Have you ever noticed that, as adults, we tend to forget what we have learned as children? Why is that? Notice that the average person, once they get to a certain age, tends to start going backwards when it comes to self-creation. Lately I have been working on a lot of areas in my life, starting with problems that I feel that I have, such as working on my self-discipline, procrastination, patience and variety of others. While doing so, I realized that a lot of ways that I would help myself were already taught to me as a child.  Here are a few areas that I feel that todays society needs to work on, to not just better ourselves, but to better our relationships between each other.

The key to every aspect of life starts with communication. To have understanding, you must first learn how to communicate. We have so many different forms of communication and yet we tend to not use any of these tools in our daily lives once we get older. One of the first tools that we learned as children was to raise our hand. Raising our hand allowed the individual that is talking to finish what is being said. It discontinued any interruptions which may cause distractions.  We, as adults, tend to forget the simple rule of allowing somebody to finish what is being said. Instead we assume what will be said and cut that person off. Just like raising your hand as a child, how many times did you raise your hand while the teacher was talking, only to put it down because the teacher answered your question before he/she had the chance to pick on you to speak? It’s the same concept as an adult. Allow the person to speak fully and give the opportunity to explain every detail rather than assuming what is going to be said. Allow yourself to ingest the information so that you will be able to productively respond. If we were to utilize the “raise your hand’ tool to our everyday lives, we will notice an extremely higher rate of happiness and deal with less frustration whether you are talking at a customer service job, strangers in passing, friends, families and especially relationships. Without clear and concise communication, you are asking for an argument to arise due to stress and frustration, even if the subject that is being discussed is fairly simple. So next time you are interacting with somebody, use that technique and see if it doesn’t work. If the person that you are talking to cuts you off, clearly explain what needs to be done and if they refuse, then the conversation is over.

: HONK: HONK: “Get the hell out of the way!”.  As an adult we tend to always be rushing, whether we are trying to get something or rushing to go somewhere. Everything must be when we say, and when we say is right now. I don’t know if we as children looked at adults a specific way and feel that they got their way so when we become adults we feel that we need to have ours, but that’s not how it is supposed to be. As an adult we should have built the learning lessons of life to be able to think ahead so that we don’t have to rush things. In today’s society it is extremely hard to build that discipline considering how everything seems like its instant. Instant coffee, Instant knowledge, instant gratification and instant reward. Another tool that we learned as children in our early years in school was to get in line and stand behind the person in front of you. Of course, once lunch time is finally here, all of the children are hungry and when its time for recess, everybody is antsy and can’t wait to play kickball, but we still remained in line in an orderly fashion. Staying in line allowed things to move a lot smoother and faster. Everybody had plenty of time to eat and got their chance to kick the ball at recess. .

Now I do not hear this nowhere near as often as I heard it growing up and I blame my generation of children raising children. How many remember the phrase “Don’t believe everything that you hear?” My mother embedded that into my head as a child and I will admit that I am guilty for not influencing it as much in my adult life as I should but I caught it early and worked on fixing it, but today seems like everybody make judgements off of what they hear rather than take the time to find out what really is. As if we don’t already have enough negativity going around just by living life, only to have rumors and gossip being spread to make things harder. From the news, to social media, to the typical workplace drama. All you ever seem to hear people talk about is this person doing that and that person doing this.  Of course, it never really ends up doing anything positive and just adding ingredients to the pot for it to be stirred when, what is being said, may not even be factual. In elementary, most people my age played a game called “Telephone”. Yeah you already know where I am going with this before I even have the chance to explain it, but for the individuals that do not know what I am talking about, let me give you a brief rundown. So, you get a group of your peers and you sit in a circle. The more people that is in the circle the easier it is to prove my point. The teacher goes to the first student and whispers something into their ear. From there, that child then whispers what is thought to be heard into the next child’s ear, and then that child whispers what was said into the next and so on and so forth until it gets back to the first person. The teacher then has the first person and the last person stand up. The teacher instructs the last person to relay the message. I have yet to have every played that game where the last individual said the same thing that was mentioned to the first. Hell, I have yet to play where the final phrase was remotely close to what the first person said. Many times, while playing, you will notice that the first person only said a few words and by the time it reaches the end, it’s a huge sentence. Well that’s how life is. One person may know something but once it is said, it slowly but surely gets dissected, dismanteled and miscommunicated. The more that gossip is said, the worse the message gets lost in translation and just like that, rumors and gossip turn into negativity and judgement. So, do yourself a favor and next time you hear something, take it as a grain of salt and don’t make any action towards it or open your mouth until you know the facts of the matter.

“Your mom is so fat, Thanos had to snap twice to kill her!” Oh snap. Yeah, he said it. What are you going to do about it? We have all been there. Even as adults, especially as adults, we tend to let word of mouth open up Pandora’s box of utter hell. We allow simple things such as somebodies words to bring out harmful actions that can be as simple as hurt feelings to actual physical harm that can later then lead to way worse. Why? We are adults, right? We should have  the self-discipline to understand that a verbal word can’t physically hurt you. Yea it can hurt your feelings and that can lead to damaging thoughts but with help, you can get over it, but a physical pain? No matter how many words are thrown to you, it will never break the skin. Again, we have all heard as children the lovely, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”. That was taught to us as children to strengthen our minds. It was taught to us at a young age so that when we become adults, we can learn to survive the horrible trials of what the real world has to throw at us, but no. It didn’t help. As we grow older, we stop hearing these simple phrases that kept us safe as children. We all felt that as we grow up, we are to old to go backwards and relearn what was said to us. As adults we allow our pride to take over and that is not a good thing because what happens when somebody gets slick out of the mouth at work? Its time to throw hands. Your 7-year-old you would be embarrassed because at that point in time, your 7 year old you would have acted more maturely than this grown adult who has the responsibility to wake up on time for work, operate a motor vehicle, protect themselves from harm, and even, you guessed it, RAISE A CHILD. Take this time to let that sink in and the next time you want to act reckless because somebody said something that you didn’t like, work on your self-discipline and have a different set of actions.

Just be happy and stop trying to impress. I completely understand the hype of wanting to be accepted. Just know that everybody isn’t going to accept you. Hell, most people that accept you don’t even accept you. People are out here going broke everyday spending money on pointless items to try and impress irrelevant people. People are not doing things that they actually want to do in fear that people will say things. Understand this one factor. Humans are social creatures. Regardless of what you do, people are going to talk. So if they are going to talk anyways, then just do it anyways. Doing what makes you happy will lure the type of people that make you happy. We live in a society where nobody is happy because they are so stuck trying to go with what social media feels is the new trend. I bet if everybody stopped following others and, instead, doing what they want to do, there would be an abundance more happiness as well as inspiration to show others new ideas of being happy. Take it from a child. They just want to go out and play. They don’t care about who is there or what they look like. They don’t care what type of shoes they are wearing and how they will act. They just know that if its not fun, they aren’t going to do it and if it is, they will. Simple as that.

Long story short. The amazing thing about us humans is that, at any point in time, we can always decide to go back in time and reeducate, reanimate, and revise ourselves. Take this time to sit down, see where you are and certain circumstances that could have treated differently and tell yourself that if you would have done what you were taught as a child, would you have been in a better position. Food for thought.