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The 4 Goals of Negative Behavior That Undermines Our Peace

Understanding the goals of any behavior that creates conflict will help us to understand the motivation of the ‘acting out of these goals’. All behaviors that create conflict are trying to fill a need with one of the following four goals or strategies to fill that need:water conflict

  1. Attention
  2. Power struggle
  3. Revenge
  4. Learned helplessness

Each goal reflects a lack of emotional awareness. At any certain age or set of circumstances we can easily understand how this can get started. We can understand how a child needs attention, or may have a need for more power or has learned to take revenge or even to play the helpless card. But our goal is to look at this negative behavior and how it undermines our peace and the peace of the family and find ways to make changes in our behavior. Making those changes in our behavior will help us to decrease our stress, empower us as individuals and control our anger.

Helping our children as they grow up to (1) identify their emotional needs, (2) name them and (3) ask for what they need will help them to grow up in a more balanced way. If we do not help them overcome these strategies for getting their needs filled, they will certainly grow up rather dysfunctional with continuous attention seeking, competitive and abusive power struggles, holding on to grudges and looking for revenge at all cost, or passive aggression with oneself or hostility towards others.

Creating peace in our homes is about being aware of our thoughts and actions and understanding the consequences of those actions. The Balanced Life Skills Way is helping the community to see that peace is possible.

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Holiday Gift Card Collection — Crunch Time!

Very recently, Balanced Life Skills has been contacted by two local Anne Arundel County Schools to support SIXTY homeless students this holiday season. BLS is proud to be recognized by local schools as a community of students and families that give & serve!

GOAL:
$40 in gift cards per student in the next TWO WEEKS.
Due Date: Monday, December 16th by 5:00 pm

WHAT TO DO:

Purchase an extra $5, 10, 15, 20, or 25 gift card the next time you’re out getting gas, grocery shopping, or picking up presents from the following places:

Visa Gift Cards
American Express Gift Cards
Westfield Annapolis Mall Gift Cards
Various Teenage Clothing Department Stores

 

The schools have presented us with a large task and a short amount of time, but it’s The Balanced Life Skills Way to accept a challenge by asking, “what’s great about this?”

We can practice time management, the spirit of giving, and change the holiday for a teen in need by contributing to Balanced Life Skills’ 2013 Gift Card Collection

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Peace is Possible

peacePeace is the “cultivation of understanding, insight and compassion, combined with action. Peace is the practice of mindfulness, the practice of being aware of our thoughts, our actions, and the consequences of our actions.”  Thich Nhat Hanh

Creating peace in our home is not just a matter of there not being fights amongst the siblings, or the parents or the butting of heads between parents and children. It is not the stopping of conflict or arguing. Peace is cultivated with the awareness of our thoughts, speech and actions and the affect it has or may have on others.

Imagine living with those that thought about the effect of their words and actions on everyone else in the family. Imagine when everyone in the family respects the space of others, and follows the golden rule of doing to others as you would have them do to you. Imagine the another side of that rule – doing to others as they would have you do to them. Imagine the good feelings from being aware of the things that trigger bad feelings or of seeing the need for pitching in to help all in the family.

This is the awareness that is required to create a culture of peace. This is the Balanced Life Skills Way.

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Life Skills: Patience – The Definition

Teaching Children Life SkillsEach month we will discuss a life skill with all of our students. This month the word is Patience.  This word will be defined in the following ways for our students.

 

 

Young students: Patience means: “Waiting without complaining.”

Older students: Patience means:   Waiting without complaining for something you want or need.

Each age group has a worksheet that parents can use to continue the discussion at home with their children, and one for adults to allow them to think more deeply about the skill and how it applies to them. Would you like to receive the worksheet? Stop by our studio at 133 Gibralter Avenue in Annapolis, MD and tell us the age of your child. We will give you a worksheet and invite you to watch Mr. Joe discuss the word with the students in class.  You can also follow our discussions here on this website.

If you would like to become a member of Balanced Life Skills, come TRY CLASSES FOR FREE.   We are not your typical martial arts school, in fact we are an education center, working with our students on physical skills along with empowering families with compassion, awareness and respect. We believe in every child and build their self – confidence.  Balanced Life Skills takes part in community service and encourages each student to do the same.

Come in and talk to the parents that are here and watch the class for the age group you are interested in.  Learn about the Balanced Life Skills Way.

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Parent Coaching Series Looks At Anger Management In The Family

LOGO - BLS - large - HQIt has been 10 days since I last posted on this site. I have been busy teaching at AACC and at Freetown Elementary School. It simply amazes me the concern that parents, teachers and even children have on the feelings and expressions of anger. These feelings that we see expressed in explosive ways are most times a result of other emotions that are not understood either by ourselves and certainly not by others.

On December 10 and 11 Balanced Life Skills will be presenting a 30 minutes discussion on Anger Management in the Home. All adults are invited to attend. I thought it would be helpful to define “peace” to begin with and then give some helpful hints to attaining peace in the home. Can we do it all in 30 minutes? Of course not. But we will give some good solid suggestions to begin working on with the whole family.

In later announcements we will provide other curriculum, blog posts and opportunities to learn more. The Balanced Life Skills Way is one of peace, for ourselves, family, schools and community. I personally invite you to become one of the families in our school who value peace in our community.

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Expectations and Uncertainty

P1090012Hoping to be able to post more often again, as it seems things are calming down a little. I’ve spent much of this month running back and forth to Beijing filming TV segments, but that might be over now.

We advanced through two rounds of 我要上春晚 (I want to perform New Years Eve) and filmed a third, but we did not advance through the third and final round. My immediate reaction was disappointment, followed by optimism. “Hey!” I thought, “at least I will get to go home for Christmas!”

However, that silver lining remains in question, even doubtful. As I have mentioned, the TV producers in Beijing have changed dates on us again and again, and time and again we were on the verge of just dropping the whole thing because keeping going was so costly and uncertain. But each time they assured us that we would certainly advance to the Spring Festival Gala, these second and third rounds were just necessary formalities, so if we could just accommodate them a little more, everything would be fine. Now, one is left wondering if those assurances had any truth or if they were just manipulations designed to keep us on the hook.

What it comes down to is that neither my master nor I feel entirely certain, after the situation has already altered so shockingly so many times, that it won’t do so once again. We are not deluding ourselves as to the nature of the TV people, nor as to the probability that we will be able to be on the spring festival show. Like Aesop’s scorpion and frog, we know the nature of our companions in this venture. And we know that we are almost certainly not going to be in the gala. But I have decided to wait patiently for the last flicker of hope to die before I hop on a plane. And I don’t know if that spark will be snuffed before Christmas.

I am sure some people will read this and think I am being naive, clinging to illusory hopes. On the contrary, I feel I am just doing what I should as a disciple. I personally think that the best thing for our Wudang culture and lineage is to carry on training good students to be good masters. But my master feels that it is the Dao that we take advantage of this high-profile opportunity if we can. Though it has been hard to do, if we can do it we will do more for Wudang kungfu’s visibility than we could do with hundreds of thousands of dollars by another means. If you think about it that way, the annoyances I am going through are very small relative to what might be achieved. And I have a good life here, training and improving myself — I am not really losing anything by being patient.

Except maybe Christmas. So here’s hoping I see you all at home for the holidays, and if not, I’ll be back in February.

Oh, and here is the link to our second round. If you look closely, you can see me miss a cue because the speakers were right in my ears 🙂 Our part starts at about 32 minutes.

http://tv.cntv.cn/video/C21299/5875d1fc495049888018cc086e21e3f9