There’s a lot to be learned from children. 
1. Live in the moment. It’s great to plan and dream — but let’s not forget to enjoy where we are at this very moment.
2. Breakfast is a good thing. A bowl of fiber cereal, maybe an egg and bacon, or just a protein shake. Breakfast can change your world. You set the pace for the day – and if you don’t eat breakfast, your body thinks it is starving and will save up all those calories as fat storage.
3. Toys! More toys! We learn pretty early that toys kick start our imagination. Little kids play with legos and learn to create cities and worlds out of little pieces of plastic. As adults – what toys are you using every day? I like my Blackberry Pearl, my iPod wannabe, and my laptop. Use your toys to spark your imagination.
4. Walk away from mean people. Kids have the ability to determine if someone is worth their time. Mean people? They just ignore them and walk away. What if we did the same thing?
5. Repeat repeat repeat. Kids repeat what they hear. They say things over and over until they get it. They repeat it to their friends. It’s how they process things. We could repeat the good things we hear for a change! (come on – we hear the news all day long, and its the same thing at night that you heard in the morning – and mostly all bad news.)
6. Ask for what you want. I just got back from a road trip to Kansas. My 5 year old great nephew asked for some toys. He was very specific. He wanted a Walmart sword, some Scooby Doo little plastic people and a Kansas tshirt. Not a Missouri shirt – he had one of those already. He got exactly what he asked for. What do you want?
You can thank my friend Bubba for this post. He asks that we write a blog post on a specific topic around What I Learned From (WILF)… You can read some of the other posts over at Middle Zone Musings.
A tip o’ the hat for the great lessons, Deb! My personal favorite is the one on toys. (But that’s no surprise, right?)
Another good lesson from children is how resilient they are. Knock ’em down, and they have a tendency to jump right back up again! Always a great quality to have…
I like that too Bubba – I’m off to go play now. Thanks for dropping by!
[…] Six Lessons Learned From Children, by Deb Brown at Need a Little Advice? […]
“Ask for what you want” is such a powerful thing to remember. Great list of learnings Deb.
Great lessons.
Especially liked the Repeat and Ask lessons.
One of the things I keep saying to folks is be specific if you want something and don’t beat around the bush, just ASK!
Repeating good things and things we are trying to learn is a forgotten art. We perhaps get to feeling abused by learning by repetition and so forgo it as adults. What a loss. Skills are only learned through repetition as well as is integration of new thought processes.
Cheers to a great WILF post.
Todd ‘@tojosan’ Jordan
Fred and Todd –
thanks guys! I agree- we need to practice asking for what we want. It can make things so much easier than beating around the bush. Thanks for dropping by.