Metaphors for Teaching Children about Power in Feelings, Relationships, Teasing, and Bullying

Link to video explaining how to keep your power to feel okay when teased, bullied, frustrated, disappointed

I once worked with a guy named, well, let’s just say his name was Steve. Steve had some talents, Steve was generally polite, easy to get along with and agreeable. He would get these great ideas about how he was going to create something fantastic that would help him live independently, generating an income and moving out of his parents’ house. When I would ask him to create a schedule, commit to a plan of regular effort, he always balked. I like to be free to live in the moment, follow my passion, just do what I want when I feel like it, I’m not the kind of guy who makes a schedule and follows it, he would say.

What sort of progress do you suppose he made on his goals, towards making his dreams come true? You guessed it. Not much. He would end up playing video games all day, and forgetting what he meant to do on his own behalf. Sign up for classes and quit going. You see, by refusing to make a plan and hold himself to it, by keeping himself free from commitment, he gave away his power to achieve many of the things he was quite capable of.

While being tied to a plan can limit freedom, this can also limit your ability to follow any plan that helps you get anything you want. When Steve passed through the exciting phase of imagining the results of a plan followed, and then let himself be distracted by video games and avoiding daily work routines, he would inevitably have a crash into a depressive state, saying he was a worthless piece of shit. He would feel bored and frustrated with his life, and lacked a sense of direction. Fail to plan, plan to fail. If one day you don’t quite follow a schedule you created for yourself, don’t give up. Get up. Start over the next day. You don’t know how much you can accomplish or how quickly if you work just a little every day.

I was talking with Alex (not his real name), twelve years old, about how upset he was with his big brother picking on him.

“So Alex,” I say, “How do you like the idea of giving your brother all your power?”

“Huh?” Alex said.

“Well, if you get upset by what he says, aren’t you giving him the power to decide if you feel okay or not? Are you not letting his actions decide how you feel? You are giving away your power to him.”

“Uh- yeah, I guess so,” Alex said.

“And how do you like the idea of letting your brother have this power over you?”

“Uh-uh,” Alex said, shaking his head and scowling.

“Would you like to learn how to take back your power and keep it?”

“Yeah.”

So I told Alex we were going to play a game. (I call it the five minute money game) I asked Alex if a thousand dollars seemed like a lot of money to him. Yes, he said, wary curiosity in his eyes. You could buy some cool stuff you want with a thousand dollars? He nodded. Okay, what if I set a thousand dollars here on the table, and I said we were going to play a game for five minutes. If you win you take the money, and the way you win is by not getting upset for five minutes while I make fun of you and call you names. Could you win?

Now Alex is nodding and grinning. That’s right, I say, you could sit there and smile while I make fun of you, thinking about how dumb I am and about how easily you will take my money, right? Yeah, Alex says, grinning broadly now.

So that means if you decide nothing I can say will get you upset, then nothing I can say will upset you, right? Yep, Alex says, looking pretty sure of himself now. So that means the only way I can upset you is with your permission and cooperation. Nobody can get inside you and make you feel a certain way, elevate your heart rate, cause your muscles to tense, your heart to constrict, your breathing to become more rapid. Right? There is only one person who can do that, and do you know who that is?

There are many things in this world over which you have no control. The color of the sky, the weather, your boss, parent, child, or sibling. Well, you would like to be able to control your sibling, boss, employee, child, or parent, wouldn’t you? But you can’t, can you? In fact, right now you are sitting on the earth’s surface, and as it spins, you are going about 1,000 miles per hour. And somehow, there is just the perfect amount of gravity which keeps you from flinging out into outer space without crushing you. And as the earth rotates around the sun, we travel at 67,000 miles per hour.

Our solar system is traveling about 45,000 miles per hour within our galaxy, and our galaxy, the Milky Way, is traveling at an astonishing 1.3 millions miles per hour. And somehow we have this thin layer of atmosphere covering our planet that we can breathe. Yes, we can’t control many things, not the weather, not what other people do, or many things that happen around us. What you do have some control over is your thoughts and your feelings. This is where your power lies. True power is power over self. Any other is temporary or imagined. Now you understand your power, what is within, and what is outside of your power but may be susceptible to your influence.

When you give away your power to others or what happens to decide whether you have okay feelings or not, you are giving away the only real power you have. You are giving away your responsibility for your happiness, living in the illusion that someone or something else is responsible for your feelings, rather than taking responsibility for your own happiness.

More Metaphors for Teaching Children about Power in Feelings, Relationships, Teasing, and Bullying

Emotional Power

It seems to me that many people think that other people and situations make them feel the way they do. (rational vs irrational thoughts here) This is a fundamental error. This would mean that other people and situations are responsible for your feelings. They have all the power to decide whether you feel okay or not. You just gave away your power. The truth is, you are responsible for your own happiness, and all of your feelings. Nobody can get inside you and make you feel the way you do.

Garden of the Mind

Ten minute secret to eternal success:

Use this analogy to teach the concept of cognitive-behavioral therapy- how to change your feelings and behavior by changing thoughts, battle depression and anxiety, overcome obstacles, and create mental health for yourself. (Taken from Your Dream Book by Brad Mason, 2016)

Have you ever noticed how sometimes a garden has a fence around it? Why does it have a fence?  Well, it’s there to keep the bad stuff out and the good stuff in, right? This is what fences are for. Fences are boundaries, keeping the good in and the bad out. Boundaries are something you create and maintain for protection. Good boundaries are a little flexible or permeable. Your cell walls are flexible boundaries, they let the good stuff in and keep the toxins out. Your skin is a boundary- they keep you inside; not you outside, they keep infectious bacteria out and let food and air in. Same thing with a fence, it still let’s air and water in for the garden to grow, but not deer and rabbits who will damage the garden.

Now, this all makes sense when we talk about a garden. For some reason, human beings tend to get this backwards when it comes to their thoughts. We tend to forget about all the stuff that is good and working right about ourselves and our lives, and focus, repeating over and over, negative thoughts, things we don’t like, what didn’t go well, what might go wrong, thoughts that cause us distress. Who is making those thoughts? Would it be helpful to have a conversation with the maker of our thoughts? Ask them to make thoughts of gratitude, review what feels good to think about, what is right about us, reassurance that we will be okay in the future, let go regrets of the past?

If we are to care for our mind, care for ourselves, like a good gardener would lovingly tend their garden, we would cast out the negative thoughts, the unwanted thoughts, the bugs and parasites, like weeds being thrown outside the fence of a garden.

Continuing to repeat and believe your negative thoughts is like watering the weeds in your garden instead of pulling them out. They grow fast and pretty soon, they crowd out all the good stuff and you will notice how prickly and uncomfortable they are. They will crowd out all the fruits and vegetables you truly desire.

If you like watermelon, and you would like watermelon to grow in your garden so you can enjoy it, what would you need to first do? Plant watermelon seeds, right? Okay, so that’s easy in a garden, just stick the seeds in the ground, pay attention to them by watering them and pulling the weeds, and watch what happens. Watermelons appear like magic for you to harvest, and oh, how sweet!

The process of making what you want to be true in your experience of reality is much the same. How do you plant the seeds of what you want to grow in the garden of your mind and your life? You begin by deciding what you want. You get as clear as you can about what you want, and you create a clear vision of what it looks like, feels like, how will your experience be different when your dreams come true?

I suggest creating a dream book. See the document I created for you called “YourDreamBook.” Get a nice book, preferably leather bound so it’s durable and can last, and write a dream you have on each page. Not a dream from when you are sleeping, but a dream that is a waking wish you have for yourself and your world. Then get images from magazines, photographs, or google images that best matches how your dream looks to you. Print it and paste it or tape it below the text you wrote about your dream. It’s okay if you pick two or three images. Every night before you go to sleep, and in the morning when you wake up, take a few minutes to look at the images and read through your dreams. Practice feeling how it would feel, as if the dream were already true. Know that these things will happen, that they are already happening. This is how you plant the seeds of what you want to grow in the garden of your mind, and this will help you make your dreams come true. Not sure if you believe me? Try it for two weeks and see what happens. What do you have to lose? Your fears and unwanted thoughts?

I also suggest after a week or two that you go back and rewrite dreams in the present tense. Rather than “I want to feel secure most of the time,” “I am feeling secure most of the time,” instead of “I want to make a million dollars,” “I am making a million dollars.”

Sometimes I ask people if they have heard the phrase “train of thought.” If they are kids they may have seen the movie “Shark Boy and Lava Girl.” which has a train of thought, literally, in it. Once they understand what train of thought means, I ask them where they are on their thought train. Are they in the caboose, just along for the ride, a victim of whatever thought their brain comes up with? Or are they the conductor or engineer, up in the engine of the train, able to slow down, stop, speed up, or change tracks if they don’t like where they are going? Where would they like to be?

Do these sound like good metaphors for teaching children about power in feelings, relationships, teasing, and bullying?

When we want abundant produce we prepare the soil, pull the weeds and throw them out, and plant the seeds of the good things we want to see, feel, smell, and taste.

Your mind is like this garden, too. Except sometimes we get confused and keep the good thoughts out and the bad in. Tend the garden of your mind carefully, pull the weeds of negative, fearful, and unhelpful thoughts, and throw them outside the fence. Plant the seeds of your dreams and hopes, thoughts that feel good, by taking a few moments daily to reflect on your dreams and imagine them coming true in as much detail as you can. If a drought comes give them more water. If a freeze comes don’t lie in a bed of weeds and despair, pull out those weeds and plant some new seeds. Keep it up and you can’t help but be successful living in the garden of your dreams.

Have faith the seeds will grow with your care and produce fruit and flowers.

This article “Metaphors for Teaching Children about Power in Feelings, Relationships, Teasing, and Bullying” is an excerpt from my latest book, My Power Book.

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Here are some documents you can use to teach kids skills:

Bullies

My Tools for Feelings copy w menu

Rational vs Irrational Thoughts Practice

Thinking Errors

Thinking Errors Practice

Thought Record

(Taken from Counseling Tools for Kids in Schools, Brad Mason, 2015)

Want more resources? Find more free resources and sign up for the free mini-course including video and forms to help teach kids how to take back their power and cope with everyday forms of unfairness: click here.

One final word about power. Love. Love is the only real power. Fear is a construct of the mind and your thoughts. You can not beat fear because it is not real. Only love is real. Concentrate on love; love for yourself, for others, for what is. Love yourself without limits, and you will find love without limits.

Relationships, Feelings: Learning Your Power

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Relationships, Feelings: Learning Your Power

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