A parenting coach argues that love—for your child and yourself—solves the dilemmas that logic can't. After seven years working with families, he's noticed parents give their kids more love than they give themselves, leading to burnout. The antidote is recognizing that inner critic isn't you, and tapping into the safety net of love.
Hi, good morning everybody. Good morning, how are you? Um, I hope you are outstandingly well this morning. So, um, yeah, I've had a lot of favorites in my A to Z of happiness so far, but this one— and I might say this again for another one— um, is my favorite. And it's, uh, so we've got to X X, X, X, X. And I thought, well, what could I talk about with X? And then I thought, no, about X's as in the kisses on a, on a, on a card or an email or a letter that we send, uh, those that, uh, those that we love. So this is the ultimate— this is the ultimate solution to any dilemma. That you find yourself in. And what do I mean by that? Surely there can't be one ultimate solution to everything. Isn't this the silver bullet that we're looking for as parents, as children, as husbands, as wives? Yeah, it's love. So I speak to a lot of parents who are in a lot of, a lot of pain, and they're in a lot of confusion, they're in a lot of anguish. They love their kids, and their kids are are suffering for whatever that reason may be. At the moment, there's a lot about kids not wanting to go back to school, kids at back school and not— sorry, kids not wanting to go back to school because of COVID or because they were bullied last year before COVID happened, or they're worried about bullying in the future. Or they're just scared, or they're off school and they're missing their friends and they're missing that, and parents are struggling. Here's the thing: the biggest thing that we can do for ourselves is love ourselves no matter what. So I see this time and time again. With parents and their love for their child. Their love for their child is totally unconditional, and yet they can't give themselves a break. They can't. Kids don't come with rule books. Um, COVID don't come with I died out of it. The science is unknown. We're all looking for answers and they're not there. But most politicians can't— they can't tell us that because they know that we're afraid. So they've got to tell us that there is a solution. A scientific solution, that is, and that they are working on the science. Well, the only solution is love, and there's no science to love. There's no reason. There's no reason to love. There's no logic to love. Love's here in the heart. Here in the heart. You know, people talk about emotional intelligence. Well, emotions are in the heart. Intelligence is in the head. So, you know, no Knowing stuff isn't the answer. The answer is loving ourselves no matter what, no matter what's going on. Loving yourself like you love your child. Sure, you have your moments, you have your moments, but what I see is A lot of parents giving more love to their kids than they have for themselves. And, um, so parents will often say, I'm as happy as my least happy child. I think it works the other way around, you know. They're as happy as you are. They're If you can love yourself no matter— if you can love yourself no matter what, if you can give yourself a break, give yourself a break. Stop trying to figure it out. You know, I've been trying to figure out stuff. I'm trying to figure out stuff with my work with kids for like 7 years. The kid stuff is easy. Figuring out how to talk to partners. I didn't— I'm talking about partners for my social enterprise, not my, not my wife. Figuring out how to talk to you as parents, figuring out how to talk to schools, figuring it out. And, uh, you know, that when we're, when we're working on it, when we're working on a problem like that, as hard as that, as incessantly as, as I do sometimes, We don't we don't get to a solution. The solution comes out of the blue. The solution comes from love. So take the pressure off yourself. It's not you that's putting your pressure on yourself, isn't it? It's that it's that societal expectation. You know, we weren't we weren't born putting pressure on ourselves. You are not. Putting pressure on yourself. This, like you know, how can we be more self-confident? How can we have more self-esteem? Well, that self isn't the true. That isn't our true self. That isn't the true self that we were, the person that we were when we were born. That big bundle of love and purity and perfection that you you saw in your child is what your parents saw in you, and that's who you truly are. Uh, that, that perfection. Not, not this whole strive, you know, we all strive, don't we? We're all striving to meet it, to, to, to be the best that we can, and we're comparing ourselves. Who's the we that's comparing ourselves? It's that voice in our head. It's not, it's not us. It's not who we truly are. So Give yourself a break, and if you can't give yourself a break, give me a call and I'll I'll I'll help you. I'll help you get into that position when you get where you're giving yourself a break because that's where the answers come from. That's what I love doing. I love to helping. People calm down enough to see their own answers because I don't have your child. You you know your child best, and all I've got to do is calm you down. You know, mums come on the phone, dads come on the phone, and this and that and then and then and then and then there's a whole dialogue, a whole history of of trouble, and you know that we're so caught. We're always all of us are so you know when something we can't see the wood for the trees. That's what I mean. And love is, is, is, is, is what gives us the fuel. It's the fuel that helps us see the wood for the trees. Um, but we, we can't see that sometimes. Um, we need somebody to point us to the place where it is, and then we see it. That's all I do. I point you to that place of love. And I help you point your child to that place of love, that place before they had the concerns that they have at that moment, the place before, before they picked up that, you know, we all pick up this rubbish from school that we're not good enough and we're not good enough at maths and we're not good at English, we're not good enough at football, we're not, we're not good enough. Um, And all that negative voice in our head—it isn't us. It isn't us. Believe me, I thought it was me for a long time, and I still get lost in it. But I've got a safety net, safety safety net, and that safety net is love. And I want to show you that safety net. See you soon. Bye bye.
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