Our 31 days to the inner rhythm of the heart, the root foundation of a house of peace, is in progress.  In the vein of those who are setting a New Year’s intention with “one word”, I offer the word of today to you: potential. Read on for more…

I recently attended a breastfeeding conference where the speaker talked about a “three step intervention model” for counseling breastfeeding mothers from the standpoint of a solutions model.  The three steps were:  relationship building, goal setting, and developing strategies.

By looking at this series of posts, perhaps you started off with a goal in your mind. Perhaps it was to take your home that you felt was filled with strife, a home that was not yet peaceful and turn it over.  Perhaps your goal was to reduce even your occasional yelling.  Perhaps your goal was to attune more deeply into your own needs.  We often have to start with the end in mind in order to affect any real change, and the first step is to acknowledge that real change is needed and wanted.  Is real change something you feel can do?

Hopefully this series has give you a lot of inspiration in terms of building relationships with not only your children, but also with your deepest and most intimate self.  Building rapport with our children, and building on the strength of our children and the strengths within ourselves are huge steps toward being able to overcome a struggle with anger and yelling.

Lastly, we have to develops strategies.  How will we achieve our goals?  To whom are we responsible?  In the very beginning of this series, I talked about enlisting an accountability partner.  This is very important! 

The reason we think about these things is that anger and yelling zaps the POTENTIAL of our families.  It takes rapport and empathy out of the picture.  It gives a distorted picture of the human soul to our children. 

And it really isn’t enough to just “not yell”.  Yelling is an outward manifestation of an inward spirit of anger, of frustration, of unmet needs.  It has often been said that communication is only about 30 percent verbal and the rest of communication is non-verbal cues.  What energy are you giving off in your non-verbal cues?  Anger zaps the potential of our own selves, our best selves.

There are certain things that we would NEVER do.  What if anger was one of those things that we just would NEVER do?  What would that look like and how could we get there?

We have only a few days (six!) left in this series and I hope to leave you with some strategies and inspiration for long-standing positive change.

More to come and many blessings,
Carrie