Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I am the owner of Teaching Self-Government.
Teaching self-government is a type of a program where you teach
children and yourselves how to govern yourselves. So, what is self-government?
Self-government is being able to determine the cause and effect
of any given situation and possessing a knowledge of your own behaviors
so that you can control them. And believe it or not,
self-government is a vital for good family functioning and family life.
That's what we're going to be talking about
in this video. How to improve family life and functioning
through love?
Studies show that for most people, their top priority is their family.
So, why then do people use their worst problem-solving skills, their worst most
selfish communications with their families? It doesn't make
sense, does it? Why would we spend all of our love and
heart energy on our family yet selfishly communicate?
That's because society is not doing a great job
of promoting functional family skills and behaviors. In fact, if anything,
we are pulling people more and more towards selfishness.
And selfishness how you feel, what you want,
what you like, who's in your space using your stuff,
all of those things are damaging for family relationships
and create dysfunction within your own heart. And if you have dysfunction in
your own heart, you are not going to have relationships
that are functional. So, let's talk about relationships. A
relationship is one way. I know many people think, "No,
to have a relationship you have to have 2 people.
It takes 2 to tango, right?" Yes, it may take
2 people to do tango but each person on the side of that tango dance
is actually in charge of their own moves, their own timing
their own beat and their own connection to the other person.
So, really each one of them has a relationship toward that other person
and a relationship to themselves. So, if you are always thinking about how you
feel, what you don't get what you wish you did
have how someone's not respecting you, then you are having a selfish
relationship with yourself. And as soon as you start thinking of
yourself in that way, you will stop valuing the people around
you as much. In fact, you might even think of them as
enemies. This creates dysfunction in your relationships.
And that means your families will experience more dysfunction whenever
there's a problem to solve or an activity that you were hoping
would go just right. Love should be the base of all of
our relationships in our family. And I think for most people it is the
base. They would never say they don't love their family.
In fact, they love their family so much. You love your family so much or you
wouldn't even be taking the time to watch this video about how love is
going to help the functioning of your family relationships. So, I want
to share with you 7 things that you can do to improve
that functioning for your family through love. Number 1, value
them. Make sure that in your own mind, they have
value. They're not your enemy, they're not a villain. They are a valuable person.
A person who you know probably feels love for you
in their heart too. In order to foster that feeling of value,
you need to see their potential. Even in the moments when they are having the
hardest time. Who can they become? What is their
true goodness that's inside? Can you see it? Do you trust that it's
there? See that potential. And talk to them
even when they're misbehaving through the lens
of knowing that that's who they really are.
When you can see who they really are despite their flaws,
then you can have gratitude for them. The gratitude in your heart
is a seed for increased love. If you allow yourself to be bothered by your
children, then you will not feel grateful for them
and that will decrease your love that you feel for them. In fact,
when you're feeling like "They wear me out.
They're too much work. They don't even care." That
usually is a sign that you're not feeling grateful for them.
Which means your love in that moment might be waning just a little bit.
Even though if somebody asked you if you loved them, you would definitely declare
yes. When people ask me their parenting
questions on my teaching self-government support group and in some of the mentor
calls that i have with people or when i go and train people in their homes,
they'll tell me "These are the problems that we're having. This child has these
problems, these problems." But i love when they say to me, "But don't
get me wrong. This is a beautiful child. He has such a
servant's heart. He's such a strong worker. He can be such
a joy to be around." And they tell me all of these wonderful
things that show me that they see his potential. It makes me
so excited to know that they're coming at solving this problem
and increasing the bond and love in their family and increasing the function
through a lens of possibility. Through a lens of potential.
So, value them. See their potential. See what they can accomplish
and be grateful for it. Number 2, show the gratitude. So, you felt the
gratitude. How do you show it? One of the most
natural and logical ways to show gratitude
is through praise. And there are better ways to praise than others.
So, I teach parenting and I always tell people of all the styles of parenting
like the correcting and handling the intensive situations and pre-teaching,
counseling with the children, the most effective style of parenting that you
can use is praise. But that praise shouldn't just
be like, "Thank you. Good job." It should be more than that.
There should be a description of what that person did
that was really great. So, when I praise somebody,
I look at them with love in my eyes and I
say, "You know, just now, I told you no that you couldn't go on the bike ride with
your friends. You looked right at me you kept a calm
face voice and body. You said okay and then you just dropped
the subject. I can tell you're totally fine with that.
That means a lot to me. That you would respect me that much. And
I've got to tell you that's going to bring you a lot of
happiness in your relationships in the future.
because you don't always get a pick when somebody is going to agree with you on
an idea." That's describing. That's a good praising.
It's valuable. It's meaty. They can hold on to it. So,
show the gratitude by praising them. A loving family,
a functioning family is a family that plans for success.
They know they're going to have problems. Everybody has problems.
But they plan for how they're going to solve those problems.
They say, "Okay, these are the skills that we need.
This is how we're going to handle this type of a problem. These are the negative
consequences that will be for this. These are the positive consequences. This
is how we're going to meet as a family to discuss
issues that need to be discussed. This is who we
are as a family." When a person is self-governed,
they're planned. That's what it means. They say, "Where am I going?
Who do I want to become? How am i going to get there?"
And then they take step by step. And after each step they analyze, "How did i
do? Am I still going in the right direction?"
That's what the family has to do together as a group.
When the family does that, it eliminates manipulation.
And if you can get rid of that manipulation and that emotional trauma,
that people download eat on each other all the time,
then your home feels happy, safe, bonded, full of love. Number 4,
look at them. Really look at them. Do you know how often we go through
daily life and we don't look at people? Really look at them? In fact I think
there are a lot of people that think it's rude
to look at people. I've been on the subway.
I've been on a bus and in an airport and seen everybody just looking down.
Everybody just thinking their own thing trying not to make eye contact.
And I've seen families just minding their own business.
Looking down. Looking at their cookbook, doing their project and not really
looking at each other. When they're talking to each other, when
they're giving instruction to each other. Your eyes are the windows to your soul.
That's how a person touches your heart. The easiest. So, if you want to have good
love in your relationships and your family,
you want to have greater functioning, you got to look at each other
with love in the eyes. Not be afraid to show the honest truth
about who you are and how much you love them. People that won't look at you
are usually people that are hiding who they are. They don't want you to see.
It makes me sad that our society is so full of a culture
of not allowing anybody in anymore. It can start in the family.
We can fix that huge chasm that is happening
culturally by teaching our family members how to bond and look at each
other so that they can lead out in society and
look at the people around them too. Number 5, send
the love. So, when you're looking at them in the eyes
even if they're going completely out of control, even if they're yelling at you,
just look at them and think, "I love you. I love you. It's okay."
If you look at them with true love even when they're having the hardest time,
that will help them come back to a place of thinking,
place of functioning. Because that honesty will be sent from your heart
to theirs. I literally visualize taking my love out of my chest
sending it through my eyes and landing in their heart.
That may seem weird but it works. It works for me. When they are completely
going out of control, I can maintain love for them. Now, my
family doesn't go out of control. Well, practically ever because we're
really self-governing. But my foster children did.
As soon as we got someone to a place where they would stop going out of
control, they would remove them from our home and
bring us somebody else who would go out of control.
And so, I had to be able to maintain that feeling, that spirit of love
in my home no matter who was here. I think that was the magic that people saw
on the BBC program that was made in 2009 about our family.
So, the BBC made a program called the wWrld's Strictest Parents.
They brought two troubled teens to our home. They were both aged 17.
And they stayed for 8 days and their hearts were drastically changed.
My heart fell in instant love with them even though they were trying to push
back on all of the rules in our home. If you
want to see that video, go to this link in the corner and you
can see the video. Or you can go to my website teachingselfgovernment.com
and you can click the video tab. It was quite a sensation.
In fact, the calmness in our home made it the most watched episode on the BBC
for that whole program which was called the World's Strictest Parents in case
you're wondering. Anyway, send love. When you
send the love, they'll feel it. Even if it seems like they're not at first.
They will. That's the truth they need to know that everything's going to be okay.
Number 6, self-government. I've already told you what self-government is. It's
this process of controlling yourself, planning, analyzing where you're going.
But self-government if every person chooses
to take responsibility for their own behavior,
for their own heart. And having their own change of heart,
that changes the whole feeling in the home.
Number 7 is calmness. Do you really know how to be calm?
I'm not talking about silent. I'm not talking about stoic.
I'm talking about really calm. Do you know how to get
yourself to a place where you can truly be calm so that you can send that love?
Because if you're stressed, if you're anxious, if you're worked up
or angry, the love flies out the window. It gets overshadowed by your emotions
that you have. Calmness is vital. In fact, you can't have
self-government without mastering your own calmness. Years ago, I started
teaching people about self-government when they
asked me to. And I would teach them all the skills and how to communicate and
how to solve problems. And I assumed everyone knew how to get
themselves calm. Well, the laugh was on me. People kept
asking, "Yeah, but how do you be calm?" So, I finally made a class called
The Power of Calm so that they could learn the 6-step
process that i go through for how to be calm.
Well guess what? I've got something even a little bit better than that power of
calm class for you. And it is called a Calm Parenting
Toolkit. And I want to give it to you for free.
Because I could spend a lot more time on this video talking about calmness. But I
think you need more time than what i actually can do on a YouTube
video. So, go ahead and get the calm parenting
toolkit. Down in the description of this video there's a link that says calm
parenting toolkit or something like that. Click that, go there. It's totally free.
The course will literally change your heart and your behavior, your
relationships and the whole feeling of love in your home.
bye