Lion’s Whiskers offers this courage challenge: As an opportunity to put your moral courage muscles to work, take a pet peeve and trace its origins. If you find yourself complaining about hiked gas prices, consider the choices in your life that have made you dependent on your automobile. When you are annoyed by another’s behavior, consider how that behavior may mirror something that you deny, don’t accept, or don’t like in yourself. For example, if you find yourself complaining about how long your child takes to get ready in the morning, is it possible that you, too, are not a morning person? Is it possible that you might need to wake up a little earlier and/or help your child the night before to ease the morning routine? Perhaps you find yourself complaining about people who ignore local bylaws and don’t pick up their dogs’ poop, forgetting the times you, too, were caught without a poop bag?
Tracing your own responsibility for what goes on in the world will help you teach your child to do the same. None of us lives in a bubble – our lives are connected in an intricate web of decisions and choices. For a humbling example of how our kids offer us daily opportunities to put this moral courage challenge into practice, read Lisa’s post What Goes Around, Comes Around!
Care to share one of your pet peeves and what its origins might have to do with you?
EXCELLENT courage challenge! I am often frustrated with my teenager's lack of organizational skills which are pretty much non existent.Yet, interesting enough, like me, he manages to get himself to school or appointments on time but never ahead of schedule.I somehow remember throughout university I managed to inconspicuously slip in the backdoor and find a seat while the prof simultaneously walked in the front door of the classroom. The challenge is to examine my organizational skills or perhaps lack of… I certainly don't need to look far as I know exactly what I will find…. a large box (very large) containing family photos firmly planted in my bedroom closet patiently waiting to be organized into albums; several drawers filled to the max with papers and stuff desperately needing attention. How many years have I neglected these jobs and others??
Love to hear about your process of self-reflection and read your honest response to our challenge Anonymous! It is often the qualities we most judge in our children that we, too, deny, judge, or otherwise are ashamed to admit in ourselves.Through compassion for ourselves, translating into empathy for our children as they sometimes struggle with the very same things we do, we can offer our children the gift of acceptance.Afterall, empathy is at the root of moral courage.Acceptance, even of those very self-same habits we wish to deny in ourselves, counter-intuitively leads to transformation!Shame, judgment, and denial can keep our thinking, feeling, and being stuck; thus, perpetuating the very things we may most wish to change.Way to focus on what you and your child ARE able to accomplish, instead of holding one another to some punishing standard of perfection!