Love is the absence of judgement – Dalai Lama

We judge so easily – without even knowing!
Unconditional love, is to love someone no matter what. Parents, feel that for their children; that is, till everything is sparkling and beautiful. When the going gets tough, unconditional love becomes difficult and judgement the go to.

Odd as it may seem, misbehaving children are children who are afraid, their attachment not secure, who need unconditional love most. Yet, we start seeing through judgement: the naughty child, the disrespectful child and so forth.

How do we consistently bring unconditional love to our interactions?

Well, to learn to love unconditionally more consistently, we need to first love ourselves. When parenting is not happening the way we envisaged, it is good to look within us and see what is keeping us from growing into the persons we wish to be.

Parenting means healing ourselves so that our children can truly experience unconditional love, a love without judgement and grow into adults who can also love unconditionally without judgement.

There are different areas we can work on to do this and here I am listing a few easy steps you can take to start the process.

1. Show compassion to yourself. Working on us is the quickest way to be able and bring change to our families. So when you start putting yourself down….the ‘you’re not good enough’ into the equation, stop and think of what you are good enough in. This of course should be extended to all eventually; but practice on yourself, and as you learn to love yourself more, and be more compassionate of your achievements and the still in progress achievements, doing it with the rest of the family will be easier.
2. Jazz up your self-care. That’s right we are still working on us! When we are happy, healthy and not over stressed, we are able to give of our well being to the rest of the family. If we are not, we are giving without refilling and eventually the engine will stall. Self-care is much more than nutrition, hydration and movement. It involves sleep, time for ourselves, time for things we enjoy, time with friends and time to think. Learn more and by attending the workshop.
3. Let go of perfection. We are not perfect period. When we strive for perfection we are not making the bar way too high for us but also for our children. It is much better to strive to love more everyday instead. When we start looking at ways to love more instead of how to be better we are releasing perfection and making way to presence and appreciation. Again start by being aware of how you talk to yourself, look at your goals and adjust these to show love instead of perfection. Remind yourself EVERYDAY when you start falling back into old habits that your aim is love.

Want to learn more? Join Conscious Parenting for weekly prompts starting next week to help you move forward.