“Our goal is to open up minds, and change hearts. That comes from relationships, exposure over time, and conversation.”
(Sam Ponder, ESPN reporter)

One could argue that what the world needs most right now is a renewed ability to resolve conflict. That starts by learning to disagree.

Honestly, most adults are terrible at this. Think about how rare it is when you find someone completely comfortable with the discomfort of disagreement. These people listen to understand, refuse to reflexively react to a differing opinion, and rarely, if ever, base a relationship on total agreement.

These people are hard to find.

And in our ever-polarizing world of social media echo-chambers, it’s even hard to find instances of this kind of mature disagreement, much less people who operate this way as a whole.

The quote above, from a female correspondent with ESPN, displayed a great example for us all. Commenting on NFL player Cam Newton’s obviously sexist dialogue with a female reporter, Ms. Ponder refused to react by throwing out names and easy accusations toward Mr. Newton. She said she did not want to “do the same thing to him, that he did to her.”Instead, she displayed a remarkable maturity in recognizing both the offense and Mr. Newton’s follow-up apology, and calling us all to a better path forward.

This path forward is not quick, is not easily forwarded and followed online, and is not for the faint of heart. Learning to listen with an open mind, understand with an empathic heart, and courageously build a relationship over time is not easy.

But like exercise and hard work, if we want to truly BE in this world, learning to disagree well is necessary.

Peace begins with pause,

“If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.”
(Carl Jung)

The first line I ever wrote for my first book was this: “The greatest thing we can do for our kids is learn to focus on ourselves.”

I knew this would sound a bit jarring to most, and even a bit heretical to some. But it simply makes so much sense I had to say it upfront. That’s why I’ve left it in the 10th Anniversary Edition of ScreamFree Parenting, which we released last week.

Whatever we focus on we will, inevitably, try to control. That’s why telling parents to focus on their children is so dangerous. If we’re totally focused on them, even our efforts to serve them can turn into passive-aggressive attempts to control their choices.

What we need is to turn our gaze inward enough to ask ourselves the most helpful question possible: “How am I actually contributing to the very problems I’m complaining about?” This way we can move away from the impossible, trying to control someone else, to the really, really difficult, trying to control ourselves.

Peace begins with pause,

“We’ve been good, even a blast, but don’t you feel like something’s missing?”
(Incubus, “If Not Now, When?”)

It’s very common, in our modern search for lasting romance, to seek out a relationship that’s got the whole package. We want to feel, with total certainty, that nothing’s missing.

I understand this quest; marriage is the most important relationship in our lives, and with all the vulnerability and maturity it demands, it better be worth it. The difficulty comes when you try to discern whether it’s the relationship that’s missing something, or it’s just you.

So often, we try to use our marriage to fill holes in our individual souls, if you will, that marriage simply cannot fill.
–Holes like…insecurity.
–Holes like…loneliness.
–Holes like…past trauma.

And the most common hole of all: our desperate craving to feel validated. (We know we’re clamoring for this validation whenever our strongest fantasy is to hear our spouse cry out in ecstasy: “Honey, you were right.”) A lifelong romance definitely needs enough mutual respect, conversational chemistry, and complementary values in order to work. But those things don’t just happen naturally–they are the byproduct of our own individual efforts to fill our own gaps, heal our own wounds, and most of all, give ourselves the validation we crave. (We’ll talk more about this tomorrow.) That way we can be free to want our spouses, and free from needing them, or our relationship with them, to have absolutely everything.

Peace begins with pause,

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”
(Pablo Picasso)

Some thoughts on procrastination:

—it’s not an aversion to hard work, because procrastinators end up working very hard at the end (like crafting a 30-page graduate school paper over a weekend)
—it can feel really good every once in a while, allowing a more spontaneous part of you rebel against life for awhile
—it only works if you’ve got a clear, hard deadline. If the due date can be pushed back, it will be.

The only way to beat procrastination, I’ve found, is to become less task-oriented, and more focused on process instead. The best writers, for instance, are those that sit down to write at scheduled times, even if there’s not a deadline looming, and even if there’s not an obvious muse beckoning your genius onto the page. The best managers, similarly, are those that regularly visit with their people long before they feel the strains of a project completion date.

Same goes for all of us in all of our relationships. Waiting till the last minute to convey your feelings is the best way I know to avoid being loved in return.

Peace begins with pause,

“Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped.”
(African proverb)

Whenever we fail, it is tempting to over-examine the big event itself, and under-examine all the decisions we made leading up to it. For instance:

—you blow up at your spouse in the car, arguing over directions, instead of looking at all the little ways you feel unappreciated but never mention
—you flail away during a presentation at work, beating yourself up as a bad public speaker, instead of looking at how you spent too little time preparing and practicing
—your kid has her first fender-bender, and you chastise her for neglecting to get pictures of the other guy’s license and insurance, instead of focusing on the fact you never led her through a similar role-play scenario when you were teaching her to drive.

Examining the incident is not nearly as important as investigating all of its antecedents. This is good news, because usually what came before is something we can control.

(All three of those examples are autobiographical. The only reason I’m able to talk about those failures now is because I’ve chosen to accept them, admit them, and learn from them.)

Peace begins with pause,

“Out of student loans and tree-house homes we all would take the latter”
(Twenty One Pilots, “Stressed Out”)

In the hit song “Stressed Out,” Twenty One Pilots’s Tyler Joseph longs for the ability to “turn back time, to the good old days…when nothing really mattered.” He wants to go back to childhood, where he (along with so many of his millennial generation) won’t have to face the stresses of debt and work.

In short, he wants to still be a kid, and he’s definitely not alone (who doesn’t?). But obviously aging is inevitable. Maturing into an adult, however, is optional.

Unfortunately we parents have been actually making it harder to do just that over the last few decades. Somehow we turned parenting into “raising kids.” This is a ridiculous phrase, when we think about it—Does a corn farmer raise niblets? Does a tree farmer raise saplings?

The truth is this: We cannot keep raising kids and raising kids, and then complain that’s all we end up with…kids.

This is why we changed the subtitle on the 10th Anniversary Edition of ScreamFree Parenting to this: How to Raise Amazing Adults by Learning to Pause More, and React Less.

The world needs more adults. People mature enough to make their own decisions, fulfill their own obligations, and own their mistakes. And that’s our real job as parents, to start raising adults instead of kids.

Here’s a way to begin: Name one thing you’re still doing for your son or daughter that you know they need to do for themselves.

Peace begins with pause,

“Take away love and our earth is a tomb.”
(Robert Browning)

If your life feels empty, try loving someone else this weekend.

If your job feels like it’s going to kill you, try serving someone for free this weekend.

If your body is full of aches and pains, reach out to someone else in pain this weekend (and don’t talk about yours).

I know these sound counter-intuitive, and that’s the point. Just for this weekend, turn your focus outward in love.

Just try it?

Peace begins with pause,

“If you don’t get anything else from this book, get this: Our biggest struggle as parents is not with the iPad or smartphone; it’s not with bad influences; it’s not even with drugs or alcohol. Our biggest enemy as parents is our own emotional reactivity.”
(ScreamFree Parenting 10th Anniversary Edition, p28)

Since you’re a subscriber to The Daily Pause, you’re probably familiar with the thought behind the quote above.

We don’t call our company, and our philosophy, ScreamFree because we can’t tolerate loud voices. Truth be told, yelling out loud is just one manifestation of this greatest enemy to all our relationships, emotional reactivity.

Learning to pause, so we can respond instead of react, is the most human of all actions. No other species on earth can choose to pause and consider carefully what to do next. Only humans can do it. Unfortunately none of us do it quite enough, and that’s why we exist. Perhaps we should call our programs and books Human Parenting, or Human Marriage, or The Human Workplace, because that’s what it takes to create and grow the kinds of relationships we all crave.

Peace begins with pause,

“Today’s parents are facing more intense stress, public scrutiny, impossible standards, and technological confusion than ever before. And it’s been building for decades…”
(ScreamFree Parenting 10th Anniversary Edition, p7)

In the ten years since our first ScreamFree Parenting book came out, the world has changed dramatically, especially in terms of parenting.

In the first few pages of the new Revised & Updated Edition, which came out yesterday, I tell a dramatic story of me screaming, in a terrifying way, at my daughter Hannah when she was just months old. Her struggle with colic was legendary that first year, and my time as a stay-at-home dad that year was quite the baptism by fire. That fateful day, I lost it in a way that would change me forever.

If that happened today, I might be tempted with an entirely new option. Parents around the world are using mobile screens to soothe babies and toddlers with tantalizing images.

Are these screens a Godsend I could’ve used back then? Or are they, instead, an entirely new long-term nightmare couched in a short-term distracting solution?

This is only one of the new topics we address (and even attempt to solve) in the 10th Anniversary Edition of ScreamFree Parenting.

I can’t wait to hear what you think about it.

Peace begins with pause,

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”
(Victor Hugo)

Want a more peaceful home? Care for a calmer, happier life? This has always been our goal at ScreamFree, and today we’re proud to release our newest effort to help make it happen for you!

ScreamFree Parenting: How to Raise Amazing Adults by Learning to Pause More and React Less (The Tenth Anniversary Revised and Updated Edition)

That’s right, it’s been ten years since our first book came out and became a bestseller, and now we’ve revised and updated it to become even more relevant for parents of all ages, with kids of all ages.

Besides the new cover, new subtitle, and new back cover photo of yours truly, here’s what’s really new:

—A new introduction, with a story about my own parenting journey I’ve never shared before
—Several new stories about other parents, just like you, making courageous choices to be ScreamFree
—A new chapter on “Parenting in the Digital Age”
—50 pages of practical answers to real questions we’ve received from parents all over the world the last 10 years
—and much more!

I’m so proud of this new edition, and all the new ways it can help parents create the calmer, happier home life they’ve always craved.

Peace begins with pause,