Hi Jon, Missy and Alex, Mine is just a small success that is going to have a massive impact on the life of my son.
So before Lifebook our lives were good, I scored pretty highly on the pre-assessment and things were tracking along well in all categories. However, we were experiencing some blocks raising our beautiful and bright son. He didn't buy into a lot of our values such as fitness, hard work, doing the best you can etc. But I'm pretty stubborn, so is he, and each Saturday morning would see us at Parkrun at 7am with both our children. Our daughter has a great attitude to life and naturally wants to do and give her best, but our son had a different perspective. So each Saturday it was a struggle to get him out of bed, get him dressed and to the course and each Saturday would see us bribing, threatening, begging, and on our worse days, I would get my son in a gentle but firm headlock and pull him around the 5kms Parkrun, if I didn't headlock him, he'd run away and hide until Parkrun was finished. Oh you can imagine the looks i would get from other people... but fitness was important to me and it was very important to me that my children be healthy... otherwise I would have failed as their parent. So I started the Lifebook program and the next week we were on school holiday.
We had decided to do a road trip to help out my mum put some new flooring in her house, 8hrs drive north of Brisbane. So I packed up the kid, Ethan 9yrs and Ashley 7yrs and myself and off we went, leaving my husband at home to continue his work. Naturally, with all this time in the car, I started listening to your program... with the kids in the back seat reading, playing and watching videos... slowly they started to show interest in Lifebook, this was not my intention, Lifebook was just about me doing something for me but eventually they started independently working on their own Lifebooks in their notebooks. What happened next surprised us. Our son was clearly able to articulate his beliefs about his health and fitness. He did this by breaking up this category into fitness, diet and health, then for each subcategory he wrote down his old, current and new beliefs (newly formed after listening to your category video). His beliefs about fitness looked like this (remember Ethan is 9 years old):
OLD: Fitness is useless and benefits nothing.
CURRENT: Fitness gives more energy but is exhausting at the same time.
NEW: Fitness empowers everything and most of my life evolves around it.
We are so grateful for the Lifebook program... this one small change in beliefs and attitude at age 9 is going to make a huge difference in our son's life. Now this doesn't mean he is excited to get out and do Parkrun each Saturday. What it means is that we no longer have to drag him out of bed or get him dressed. He gets himself ready and even though he doesn't necessarily love it, he is now determined to finish it. Last Saturday we all went to Parkrun, we all started off at a gentle jog but it didn't take long before my son dropped off to a slow walk, we tried to motivate and encourage him but he wasn't buying it so we continued on without him, thinking we'll pick him up on the way back, the track we use doubles back on itself. As we returned he looked miserable so I said, "come on, turn around, I'll walk with you", he said, "No mummy, I must finish it". This came from a 9yr old who had never had any intrinsic motivation to finish anything that involved physical exercise in his whole life. So we continued, my husband ran the 5km and then doubled back to meet our son and then walked the remainder with him. My daughter and I ran about 1/2 the track until my 7yr old had enough running then we walked the rest together. This self initiated determination to complete the full 5kms is a massive breakthrough for our son and we are just so grateful. We have coached him for so long on better beliefs and better attitudes but he simply couldn't hear it from us. The difference this one small realisation about how changing his beliefs can change his life will serve him for his entire lifetime.
From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU.
So before Lifebook our lives were good, I scored pretty highly on the pre-assessment and things were tracking along well in all categories. However, we were experiencing some blocks raising our beautiful and bright son. He didn't buy into a lot of our values such as fitness, hard work, doing the best you can etc. But I'm pretty stubborn, so is he, and each Saturday morning would see us at Parkrun at 7am with both our children. Our daughter has a great attitude to life and naturally wants to do and give her best, but our son had a different perspective. So each Saturday it was a struggle to get him out of bed, get him dressed and to the course and each Saturday would see us bribing, threatening, begging, and on our worse days, I would get my son in a gentle but firm headlock and pull him around the 5kms Parkrun, if I didn't headlock him, he'd run away and hide until Parkrun was finished. Oh you can imagine the looks i would get from other people... but fitness was important to me and it was very important to me that my children be healthy... otherwise I would have failed as their parent. So I started the Lifebook program and the next week we were on school holiday.
We had decided to do a road trip to help out my mum put some new flooring in her house, 8hrs drive north of Brisbane. So I packed up the kid, Ethan 9yrs and Ashley 7yrs and myself and off we went, leaving my husband at home to continue his work. Naturally, with all this time in the car, I started listening to your program... with the kids in the back seat reading, playing and watching videos... slowly they started to show interest in Lifebook, this was not my intention, Lifebook was just about me doing something for me but eventually they started independently working on their own Lifebooks in their notebooks. What happened next surprised us. Our son was clearly able to articulate his beliefs about his health and fitness. He did this by breaking up this category into fitness, diet and health, then for each subcategory he wrote down his old, current and new beliefs (newly formed after listening to your category video). His beliefs about fitness looked like this (remember Ethan is 9 years old):
OLD: Fitness is useless and benefits nothing.
CURRENT: Fitness gives more energy but is exhausting at the same time.
NEW: Fitness empowers everything and most of my life evolves around it.
We are so grateful for the Lifebook program... this one small change in beliefs and attitude at age 9 is going to make a huge difference in our son's life. Now this doesn't mean he is excited to get out and do Parkrun each Saturday. What it means is that we no longer have to drag him out of bed or get him dressed. He gets himself ready and even though he doesn't necessarily love it, he is now determined to finish it. Last Saturday we all went to Parkrun, we all started off at a gentle jog but it didn't take long before my son dropped off to a slow walk, we tried to motivate and encourage him but he wasn't buying it so we continued on without him, thinking we'll pick him up on the way back, the track we use doubles back on itself. As we returned he looked miserable so I said, "come on, turn around, I'll walk with you", he said, "No mummy, I must finish it". This came from a 9yr old who had never had any intrinsic motivation to finish anything that involved physical exercise in his whole life. So we continued, my husband ran the 5km and then doubled back to meet our son and then walked the remainder with him. My daughter and I ran about 1/2 the track until my 7yr old had enough running then we walked the rest together. This self initiated determination to complete the full 5kms is a massive breakthrough for our son and we are just so grateful. We have coached him for so long on better beliefs and better attitudes but he simply couldn't hear it from us. The difference this one small realisation about how changing his beliefs can change his life will serve him for his entire lifetime.
From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU.