Family

Why the Family Separation/Detention Issue Touches Us

July 6, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

The debate over immigration in the US is fierce and complex, and the issue of families being separated has taken the intensity to a new level. People are polarized on their views of this. No matter what you believe the solutions should be, you cannot help but feel deeply that this matters. Here are some thoughts about this, and what you can do to make sense of things.

We think in terms of family. Our minds are designed so that we are a family-oriented species. We started in a family, we grew up in a family, and most of us create our own families. A family is where life starts and is developed. We hope to end our lives in the company of those family members we have loved for years. Even those of us who had struggling families still have a hope and a desire for a better and more loving family down the line. We are even interested in others’ families, and how healthy they are. It’s just in our DNA. We can’t ignore the reality and importance of family.

Vulnerability requires priority. The younger the child in a family, the more they must take a high priority in any decision. Developmentally, younger children do not have the internal fortitude or skills to handle the stresses of life. On a neurological level, their brains are unformed and vulnerable. That is why however this issue plays out, we must always put those who are less “able” at a high priority. The imprinting of both healthy and harmful experiences will affect the entire lifetime of a young child, so we must have a focus on helping that go right.

We want to help, but don’t know how. Millions of us read about and view the issue, and go away feeling a bit helpless, like “I can’t do anything about this.” That sense of helplessness conflicts with our natural compassion for safe families where the young are protected. Those two feelings do not go together. That is why the best route is to do something helpful, wherever you are on the debate. Read up on it. Investigate both sides without a bias. Get in touch with the decisionmakers on the position you have worked out for yourself, and ask them how you can help.

Families cannot be ignored, because we can’t ignore a part of ourselves. Pay attention to the issue, and support the best solution.

3 Ways to Keep Anxiety From Taking Control of Your Life

June 26, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Everyone feels anxious every now and again. Anxiety is just a fact of life and a perfectly normal emotion. Unfortunately, though, certain life events can lead us to feel a little more than just normal anxiety. These events might include your children getting married and starting families, the death of a loved one, job loss or transition.

All of these life events can cause an overwhelming sense of dread, which is not a healthy way to go through life.

What Does Anxiety Feel Like?

Anxiety, as an emotion, can stem from anything that is stressful or disconcerting. These days, some people experience this emotion simply by watching the news for a few minutes!

So, what happens when you experience anxiety physically?

First, you enter a heightened state of consciousness. You’re more alert.
Second, you feel some kind of fear about the future or the situation. There’s a dread, like something bad is coming.
Third, you have a fear and must be ready for action. That’s where the body gets involved. Your heart beats faster and you’re breathing faster because you’re preparing to get out of danger. Think of it like the “fight or flight” methodology.

Before I talk about the right way to approach feelings of anxiety, I want to first tell you about a few wrong ways approaches to anxiety.

Don’t ignore your anxiety! Despite what you may think, “I gotta just push through” mentality is not healthy. It’s a really bad idea to ignore your anxiety because the emotion is trying to tell you something. Ignoring anxiety can potentially lead to bad decisions, poor choices, and even health problems.

Similarly, stop shaming yourself about anxiety. Don’t make yourself feel bad for experiencing this very normal emotion. Don’t shame yourself and say, “I shouldn’t be feeling like this, I’m being a wimp, I’m being a kid.” No more shaming! Your anxiety is a valid emotion!

3 Healthy Ways to Overcome Anxiety

So far, we’ve agreed to stop ignoring and shaming our anxiety. Now, let me share some healthy ways to deal with anxiety.

Be in a relationship. This can be any relationship with someone who knows you deal with anxiety. Find three or four friends who you can reach out to and say, “From time to time, I deal with anxiety and I need to know I can call you and just say, ‘Can we talk, can you kind of get me off the ledge?'” This must be a relationship where you can comfortably express your feelings. Part of this relationship will require them to give you advice or guidance like, “Why don’t you go jog or go pray?” or something like that. Whatever they suggest should help get your emotions out of the cycle of anxiety by suggesting other activities.
Give yourself a pep talk. I am a huge advocate of taking a moment and reciting the Serenity Prayer to yourself. Say to yourself, “God help me to know the difference between the things I can change, and can’t change, and wisdom to know the difference.” This may seem like a small thing, but it can help change your mindset and start moving forward out of your anxious emotion.
See a therapist. If your anxiety reaches a point where it becomes unmanageable, including impacting your work or home life, it’s time to seek professional help. They can help you sort through what’s going on and what’s driving your anxiety. You can also consider seeing a psychiatrist for medication.

Hard times and anxiety come and go. When you start to feel those anxious emotions, it’s very important to take steps to overcome anxiety before it gets the best of you and disrupts your life in a way that can’t be fixed. I believe you have the faith, hope, and love to overcome anxiety and any other challenge you’re facing.

Follow These 3 Steps to Find Your Life Team

June 3, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

Your life team is critically important to your wellbeing. This support system will help you overcome the challenges you face in the personal and professional realms.

I’m going to discuss my three-step process to help find those great people to have in your corner when the going gets tough below. Hopefully, you will be inspired to find your life team!

1. Identify Your Life Team

First of all, what is a life team? Let’s talk about this a little bit.

In your life, you are going to interact with thousands of people. Family, friends, classmates, coworkers, etc. Having the right kind of people in our lives is a great gift.

Think of your life path like your car. It needs fuel to get down the road. It needs proper maintenance to run correctly and keep you safe. By the same token, you also need the right kind of people in your life. Your life is there to help you accomplish the things you need to do to be successful.

They might offer you support in the following areas:

Take care of your family
Make the money you need
Have the right kind of job
Get up in the morning and feel good
Go work out. Have friends
Go take vacations
Achieve things

Do You Need a Life Team?

Maybe you are wondering if you actually need a life team in order to get the most out of your experiences. Let’s examine this a bit.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by your to-do list at work at home?
Are you completely satisfied with your career?
Is your overall physical and emotional health where you want it to be?

Chances are, you have areas in your personal and professional growth that could use support.

When you aren’t able to make things happen on your own (without support), it’s time to consider changing your fueling system in your car. It’s time to make an effort to build your life team.

We tend to hang around the people in our lives because they chose us. Throughout life, you just kind of choose people who reciprocate. They might pick you because you’re nice, warm, have answers, or you’re kind.

If you really want to get the energy you need, as well as the resources, wisdom, and the smarts you need in life, you’re going to have to pick some people to change your fuel a little bit.

This doesn’t necessarily mean reject or condemn anybody. We all have friends at different levels. It just means you must make sure you’ve got the right people in your corner.

2. Understand Why a Life Team is Important for Growth

So now that you understand what a life team is, let’s talk a little bit about why you need to assemble yours now.

So much of the energy we need to live life comes from other people. It just does! Much like vitamins for our physical body, we have the need for certain people in our circle for a great life. Your life team will give you those nutrients; their support will give you the energy needed to keep growing and moving forward! You then use that energy to fulfill your purpose in the world.

Surrounding yourself with people who you can count on, who will listen to you, who give you warmth, and won’t judge is critical to overcoming obstacles. It’s that simple!

3. Create a Life Team

We’ve covered what a life team is and why it’s important. Now, let’s get started on creating your life team.

Ideally, you need somewhere between 3-10 people on your life team. Ten is kind-of the maximum because it takes time to develop in-depth relationships with people. Keep in mind that the larger the group, the longer it will take.

Your time is valuable and so is theirs. Less than three people may not provide the life nutrients you need for growth.

The great thing about people is that everyone contributes something different to your life. Certain people have wisdom, while others offer empathy, challenge you to grow, or have strong insight.

Now, This is Not a Team in the Traditional Sense.

I know it sounds like everyone is getting #TeamYou jerseys. But, the truth is you probably won’t meet your life team all at one time. Think of them as people you pick up along the way.

Let me tell you about my own life team. I have 10 people on Team Townsend because I have a lot of needs. They all live in different parts of the country and don’t know each other well. The common thread connecting them is me!

What Does it Take to Be #TeamYou?

Consider these questions as you seek out people who can provide valuable nutrients for growth:

Can they be vulnerable with you and can you be vulnerable with them? If you can’t be vulnerable, you can really never get what you need out of the relationship. When people feel they have to have it all together all the time, they’ll sort of never get anywhere in life. Vulnerability is a real answer to growth.
Can you really be honest about the negatives in your life, including failure, things you’re embarrassed about, and things where you’re beating yourself up? Not only must players on your life team be vulnerable, they’ve got to have total safety. There’s no shaming, no judging, and no advice a lot of the time. Chances are they will be great listeners and great at asking you the right questions to help you find answers.
Can they challenge you and offer honesty? They must be able to say, “I think you’re going the wrong direction here,” or maybe just give you wisdom or data or information or life experiences. Bottom line – they’ve got to have truth in them.
Is there chemistry? If you don’t really like them personally, then you won’t want to have lunch or coffee with them. If you don’t enjoy spending time with them and learning from them, don’t add them to your life team!

Life Team: Assemble!

Ready to assemble your life team? Let’s get started! Here are my suggestions to get you started.

Make two lists. One is a list of the prospects by going through your email and phone contacts. Make a second list of the people that shouldn’t be prospects.

Although it may sound harsh, this is an important part of the process. After some reflection, you may learn you’re letting people in your boundary space that you shouldn’t. Or maybe you’re not giving enough time and energy to the relationships that benefit you. Trust me, you’ll find a lot of good things happen when you do those two lists.

This list will likely take you a couple of hours, but prune the list down to 20-40 people. Then, pick the first person that looks like an ideal life team member and, call them and ask to catch up. Spend some time with them.

When you talk, take one little step of vulnerability. Maybe you admit something is kind-of hard to them, like “I’m really struggling with my job,” or, “One of our kids is kind of going south,” or “I’m struggling with my dating life,” or whatever. Be open to the person.

If they give you a bunch of advice, change the subject, or talk about themselves, that’s not a good sign.

But, if they move toward you and say, “I had no idea. Tell me more about that. That’s really hard,” you know you’ve got a potential. The key here is that they are able to listen, and not make it about themselves.

I recommend that you have three or four lunches or coffee meet-ups with someone you consider a prospect for your life team before creating your final roster. Their support will be critical to your overall growth, so take your time and get it right!

Once you have picked your life team, your next step is asking them for their support. What you say after three or four meetings is, “I’m getting really intentional about my growth. And I know my growth involves getting a lot of people around me who really want to grow and change and support each other, and I’d like to meet on a regular basis.”

It will take time to build a team, somewhere between four and six months. A life team can’t be sporadic.

Try to get together regularly, whether it’s once a month or once a week to just talk about life and how you can help each other grow.

If you’re struggling with identifying who should be on your life team, let me help you. Subscribe to TownsendNOW today and start identifying the good people who can truly help you grow.

Leading a Family

April 30, 2018 by Dr. John Townsend Leave a Comment

What does it mean to serve as the head of a family?

A family is really an oven, growing people to be the best they can be, to learn their talents, to feel loved, to feel like they have choices, etc. To lead a family unit is to influence your kin to be the best oven of growth possible.

As a household leader (which usually means a Mom or a Dad), you’re going to influence your family; it’s up to you to create a place where all the elements of growth and the kids’ work come together.

If you are leading with integrity, that means you’re working hard, God’s working hard, and really good things happen. Leadership is an influence.

Why Is Leading A Family Important?

First off, leading a family is an expression of love. I mean, one of the primary feelings we feel inside is that we love our kids. When you have kids, they can sort-of drive you crazy, but they’re also the people you love more than anything in the world.

Simple fact – kids can’t do it on their own.

By definition, a kid can’t lead a family. Sometimes, you see this happening with absent and dysfunctional parents when you’ve got somebody 11 years old who has to be a grown-up. This isn’t fair – kids can’t do it.

Basically, a parent is the person who has the maturity, structure, and all the tolerance and wisdom to pull it off. You can’t expect a child to have these things and lead a family!

Another important thing about leading a family is you really want to work yourself out of a job. Your job as a good parent, really as a good leader of a family, is to work yourself out of a job. Your goal should be to be fired, so to speak, one future day at the right time. If you’re always somebody’s parent at 25, and 35, and 45, you’ve still got children.

When you think about it like this, the end goal for your children is really autonomy. The goal in leading a family is for your kids go out and win the world themselves.

Your job as a family leader is to help your kids be self-sufficient and find their life in their own way.

When In Doubt, Be Warm

Another thing about leading a family is, sometimes it can be tough! When in doubt, move to warmth, and when there’s still doubt, move to strictness.

In great meta-studies, researchers found out that warmth and strictness from parents made for highly-functioning children over a long period of time.

So, what is warmth? Simply put, it’s just getting on their level and talking to them about life. Learn and apply listening skills and get them to open up.

Part of being the leader of a family is applying appropriate strictness. Functional families need boundaries, house rules, ground rules, consequences, and values.

This also means that you’ve got to be the one with a thick skin and let people hate you. This is how families grow together. I mean, it’s a tale as old as time – kids must hate you (respectfully) and rebel, which will ultimately result in (fair) consequences. The big thing is that you can’t take this personally – it’s part of growing up and they will grow out of it.

Final Thoughts

Part of leading a family is giving your kids room to grow. Be the good parent that lets them make other friends. Keep in mind that they’ve got to be the right friends, hopefully, with good parents, you can trust You don’t want your kids to be around toxic friends, but if you’ve done your job right you won’t have to worry about this. Instead, learn when to start letting go of the reins a bit and trust your kids to pick the right people to spend their time with.

Struggling to connect with your children? Get real-world guidance today from TownsendNOW!