Lessons from Oatmeal and ABC’s

By M-Power

I was watching some preschoolers play the other day and I think there are a few lessons we can learn from them on how to adult.  When I first started watching them, the teacher had directed them to a discovery center and she had put alphabet letters in some oatmeal (dry, not cooked). The kids had scoops and as they scooped, they discovered there were some letters in the oatmeal. They were then to find the letter on the alphabet strip next to the discovery center and put the letter there.  The kids did this for a while and found most of the letters, but not all.  Then they took some cars that were near the center and began running their cars in the oatmeal and making up all sorts of scenarios and knocking into one another, and driving on again.  I thought about the kids and how they readily…

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How to Make Up Your Mind: Try Some Stuff???

By M-Power

Let’s start with what gets in the way of making up our mind about something. Usually we create some kind of pressure or expectation that we have to get it right, That expectation creates a fear that we may get it wrong and who wants to be wrong? And so, we do not make a decision at all. Brett Harward is a friend of mine and the author of the 5 Laws That Determine All Of Life’s Outcomes. Brett talks about the law of frequency. And my understanding of that comes from an example that Brett shared with me. If you can imagine having a nice little paper bag, and I put in 20 $1.00 bills. Then I add 15 $5.00 bills. Then I add 10 $20.00 bills and 5 $50.00 bills. To top it off, I put in 1 $100.00 bill. Now, which one of the bills do you want?…

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How To Reduce Children’s Stress and Frustration

By M-Power

Stress, and frustration usually come up, because we feel that things are not the way they should be. Sound familiar anyone? This triggers an emotional response for us as parents when we think things are not how they should be. This happens to our children also. If we see our kids stressed out or getting frustrated, the biggest help we can give them is to take a step back and keep ourselves calm. If our children are frustrated and we become frustrated, we aren’t helping. Take a deep breath and kind of detach for a moment. Check your face. Check your posture, your body language. Check your voice. Maintaining a calm voice, face, and body will show our children how we act when we think things are not the way they should be. Your amazing imagination has the capability of dreaming up scenarios that are either better or worse than…

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5 Effects Of Bad Parenting

By M-Power

As a psychologist, I have seen some of the effects of bad parenting. Having said that, before I get into the top 5, it’s a relief to know that most of these things can be fixed. Especially if we jump on it quickly and early. The first thing that came to my mind is one of the effects of bad parenting is the endangerment of children. I’m thinking about a video that we’ve probably all seen, Home Alone. The parents somehow forgot and left one of their children home alone. Macaulay Culkin plays the child, who at first was a little tipped over but then starts to enjoy himself. Endangerment is one of the issues we need to look out for and especially when it comes to abuse. There is no excuse for the abuse of children. And that’s not what this particular video is about. But that’s one of…

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The Best Way For KIDS To Totally MANIPULATE Their Parents

By M-Power

One of our younger viewers on our YouTube Channel asked, “Dr. Paul, can you tell us the best way to totally manipulate our parents?” And I can. Parents, before you run screaming away, stick with me because I think you are going to like the final answer. Let’s explore a few options first.  Maybe, the best way for you to totally manipulate your parents is to just tell them what they want to hear. You know what they want to hear. So, just tell them that. Vicki, you are a mom. Can you tell if they’re doing that? Vicki: Usually I can tell right away. Paul: Can you tell if they’re doing that as a parent? Yeah, you can. It stinks a little. I mean you can kind of smell it. You can see it coming. Tell them what they want to hear. Vicki: No. That’s not it. Paul: Well…

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How To Achieve Peace Of Mind In Daily Life

By M-Power

Peace of mind is something that I get asked about a lot and I have one of our Certified Live On Purpose Coaches, Devan Bosch, to help us out. Devan, you’ve got a lot of reasons for knowing about peace and there’s not a lot of peace in the world. Would you agree? Devan: Absolutely. It’s all around us. Everywhere to go. On my way here this morning, I was struggling with it, just thoughts about things that have happened over the last couple of days. People that have failed to show up in my life and different things like that. Paul: There’s all kinds of negative news out there. It just feels like the world is in turmoil. So we’re addressing today this question of how to achieve peace. How to find that or create it as you and I talked about quite a bit in our daily lives?…

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How To Stop Overthinking Everything And Find Peace Of Mind

By M-Power

You will either run your mind or your mind will run you. If you have to choose between those two, which one do you want? To run your own mind, you have to know a little bit about how it operates. Metacognition is a made-up word, in psychology all it means is thinking about thinking. I want you to notice that you can do this. Because as you think about your own thinking, we create a little space, and in that space is where choice exists. This will be really important in our strategy to stop overthinking everything and experience some peace. Metacognition, thinking about thinking, turn that on for a moment and I’m going to walk you through a little exercise. I got this idea from a book that I’ve been reading called, “The Power Of Now,” by Eckhart Tolle. It’s an amazing, profound book that helps us to…

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How To Do The Right Thing When It’s Hard

By M-Power

One of our viewers asked, “Doctor Paul, how do you do the right thing when it’s hard?” There’s some psychological tricks to this. And I’m going to fill you in on each one of them. First of all, newsflash! The right thing often is hard. Do you remember in Harry Potter where Dumbledore is talking to Harry and he says, “There will come a time when you have to decide between doing what is right and doing what is easy.” That implies that the right thing is hard. My friend Art Coombs is just finishing his new book entitled, Hard Easy, Easy Hard, and it’s about this concept where if you choose to do the easy thing right now, you probably are going to create a harder life for yourself. And then the converse of that. If you choose to do the hard thing now, you’re more likely to set…

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How To Help Your Spouse With Depression

By M-Power

There are four specific things you can do right now to help your spouse with depression and they may seem to be simple. Just because something seems simple, it doesn’t mean it is easy. First, your job is to love them no matter what and even if… It isn’t to make sure that they anything. Let’s take the word love and break it down into 4 steps for each of the letters in the word LOVE. L stands for LISTEN. You have two ears and one mouth. Let’s use them in that particular ratio. This is so powerful. Just yesterday, I was meeting with a couple where they both had some things they needed to share. She started to share what was on her mind and he immediately started to speak over her and interrupt her and interject his own thinking and agendas. She immediately closed right down. Can you…

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Family Home Evening | Bring Power, Principle And Purpose Home

By M-Power

Today, we’re going to discuss with you a topic that brings power, principle and purpose home. We call it Family Home Evening. This is going to rock your world. Paul: Vicki, we’ve had a practice in our family that I’ve realized in recent years (after the kids are grown) has been a really powerful practice. We have been implementing this in some of our parenting groups and the programs that we are doing for positive parenting. Some people call it different things, it could be family council, family together time, family night. I have one family that calls it family drum circle. It’s a meeting that you hold on a consistent basis, we recommend weekly. There are other things you ought to do daily, like family dinner, for example, but this is a meeting that you’ll hold once a week for a couple of very specific purposes. Implementing this as…

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