Children make up our future generations. The way they think, feel, interact, and communicate can be shaped and guided by thoughtful and nurturing hearts and minds. To cultivate a future society of more conscious, creative, and successful adults, you must start working now to help your child become more mindful. Keep reading to find out more about what mindfulness is and how you can help your child grow into a mentally and emotionally healthier adult. It’s easier than you might think!

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness can encompass a lot of things, and you’re likely to find several different explanations of it. However, when it comes to ways to help your child become more mindful, it’s a little more straightforward. It’s all about teaching your children to be aware of their surroundings, themselves, and their emotions. They should understand there is no right or wrong way to think or feel. If they are angry about something, for example, it’s okay that they feel that way. Nevertheless, they have to think through their actions before they proceed.

While this might sound too complicated for a child to understand, it’s a lot easier than you think. You can help your child become aware of how they are thinking or feeling by merely asking them about it. “What are you thinking about?” or “How does that make you feel?” are some great questions to ask. Once your children are old enough to start writing and processing their emotions, encouraging them to keep a journal or diary can be a great idea.

How to Help Your Child Become More Mindful

There are many excellent guides, courses, and resources out there to help your child become more mindful. Just learning to be more mindful yourself can be a wonderful way to pass it on to your children. Read below for some helpful tips you can start using now.

• Take a moment to talk about your surroundings. Are you waiting in line somewhere or at the doctor’s office? Talk about the things around you. Notice a colorful stand of fruit or a piece of art on the wall. Think about what you see, what you smell, and what you hear.

• Clue your child into how their body is feeling. Being able to recognize the feelings of happiness, nervousness, and sadness is essential in learning to express how we feel. When your child feels nervous, for example, ask how their body is feeling. Are their feet tapping? Are their hands sweating? Do they feel butterflies in their stomach? Assure them that this is normal. Talking about these physical manifestations can also help ease them.

   

• Give them a creative space to explore. This can be any space at all. It can be in their room, a separate room, or a little fort in the living room. Allow them space where they can just “be.” You can include books, coloring books, puzzles, crafts, and more.

Teaching Our Future Generations to Be Mindful

When you help your child become more mindful, it will allow them to develop and grow into a healthy, happy, and more consciously creative adult. Teaching our future generations to be more mindful can create a society that is more cooperative, communicative, empathetic, and one that practices creative problem solving rather than destructive impulses. By learning how to become more mindful yourself, you can pass it on to your children and benefit future generations. And with the help of CreatableMe and our Creativity Courses, it will be easier and more powerful than ever. 

How are you feeling right now? How have you felt this week? Our thoughts and emotions are important but we don’t often take the time to stop and really think about them. Ironically enough, when we’re out in the real world, we’re often too stuck in our heads to pause and look at the beauty around us. So, what are we to do? The solution lies within conscious creativity; being more mindful, conscious, and creative. Practicing these methods can help us create the life we really want. Even better, when you learn how to practice conscious creativity, you can then pass it on to your children; teaching them how to live fuller, happier lives.

Creating the Life We Really Want

While every person is different and unique, you’ll find that when asked about the life we really want, most of us want the same things. We want to be happy, to love and be loved, and feel fulfilled in our lives. When considering what we really want in life, a lot of people might think about a successful career, while a large number of other people might think about having a family. Whatever your version of happiness is, practicing conscious creativity can help pave the way.

Conscious creativity can involve many different things but the idea revolves around mindfulness and creativity. When we open up our eyes and look at the world around us with almost child-like curiosity, it can help to expand our minds and inspire us.

Being Creative Leads to a Better Life

Practicing conscious creativity, which will help you become more creative, can help us create the life we really want. Research has shown that participating in creative activities can improve mental health, physical health, and brain function. It can make you smarter, improve your memory, boost your immune system, and fight off both depression and anxiety. Overall, being creative makes you happier and healthier.

Practicing Mindfulness

The word ‘mindful’ can mean different things to different people. So, let’s look at the official definition from Merriam-Webster.

“Mindfulness is the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis.”

That might sound like an intimidating explanation but it all boils down to being more present and involved in every aspect of your life. Rather than avoiding how you feel, you should face it head-on. This can be done in many ways such as meditation, writing, or other creative outlets. Regardless of the things going on in our lives, meditation is one of the best ways to become more mindful, healthier, and happier.

In fact, studies have shown that those who practice mindfulness meditation experience both physical and mental benefits. Mindfulness meditation can help with depression and anxiety, lower your blood pressure, ease symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and boost your immune system. While the effects are still being studied, practicing meditation has also been shown to improve the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and psoriasis.

Creating the Life We Really Want and Passing it On

When we learn to become more conscious and mindful and understand how to practice conscious creativity, it’s then that we can truly start creating the life we really want. The most rewarding part of this experience is being able to pass on what you’ve learned to your children. By learning these techniques now, they will grow up to be much healthier, happier, and smarter adults. CreatableMe Courses will help you to learn how to use conscious creativity and then teach your children or you can even learn it together! It is a wonderful bonding exercise that promotes positive and successful growth for everyone.

I’ve often heard my son debating the efficacy of certain superpowers (for example, invisibility vs. flight) with other children. But while children are entirely focused upon superpowers, the supers’ outward expressions, what’s ironic to me is that, superpowers aren’t the most exceptional traits about superheroes. Often, superheroes are heroes first and super second. The internal compass (Character) and external expression (Personality) of a person are both important, but also essential for parents, is distinguishing the two. Fortunately, for everyone, heroes (and Character) can be developed with the right foundation, creativity, and training. Superheroes are a good springboard to teach character development and a great medium to illustrate the differences between Personality and Character to young people.

Take scrawny Steve Rodgers, for example, even though he was slight built and asthmatic, that didn’t stop him from attempting to join the army or jumping onto what he believed to be a live grenade to save his fellow soldiers. These acts of tenacity, bravery, and selflessness were what got him selected to be transformed into a super-soldier by the US Army.  

Captain America’s hero status was already developed long before he took on the super “vita-rays,” only then, was his internal hero matched by his new exterior physical strength and power. This is a common, but brilliantly-purposeful, theme in the superhero universe, at least the on-screen versions of popular comic books. Superpowers are given to individuals who are internally-prepared to use their powers responsibly, for good. Spiderman’s uncle said it best, 

“With great power comes great responsibility.” 

Pre-Captain America, Steve Rodgers, and his journey to greatness is a fitting visual narrative illustrating the importance of developing a strong character early on. His character just happens to be the most ideal, as he embodies so many over-the-top virtues; timeless principles of humility, bravery, courage, selflessness, duty, freedom, equality, justice, and hope. All rolled into one person, like a living, breathing “American Spirit.” So it would stand to reason this comic hero headlines his own movies, leads a team of Avengers, and has self-help books written about him. The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero, by Mark D. White, is a  good read for a deep-dive into character development.

As Director of Product Development for behavioral analytics company, PeopleKeys, I spent my career developing products to identify and apply Personality Styles.  And while understanding a child’s Personality Style and applying their style to techniques for communicating, teaching, and motivating is essential, it’s only part of a caregiver’s responsibility. Character development is actually an obligation of greater significance and consequence and even a caregiver’s social duty.  

Personality and Character are often confused, but they are not synonymous. Distinguishing between the two, as a caregiver, is important. While Personality is somewhat easy to ascertain in one setting, for example, we can observe someone as extroverted or introverted in a single conversation. Character, on the other hand, takes longer to determine for the observer. Character traits will reveal themselves in specific ways, often requiring difficult situations and will show patterns over time. Becoming a “good judge of character” is a great attribute to develop, but comes with great effort, experience, and empathy.

Personality represents mostly inborn traits demonstrated externally, we call this “observable behavior.”  In contrast, Character is mostly learned attitudes and values gained through a child’s nurturing, personal experiences, and first-hand examples. But it’s not set in stone, Character is more malleable and can be learned, which gives anyone hope for developing more heroic virtues even late in life. Personality can be confused with Character because some people can deftly fake behavior for a short time. Let’s face it; we wear social masks from time to time. The word “Personality” is derived from the Latin word “persona,” originally known as a “theatrical mask.”  The “Mask” is a central theme in teaching DISC Personality Style Analysis in PeopleKeys’ Behavioral Certification Courses.

Another differentiating factor; Personality is neither good nor bad, while Character can be positive or negative. In other words, Personality traits of authority, influence, steadiness, or conscientiousness are not right or wrong. These four behavioral dimensions comprise every personality style, only in varying levels of expressed or unexpressed intensity.  Character is a different story because Character traits can be positive, like those exemplified in Steve Rodgers, or negative, like those personified by Jack Napier, the man who became the super-villain, The Joker, in the recent movie. But Jack’s traits of deception, manipulation, apathy, selfishness, and egocentricity were learned as a coping mechanism as a result of difficult circumstances.  Jack turned his bitterness from early events inward, and the manifestation of it created The Joker super-villain. Yet, no need for sympathy, Jack was not a born monster; he made a conscious decision. However, his caregivers were indeed great incubators in developing his negative character.

There’s a lot of buzz today about personality identification and behavioral modification in young people, and though these are important, it shouldn’t be a caregiver’s only focus. Tools increasing self-awareness are always necessary for self-improvement. Personality Styes can be viewed as a superpower, when understood and cultivated with responsibility.  

Think of it this way, Personality is the suit we put on, much like superheroes wear tights, masks, and capes. Ironically, it’s what lies underneath the suit, the heart and soul (Character) that gives a person the integrity to make them heroic. It’s the conscious choices a person makes, the words spoken, and the actions taken that make him/her a hero.

So, even more significant than behavior modification is the obligation for caregivers to provide the infrastructure for good character development. It’s not only an obligation to the child, but a societal duty to help young people become more mindful of their choices and actions, to create community, and teach them to become the best version of themselves, as they will become someday be the parents of the future. 

CreatableMe workshop courses combine Character Development Creativity, Consciousness, Communication, and Connection (The Five C’s) in a unique, hands-on, child-caregiver experience.