Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us
- Jane Austen

Two weeks ago, I ran a leadership camp for 26 kids from five different schools. For two days, I asked them many times what made them proud. Believe it or not, it was not easy for everyone to reply. From as early as 12 years old, though the definition of “proud” is “Feeling pleasurable satisfaction over an act, possession, quality or relationship by which one measures one’s stature or self-worth”, many kids thought that being proud meant boasting or being arrogant.

In the morning, I told them about a game Gal had made up, which is written on our white board at home, “I’m proud of me!”

As kids, we learned that pride is the territory of adults who show off with their “possessions”. Parents were proud of their kids for doing what was expected and when the kids’ behavior improved, the parents’ status improved as well. Teachers did exactly the same. The older generation used statements of pride to build a sense of belonging and set standards.

In the “olden days”, being proud of yourself involved the risk of being considered arrogant and only people in superior social standing could afford to take that risk. I thought the definition of pride has long changed from external approval to recognizing self worth. So I was very surprised to hear the adults in the camp, who are leaders and educators, sharing stories of hiding their own success to avoid being seen as bragging by others.

Despite many social changes and a personal development trend, kids are still dependent on external pride, grow up to be adults starving for external pride and raise kids dependent on external pride…

Time to change

As a life coach, I find that most of the personal development process is refining the definition of life experiences and finding healthy, empowering definitions that will help us move forward to a happy, healthy and fulfilling life. In other words, if you are not happy, it means your definitions of happiness, fear, anxiety, wealth, relationships and so on are making you unhappy and need to change.

One of my clients once said to me, “Ronit, but this is just a change in my mind, not in real life”, so I said, “It’s a change in your mind and therefore, it is a change in your real life, because your mind is real life”.

It is as simple as that – you change your definitions, then your thoughts, ideas and actions change and there you have it, a changed reality, only this time it is the change you have been looking for.

I would like to use this opportunity to spread the word about the importance of refining the definition of being proud in yourself as fuel for the engine of your personal development.

I will be proud of myself if by the end of this article, I can convince you that there is a big difference between arrogance and pride in yourself and that you should be proud of yourself, because it will make you happy.

Ronit’s new rules

Growing up in a house that confused pride with arrogance and never hearing the word “I am proud of you” was not very helpful in making me proud of myself (being a sick girl and a bad student with a bad behavior did not help either). I remember glimpses of pride when I hit a ball in a street game and being good at sports, but generally, pride was not part of my emotional vocabulary.

I was 16 when things changed for me, after being kicked out of high school at the end of Grade 10. I realized that my definition of life was leading me to a very sad place. I cried for days and agonized over this for hours, until I discovered that my self esteem was extremely dependent on what my parents and teachers thought or said about me and that I could not encourage myself at all.

You see, until that moment, I did not think I had any control over my life, because I had been giving that control to others whose job, I thought, was to provide for me. They were busy “feeding me fish”, but never taught me how to “fish” for myself. My emotional food was their approval and external rewards and I was doomed to starve, because I did not know how to fulfill my own needs. The people around me helped me get up in the morning and go to school using punishments and school grades, but I never learned what I needed to tell myself in order to motivate myself to get up in the morning. Realizing that my definition of what needs to drive me forward is pathetic was painful and from this pain, I was driven to change the definition.

So I said to myself

Whatever other people think about motivation, success, health and good relationships is only theirs, not mine. Their thoughts and ideas may lead them to motivation, success, health and good relationships, but not me. How they navigate their life may be good for them, but not me. If I want to control my own life, I need to find my own definitions and my own ways!

And I started my personal development journey right then and there.

Many years have passed since this first awareness. The good thing about personal development is that it never ends and even when you think you have reached a desired state or understanding, there are higher states and understandings waiting for you to reveal them. The most important things I refined when I was 16 were my basic rules of living. When life was tough and no one could save me from myself, all I had to focus on was following them and so I did. Religiously, slowly, one action after the other, I used my new rules to guide me. Here are the rules I followed:

1. Life is a personal journey. No one can make you feel anything, either good or bad. Stop blaming others and expecting others to motivate you. You are the captain or your own ship, so take charge!
2. Everything that happens in life must move you forward. Although this may seem strange, pain can also help you move forward. If you are stuck, feel overwhelmed or hurt too much to recognize a step forward, ask yourself, “What good can come out of this?” Ask and you will find the answer. I have gone through some tough things, yet a lot came out of them when I asked the right questions. And if you saying to yourself, “Ronit, but it was all in your mind”, you are right – it was and it still is.
3. Life is a choice! Regardless of how horrible the situation is, you have a choice. Practice choosing. I could choose to be a good student, I could choose to behave, I could choose to be healthy and you know what, when I realized it, I chose all these things!
4. Do not mix choosing and being a fortune teller. Every day is the first day of your new life. You can plot a new course and sail to a new destination, but you cannot predict the weather, who you will meet on your journey or how those will affect your trip. Do not waste time and energy trying to predict the future. Some choices will work and others will not – choose anyway! If you want to hit a target, you have to practice shooting.
5. Happy moments and success experiences are the fuel of every progress on your personal development journey and it is your responsibility to refill your own motivation tank. What I appreciate about myself and my life, what I have achieved, what I can now do better, what I have learned (especially from failures) and what I am proud of provide the energy for a happy life. It was easy – I made a list of happy moments and achievements, skills and things I was grateful for and looked at them whenever I felt down. I still do this! Over 25 years later, I am teaching others to use this technique and it works for them too.
6. Do not confuse being proud with being arrogant and putting others down. Being proud of yourself is “feeling happy and satisfied about an action, decision, quality, possession or association that positively reflects on my confidence and self worth and I do not need anyone to feel bad for me to be happy and satisfied with myself”. Suddenly, after defining this, others around me could be wonderful and great and I swapped envy with inspiration.

Refining my basic rules of life has helped me move from darkness to light, where social life was wonderful (I started going out with Gal), academic success was easy (6 months after being accepted on probation to Grade 11, I received an excellence award for academic achievement), my relationship skills improved (a month into Grade 11, I started editing the school newsletter and joined the school council) and the ride since has been much smoother.

The pride game

The last 6 months have been a long and wonderful “Pride Therapy” for us (highly recommended!). We were proud of overcoming Gal’s health challenges and the stress and anxiety concerning my sisters and my new nephews. We were proud of our successes at work, new projects and the wonderful successes of our kids (which positively reflect on our confidence and self worth as parents). All these motivated us to move forward.

But our proud moments were occasional and mostly related to external events. We needed some ongoing way to feel we are on the right track. We needed something daily.

One day, Gal returned from his morning walk and wrote on our white board “I’m proud of myself”. When we sat down for dinner, he said, “Today, we will start a new game, called ‘I’m proud of myself’. When we describe our day, each of us will tell the rest about things he or she is proud of” and I thought, “Yes, this is brilliant. What a great way to ‘learn to fish’”. It took only 2-3 days for the kids to get the hang of it and we got a chance to declare our pride in our achievements and efforts out loud and hear ourselves saying them. It felt great.

On camp, at night, when the kids went to bed, I entered their rooms and told them that at night, before they go to bed, it is a good time to fuel their ships with motivation by going over the day and taking happy moments and successes that positively reflect on the way they see themselves. We then had one round of “I’m proud of myself” in each room.

Just before kids went home from camp, I asked them to tell me about the most meaningful things they got from our time together. To me, if they took nothing but ways to fuel themselves and reduce the dependency, I had done great. Kathleen, my wonderful and inspiring Together for Humanity partner, wrote what they said on a piece of paper.

Every other word was “proud”.

I left home that afternoon tired and happy, knowing this could fuel me for a long time. I was very proud of myself!

Wishing you a proud life,
Ronit

Why is this? Better yet, once we know why this is, how can we benefit from this knowledge to become happier?

I am so glad you asked…

First, an introduction to human sensory perception (relax, this is the end of big words, except one). Think about a time when you stepped out of your warm home and into a cold street. At first, the feeling is sharp – your face, your ears and your nose seem to drain heat out of your body and pour it out. Then, you start feeling the cold in your fingers and feet. You shiver. Your muscles tighten.

But then, the strangest thing happens. As time goes by, you feel the cold less and less, until you can stay outside as long as you like. Although the temperature does not change anymore, it seems to be going UP for you, because you feel more and more comfortable.

Turns out the human nervous system mostly notices changes – a drop or a rise in temperature, more or less pressure on the skin or joints, the presence of a chemical in the nose or on the tongue, the presence or absence of a particular sound and the presence or absence of light in a particular color. Scientists call this “excitation”. When the temperature, pressure, chemical concentration, sound or light stays the same, our system gets used to it. Scientists call this “habituation”, from the word “habit”.

To test this yourself right now, fix your eyes on something that is bright white, like one of the lights on the ceiling. Count to 10 and then come back here.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

What you probably see now is a dark spot in the shape and size of the light but in “negative”. If you blink, you will see the light again when your eyes are closed and the “negative” when they are open.

This happens because as you stare at the light, the cells in your eyes “get used” to the light and become less sensitive to it. When you look somewhere else, it notices all the other colors, but not the color of the light until some time has passed.

The same happens with our emotions and especially with happiness. When something really great happens to us – we bump into someone we like, somebody buys us flowers or our kids give us a hug – there is a difference between our degree of happiness before and after, so we feel very happy very quickly. We get excited.

However, as times goes by, the effect of that encounter, those flowers and that hug fade, our emotional system gets used to them and we blend them into the background until we are back. We become habituated.

It actually gets worse, oddly enough.

Research on porters at a loading dock measured their physical response to going in and out of cold storage. The difference in temperature was 40 degrees Celsius (72 Fahrenheit). Experienced porters adapted so quickly to the temperature changes, they hardly noticed them anymore.

So what happens when you work around people you like every day? What happens when you get flowers every week? What happens when your kids hug you a lot? We get used to it. It becomes a habit and no longer excites us.

This can become a challenge in very common situations, like marriage, parenting and work. The hunt is over, we got the girl/boy, we even have kids together, no more romantic excitement, now what? Kids do well in Math, keep bringing home those good results, nobody gets excited anymore, now what? Work is great and fulfilling, then stops being new, we already know what happens next, now what?

The solution is a combination of variety, gratitude and updating our emotional position in life (our “normal” state).

More variety for more happiness

It is easy to see that a boring life leads to unhappiness. Therefore, it is also easy to see that making changes spices life up and leads to happiness.

Changes can be very small, like rearranging the position of the furniture in the living room, putting flowers on the dining table, switching from plain white napkins to colorful ones, drinking in special glasses for a week and so on.

Changes can be bigger, like painting a room, clearing the garage, doing up the garden or dining at a restaurant. Really big changes might be getting a new car, moving house and changing jobs.

Whatever you change, as long as it is OK with everyone, the level of happiness around the house will increase for a while. If you keep changing things from time to time, you will generate more happiness.

When you plan your changes, watch out for negative reactions, like worrying about the effects on your finances of buying a new car. Start with smaller changes, get everybody on board and gradually notice together how your happiness increases until you like making changes and can make bigger ones.

More gratitude for more happiness

There is a limit to the things you want to change. A few obvious ones are your family members and most of your physical features.

What you can do is feel grateful for the good things in your life. Make a list of them, read your list every day, express your gratitude to the people around you who make you happy and watch your happiness grow.

Here is a list of things many people take for granted, at least after a while. See if it makes you any happier to notice that you have them:

• Having a home
• Being healthy (even mostly healthy)
• Having access to the Internet
• Living in a free country where you are not afraid of the government
• Being able to send the kids to school for 12 years
• Living in peace
• Being able to buy food in abundance at the supermarket, rather than hunting, gathering or growing all of it

Feeling any better?

How to raise your emotional position

There is a girl we know, who was a school captain, who is a truly fine performing artist, playing violin and percussions, singing and dancing, and who always, always smiles.

We have seen her in stressful situations, being in the middle of a mess and organizing her friends with a big smile on her face. We have seen her playing music, singing and dancing many times with a big smile on her face. She comes from an large family and we know she did not always have all the equipment she needed. To our family, this girl is the ultimate role model.

Smiling takes you to a happier place. As simple as it may seem, smiling works miracles. It is a chemical thing.

Try it.

Yes, now. Come on. Smile.

Feeling any better?

Keep smiling, then.

When you smile, you do things better, quicker and you think they are easier. Then, you get better results and this makes you happier.

When you smile, people tend to smile back at you, making your world a happier place, full of smiling people. Then, it is easier to smile more and you become happier.

When you smile at people, they are far more willing to help you, so you have less friction and more cooperation. Being “on the same wavelength” with others will make it even easier to smile and keep you happier longer.

Not a smiling person? Remember the movie Hook? Grown up Peter Pan needed a happy thought to lift his spirits so he could fly. Think of your kids. If they are no longer cute and cuddly, think of them when they were cute and cuddly and SMILE. Feel the tingle in your ears and neck, show your teeth, raise your cheeks, imagine yourself holding your kids for the first time, throwing them up in the air with excitement, bouncing with them on a trampoline or swinging with them at the playground.

Does this feel good or what?!

Now, do this first thing every morning and your whole day will start on a positive note. Things will go your way, you will be pleasantly surprised and your happiness will keep growing as you smile your way through the day.

Have a happy day,
Gal

When I was in high school, I spent many hours reading science fiction. One of the books I still remember well was called “Man Plus” by Frederik Pohl. In the book, astronaut Roger Torraway is preparing to go to Mars, which has a very different atmosphere and pressure and requires special vision. So he is fitted, among other things, with special bionic eyes.

After the eyes are implanted in his head, he wakes up from his surgery unable to see anything. He complains to the surgeon, who then tells him his eyes are connected to the same nerves as his natural ones were and instructs him to open the bionic eyes the way he opened his eyes before.

Roger searches his brain in growing panic, until he finally finds the switch. He flicks the switch on and he can see!

I have used this analogy while going on rides at theme parks. Rides are built so that you cannot see the big dip or the steep slide ahead until you are right upon it, and then, there is nothing you can do to stop the fall. The pit of your stomach is filled with fear, which is only reinforced by the screaming people all around you.

I recently went on a few rides, not having done so in a long time. As expected, whenever that horrible turn came, the knot formed in my stomach and my brain started screaming “Oh, s…”. I decided to trust the builders of the ride and remembered the people before me arriving safely at the foot of the ride and getting out with a big smile on their face. Then, although my fear did not disappear completely (those ride builders sure do a good job), it was mostly replaced by sheer enjoyment of the fall or slide, which allowed me to also pay attention to details my scared mind would have missed on the way down.

Being committed to my relationship with Ronit, I have also developed a love switch. No matter how angry I might be or how frustrated, I give myself some distance, take a few deep breaths (I exhale all the air from my chest and stomach before inhaling as much as I can) and look at her again from a neutral point of view. I ask myself, “What must she be going through to act as she has just done?”

Of course, this takes practice, but by “flicking this switch” I can now calm myself like this and imagine Ronit’s state of mind, which floods me with understanding and love towards her.

Many of our coaching clients are full of self criticism and regrets. They ask us to help them build self confidence and feel good about themselves. Knowing how damaging regret can be, Ronit and I show them how to create a new switch in their mind, the “I always do the best I can” switch.

Although this mental switch seems very useful, it too takes practice to master, but it works! After a while, our clients are able to forgive their young selves and their current selves for many things they once considered horrible and they fill with energy and a zest for life.

I used to be quite a competitive driver on the road. I would challenge myself to get everywhere in the shortest possible time, even when it did not really matter. Of course, this meant that other drivers were just a nuisance, because they were in my way, preventing me from achieving my driving goals.

Whenever we went somewhere as a family, I drove the car, but sometimes, I had to sit next to Ronit as she drove and I just went ballistic. “How can you drive so slowly? Quick, change lanes! You missed the light! What are you doing?!”

Sure, I noticed that when Ronit and I drive separate cars, starting at the same time and going to the same place, she somehow makes it to our destination within a very short time (usually just a few seconds), but I still did my best to arrive as quickly as I could.

While being coached, I created a mental switch from “I must get there as fast as I can” to “I prefer to relax and enjoy the ride”. Sometimes, I find myself cruising along, humming to myself, looking around and having a good time in the middle of heavy traffic. I look at the other drivers, smile at them and when I see one who is distressed, I think to myself, “Poor thing. It’s no use stressing on the road. It’s a lot more fun being relaxed and open”.

Last week, I was taking a walk with my son Tsoof and told him I was going to write about switches. To my surprise, Tsoof had a story of his own.

Being a highly auditory kid, Tsoof’s biggest challenge is ignoring noises and sounds. Somehow, his room seems to collect the sounds in the house and amplify them, which even I have found hard to shut out. But Tsoof told me that whenever he goes to sleep, he can decide to focus on a single thought or a single sound, like the ceiling fan or the frogs outside, and pay no attention to the rest.

“I can hear everything”, he explained to me, “But I just choose to ignore everything other than what I’m focusing on”.

Remembering that Tsoof has been meditating since he was 4 years old, I commented that this was precisely what he practices during meditation, but he said, “That’s true, but I actually read about this mind switch in Eragon“.

You learn new things every day…

Switch on the good feelings!
Gal

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