World peace begins with our children

World peace begins with our children. Emotionally healthy children grow into emotionally healthy adults. Emotionally healthy children learn inner peace. Children that grow up feeling inner peace become peaceful adults. To begin the process, we need to make sure that all children grow up with positive messages streaming through their psyches. This doesn’t mean praising children and giving them affirmations that don’t come across as being authentic. Children can feel whether or not a person is being authentic with them. For this reason, the verbal messages and the non-verbal messages are equally important. We can "tell" our children how wonderful they are, but if we are not in the moment with them, listening to them and really being attentive to their needs, they receive an entirely different message.

My hope is that all adults will realize that their presence in a child's life makes a very significant impact. Since children are technically living in an adult world, they are at the mercy of adults—parents, teachers, caregivers, employers, etc. They are conditioned with the messages that they receive from all of these adults. We hope that they receive healthy messages, but the reality is that this doesn't happen as often as we would like it to. Many adults are walking around with unhealed wounds from their own past, and those messages get passed on to the next generation. I believe that all parents have great intentions, and they all love their children deeply. It can be difficult to be the kind of parent we want to be if we aren’t aware of the messages that we tell ourselves. Awareness is always a starting point. Once we become aware of something, we have the ability to change it. Being human is a magnificent gift in that we can change things about ourselves that aren’t working for us.

The wonderful thing is that children are resilient, which gives us many chances to make mistakes. Once we become aware of the impact we have, we are able to make adjustments to our interactions with children. For adults that have unhealed wounds, this is a good time to work on healing them. Many of us didn't know we had unhealed wounds until after having children, so once again, our children present us with opportunities that lead us to personal growth. By choosing to heal ourselves, we give the next generation a healthier start. They can start out with healthy messages flowing through them. They live in the inner peace that they were born with. Of course there will be sadness, disappointment, anger and other normal emotions in situations that come up in their lives. When they have a starting point of knowing deep within themselves that they are okay, they will be able to get through these situations with trust and awareness.

My dream is that every human being walking the face of the Earth will have the following messages flowing through them: I am loved, I matter to this world, I have a gift to share with the world, my birthright is joy, I was born for a reason, I have a deep knowing that I belong here, I am loved for exactly who I am, I am heard and I am seen, I am powerful, I am capable, I am safe, I am connected to everything in the world.

I am sure that there are many other healing messages that could be added to the list, but these can be an excellent start. The good news is that we all are capable of healing ourselves, we are resilient and we are awesome creators. We can change our awareness whenever we want to! We can all begin again whenever we choose to. Be the change!

For a list of books that have been helpful to me on this journey, please check out my booklist on my website at www.benurtured.com.