trust-1288018_960_720Trusting Your Child Is Necessary 2

On those mornings, there is very real tension in my life. Whenever my “what is” does

not match my “what ought to be,” I am under stress. In fact that is the heart of any

stress that I feel. To say it yet another way, any stress that I feel can always be traced

back to a tension between “what is” and what I feel “ought to be.”

However, let me take a moment to clarify healthy tension from unhealthy tension. I am

not advocating a life devoid of all tension (see the chapter on Secret Five for an

elaboration on this point). Every great discovery has always been the result of

someone believing that “what is” is not “what ought to be!” The car was invented

because Henry Ford believed that although walking or riding a horse was certainly

“what is,” it was not what “ought to be!”

That type of healthy stress motivates us. However, the tension that demotivates us can

be found when I insist that the unchangeable realities of my life just shouldn’t be! When

I fight my realities either on the job or in my personal life, unhealthy stress erodes my

motivation.

This should help make it clearer. Imagine that there is a “Room Of Reality.” Within that

room, sometimes I’m sick sometimes I’m well; sometimes I make good decisions,

sometimes I make bad decisions; sometimes I make money, sometimes I lose money;

and the list goes on.

Much of what is inside that room I don’t like. In fact my “ought to’s” fight the “what is” of

that room with great vigor! When I’m a child, I live outside of the room. My parents’ role

is to gradually usher me into that room. Anyone with teenagers can appreciate just

how much they fight entering and then staying in that room. We too can fight facing the

realities about the world around us as well as our internal child. We want him/her to be

someone they aren’t equipped to be. Our expectations of the child can be completely

unreasonable, and the child becomes demoralized by the height of the standards.

Many of us grew up in a time when parents did not base their expectations of us upon

any understanding of us as unique individuals. Instead they just pulled their “ought to’s”

out of the air (or out of a book). And if we don’t stop and consider what’s happening, we

will continue to talk to and raise ourselves just like our parents raised us (even if we

don’t agree with their methodologies). That’s why so often the voice of the internal

parent (its words and tone of voice) can be traced back directly to a parent of significant

parental model in our lives as children.

As we learn to listen to the internal child, we will hear some honest words that could

dramatically change the “ought to’s” of the parent. As with all parents, some internal

parents hold unreasonably high demands while some expect little or nothing from the

child. Both approaches directly affect motivation.

Who hasn’t ‘t been frustrated as you tried to type on a computer with someone looking

over your shoulder? You get nervous and make more mistakes when someone is

watching that closely. Or have you ever driven down the interstate with a policeman

behind you? It’s easy to become so nervous that you actually speed. An internal

parent who monitors the child too closely will find the child filled with anxiety and

actually performing worse than if the parent “gave the child some space” and room for

making mistakes.

Of course the other extreme is also extremely detrimental. The permissive internal

parent allows the child to say and do anything with no censorship. The result of this

laissez-faire dynamic is a complete lack of self discipline. See the chapter on Secret

Five for a more detailed examination of this style of relationship.

As this chapter concludes take a moment to again sit quietly and give permission to

your internal child to speak in complete honesty about the expectations of the internal

parent. What expectations does the child believe are unreasonably high? Are there

any areas in which the child would desire more structure from the parent? Listen and

write any response from the child in the space at the top of the next page.