Teaching Humanity Remotely with Dr. Mindy Shaw learnwithmeremotely

In this episode, Dr. Shaw talks about the celebrations of the Spring Season.  The religious holidays and other celebrations of this season have a focus on re-birth, growth and freedom.  She relates a personal story about her recent experience telling the story of Passover to her young grandchildren and how she handles some of the scary parts of that story.  She talked at that dinner about how the Passover story allows a vision into the human condition and is very focused on the notion of freedom.   There are lessons in there about co-existence and it demonstrates different belief systems.  The conversation then turns to handling relationships that may not share the same point of view... her conclusion is that someone may not be a friend, but that doesn't mean one shouldn't be friendly with that person.  The understanding that comes from this is that in order to have peace in our lives, acceptance of differences is key.

In this podcast, Dr. Shaw takes a very personal turn and shares an story from her own life in order to illustrate how we should celebrate the good stuff in life.  The story she shares is about selling a home and buying a new one, but the emotion runs deeper than just that transaction.  The new home felt perfect from the start, and much of that happened because the prior owners who built the house clearly created a home filled with love.  Then, not only did it feel that way, but the current owners have been very cooperative and downright sweet in helping access their property for planning purposes.  Their land is filled with fruit trees and they generously shared their homegrown fruit and gave lessons on the care and feeding of their garden.   The positivity of that exchange and that experience makes the exit from the old home feel very comfortable and welcoming. One can focus on one's struggle, and there can be valuable lessons in overcoming thing, but it's important to also keep a focus here on being present and open to positivity.  

In this episode Dr. Shaw addresses the need for empowerment and the ways in which we sometimes give up our power.   She poses the question of when we learn to give up or power and how do we stop doing it?    The way to reclaim power is to not blame anyone else.   As we teach our children to be empowered (while still at the same time keeping them on the track that we want) it is important to give them responsibility.   If we adults model being empowered for our children, it teaches them to understand how to hold on to their power.   Dr. Shaw gives a great illustrative classroom example of not giving her power away to a student who was being a bully, and then wraps by reminding the listener that her social-emotional children's book series address these kinds of issues directly... those books can be found here:  https://tinyurl.com/DrMindyBooks
 

In this episode, Dr. Shaw discusses and reveals some perspective on her own humanity in a way that can help parents, and all adults really, keep themselves in check regarding their own personal progress in life.   She begins with the notion that a moment is just a moment, and she points out that when we have dramatic experiences or we learn important lessons that we need to develop a new emotional muscle so that we don't fall back on old patterns.  For herself, she always attempts to be present so as not to respond habitually.  She then shares an important example of how this creation of stamina or new behavior came into play for her recently in an important interpersonal relationship.  The big takeaway is that we all tend to be our most self-important when we feel unimportant... we all feel our most controlling when we are actually out of control.   Knowing this can be incredibly liberating.

In this brief and personal episode, Dr. Shaw talks about the parenting dilemma of being overly enabling versus allowing our children to have experiences that sometimes can be very difficult.   She shares an illustrative example from her own life and friendships as she describes a parent experiencing their child in an abusive relationship.  Her philosophy is that as a parent, we can't judge or intervene sometimes... we have to help our children navigate their situations, but all we can do is pick up our children when they fall.  Sometimes, in fact, when they fall, there are important and hard lessons learned via natural consequences.   Our children need real life experiences to build their own independence, difficult as that may be to witness.

In this episode, Dr. Shaw examines the concept of not moving forward in life because we are defending our positions or defending our own limitations.   She uses some illustrative examples of how we defend our positions in order to set the stage.   Then we learn that what she feels we need first and foremost are good relationships, and a key to a good relationship is having communication that includes the views of our partners and not disregarding their opinions.   If we can learn to not defend our positions, we can teach our children to be better friends and not to sweat the small stuff.  Don't take things personally... that's an important axiom to live by.