children
Work-Life Balance For The Single Parent
Single parents face many daily challenges and can easily feel overwhelmed. This is especially difficult when juggling childcare, household responsibilities, and your career or business.
It is undoubtedly important to maintain a healthy work-life balance in your life, but it is easier said than done. How does one balance work, family, life, and love as a single parent in the busy world we live in?
Here are some simple strategies for single parents to achieve a better work-life balance.
Work-Life Boundaries. The first important step is to set boundaries between your work and home life. I find that this is often a key element that is missing in the lives of many of my clients.Without clear boundaries between work and home, it is very difficult to be fully present and focused on one or the other at any given time. Without defined boundaries, the single parent is constantly straddling two worlds.
Creating work-life boundaries simply means not mixing business with pleasure. You designate specific times and activities for work and specific times and activities for spending time with your children. This means no thinking about work, no work-related texting, no checking email, and no taking phone calls outside of your designated work time.
The Lucky Penny
My son is an old soul. He is intuitive and deeply spiritual. He communicates with his guides on a daily basis. He tells me he has gut feelings that often come true. He has had prophetic dreams. He ‘reads my mind’ all the time!
I love sharing magical things with him. For example, I taught him the traditional rhyme, “Find a penny, pick it up; all day long you’ll have good luck,” and he has been eagerly looking for pennies ever since. This makes me happy, as it teaches him to be aware of the world around him and to find the magic in everyday life.
By the way, I recently learned that the penny rhyme was originally “See a pin, pick it up, all day the day you’ll have good luck.” Apparently, this was a reference to an old pagan ritual in which a pin could be used as a good luck charm. The belief was that a dropped pin may have been used in such a magic spell and would therefore bring good fortune to the person who found it.
A while ago, I also told my son about an incident when, at the age of 11, my guides told me that they were sending me a gift. The next day, in a cow field, I found a sterling silver children’s ring with a Native American design engraved on it. He has been asking me ever since when he will also get a gift from his guides. He has found some coins on the ground, but they are always upside down (not a good sign).
The Miraculous Roll Of Film
I have experienced many miracles and magical events in my life. As you read the following incredible story, you will see why I have chosen this particular one to best illustrate my experiences.
When I was 18 years old, I was working at a pre-school in my home town. One of the pupils was a three-year-old girl with whom I felt a real connection. She was an old soul; a bright and talented young artist.
But she usually came to school with unwashed, unbrushed hair and dirty clothes. She would never bring a packed lunch. When her parents came to collect her from school, they were often late and, unlike the other children, she did not run into their arms. There was clearly a disconnect between parent and child.
Eventually I moved several hours away and stopped working at the school. But I still thought of her often and prayed that she was well. A few years after I left, I made some enquiries, but no one knew what had happened to her. I hope she survived her difficult childhood and continued to create art, which I believed may have been her saving grace.
Two decades later, I was visiting the area around my hometown to go hiking with friends in a nearby national park. One day, one of my friends climbed a big rock and I followed him. Then he jumped down and I noticed what looked like something he had accidentally left behind.
“Hey, you dropped your roll of film up here,” I shouted, holding up the roll I’d found on the rock. But it turned out not to be his film and that someone else must have left it there. Maybe that person had the same idea of climbing the rock to take some pictures of the magnificent view.
Rebuild Your Trust In A Benevolent Universe
Have you ever watched a child learn to ride a bicycle? There is a certain excitement associated with this rite of passage as youngsters wholeheartedly embrace the possibility of being able to soon ride down the street without help.
The first time they get on a bike, they have no prior knowledge or experience to compare it to. Nevertheless, it is usually easy for most children to accept that they will be able to accomplish this task.
Most kids, in their innocence, focus on the joy, freedom and fulfillment of riding a bike rather than worrying about not being able to do it, let alone falling and getting hurt. They also don’t think in terms of good or bad ‘luck’ determining their ultimate success, nor do they imagine that riding a bike is a special gift, talent or privilege reserved only for certain people.
Perhaps this self-belief stems in part from an encouraging parent who has confidently assured the young person that they will indeed be able to achieve this skill. Perhaps the child has seen other children learn to do it and therefore trusts that they can do it, too.
The thing about children is not so much that they blindly or foolishly trust, but simply that, unlike most adults, they have not yet learned to distrust. Being able to trust as an adult is therefore not so much a matter of learning to trust, but of regaining the ability to trust that we once had, until we lost some or all of it through trauma, disappointment, betrayal, or hardship.
Raising An Old Soul
We have more people on the planet now than ever before. That means we have more old souls, and more new ones. Many parents are raising old souls and are struggling with how different it is from the information in all of the parenting books and blogs out there.
If your child is an old soul, which is one who has lived many past lives, they probably were your parent at one time. On some level they know and remember this and may challenge your authority, and change in roles. Thus, the power struggle so many parents go through.
I have been working with children for decades and have had many of them tell me their past life stories. I’ve heard, “I used to be a princess” and “I used to have a sister” or “My mom says we’re not having another baby, but I know I have a little brother coming!”
I’ve also had children tell me how they died in another life or how their mom isn’t their “real” mom. One boy told me he remembered being born. He remembered leaving the light and coming through a tunnel. It was a difficult decision to come back to Earth.
Another gifted child I worked with was able to find lost items, when his parents asked him where something was that had been misplaced. Just the faith that they had in him and the unquestioning belief that he could find these items helped him open up an invaluable gift that will serve him and others in life. Old souls also tend to have unusual or extraordinary gifts, talents and interests which should be nurtured for the greater good.
The Ghosts Of Regret
As part of my training as a spiritual life coach, our class was asked to do a profound exercise. Our task was to imagine ourselves on our deathbed someday, being visited by a gathering of ghosts. We had to imagine these ‘ghosts’ from our past as being very bitter and angry, because they represented all the things we never achieved or succeeded in, coming back to haunt us. They were the ghosts of our unfulfilled goals and dreams returning to die along with us.
We were asked to then review our life and imagine what we would say to ourselves and our ‘ghosts,’ now that our life is over. What would we advise ourselves to do if we could go back in time, get a second chance, and somehow live our life anew?
For me, this was a very thought-provoking process. The first thought for me was my personal ‘bucket list’ of things I still want to experience in this lifetime. For example, I still want to travel on the Orient Express train with my family; see the view from The Shard (a 72-storey skyscraper in London); fly down The Grand Canyon; and witness the splendor of Niagara Falls.
There are many things I still hope to also do. But why have I not done at least some of it yet? Too busy earning a living? Yes, we all get busy, and most of us need to work. However, does this mean we cannot also lead a fuller life?
The next thought the deathbed exercise brought up for me was a sad memory from a few years ago, when my late brother was receiving rehabilitation treatment at a local hospital. We were very close as siblings. He confided in me one day, while we sat looking out the hospital window and saw a young family walking by, that he often feels intense regret and sadness when he sees people with their kids and grandkids, while he had no offspring of his own.
Reawaken Your Psychic Ability
Many of us are born with the ability to perceive the unseen, sense the future and communicate with spirit. Childhood conditioning and trauma, religious and cultural influences in how we were raised, and various circumstances and life experiences can suppress our psychic gifts, often because we were told it is silly, inapproriate, or even ‘evil.’
If you can relate to this, then you need to know that your psychic talent is never lost or destroyed. You can reconnect with your natural gifts by engaging in various spiritual and metaphysical practices that will reawaken and develop your psychic abilities.
I started this process myself years ago by experimenting with various forms of meditation. Meditation teaches one to achieve altered states of consciousness, to become more aware of perceptions and energies that we otherwise do not notice in our normal waking state.
I also started keeping a ‘psychic journal.’ I wrote down my dreams every morning, as well as any unusual thoughts and feelings I had about a person or situation. Using these notes as reference, I would later check the relevanc and accuracy of my perceptions and premonitions.
Studying various divination methods also helped me a lot. For example, Astrology helped me to better understand the ancient metaphysical concept of “as above, so below,” and how it affects our daily lives. Astrology references universal consciousness and divine design, and the direct affect it has on us. It gave me greater insight into why people born under certain zodiac signs behave the way they do, and how each planet affects us, especially when it retrogrades, or moves into a new sign. It also explains why people get more emotional when the Moon is full, or why communication breaks down when Mercury is in retrograde.
