Whether we like it or not, there are times when we all lose our cool around our kids. Now and then we get annoyed, grumpy, frustrated, upset and exhausted from dealing with a raging child or what seems to be like an endless struggle.

While we know better how to respond in a calmly manner and not be inflicted by their emotions, we still fall into the trap sometimes in the heat of the moment. Some parents start yelling and some use the silent treatment. Neither ways are the solution.

How can you keep it together and be the calm and soothing parent you wish to be at all times?

Let’s take a closer look.

Take a step back
Whenever you find yourself losing your cool, whatever the reason, try to recognize and detect these emotions as quickly as possible. Be aware of the triggers that fuel your anger, then take a step back, pause yourself and calm down first.

Observe
Step outside of the situation for one minute. Now observe your situation from a distance. As if you are looking at yourself and your child from a distance and pay attention to what is going on. What are you noticing? What would you say to yourself standing there arguing with your child. What good and wise advise would you recommend?
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A lot of people will recognize this. You wake up on the alarm of your mobile phone, you walk downstairs and while your having breakfast you’re checking your emails on either your phone, iPad or computer.

Then you start checking Facebook and look for other ways to connect online, allowing you to ignore the real life in the present moment.

A lot of hours during the day you will work online in front of a screen. After work you will check your phone again for more emails, texting, news, Facebook, Youtube and other types of entertainment. And in the evening you’ll relax in front of another (TV) screen.

It goes on and on and on and it adds up tremendously. It has become so normal for us, most people don’t even realize the insanity of it anymore. And if they do, they ignore it and tell themselves, “It just the way things are nowadays. It’s progress”.

But is it really? Well, maybe digital progress and efficiency progress to a certain degree. However, there’s also a major decline in our optimal functioning as a human being.

Internet is great if you use it moderately to benefit your superb lifestyle. But many have becomes slaves of social media, news, apps, email, texting, and it effects your behavior and the way you live. Overuse of mobile phones and internet can lead to a poor attention span, impatience, snappiness, anxiety, depression, online addictions, and so on.

You might read these words and think, “I know, I know”. But the symptoms of overuse are often taken lightly and will impact everything in your daily existence. Your way of thinking, your relationships with your partner, your kids, your friends, what you do and especially what you don’t do.
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“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” ~ Lao Tzu

Simplifying your day and your life is not just about being efficient, organizing and reducing stuff, it’s also about simplifying your mind and your way of thinking. The latter is the key to swimming in time.

What does swimming in time feel like? For me, it means feeling unleashed from obligations and restrictions, to perceive a sense of timelessness, where I enjoy the abundance of time freely and unworried.

It is possible and on the one hand it’s simple and easy, because it’s just a state of mind, a shift in your thinking and way of feeling. It’s letting go of old rusty thinking patterns.

On the other hand, it’s difficult and rocky. You have to train your brain everyday and pick yourself up while you fall regularly, because your mind is like a wild stubborn monkey on the loose that doesn’t hold on to new ideas very easily.

So how do you train the monkey to calm down, stop running around and make it realize that the ticket is already in it’s own hand?

You need a solution that doesn’t take a big sacrifice, that will stop the feeling of pressure, achievement, urgency and doing what you’re supposed to be doing all the time.

Here are the keys:
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A new day has begone. You turn on your laptop to get some serious work done. You quickly check out an email from a friend that just came in. You open it and the email contains a link to a Youtube video or website.

You click on it to see what all the fuzz is about. You watch the video, read the website and suddenly there’s another video or link that draws your attention. Now without realizing it, you are distracted, absorbed and lost, wandering from one video or website to the next.

30 minutes later you wake up from the world of info and entertainment and you think “Hey, what am I doing here and what was I doing in the first place?”.

You just lost precious time!

Email is a great convenient tool but also a curse if you don’t use it effectively and mindfully. There are a lot of emails that have low or no value at all and they keep coming back, pulling you away from what is most important to you.

What you want is an inbox that only contains the few crucial or meaningful emails that really matter. Emails that only take up a minimum amount of time, questions and demands that are processed quickly and easily taken care off. An inbox that leaves out the clutter, the ads, the horse shit and URLs that send you off to mars and beyond.

The payoff is a serene and peaceful empty inbox that brings a smile on your face.

Here are the keys:

1 – Read every email that comes into your inbox carefully and think hard about how you can reduce or eliminate future emails from that address or change the way of communication. Think outside of the box.

2 – Change or move specific email communication to different platforms (smartphone, talking in person, Facebook, Twitter or nothing at all).

3 – Learn people how to email you. Ask them to only email you what is important and leave out any unnecessary details, links or distractions. Tell them in a friendly way that you easily get distracted (like everyone else) and want to reply to their emails and help them as quickly as possible without getting sidetracked.

4 – Use filters to move emails to specific folders/labels.
I use a filter to send invoices from recurring payments to a specific folder/label. And if I can’t unsubscribe from an obnoxious email easily, I use a filter and forward the email to the trashcan. Continue Reading