Hello

Often it is the milieu in which a person is raised that allows her to see the world from a distinct paradigm that changes her perspective and leads to innovation.

I was a huge Star Trek fan as a kid.  Loved the original and the Next Generation.

Shatner’s character Kirk had an episode where he was challenged to get rid of the trauma of his life and be free – he said he needed his pain, it’s what made him who he was.  And Piccard did a vignette wherein he had a whole lifetime of experience, that was distinctly different from that of being a captain, all transmitted in a dream.  Through that dream he was able to know an entire group of people who had since become extinct and it changed his perspective of what to do in future situations.

I remember even as a young person these ideas held deep meaning for me.

In my experience, your response to adversity is what makes you unique and can create space for a new perspective in the world, a new paradigm through which to view your world or circumstances.

Parenting offers a way to transmit your gifts from your early experiences to your child so that he or she can learn through your adversity and have innovative approaches to old problems.

This is one of the very best actions that you can take to assist your children, to openly and directly approach and discuss controversial and profound issues with innovative and honest ideas.

Certainly one of the things that interferes with this is when you are holding on to a hurt and feeling injured.  That injury can cloud your full capacity to understand and learn the gift presented through your injury or trauma.  That clouding can actually create or allow for the transmission of prejudice, hatred, and stereotypes.

The best way to clear up the injury or cloudy perceptions is to use a mindful approach to the traumatic experience.  To use a paradigm shift in how you perceive the events, making an effort to shift from figure to ground – from the injury (figure) to the background and context of the event (ground) to more fully understand their relationship to each other – it gives you a more holistic picture.

This isn’t to say to negate the pain but rather to look at what benefits came out of the trauma. To investigate what aspects of the experience were due to a lack of clarity on your own part, what had to do with an internal misbelief or misunderstanding, and what about the experience was a catalyst to change your life for the better.  There are experiences, like the death of a child or loved one, which will not offer any of these kinds of insights – in those circumstances the way through the cloudiness or pain is to discern how to change your response to the adversity or how to keep the positive memory of that person alive through your actions.  In my own personal experience I learned to always let my loved ones know they matter whenever I took leave of them because that may be the last time I would see their faces or hear their voices.  I learned to think about how I relate to others so that it is mindful and not hurtful.  I have seen others start profound agencies to help others in response to a profound loss.  In this way the loss has given rise to the gift of helping others on  a large-scale.

Through this process you can allow yourself to perceive events in a new way and offer a new perspective on how to be or act in the world.

Your actions create a webbing or thread connecting you to others and your future to your past.  Acting from  a mindful perspective increases your focus and purposive action/creation in your world.  Transmitting your gifts through parenting assists your children to have fuller more clarified lives.

It is a ripple effect; you are transmitting a new way of being that is based on mindfulness and wellness responses to adversity and stress.  The effect of which will be more balance and health for your children.

See you tomorrow.

Beth