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Self Control: making choices

One of the most common reasons parents bring their children to a martial arts school is to teach them about impulse control.  Doing the first thing that pops into our head without thinking through all of the possible solutions can end up in results that are less than what we hoped for.  So we are going to spend some time this month on the subject of self control. 

Our child development specialist,  Robyn Silverman, gave us this system for gaining this control.  We want to remember STEP.
Here is how it works.  S is for Stop.  First we must find a way to slow ourselves down before we do the first thing that pops into our head.  It might be taking 3 deep breaths or stepping away from a situation, but we must distract ourselves before making that decision.  T is for THINK.  Make a list of all the possible solutions you can come up with.  Some of them may seem ridiculous, but the point is to let your mind be creative and think of all of the ways you could handle this situation.  E is for EVALUATE.  Now look at each solution and decide if this would result in a good consequence or a bad one.  Is this solution safe?  Is it fair?  Some of the choices you will throw away and some you will keep.  But then you need to decide which one is going to be best for you at this time.  P is for PROCEED.  Now is the time to implement your choice.  Here is where great balance is needed as you proceed you choose what is thoughtful with being eager and gutsy.  You balance your goals and self motivation with being level headed and thoughtful.

Maintaining self control is really just about slowing down and thinking through our choices before acting on them.

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Self Control: Definition

Each month we define and discuss a word of character development with all of our students.  This month the word is Self Control.  It will be defined this way.

Young students:  Self Control means: “I stop and think before I act!”

Older students:  Self Control means:  Slowing down and thinking through choices before acting upon them.

 



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Emapthy: expressing concern

Beyond listening and being sure that what we heard is what the other person meant by paraphrasing, the next step in empathy is to show concern.  Showing or expressing our concern is a very visible way of showing that we care about the other person and their feelings.

We can do this by expressing our concern with words and offering to take action if they would like us to do so.  We may say to a person who is sick – “I am sorry that you do not feel well. Is there anything I can do to help you feel better?”  Our children can learn about expressing concern by practicing this and role playing it with their parents.  

For instance we may ask them what could you say if one of your schoolmates was being bullied at school?  When I asked this at our school many of the kids wanted to fix the problem with some sort of solution.  “just ignore it”  “walk away” were common responses.  But for the other person to know that we care we may want to say, “ I am sorry those boys were picking on you.  Would you like to play with me? or Would you like to hang out with me and my friends.  Maybe they will leave you alone then?  Or Would you like to speak to a teacher about what happened.

As we go into this year lets all of us see if we can express empathy for others.  Doing so will contribute to the peace of ourselves, family, community and the world.

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Empathy: Understanding what is said

It is one thing to feel compassion for another person or situation and quite another to be demonstrate empathy.  I think we all can agree that we like to be listened to when we are speaking and even more important to be heard.  Most of the time we are not looking for someone to solve the problem for us – we want to know that someone understands and more important that they care.

One way of being sure that the other person knows that we heard and understood what they were saying is to repeat back to them what we heard them say, using slightly different words, paraphrasing.  When we do this we are sure then that what we understood them to say and what they meant to convey were the same.  For instance if we ask our child to clean their room for this weekend we may have in mind that it be completed prior to other activities on the weekend.  But the child may have only heard the time frame “weekend”  and may feel that as long as it is done by Sunday night that that fills the requirement.  However if they had paraphrased back to us “So you would like me to have my room cleaned by Sunday on this weekend”, immediately we would know that there was a misunderstanding and could correct the situation before there was conflict.

The same is true for understanding the feelings of others.  We may state back to a person, “So you are upset when …..”   Being able to paraphrase effectively helps us to listen more closely and confirms that we understand each other which allows us to be more empathetic.

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Empathy: two people, two reactions

We tell a joke or say something that is funny.  One person laughs – another person does not.  We serve squash at dinner, one person likes it – another person does not.  We are at the ocean and we playfully splash water on our friends, one person laughs – the other person gets mad. 

What happened here?  Two people can feel differently about the same situation.  In fact what may be amusing to me on one day may aggravate me on another.  No matter the situation we must consider the personality and mood of a person when we are using our empathy. 

Now we know that on an intellectual basis but have you ever seen someone do something that gets a bad reaction from another and then says, “just kidding”.   If we make someone angry, hurt, or upset, does saying “just kidding”  solve the situation.  In my opinion it does not.  In fact given the tone of voice or other physical actions I may even question the sincerity of the comment. 

Many years ago I had an embarrassing situation take place that required an apology and a rethinking of how I described things.  One day I had a phone call from a business acquaintance whom I had never met in person.  He asked me how I was doing and I said “I was busier than a one-armed paper hanger”.   We both laughed, but then a couple of months later I had the occasion to be in his office.  Much to my surprise he was an amputee with just one arm.  Can you imagine my feeling at the moment of meeting him.  Now whether this is just being too PC or not – but I vowed to myself never to use such an expression again unless I knew the person very well and then in person only. 

No matter our age we must take responsibility for the choices and actions we make, even if we didn’t mean it.  How would we do this?  We must make a sincere apology to the party that was hurt, and then be sure that both ourselves and others do not continue in that line of speech or action.  This is true whether it is a young child playing with another child’s hat or joking that is done by an adult. 

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Empathy: our actions affect other people

Can you make someone else smile, feel good, sad, angry, frustrated?  Most of us know that we have that power just by what we say or do.  In fact it is by our choice of words or actions that others many time are affected and can have very strong emotional reactions.

One action like a smile or hug may make someone happy, another action like leaving someone out may make them sad.  Now it is not always possible to make others happy with our actions, nor should we, but we should be aware of and in fact we may want to predict the affect on others prior to taking a certain course of action or making certain statements.

There are some goals or actions that we can set for ourselves though that help both ourselves and others. What if we chose to help out a charity group with some of our time or to tutor a child who needed to improve in their reading.  If we are a young person, what if we helped our brother or sister with some of their work or read to a senior citizen.  All of these things demonstrate empathy and will no doubt make others happy.

Here is one more question on this subject though.  What is it that gets in the way of our seeing how our choices or behavior affects other people?  I think back to the time when I was a teenager and I do not think that I thought very much about how my actions would affect those closest to me.  Some of my actions brought pain and worry to my mother.  Was I that self – centered that how she felt just was not that important to me? 

When I look around and I see the hurt of some young people and their parents today. It goes both ways.  Some parents are so busy with their “lives” that their children are feeling very hurt and are affected by the lack of closeness.  One young man (17 years old) said to his pastor one day, “All I want is for my mom and dad to stop fighting about money and just spend some time at home with me.”  He said this just after his parents gave him a brand new BMW to ride around in. 

It is the hardest thing in the world to know how another person is feeling.  So the question is how can we adjust?  How can we do this first and foremost with our own family and then with others.  This is just a thought but I believe it takes deep listening and time.  As we start this year off, I for one plan on making empathy a bigger role in the decisions and choices I make.  That is one way to make a difference in the world that we live in.