We often label children as being difficult. We forget that we too can be really difficult! What's actually difficult is growing up in a world that is full of exhausted, busy, impatient, nervous, and especially today digitally overstimulated adults. We were not taught how to deal with the current scenario of digital advancement. If we don't have time for the child, how can we expect the child to learn how to manage their emotions when we haven't learned how to manage ours? It's time to PAUSE and ask ourselves what WE are doing to help our children cope with their emotions and become less difficult. Have we learned to cope with ours? Thoughts anyone?

There are 4 stages in life that are not mutually exclusive. The learning years The earning years The legacy years The Golden years Our goal is to arrive at the Golden years having built a legacy we can be proud of. Also, in the Golden years people call us for our wisdom. However, wherever we are on the journey, we can still dabble in the other areas, in fact it is advisable. We can contribute a little wisdom when we are young, a little energy when we are not so young. We can contribute throughout our lives. Often these opportunities to contribute are right before our eyes. It can be a smile, helping someone across the street, a kind observation, patience when the wait is longer than it should be, making us late for the next thing, not needing to be "right" all the time, letting ourselves have a little grace when we screw up. All of these contribute to our legacy and prepare us for our golden years, when we can contribute true wisdom and be happy in the knowledge that we contributed.

I have known some people who have many talents and have not excelled over time. I think most of us have multiple talents. It could be empathy, humility, mental toughness, artsy stuff, rational mind stuff, high IQ, etc. However, whether we have one talent or many there is a problem that we need to be able to face. What happens when things get hard? Talent alone is not enough. Hard work alone is not enough. Connections alone are not enough. What do I mean "when things get hard". When the boss that hired you leaves the company, and you are no longer top of the list. When your team don't respond the way you expect them to respond. When "you fill in the blank". All your talents will get you "into the room". What will keep you there (When things get hard)?

I just did this and here is what happened: It took about 30 seconds to find the emotion...I feel busy and not focussed. It took about 60 seconds to NOT jump to the wise mind, but to see what the rational mind was saying. Rational mind said you are not organized and you are just responding to outside stimulii. Then Wise mind said (in 20 seconds), stop what you are doing, look at your life purpose and priority and pick 1-2 things that are most helpful to move you towards your purpose now. That is the real example of what I just did. I hope it helps others. PS, we need to know our true purpose. That's another conversation of how to find that.

This is one of the learnings I got from Kain Ramsay of Achology. You can find the course where he talks about this much more eloquently than me at Achology.com. The name of the course is "Goal Setting and Strategic Action Planning Masterclass." I think you can see that this Masterclass of Kain's is a lot deeper than a typical S.M.A.R.T goal setting course. It's well worth it. So far it is just in English. Soon there will be a Spanish version of the same course.