A question I get all the time is this: If I’m a Middle Grade Author, why do I speak to the PARENTS of young children?
Great question! So glad you asked.
It all started with a bowl of candy.
Years ago, I had a public speaking assignment. I delivered five-minute morality speeches to parents with young children. I decided to tailor my metaphors to those young ones. The response was overwhelming. What I learned from that experience is the simpler the concept, the more the parents enjoyed it too. A simple story about a stingy child not sharing his bowl of candy with his friends. This illustration reached the heart of one young boy. He ended up repeating the story to his friends. And his mother felt great pride in seeing her young son take a moral lesson to heart.
From then on, I tailored most of my metaphors to young people. Parents and children learned together. We’ve forgotten this principle in today’s modern world. Content created only for young people enrapture them. This is reality. My goal is to teach young people and their parents together in a fun, bonding and interactive way.
This blog is not focused on morality lessons. Plenty of content creators are providing excellent quality information in this department. I have a different goal. My goal is to help people of all ages learn to navigate their emotional world. There is too little exposure to navigating our emotional maps. Yesterday, I was listening to a podcast interview with Tim Ferris. He interviewed two Olympic Gold Medalists. These men were quite candid about their struggles.
One aspect of the interview baffled me. They were unaware of their emotions while competing. Only after winning medals did they learn to navigate their emotional maps. Learn to identify their anger issues and fears. Learn to readjust their unhealthy emotional patterns and habits.
The thing that separates them from us, is their access to quality help. They could afford to hire experts to help them. Coaches, Psychologists, etc. They could afford to take time off and focus on their healing. Because of their achievements they received access to quality help. You and I don’t have that financial advantage or luxury.
But. What they achieved isn’t out of our reach. Not at all. Not even close.
For the last fifteen years I’ve been digesting books, videos, and podcasts. Rewriting my own emotional map. Using techniques that the rich and advantaged have access to. And the big secret I learned?
It ain’t rocket science!
These are not special woo-woo powers performed by Tibetan Monks. Psychologists don’t have secret books with special powers. They don’t wave magic wands over our heads to fix all the broken bits. There are many reasons why our culture neglects emotional health. A reason why emotional distress is so rampant. I’m going to boil it down to one main ingredient.
Lies.
Too many lies.
Our entire life we’ve believed lies.
Now don’t stop reading and click away. Don’t imagine I’m some paranoid Conspiracy Theorist. Let me unpack this bold statement, please. First, I will begin with a personal story. When I was a small child, an authoritative guardian in my life called me ‘stupid’ on a regular basis. I have one vivid recollection of sitting at the dinner table. I knocked over my full glass of milk. This person yelled at me and asked if I was ‘stupid’.
As a small child, I internalized that voice. That voice became part of my emotional map. I learned to be a perfectionist. Making mistakes caused emotional pain. Making the mistake of spilling my milk resulted in humiliation and verbal abuse. So, my emotional reaction was to try to always be perfect, avoid making mistakes.
Anytime I made a mistake—even tiny, minor ones unobserved by others—my internalized voice would surface. It would scream from the depths of my mind: “Stupid!”
I endured the emotional abuse from my own mind for years, never knowing I had the power to make it stop. My experiences as a child activated my fight or flight mechanism. The emotional center of my brain believed my life depended on living mistake-free.
So, let me ask you this question: Do you believe I’m stupid? Doubt it. It’s a harsh word, with an absolute definition. The concept is negative and creates an unflattering visual association. If you stop and think about it, you might agree that NOBODY is stupid. At least, in the absolute negative sense. Yet, when my mind replayed that, I believed it. My mind accepted that reality. Yes, of course, I’m stupid, I learned that lesson as a child.
You see the truth: I believed a lie.
And this type of emotional mapping occurs thousands of times a day in millions of minds. We are so used to believing these kinds of lies, we never stop to question them. We’re so busy keeping up with our life, there’s no time to readjust our emotional mapping….
Oh, I see you catch on quick. Another lie. Not having enough time comes from the scarcity mindset. The reality is, we all have the SAME amount of time each day. That is a huge lesson for later exploration. Let’s get back to lies.
We agree now that we all lie to ourselves, yes? It’s not always malicious intent. Though some of us may have had authoritative figures in our past who did cause us harm. Through automatic emotional processes we adopted theses lies into our mapping. Our brain works by association.
We all know how this works with commercial ads, right. A commercial appears. A big juicy hamburger dripping with cheese and sauces. It’s smothered with big thick slices of bacon. We see the golden arches. A moment earlier we weren’t hungry. Now, our mouth is watering. We’re craving a McDonald’s cheeseburger. Why? Did our body lose 2000 calories and we need to replace them before we die? Not at all.
It’s simple association. We steer our mind, paying attention to the details of the visual experience. Our mind attaches the neural pathway. It arrives at the visual picture where we’re consuming that burger. Our mind receives the reward of chemical fireworks.
Now, you may not be able to label the exact processes involved or explain how it works to a neurosurgeon. Well, neither can I. That doesn’t mean we don’t have the right or ability to master the process. Does an Olympic athlete understand how the body works? Or do they simple practice and train until the body gets faster, stronger and more powerful. Do any of us understand how our smartphone works? Could we pull it apart and put it back together again? Unlikely. Yet, most of us use them to our advantage.
So. We don’t need to be a rocket scientist, a psychologist with a PHD to remap our emotional programming. This is not some off limit area reserved for the super smart. It’s not some mystical power tapping into the secret force holding the universe together. It may feel a bit complicated at first. It’s like learning a new language. Or getting a new job where you must learn a program including the jargon.
That’s why I’m keeping it super simple, going to start with the basics and build your knowledge piece by piece. I’m offering my personal journey. Providing examples, experiences, stories and fun anecdotes.
So, allow me to sum this up for you, please. We can agree that for whatever reason, our minds have adapted to the habit of believing lies. We don’t need to judge ourselves for this phenomenon. It’s the human experience. Do you judge the people who used to believe the Earth was flat? No. They didn’t know better. Everyone believed it.
Likewise, today, there are all sorts of stories surrounding emotional health. And there is still stigma attached to people who need help. There is a prevalence of toxic shame and fear of ridicule and rejection. Many people who suffer find it terrifying to ask for help. They would rather spend a lifetime the victim of their own programmed lies. Showing weakness or vulnerability can seem too scary.
I get this. I spent DECADES suffering there.
But I learned something valuable. It only takes one person to step forward and say, “Enough is enough!” We’ve suffered long enough. The scarcity mindset is a lie. Nobody should suffer from emotional lies when smart people have studied this. The answers are all here. There are books written. There are solutions found. And it is not for the super-rich or successful, it’s for everyone.
The problem is the human mind can only focus on a narrow band of information at a time. Today we have access to more information than any one person can absorb.
One of my Superpowers is prioritization. Not everyone has this skill set. I attribute this to spending 20 years managing restaurants. And I’m sure many people can relate to this strength or weakness. We all have that favorite boss who gets things done and knows the priority in any given moment. Then we’ve all had that boss where we ask, “What in the world are they thinking? How can that be the most important thing in this moment?”
I’m not perfect, nobody is. I’ve learned to prioritize my emotional health. Prioritize all the steps involved. It makes my entire life better. It’s the foundation of a beautiful house. You wouldn’t try to build a house without a solid foundation, would you?
Something important happens when you prioritize your emotional health. All the puzzle pieces of your life snap into place. The part of your life where you kept banging your head against the wall because you couldn’t make the piece fit? Snaps into place. Money, job, career, loneliness, love life, family, physical health, etc. Prioritizing emotional health makes all these insurmountable obstacles manageable.
Whatever lies surrounding emotional health inhabit the mind, take this one truthful tidbit away. There is information out there to help us and we have access to it. But illiteracy is rampant. And so many parents are too busy to read because of life responsibilities. Our world is moving toward videos. That is why I’m providing this service.
My goal is to bridge the gap. Create a bridge between the information on emotional health and the people who need it. Through my videos I intend to start an emotional health movement. Parents who embrace the priority of emotional health. Helping them to learn with their children how to write healthier maps.
And get people excited about reading too. Thanks for joining me on my journey. I’m convinced you’ll enjoy the ride.