An Attraction Lesson from Eating Icecream

I find it fascinating how having an understanding of the Law of Attraction sheds light on to all sorts of other areas - when viewed from the Attraction perspective, the most effective approach to all kinds of situations becomes clear.

An example that bumped into my consciousness over the weekend was that of parenting skills. Nearly literally bumped into me, as I was sitting on a riverside bench enjoying the first icecream of the year - yesterday was a glorious Spring day, far too early in the year, but precious for being so premature. The world was out and about, strolling in the sunshine, and providing me fodder for one my favourite pastimes, watching people go by, and wondering who they were, and what stories their lives could tell.

I saw lots of other people eating icecreams too - those top-heavy whipped confections, with a chocolate flake in the side, dipped in chocolate too! And I witnessed several minor tragedies, as ice-cream toppled onto the pavement from an inexpertly licked cone - you've got to ensure you don't undermine the structure with an over zealous tongue.

What struck me was the difference in the reactions from different families to the same event. For some, it was the cue for some serious shouting at the poor infant, whilst for others a matter of fact comforting was offered before moving on.

Years ago I used to run parenting classes on behalf of the Parent Network, which has morphed through several forms into ParentlinePlus nowadays. One of the skills I used to teach parents of young children was to focus on what you want, and comment and praise any evidence you saw of that, and to not focus on behaviour you don't want. Just ignore it, and distract the child on to something else.

Even the language to use with young children is aligned with this idea - instead of saying "Don't spill your icecream" (focusing on what you don't want to happen), the advice was to say "Carry your icecream carefully" (which is what we do want, of course). Young children have to form images of the words in their minds to understand the meaning (and I guess we still do the same as adults, just so rapidly we don't notice it), so when we say "Don't spill your icecream" they've had to create a picture of spilling the icecream in their minds, and then had to stop themselves from doing it. It must be very confusing for them when accidents happen and they get told off...

A good reminder too about the language we use with ourselves - Don't use Don't, but focus on what you do want.

Attraction Marketing author: Annie Meachem asin: 095456815X