If a child can, why not you?

Have you ever noticed a child crying because he got hurt or broke his toy, or had a fight with another child, or other child having better toy than what he has?

What do you do? How long does it take for a child to get over the hurt/pain and get engaged into something else that gives him pleasure? Do you think it is your credit to make a child forget what he dearly looked for and refocus his attention to something else? Ofcourse you do need a skill to do so, however, it is also important to understand how a human mind works.

I remember an incidence of my niece Ananya when she was 5-6 months old. She used to crawl that time. So bad on our part, that we once intensely engrossed in our own discussions, forgot to lock the front door. And you know how kids are – they will immediately sense the opportunity to explore what they are barred to do. We didn’t notice when this little one crawled between our legs and pushed open the door and went out. There were stairs – though 4 of them but for a kid like her, they were enough to do the damage. Few minutes passed and we heard the cry...we wondered where was it coming from and started looking for her.

Within a few seconds or so, I followed the sound and rushed out to see my darling sitting 4 stairs down and yelling with her face red and big tears rolling down her cheeks. My heart missed a few beats. Just a thought of what she must have gone through when she was falling shivered me to death. I picked her up, hugged her tight and kissed her like I could never stop kissing her. And in the process of comforting her, told her how strong she is that despite of falling she is not hurt, showed her other kids playing and laughing at a distance, etc. In a fraction of seconds, I saw her starting to smile and then giggle with her tears still rolling down her cheeks. I brought her in and everyone started hugging her and loving her and being playful with her. I believe, we adults took longer to come out of that shock than she did. She became normal and started playing with her toys but gave me a lesson for life.

 An incident is as intense as the meaning we give to it. And it is completely in our control to choose a response to it including the duration for which we wish to hold our responses to it. Does in any way the incident of falling was less intense for a 5 month child than to what other situations happen to us as adults if we look at the complete context of an event? Perhaps, for a child of that age, it could be so much larger than the situations we face as adults.

Or did it in anyway mean that by laughing, the child would have undone the incidence or had not felt the hurt for next few days until it healed completely. Things will happen the way they are meant to. But how we respond to it, changes the experience of our life during that period.

More so, if a child can, we as adults should ideally have much more awareness, skill & strength to respond to our life situations.

Our choice of meaning that we give to a situation, our choice of duration to which we choose to hang on to an emotion and let it impact our state of mind and our choice of action that we take defines the quality of our life. Healthy state of mind leads to better thoughts, feelings, decisions and actions.

 Your mind follows your directions. Take charge – It is do-able!