Dr Scott Zarcinas
by Dr. Scott Zarcinas
Emotions should come with some kind of warning when we are born, and the warning should be:
Buyer beware—emotions are powerful!
Emotions can be the fuel driving you toward success, or they can be the flames burning your hopes and dreams to the spot.
Negative emotions are especially powerful, such as fear, anger, hate, and greed. To harbour and encourage these emotions, however, is to harbour and encourage failure.
We are well advised to teach our children of the dangers of negative emotions, especially this:
When you choose negative emotions, you choose to limit yourself.
In my own experience, the fear of failure and the fear of rejection caused me to procrastinate for 15 years before I started writing my first book, The Golden Chalice.
As a 15-year-old high school student, I wanted to be a bestselling author. I wanted to be just like my heroes, Stephen King, Wilbur Smith, John Irving, and later Paulo Coelho.
But the fear of failure and rejection prevented me from even trying. For 15 years I told everyone who’d listen that I was going to write a book, but I didn’t. I procrastinated instead and made excuses.
I also had a lot of self-judgement, convincing myself that I wasn’t a particularly good writer and that nobody would want to read what I wrote anyhow, so why bother?
It wasn’t until I was 30 that I started to overcome my fears and start writing. Unfortunately, by then, procrastination had already stolen 15 years of my life, but I console myself that at least it wasn’t 50 years of my life, which it could well have been.
So it’s important that we teach our children that negative emotions, especially fear, such as the fear of failure, can severely limit their future success if they’re not aware of how these emotions work against them.
This is one of the lessons we learn from the fable of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
The queen, caught in her own vanity, reacts with fear, anger, and hatred toward her step-daughter, Snow White, when the magic mirror replies that she, the queen, is no longer the fairest in the land.
Her obsessive thoughts convince her to murder Snow White, first by ordering a woodsman to do her dirty work, and then, when he couldn’t go through with it, to venture into the woods disguised as an old hag and give Snow White a poisoned apple herself.
Ultimately, however, it is the queen’s own fear, anger, and hatred that are the cause of her own demise.
Likewise, if your children are not aware of how fear and other negative emotions pull their strings and control their life, at worst they risk their own demise. At best, they severely limit their power of self-determination and personal growth, which are essential for their effectiveness and success.
Yet, your children also have the power to choose positive, self-supporting emotions that can work to their benefit, as long as they are also aware of how these emotions can work for them.
In particular, emotions such as enthusiasm, vitality, vigour, passion, courage, confidence, and self-love, emotions that can drive your child toward success.
There are many other positive emotions that can power your children forward. In the late 90s, when I eventually found the courage to overcome my fears and chronic procrastination and start the novel that I had always wanted to write, I discovered something that had been dormant in my sense of being for a very long time—bliss.
Growing up in Australia means you’re never too far from the beach. Over 80% of the population lives within the coastal zone, about 50 kilometres from the shoreline.
Which means whatever beach you drive past that has any semblance of a decent wave, you’ll find surfers bobbing up and down on their boards just past the first break waiting for their next ride.
Then, as the swell builds, they’ll flip onto their stomach and arm-paddle to catch the momentum of the wave, jumping to their feet before the wave breaks and sliding down its face, cutting across the line of the break before it crashes and loses its power.
All in all, from the time the surfer starts paddling to the time the ride is over, about 10 seconds of joy has passed, maybe 15 seconds if it’s a really good wave.
But when I am sitting in front of my computer and tapping out the words of my latest book, I can experience 10 hours of joy each day. If I have a clear day of writing, from the time I get up in the morning to the time I shut down the computer, I’m surfing that writing wave for hours upon hours upon hours.
To me, it’s pure bliss, and it’s the fuel that powers me forward to keep writing, to keep achieving, to keep pumping out book after book after book.
When used properly, that’s the power of emotion that’s inherent in all of us, including our children. We just need to teach our kids how to tap into it, and it usually begins with their passion and joy.
I mentioned before that when you choose negative emotions, you choose to limit yourself. The reverse is also true.
When you choose positive emotions, you choose to go beyond your limits.
So the best way to help our kids is to ask them some ‘emotional’ questions:
- What is their passion?
- What is their joy?
- What gives them greatest happiness?
Then, once they are clear about what makes them happy (as long as it doesn’t violate other people’s happiness), all they need to do is consciously and intentionally choose more of it.
So teach your children to keep choosing what makes them happy, and soon they’ll find there’s no power for negative emotions in their day.
DoctorZed
Dr. Scott Zarcinas (aka DoctorZed) is a doctor, author, and transformologist. He helps aspirational people to be happier, more confident, decisive, and effective so they can reach their potential and become the person they are capable of being. He specialises in helping work-at-home fathers build their self-esteem and self-belief so they have the confidence and the courage to live a life that is true to themself. DoctorZed gives regular workshops, seminars, presentations, and courses to support those who want to make a positive difference through positive action. Connect with him at:
F: www.facebook.com/YNSOB.by.Dr.Scott.Zarcinas/
T: www.twitter.com/DrScottZarcinas
L: www.linkedin.com/in/dr-scott-zarcinas-6572399/
