by Faye Cox | Nov 20, 2022 | Anxiety, Family, Parents, Teens, Tips
You may have noticed that there are some days when your teenager comes home and tells you everything about their day. They’ll be feeling motivated, have clear focus and can tell you some of the things they learnt that day. On other days, however, you’ll get grunting, vacant looks and you may even feel like they can’t even hear you talking at all.
These days can feel difficult for both of you. They may come home and genuinely not remember much of what’s happened in their day. It’s not deliberate so please don’t take it personally. It may be that your teenager has something else going on that is consuming their minds or their attention has been focused elsewhere for some reason.
We all know that if something really catches our interest then we will shift our entire focus to it, but if it’s not a subject we’re fully invested in then we can lack focus and attention for any length of time and it’s no different for our teenagers. In fact, with everything that’s going on in their everyday lives, including their brain development and hormones, it’s no wonder that some days they’re a little all over the place.
Having worked with teenagers for many years now I am here to support you to support them in the best ways you can and here are some ways to help them improve their focus and learning skills.
These will also help those with ADHD.
Keep the following points to hand when your teenager is doing their homework and needs to fully focus
Create a distraction-free space for their learning
Make a designated space where your teenager knows they can go and do their homework in peace. Having a specific space enables them to take themselves away, whilst letting everyone else know that it’s time for them to focus and get on with their work.
Create a space that is well ventilated and lit, ideally with natural light if possible and away from everyone else so there is less noise from the TV or other family members. Your teenager may find white noise effective for helping them focus. Certain music playing quietly can also assist focus. Having one ear-pod in whilst working can be useful. This is one I see a lot with the teenagers I work with.
Be sure to put any other devices, gadgets, computer games and any other distractions away from your teenager at this time. These can become a huge distraction if within their eye line.
Once that task is over, encourage your teenager to put away everything that they have used before starting the next task and then get out everything they need for the next task. This way they only have what they need within their eye line.
Give your teenager a drink and some snacks to see them through and keep their blood sugar level up and to make sure they are hydrated whilst they work.
Grounding before homework
Before your teenager begins their homework, they can do a quick and highly effective grounding meditation to help prepare them for learning.
Grounding is an amazingly effective method to help clear the mind of any clutter that may be hanging around from the day. You can do this with them if you like as you will both benefit from it as it will also help to rid you and your teenager of any stress or tension you may be holding on to.
Here is a simple grounding meditation for you both to try.
- Sit down on the floor with your legs crossed
- Close your eyes and focus on your breath
- Simply notice the inhale and exhale of your breath
- Then make the inhales and exhales a little longer and deeper
- Feel yourself connect with the core of the earth and feel a complete sense of grounded-ness whilst picturing yourself as a tree with vast roots that are growing and reaching the centre of the earth.
- Bring your awareness back to the breath
- Take 3 long and deep inhales and exhales and come back to your awareness of the space around you
- Count to 5 and open your eyes
Notice how calm and grounded you feel ready to focus
Always set realistic goals for learning
Support your teenager to break down their tasks into manageable chunks and even use a brain dump to help them start a new task. Many people find starting a new task and transitioning between tasks difficult, so using a brain dump can help to get everything out of their head so they can break down what needs doing and how. This will free them from the overwhelm of it all.
Encourage your teenager to steer well clear of multi-tasking as this will escalate their overwhelm and create stress and anxiety. Plus, they won’t be able to do any of the tasks well and one task done well is worth more than two or three tasks done badly.
Use a planner to plan out homework with dates of when it will be completed by. Have set days and times as this will encourage good routine when it comes to learning.
Make sure that they are taking regular breaks from learning as this will increase productivity and focus. I encourage my teenagers to use the Pomodoro technique which involves full focus for 25 minutes and then a 5-minute break. Find what works best for your teenager as different things work for different people.
Remember that everyone is different, and these are just a few suggestions from my experience of working with teenagers who struggle with focus, anxiety and overwhelm when it comes to schoolwork and homework. These strategies have been very effective over the years. If your teenager is struggling in any of these areas, you can arrange a call with me to see where I can further support them.
by Faye Cox | Jun 9, 2021 | Tips
“Change your thoughts to change your life!”
Now you might be surprised at how often during the day you focus on a negative thought. The average person has 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts per day. So it’s no surprise that this can get out of hand pretty quickly.
The best thing you can do to stop negative thoughts, is try and become more aware of those times that you are thinking in a negative manner.
Your life is a reflection of everything you have programmed into your mind over the course of your life up until now. You have been programmed, every second of every day from the very minute that you are born. You’re being programmed with both your internal thoughts, and your external thoughts. Those internal thoughts are the ones that drive you. And in a nutshell, you are what you think you are.
Now your unconscious beliefs and thought patterns, literally shape the whole world around you, each and every second. Much like a broken record, your thoughts get stuck on what your problems are. And you can then lose the ability to break out of this negative cycle. This never ending cycle becomes your way of life. So you literally think yourself into creation. This then becomes the song that you sing, and the dance that you dance when you’re stuck in a cycle of despair. When we’re stuck in this cycle, all we can really do and all you’re actually really doing is expanding the presence and giving more power to that despair. You’re tightening its grip on you until it gets to a point where your mind is controlling you, when what we want to do is we want to totally flip it so that you are in control of your mind.
That brings me nicely on to my five quick tips to help you change your thoughts – You can watch the video here!
Tip 1 – Is to identify those automatic negative thoughts that keep coming up again and again. Because your thoughts are directly linked to your feelings and your behaviours as a result of those feelings. So, your thoughts influence how you feel, which influences how you behave, so listening and writing down your negative thought patterns can help increase your awareness. The very first step to anything we do is becoming more aware and writing things down so we’re getting them out of our minds and onto paper. It’s one of the simplest but most effective ways that we can bring these thoughts in to your awareness. So list down those thoughts that keep coming up for you, just simply write them down.
Tip 2 – Is explore the cause of that negative thought process or pattern. These could even relate to your childhood. This could be stuff that has been programmed from such a young age, potentially from your parents. Your parents have always wanted to protect you so there will be certain things that they would have said to you when you were younger, such as, don’t talk to strangers, we all get taught stranger danger when we are younger and that keeps us safe, and it’s really really important to know that as children. But as we enter our adult lives and we start to go out and about and we start to meet new people, we start a new job, we’re in business and go networking or we’re wanting to build a wider circle of friends, we have to start getting comfortable with talking to people we don’t know. And this completely goes against that belief that we have been taught not to speak to strangers. And there’s so many different things like that, so we need to catch these thoughts to become aware of them to explore where they come from.
Tip 3 – Is to keep a record of those negative thoughts and try and come up with words or phrases that counteract it. So if we go back to where we might say you can’t do something. In my house, I teach my children not to use the words, I can’t, because the evidence shows that every time they tell themselves they can’t do something, there will have been another time when they have said it and proved themselves wrong and this happens every time, so now we use ‘I’ll give it a go‘ because let’s face it, how do we know if we can do something or not, unless we give it a go. I don’t tend to use the words I’ll try because I find that a bit wishy washy. But if I say to myself or my children say to themselves, I’ll give it a go. It makes you feel good, it’s an empowering kind of statement, it totally changes your state, and how you feel about something than saying, I can’t.
Tip 4 – is to use a tool such as NLP, or affirmations to help you think more positively. Now, through my series of videos, all of the videos that I create, are all to do with using my coaching and NLP techniques so if you subscribe to my You Tube channel to watch all my other videos, you’ll start to learn a lot more of these techniques to help you create more success in life but also to help you change the way you think and start believing in yourself more. List at least 10 negative thoughts that you’re having a day. This takes a little bit of time but as does everything. If you want anything to change. You have to practice. Repetition Repetition Repetition, the brain loves repetition. Now turn those thoughts on their head and creating a statement that better supports you .
Tip 5 – is chunking or breaking large amounts of information down into smaller pieces. Now sometimes our negative thoughts can be big thoughts they can be those ones that are ingrained from years and years of that negative repetition. And in order to reframe them and change them into a more positive, we may have to chunk them down. It’s like with any goal or anything that we’re trying to achieve, if you try and deal with something that is too big, all in one go. You’re going to get to a point where you’re banging your head against a brick wall, you’ll feel like you’re failing and can’t do it It sends you into overwhelm, so rather than carrying on and dealing with it. You give up. So, pick that bigger thought apart into smaller ones and deal with those smaller ones. Once you’ve done that you can chunk it back up, so that you can see the bigger picture of what it was that’s going on.
Practice these tips often until it becomes so natural that you can do it automatically in minutes. Use a journal to help if needs be. I have my own personal journal that you can purchase here.
Faye Cox Coaching – BELIEVING IN YOU UNTIL YOU DO TOO! If you’d like some support so you too can start believing in yourself, you can have a chat with me here
by Faye Cox | Apr 30, 2020 | Tips
We all experience it at one time or another; this trespasser called stress. It is perhaps the number one cause of most health problems in our society today. Here we explore 6 ways you can deal with the stress of life in a healthy and effective manner.
* Talk about the problems you are experiencing with friends, loved ones or a professional. Keeping everything bottled up will only create more problems later on. Talking is a great way to release the inner stresses of a situation and help you gain a better perspective on the situation that is the cause of your stress.
* Exercise often. Go for a walk for 20-30 minutes either every day or at least every other day. Exercise relieves tension and produces a calming effect. Perhaps joining a gym would work better for you. Remember it needs to be something that you will do regularly.
* Yoga is not only a great form of exercise in general for creating body strength. It’s also well known for quietening the mind and creating calm. Sit in a quiet room alone and begin breathing exercises.incorporate meditation in this and you have a powerful combination for relieving stress in the mind and body.
* Music is known to calm the stress beast. Listen to something that either relaxes you or gets you up and motivated. This is a great distraction technique that works wonders.
* Healthy meals can become an important factor in limiting your stress. Ensure you eat three meals a day, and make an effort to avoid too much caffeine and sugar. We’ve all heard the term ‘hangry’ and we’ve all felt it too. Skipping meals isn’t good for either your physical or mental health. Too much caffeine will send your head in to a spin, it over stimulates the brain and can cause what I term as the fast spin on the washing machine affect.
* Sleep deprivation is a big cause of stress. Go to bed earlier. Seven to eight hours sleep can make all the difference when possible. I used to stay up later as it was the only time I got to myself when the kids were younger, but it wasn’t doing me any good in the long run. In fact it was having the adverse effect.
Coping with stress can be challenging. Every day you seem to be pulled in every direction, trying to accommodate others, living in what feels like chaos. The first priority is to take care of YOU. YOU are the thread that holds your family together. If you’re stressed, you won’t be much good to anyone. You need to fill your cup first. You need your cup to be over-flowing so that your over-flowing cup then fills your partners and your kids cups. If you fill theirs first, then there is nothing left for you.
Give yourself a break every now and then. Buy a new outfit; go see a movie; do something you’ve always wanted to do. Your family can take care of themselves for one day. Alone time is just as important to you as it is for everyone else. Think of yourself as a gas tank; eventually you will run out of fuel.
Laughter is a wonderful release. You’ve probably noticed those times when you’ve laughed so hard, you cried. This is probably due to the fact you haven’t laughed in a while, and the tension released through laughter is the best cure-all method for dealing with stress-related issues.
Avoid stressful situations whenever possible. If you are a working mom, it’s probably not the job but the people who are causing you the most stress. Take everything in your stride and remember that it’s not about you, it’s about them.
If you can’t finish a task, don’t worry about it. If dinner doesn’t turn out as you expected, improvise or get a take-away. We stress over so many things that really don’t matter! No-one is judging you anywhere near as much as you’re judging yourself, so give yourself a break and stop being so hard on yourself.
Life is too short; and stress can reduce it even further. Nothing is more important than your health or state of mind. Eleanor Roosevelt wisely said, “No one can make you a victim without your consent.” She was right; it is, after all, up to you.
If you’d like help managing your stress then feel free to book a FREE 30 minute call with me where we can discuss how I can help you further.
