know where you are going?
The publishers write:
Why do some people achieve all their goals while others simply dream of having a better life? Bestselling author Brian Tracy shows that the path from frustration to fulfillment has already been discovered. Hundreds of thousands — even millions — of men and women have started with nothing and achieved great success.
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Here Tracy presents the essential principles you need to know to make your dreams come true. Tracy presents a simple, powerful, and effective system for setting and achieving goals — a method that has been used by more than one million people to achieve extraordinary things. In this revised and expanded second edition he has added three new chapters addressing areas in which goals can be most rewarding but also the toughest to set and keep: finances, family, and health.
Using the twenty-one strategies Tracy outlines, you’ll be able to accomplish any goals you set for yourself — no matter how big. You’ll discover how to determine your own strengths, what you truly value in life, and what you really want to accomplish in the years ahead. Tracy shows how to build your self-esteem and self-confidence, approach every problem or obstacle effectively, overcome difficulties, respond to challenges, and continue forward toward your goals, no matter what happens. Most importantly, you’ll learn a system for achievement that you will use for the rest of your life.
One of my goals is to become a multi-millionaire. Laughable? Maybe. But at least I have a road map and I am consciously working on that every day… And since I do have a road map, it alleviates a huge amount of stress and worry from my shoulders.
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I may not be a millionaire yet, but I really do have proof that this works! I have evidence that Tracy’s philosophy and ideas in Goals! are successful. I have shown myself that actually writing down goals are critical to achieving them. And my proof stands in something that, for me, is much more important than the Rat Race and making money: it’s being the best, most wonderful dad I can be.
It used to be my #1 priority in life was to always make more money. I always thought about how to increase my cash flow and I constantly worried about the economy. What a fool I was. My children were growing up around me and all I could think of was money. Then, one day, a few years ago my son said something foolish and I got a sudden flash of extreme anger. Later on, while my son was sobbing, I quietly considered and reflected upon my actions, I regretted them; I wondered if I had overreacted. I wondered if stress was clouding my thinking.
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After deep consideration of that incident, I realized that the most important thing for me was not money. By far the most important thing for me was to be a great dad to my son. How could I have thought differently?
Now my #1 priority goal that I write down in my pocket notebook every day is; “I am a kind, loving and patient father and husband today and every day” (with today’s date added). Then, I write my next 9 goals, which have to do with making more money and being successful at work.
Folks, trust me. This really works! Since starting this habit, I have caught myself several times with a flash of irritation — that before would have caused me to get angry or upset at my son and perhaps raise my voice — but since I started writing down every day my goal of being patient and kind, my mind recalls that goal within a split second and has killed that flash of anger instantly its tracks. It is truly amazing.
Why ruin what could be a good learning opportunity with your children and a possible great memory with an outburst of irritability? What for? Life is too short to be getting upset at the small stuff all the time.
As the great writer C.S. Lewis wrote in Chronicles of Narnia, “Life is difficult, so let us be good to each other.”
Writing down my goals every day has truly helped my family to have joy, love and peace. Your family can have it too. All you need to do is write down your goals every day. You’ll be glad you did.
Don’t you and your family deserve it?
My friend Roger Marshall inspired this article.