Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines
- Robert Schuller

When I write about life lessons, I think that every experience in life can be somehow written as a lesson. It is almost as if everything that happens to us is meant to teach us a lesson that will guide us on our way forward.

The word “lesson” makes most people see themselves sitting in a class with a teacher talking at the front. Many times, it brings up extra homework and fear about being tested on subjects learned. What a shame, because life is a long lesson, with lots of work (at home and outside of home) and daily tests!

Believe it or not, about 20 years ago, I managed to get a group of kids (1½ to 4 years old) to think that life can become a great lesson if only we ask the right question. For them, there were no failures in life, only opportunities to learn. They were so young and uncorrupted by life’s heartaches, I could convince them to think whatever I wanted, so I did!

Later on, I traveled around the world with my program and realized that our perception of life depends on our definition of happiness, knowledge, curiosity, success and failure.

What have I learned today?

If you want to know how those kids felt, look at every experience as fun and learning. Instead of asking “How was it?” ask “What have I learned from it?” Try this every day before going to sleep and allow your mind to extract the learning from the events, thoughts and emotions of the day.

We learn many things all day, every day. Writing down your learnings is a good way to remember them better. Keep a notepad next to your bed and write down your answers to the question “What have I learned today?”

Today, I want to share with you (some of) my notes from this month. I wrote them on notepads not only next to my bed but in the car, in my bag and in my diary. I hope my notes contain some useful learnings for you too:

1. Every time my son (Tsoof) performed, every time he wrote music, every time he played his guitar or practiced for his big audition, I learned that pride and satisfaction are my rewards for waiting such a long time for him to be born.
2. When I went to give a talk at the festival my daughter (Eden) helped organize, everyone came to me and told me “You have the most wonderful daughter in the world”. I learned that, although I did not need other people to tell me that, it made me feel so proud!
3. When I went this month to meet the teacher of my youngest daughter (Noff), I discovered her class would not have enough time to cover all the required material for the national exam and I learned (again) that the responsibility for my kids’ education was, is and will always be mine.
4. At the same meeting, the teacher asked me if we were coming to see Noff dancing with all the year level and I said “Of course!” She said she wanted to make sure, because Noff would receive a special dance award. I learned that she asked it because many parents just don’t come. We would have gone anyway.
5. After discovering my husband (Gal) had a skin cancer and having a stressful month, I learned (again) the importance of emotional strength and good attitude. I learned (again) that life throws many tests at us and we are much stronger than we think we are. Every time we get up in the morning, we have passed that test.
6. During the surgery, time in the hospital, doctors and more doctors, I learned to appreciate the value of health insurance. Thank God money was not an item on our worries list.
7. While Gal was recovering from his surgery and friends came over, I learned how important it is to have friends and how valuable they are in times of joy, but also times of trouble.
8. Every second I worked with “Together for Humanity” to promote living in harmony, I learned how much I love being around kids. I learned they give me strength and I love them so much, I probably get from them more than I give them.
9. This month, we met a new family. They came over for dinner and we had a wonderful time together. I learned that I love meeting new people. I had a chance to meet so many new people this year, it has made me very happy.
10. Both of my sisters were pregnant. One was in hospital for more than 8 weeks, counting hours and days to keep her precious pregnancy and avoid having a premature baby. The other was suffering pain and sleepless nights and considered herself lucky. I learned that when I see someone going through bad things, it makes it easier to pass my own tests.
11. I learned that worrying about my sisters from far away makes me feel helpless and I am not very good with feeling helpless. How can I help if I feel so helpless? I need help myself!
12. In over two months of worrying about my sisters, I learned that my own scars never disappear. I could feel the tension building up in me and all the demons ran loose again. I needed to meditate a lot!
13. I learned that being on Skype two to three times a day with my sisters makes me miss them badly and questions (again) my decision to live on the other side of the world from them.
14. After a year of not using our Jacuzzi, we wrote the yearly goals with the kids and Eden wrote she would love to fix the Jacuzzi and use it more often. With her encouragement, we did! We used it move than 10 times in the last 2 months. Now, every time we do this, Tsoof brings his guitar and plays and we sing and we are so happy, so I learned that asking the kids to share their goals and desires with us contributes a lot to our relationship as a family.
15. This month, Gal and I decided to buy Tsoof a music editing program and to hide it from him until we got it from overseas. I learned that it is very hard for me to keep a secret, but it was well worth it just to see his reaction when we showed him our gift.
16. It took me over 3 weeks to organize a professional development training day, but it was very, very successful so I learned that I’m really good at this!
17. I did a presentation about acceptance and stereotyping at the Ideas Festival in Brisbane for 220 kids with two of my team members. The kids were so cooperative I learned that my work helps me live my purpose of making a difference every day. I learned (again) that education is a great way to make a making difference.
18. I managed to tell jokes on stage at the Ideas Festival and I hoped my kids could hear me. They think (and I agree) that I am not funny at all. I learned that I can be.
19. I received a notice about fees for my kids’ activities at school. I compared what I needed to pay to how happy my kids were at those activities and I learned that I am lucky and happy to be able to allow them to experience so many wonderful programs at school.
20. My laptop is now one year old. This month, I discovered it cannot burn CDs (though it should be able too), but since I had never tried, I did not know how long it had been like that. I learned that, I need to use all the functions of everything I buy in the first month.
21. Just planning our camping for the school break made me so happy I have learned that looking forward to something fun can be a great motivator.
22. Every time I get into the laundry room and look at the shelf unit we have built, which makes the room look so clean and organized, I am happy and proud. From the long quest to organize the laundry room, including attempts to paint the doors, bring in another closet and use a screen wall, I learned that trying one more time and then one more time is the right way to find solutions.
23. When I sat next to a group of people talking about the hassles of having the kids at home during school break, I learned that, although there are challenges to working at home, it provides the huge advantage of looking forward to spending time differently with your kids during the holidays.
24. We watched our kids’ videos from 11 and 19 years ago, which showed the kids themselves, as well as their little sister, what they were like as young kids. I learned (again) the importance of making videos of your kids. The memories of every smart thing they did and their first words do fade and videos are a great way to bring them back to life. I also learned that it was an awesome experience for 7-year-old Noff to see her siblings, who are 7 and 12 years old older than her, in diapers, taking their first walking steps.
25. One of my sisters’ friends, who is 38 years old, decided to have a baby without a partner. Her family is not talking to her and her siblings and mom keep minimal contact with her for fear of her dad’s anger. She asked her mom to come and help her after the birth and her baby, but her mom said she could not come. When my mom heard this, she called my sister’s friend and told her she would come for the first few days and help her out. I learned that my mom, who is 70 years old, has a heart of gold (and I am so happy).
26. This month, I finished writing my best book yet, called “Reflections”. It is a book I have been writing for over 25 years. When I signed it with a sense of achievement and accomplishment, I learned the importance of allowing myself time to grow and evolve. I learned that some of my lifelong projects require purpose and persistence and that in hindsight, everything that happened to me, good or bad, contributes to my life story.
27. From reading the many supporting comments on “Family Matters“, I learned that making an effort to write and share every day is certainly worth it!

My learning list for this month was as big as the one from last month and I learned that my learnings are the result of the challenges, successes and joys I experience. To survive a challenge, I ask myself “What can I learn from this?” To maintain and leverage success, I ask myself “What can I learn from this?”

Not everything in life is beautiful and easy, but everything holds a lesson – a message of encouragement or a warning. When circumstances speak, all you have to do is listen.

Until next time, I wish you great, empowering lessons.

Be happy,
Ronit

No one had warned us about Miss Morrison. When my friends and I picked her classes, it was only because we had to take some psychology classes and hers were given at the best times of the day.

When she entered the first class, it was overflowing. There were people standing around the room with no seats. The classroom was designed for up to 40 people and there were nearly 100 students already. Miss Morrison entered with an angry look on her face. She was so rude you could say she barked her words.

She started reading the class roll and occasionally said to a student, “I don’t like this name. I’m going to call you…” and gave him or her a different name. She also skipped some of the names. When people commented about this, she said, “I only read the names I like to read”. Someone asked her, “What about the names you do not read? Will they be reported as missing?” but she just shrugged her shoulders and never answered.

The class was in terror. Miss Morrison was rude and abusive and I was not sure if I should laugh or cry.

The following week, I entered the class and there were only 17 students there. I remember wondering whether I was brave or stupid to stay in that class. After the previous abusive session, most of the students rushed to the office to change their timetable. Miss Morrison came into the class with a big grin on her face, “Great, it worked”, she said. We looked around at each other, understanding she had done it on purpose.

Only later in life, I understood it was a test of confidence. Only those who were not afraid of her, only those who dared to stay (or had no choice with their time table) could enjoy her wisdom. And only a courageous teacher could dare to take her students through such a test and survive the system…

The first question she asked was, “Who are you?” I was not one of the bravest and I was so afraid of her at that stage. I hoped she would never recognize me and that she would skip my name because she did not like it…

One woman in the class answered. I remember admiring her for the rest if our studies. She said, “My name is Amira, I’m a woman, I’m 26…”

Miss Morrison interrupted her, “Why did you tell me your name?”

Amira was shocked.

“Why do you think it’s important for me to know how old you are?” continued Miss Morrison, her list of questions going on and on.

We were confused at first, but this lesson started a journey of self discovery for all of us. For 4 years, she kept telling us the way we described ourselves was our identity and vice versa.

Years later, when I became a life coach, I understood the full depth of the question “Who are you?” and the types of stories it brings out of different people.

Every person has a story. This story is what we think of ourselves and how we present ourselves to others. Whether we like it or not, we dedicate our lives consciously and subconsciously to support this story, whether or not it is a nice story.

When we present our name, our gender, our profession, our religious background, our place of birth, our talents or our weaknesses, we declare they are part of who we are and we live life to support this declaration.

We become the stories we tell about ourselves

The real difficulty in life is that we believe our stories. When we have told them enough times, we find it hard to change them, because by telling them over and over again, we have convinced ourselves they were true representations of us.

The good news is we believe all the stories, including the good, happy and successful, ones like, “My name is Ronit, I’m a good mother, I love traveling and writing…”

The bad news is we also believe the bad, sad and failure, stories like, “My name is Ronit, I’m not very good with technology, I do not like it when my kids watch TV…”

So stories are not all bad. It only depends which of them you choose to tell yourself.

What’s your story?

If you want to discover your own story, write a letter introducing yourself to the world, as if you were a journalist writing a feature article about yourself. Tell the world who you are. Start from where you think the beginning is. Be honest and describe things as you perceive them, not the way you wanted them to be. Try telling the world how you have reached this point in your life. Write about the highs and lows. Feel free to write the truth. After all, you are the only person who will be reading.

When you are done, check your stories. Which of them are good? Which of them are not healthy for you? Find patterns that repeat. You will be surprised to discover what stories you tell yourself.

If you are a parent, your challenge is to make sure your kids tell powerful stories about themselves. To find out if this is the case, ask them to write a description of who they are. It will give you insights into their minds and what you can do for them to be whole a happy in life. If they are still young, they can draw and tell you what they have drawn. You will be amazed at what comes up in this little activity.

One of Gal’s clients took this exercise so seriously that it took him over 3 months to write his life story. In the process, he learned so much about himself, his fears, and his mindset. Gal received a copy of this story as a printed book and it was as brilliant as it was revealing.

I invite you to my blog, to read all my stories. Every day I write (I have already written over 300 days), I learn something about my own stories…

By the way, my psychology teacher is one of the stories of my life – I am living every day to support it.

Happy stories,
Ronit

A very common human expression is “I wish I could go back in time and change something.Then my life would be different. I wish I could have a second chance”. Let’s explore this a bit, shall we?

Pick an event in your life, which you would give anything to go back to and change. Being unfair to someone close, breaking a leg because you weren’t careful enough, getting caught doing something you shouldn’t have done or anything else you wish hadn’t happened. Think of what this events caused in your life – pain, embarrassment, failure, etc, and make sure you’ve chosen an event you feel very strongly about.

Now, roll back your life to the point in time just before that event. But here’s the catch: you can’t take with you any of the knowledge and skills you’ve accumulated since the event. You must go back to being exactly the same you from before the event took place.

Now, ask yourself this question:

Given a second chance, but being exactly who you were then, with the same fears, same understanding, same beliefs, same knowledge, same mindset, could you really change anything?

If your answer is “yes”, then ask yourself this:

Why didn’t you do it differently the first time?

It’s OK. Take a deep breath, think about it, and the answer will come … you couldn’t, because you didn’t know better, or didn’t have the required skills and missed by a second, or whatever the reason. If the same you was put in the very same situation exactly, you would get the exact same results as you did the first time. In fact, you could go back there a million times and still get the exact same results.

How frustrating! Or is it?

When we’ve done this little exercise, and when our clients have done it, we’ve found that, strangely enough, this thought provides total liberation from any guilt feelings we may have had. The reason we did stupid, cruel, painful or boring things was that they were the only things we could do at the time. Sure, now we know better, but then, we didn’t!

But why stop at a single event? If this is true for one event, isn’t it true for every event? Isn’t it true for every decision in our life? Isn’t it true for every single second we live? Sure it is.

So does this mean that we never ever make mistakes, because we always do the only thing we can do? Absolutely! We always do the one and only thing we can do, and it’s always what we consider at the time to be the best thing to do (from our point of view).

Conclusion #1: I’m OK

Let’s expand this to other people now.

First, we can start with the people we like, because it’s easiest to forgive them. You’ll quickly agree that the people you like, much like you, always do the best they can, because they are such good people. Even when they make mistakes, it’s simply because they couldn’t do any better. Therefore, they are OK too.

The next step is a bit harder, especially when we think of people who do seriously bad things, like rape or murder, but it’s as inevitable as all the previous steps. No matter how we may judge another person’s actions, the person himself is doing the best he can under the circumstances. No matter how “bad” the other person is, their genetics, background and experiences have gotten them to do what we consider to be bad, but it was still what they thought best for them.

Conclusion #2: Everyone else is OK

All this is fine and good, but what do we do with it?

Well, accepting yourself (conclusion #1) will help you relax a great deal and increase your self-confidence. It will eliminate guilt, which is a destructive feeling, from your life forever. You will be free to focus on getting the best outcomes without worrying about things too much. This will, in turn, improve the results you see in your life.

Accepting others (conclusion #2) will help your relationships tremendously, because you will no longer judge other people’s actions and words. You will become very helpful to others, being able to support them in whatever they do. You will be forgiving, because you don’t take anyone else’s actions personally. After all, they are doing the best they can. Forgiveness will help you eliminate anger. This will, in turn, improve the results you see in your life, because people around you will return your kindness and help you too.

“If I could tell the world just one thing, it would be that we’re all OK”
- Jewel

Jewel said it the best way. Yes, If I could, It would be that we’re all OK, no matter what. I have chosen to dedicate my life to teaching acceptance. I want to live you with words of hope.

“Everything will be OK in the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end”
- Ronit Baras

Love and blessings of happiness and acceptance,
Ronit

So a lot of people attend the seminars, buy the books or audio visual programs and do their best to follow the advice of the mostly-self-proclaimed “guru”. However, only few succeed.

Why is this? Why do so many people fail to get the money, the personal growth or the fitness, even when presented with a bullet-proof, step-by-step method, coming from a live example of success?

Good question.  I’m glad you asked.

In all the personal growth and wealth creation material I’ve heard and read, invariably there is the bit where you must let go of your current thinking and adopt the thinking proposed by the new system. “All you have to do is buy <this, that and the other>, learn <some skills>, spend some time every day <doing what I tell you to do> and voilà, your life will change forever”, says your guide-of-the-day, but, try as you might, you cannot see yourself spending that initial amount of money or that initial amount of time.

Another recommendation we find hard to follow is “Delegate. Don’t do everything yourself. Pay others to do the routine tasks for you and focus on strategy”. This means (oh, my God) having to spend money on an ongoing basis, which is even harder than a one-time amount.

“Well, that’s natural”, you say, “How do I know I won’t just lose that money and time I’ve spent and get nothing in return?” In fact, that’s what most people say, and it’s exactly why they don’t make it big like their mentors say they can.

The missing ingredient is a leap of faith. If you got anything out of “What the Bleep Do We Know” and “The Secret”, it should have been that our beliefs and focus change our universe. The people who fail or get limited success do not have the belief that THEY can do it. Their focus is therefore on justifying this belief by finding reasons for their lack of success and then ways to actually not succeed. They subconsciously ask the question “Why can I not do this?”.

The successful people, on the other hand, have faith in their ability to follow through and in their ability to judge good advice. They immediately start focusing on “How will I do this?”

My life coaching instructor told us time and time again “‘Why’ is a past-facing question. If you ask your coaching clients ‘why’, they will look to their past for the answers. ‘How’ is a future-facing question. This question you should ask your coaching clients often”.

So here’s your chance to coach yourself to riches, fitness or personal growth success. Find a quiet place to sit, close your eyes, take a deep breath and relax. First, imagine your mentor’s success and see yourself with them, having achieved your goals and succeeded. Then, go over all the successes you’ve had in the past, reliving the awesome feeling of completion and achievement. Finally, walk yourself through how YOU will carry out each of the steps in the new method. As you do this, make a note of the challenges you may face along the way, and recall how you’ve overcome similar challenges in your life.

When you open your eyes, for each of the remaining challenges, write down the question “How will I <get the desired result>?” and keep the list in your pocket. Your subconscious will know it’s there and will keep finding solutions for you until it finds them all.

[Solution ideas: save, borrow, plan, network, ask, partner, use the Internet, use the 80/20 rule, breathe deeply, smile]

Repeat this self-coaching session with yourself daily (oh, yes you can!) , until you get all the answers and achieve success, because YOU CAN.

This influence gets many people stuck in life. They look at their own bank account and think “Oh, my God, I am such a failure”, while there is much in their life they could see as success. There are others who sacrifice many important things in their life, but their bank balance is large, so they think “Gee, I am so successful, why am I so miserable?”.

Now, I don’t contest the importance of financial comfort, because our world is a lot nicer when we have money. What I am saying is that the link between the amount of money you have and how successful in life is not 1:1. In fact, anyone can see themselves as a success in some areas, sometimes even more so than compared with “the rich people”.

Here are some “personal growth” things that will get you feeling successful in no time:

1. No matter what decision you ever make, it always has a down side. The decision only has to do with what is more important to you. This means that you are always more successful than you could be, had you chosen differently, according to your own priorities. Whenever you make a decision, you choose the most successful option by your definition.
   So when you evaluate your life, remember that by your standards, you are as successful as you could be.
2. The flip side, of course, is to look at what other people sacrifice in order to gain their financial success – time with their kids, broken marriage, lost friends, stress-induced medical conditions and lots more. When you look at their decisions, their down side may be your up side, and your time with your kids, your loving relationships and your health are your successes, even if you’ve had to give up money to have them.
   When you die, seeing the face of people who love you is a lot more comforting than knowing you have money in the bank…
3. Brian Tracey, a truly remarkable man, says that success is a matter of focus and that one should focus on learning and growth, instead of achievements. It may take some time to hit a goal, so keeping motivated can be a challenge on days when nothing is finished. Brian Tracey suggests to focus on improvements instead. Every day, you can be successful at being a bit better than yesterday at something.
   Measure you skill levels at various things and set daily goals to improve them. The compounding of these improvements will take you a long way, but more importantly, you will feel like a success all the time.

[Just to be absolutely clear, many rich people also have friends and lead a good life outside of work. I sincerely hope no rich people have been hurt in the process of creating this post ]

What I’m saying is that the starting point of each one of us is different, so comparing people based on any single factor is ridiculous, let alone a perceived factor. Broaden your definition of success and make it your own. Decide what’s important for YOU, break it down to little bits, conquer them daily and feel successful all the time.

That should put a big smile on your face!