Small-town schools are closing doors across Nebraska. No, it’s not just summer vacation. Budgetary restrictions and low student counts force many districtss to merge with neighboring schools. It happened to Clay Center, my high school alma mater. This week’s Nebraska-isms column takes a look at how the building served as a silent character in the lives of its former students.
What are we afraid of? Dr. Caron Goode shares her views. Check out "Kids Who See Ghosts."
Today, I have the pleasure of being the 8th blog stop on Dr. Caron Goode’s blog tour for an amazing book, Kids Who See Ghosts. If you missed yesterday’s blog stop, check out Ellen Braun’s interview with Dr. Goode at www.raisingsmallsouls.com.
I am excited about this book because the focus is to help parents guide their children through fears, and every parent can use help with that, especially if the fears revolve around night terrors and seeing ghosts. Dr. Goode shared with me that often, parents were also frightened, either by the thoughts of ghosts getting their children, and from the extreme anxiety their children experience.
Dr. Goode interviewed me on the subject of exceptional thinking skills and how, if we shift our thinking, we can move through fear and help our children do the same. Goode became familiar with exceptional and creative thinking types from my book, Your Exceptional Mind: Enhance Intelligence, Expand Understanding, and excerpts from the interview follow.
There is an underlying reality that is more powerful than our everyday reality, and we’re not paying attention to it. We can influence this underlying reality through our focus. Also how we think heavily influences what we see and what we are open to in our worldviews.
The reason we do not pay attention to the underlying reality is because of our limiting thinking and where we focus in our daily tasks. Most of us, in our day-to-day living, operate in one or two levels of thinking—called automatic thinking and institutional thinking—because our environments demand these types of thinking in how we operate.
Few of us call on inspiration or creative thinking skills, so we miss those moments of creativity with children. Yet it is precisely the more exceptional and creative thinking that we need for children who see ghosts, in order to inspire their confidence in dealing with their fears. I call inspired and creative thinking by the term exceptional thinking.
This is the kind of thinking we want to bring to any ghostly situations, and we want to share examples of such thinking with our kids. Let’s face it—our kids need creative solutions, not our put-downs.
The unknown is a new frontier and involves our children’s fragile psyches. What would exceptional thinking by a parent look like when they’re handling these kinds of ghostly apparitions with their children?
First, use exceptional thinking to reject your limitations. The four limitations of fear, ignorance, ego, and self-deception keep you from learning new strategies to help your children.
Fear freezes you; so you, with your child, are afraid of ghosts. Huddled together, you face the unknown without a solution because fear means you think someone or something can hurt you.
When we personalize fear, it rules us. An exceptional-thinking approach is to face fear and conquer your limitation.
Ignorance means lack of information. If you do not have enough information to deal with a ghostly situation, then it is time to find someone who can help, or find a book or Internet information on the topic, such as the website… (http://intuitiveparenting.wordpress. com). Exceptional thinking says educate yourself, find out strategies, and ask for help or support.
Self-deception is one result when we fall into the unproductive practice of believing that a false idea, feeling, or situation is true, like “Ghosts don’t exist”; “You, child, are lying”; or “Don’t bother me, kid, I am watching television.” Self-deception allows us to close our eyes to other realities that intersect our world and that we cannot understand or deny.
In essence, we are hardwired genetically to feel and experience the fears and deception. Throughout human evolution, for example, fear served its purpose as a warning system for environmental dangers. So evolution has worked for us and against us. Unfortunately, the limitations are the antithesis to exceptional thinking.
In summary, the limitations keep us below the radar of aware- ness, fortify false beliefs, and poorly communicate our intent to be exceptional!
If you care for your child’s best welfare and a healthy mental framework and an expansion of their intelligence, you adopt an accepting environment rather than rejecting environment.
Seek the positive aspects of fear and self-deception that teach you a new way to approach the situation. The four restrictors present opportunities for learning. To help a child feel empowered, you have to stand simply in your power, creating an environment of power that says, “I am in control, fear or no fear. I stand strong.” Your reality is the correct reality.
To continue the blog tour on stop ten, please visit “Dr. Bob”Flowers at http://www.n2l.typepad.com.
I hope you are inspired by the interview you read. Be sure to sign up for the book launch reminder so you can
buy Kids Who See Ghosts and receive free thousands of dollars of personal development gifts on June 8, 2010. To register, go to: http://www.kidswhoseeghosts.com (if you are reading this article after that date, you may buy the book directly from that page).
On June 1, stop by and check out Dr. Caron Goode’s new book: Kids Who See Ghosts – Guide Them Through Their Fears. She’ll be talking about whether or not seeing ghosts is a hushed or hot topic for parents. Make sure to comment and continue to her site for book details. Again, make sure you stop by on Tuesday.
During Nebraska’s inception, the railroad connected both coasts by following the Platte River. Small railway companies developed and soon, you could get nearly anywhere you wanted to go by train. Now, UP headquarters are located in downtown Omaha. Amtrak stops in five Nebraska cities as it connects Chicago, Denver and San Francisco. And a handful of small local railroads haul grain. The Fremont & Elkhorn Valley Railroad has cornered Nebraska’s rail tourism market.
What is it about Nebraska and trains? Willa Cather came to Nebraska on a dusty rail car and she talks about it in My Antonia. I share my insights into train travel and the slow pace of life in this week’s Nebraska-isms column.
I added a link to this week’s edition of Nebraska-isms on the page. It’s located at the bottom and can be read by clicking on the PDF file at the bottom of the page. I share concerns about the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline project that is scheduled to run through the Nebraska Sandhills. And I talk about Courtney and her new baby, Jorden, and Melanie, who graduated from high school. Both have important decisions to make. And finally, I dish about trolling Goose Lake and share which Schindler caught the most fish last weekend. It’s true!
