We all use our mind to get through the day. We feed our minds just as we need to feed our bodies to stay alive. Instead of food, our minds run on thoughts. Whether people realize it or not, we can vastly improve our ability to navigate daily situations and larger life tasks if we are more aware of how to “feed” our minds in a balanced way on a daily basis.
Using your mind operating through a fixed mindset, meaning you believe your abilities cannot change, can have a huge impact on every part of your mental diet. It would be like eating candy for every meal. It might taste good at the time, but it has a low ability to help you grow and it can be very much like an emotional roller coaster with peaks and valleys similar to a sugar high or junk food binge.
taking life one step at a time and doing your best is like eating healthy nutritious foods that will help us grow and develop mentally and emotionally. Being honest with ourselves and our kids is a constructive mental choice like adding a vegetable to our meal. Honest feedback and specific support can help us to be ready for those challenges that come up in life. We need to help ourselves and our children to understand and adjust our mindsets (beliefs about ability) as needed. We know that our brains can grow and develop just like our bodies. Some people have the dangerous misconception that we are just born with it or not.
Many people do not even see thoughts as a choice, including many children. They are victims to their emotions and thoughts often with little guidance on how to choose more effective ways of thinking and coping with life’s challenges. We can learn and teach how choosing thoughts and the resulting emotions are important for our success.
We can learn and teach our children how to have a healthy mental and emotional diet through the feedback and praise that we offer. Ego-based, person focused praise like “You are the best at …” is vague and often is some kind of judgment designed to boost self-esteem. Sometimes, this type of praise is empty and downright false. Kids know if they didn’t do their best. If they fail and you make an excuse or blame someone else for their lack of effort, they may feel better for the moment but they may actually devalue your opinion and not trust your assessment of the situation in the future. This ego-based feedback does very little to give them useful information on how to improve. So to address some disappointment and a bruised ego in the face of failure, we have offered some useless praise and brought our integrity into question. There has to be a better way. This option is like the fast food drive through method of praising our kids. Not the healthiest choice. The more we do this as parents, the more our children will start doing this for themselves.
If instead we choose to be honest and skip some of the sugar coating we can focus on the task at hand and make some real progress. This is what parenting is all about. Be specific and be honest. Make sure you make it clear that you love them and even ask them how they think they did before you offer your feedback. Choose one thing to focus on especially if it is something that can improve with effort or awareness. By sharing this task-specific feedback, you have a constructive conversation with your child that will actually assist them in growing. This is the balanced dinner at the dining room table kind of praise.
We all know that a balanced diet makes us feel better in the long run. We don’t always stick to it, but our overall goal is to make good choices. If we do this with food, we can certainly help our children do this with their mental/emotional health as well.
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