Chapter 8 What Drives Our Struggles A young woman passes a guy on a busy Manhattan street and says,
Nice jacket.
What's driving the comment?
Appreciation?
Jealousy?
Judgment?
The tone says it all,
But what drives the tone?
Emotion.
She might genuinely like the style and be making a compliment—or flirting with him.
Or she might have snidely said,
Nice jacket—with a smirk,
Just loud enough for him to hear and feel the sting of her judgment.
Why she said what she said isn't as important as what drove her to say it.
The point is,
How we show up is driven by how we feel.
This simple truth has profound implications for every relationship in your life—especially the one with your kid who struggles.
The Hidden Drivers of Everything This may sound basic,
But most people look past this simple chain reaction.
How you act is based on how you feel.
How you feel is based on how you think.
How you think is based on what you believe.
When you become aware of what drives how you think,
Feel,
And act,
You unlock something incredibly powerful—the ability to consciously create your life instead of being tossed around by your emotions like a ship in a storm.
Most people miss the fact that there's an emotional engine running beneath every thought and action.
Nothing you do is emotionally neutral.
The key is becoming aware of what's driving your internal experience.
When you become aware of the Hidden Driver,
You gain the ability to create the life you actually want instead of just reacting to whatever gets thrown at you.
You can navigate difficulties in ways that reduce their impact over time rather than letting them accumulate into bigger problems.
This leads to a radical but liberating truth.
You always have a choice.
Remember,
Every struggle is an expression of an external and or internal challenge.
Understanding why you struggle unlocks a completely new way of relating to yourself,
Your life,
And especially your kids.
It's easy to relate to suffering as if it's some mysterious force beyond our control.
But here's a simple truth that might sting a little—we choose to suffer or not.
We don't get to choose our circumstances necessarily.
We don't get to choose how people treat us or the choices other people make.
But one of the great freedoms of life is that we get to choose our state—how we think,
How we feel,
And how we act.
Most of us don't relate to ourselves as being able to think how we want,
Feel how we want,
Or act how we want.
But all of these are manifestations of our mind.
And our mind is trainable.
It can be coached and molded to respond to the world around us in the ways we want it to.
How do we know this?
Great thinkers and leaders have shared this approach as the key to their success,
Their ability to influence,
And their ability to achieve their goals.
There are countless examples of people who refused to tolerate the state of their life so they dedicated themselves to improving it.
And at the end of this journey to accomplish the profound task they set out to complete,
They all found that the state of their mind was reflected by every result they got.
Our mind creates the world around us,
And the mind is created by us.
So if you don't like your life,
Look at the state of your mind.
The path to freedom.
Okay,
That's nice information,
Jeevan,
But how does this relate to parenting my kid who is struggling,
You might be asking.
Well,
Transformation in you directly translates to transformation in them.
So stay with me just a little longer on this topic,
And I promise it'll be worth it.
So how does someone actually make a shift from unconscious reaction to conscious choice?
From confused suffering to practicing inspired ownership?
From things just happened to me to I have the potential to create my life experience.
The process follows a predictable pattern.
Here's how transformation happens.
First,
A person suffers so much that they get to a breaking point.
They realize only they can change who they are and how their life occurs to them.
They refuse to tolerate the current limited results of their life.
Then,
Eventually,
They discover this truth.
Their lives only reflect how they think,
Feel,
And act.
So they pivot their gaze inward.
After examining and transforming the state of their mind,
The results of their life begin to shift.
And as one great teacher has shared,
Show me your results,
And I'll show you how you think.
But how do you actually develop this kind of self-mastery?
The power of awareness.
This transformation sounds profound,
But the steps to achieve it are deceivingly simple.
It all comes down to one powerful practice.
Awareness.
Every moment is an opportunity to make one pivotal choice.
To become aware.
If someone cuts you off while driving and you get pissed,
You can't do anything about that anger if you're unaware of it.
Most people live completely disconnected from their own emotional experience.
They get angry because events happen to them,
And without awareness,
They carry that anger into the next situation.
They're dragging an increasingly heavy bag of emotional burdens into every situation in a relationship,
Ultimately passing them on to their communities,
Friends,
Partners,
And kids.
But here's what makes us as humans different from every other being on the planet.
We can become aware.
Let's take the same driving example.
When someone does something dangerous and you get angry,
You become aware of the anger.
With a moment of reflection,
You might realize you became angry because you felt your safety and the safety of your passengers was at risk.
Then you choose to do something about that emotional awareness.
Because you've become aware of your current experience,
You now have the power to shift it.
As you practice this awareness more consistently,
You'll start to notice something potentially uncomfortable or potentially liberating.
It's always about us.
You'll notice most of your emotional reactions aren't really about what's happening around you right now.
We get angry,
Sad,
Jealous.
We expect people to behave in certain ways and make them responsible for our emotional state.
It's not that this is wrong and another way is right,
It's just that it's not effective in supporting us and creating the life we actually want to have.
When we get upset,
Stressed,
Helpless,
Or depressed,
We say it's because of how the world exists around us.
But it isn't the world,
It's us.
Period.
Suffering exists nowhere except within our own experience.
You might still be wondering why we are talking so much about personal transformation when this is a book about how you can help your kid who is struggling.
Well,
Here it is.
Your kid's liberation depends on your awareness.
The unreflective parent is one of the greatest threats to a teenager's development.
Your self-awareness has the potential for your kid to create the life they want.
Your lack of awareness creates roadblocks to their destiny and increases the likelihood of their struggle.
Your lack of awareness hurts instead of helps.
The most common and destructive pattern in parents of kids who struggle is this,
They don't recognize themselves in their kids.
The stubbornness,
The lack of resilience,
The closed-mindedness,
The anxiety,
The self-centeredness,
They all have their origin points within the parent.
Always.
Like before,
This realization is either devastating or liberating,
Depending on how you choose to use it.
The reflective parent.
This shift from blaming circumstances to taking responsibility is what separates effective parents from struggling families.
The reflective parent patiently and humbly examines this truth.
They're curious about how both they and their kid develop these patterns.
They're receptive to feedback from therapists,
Counselors,
Mentors,
And friends.
They start to notice when they get annoyed,
Escalated,
Bothered,
Or depressed.
They realize how ineffective they've become as parents and how they unintentionally reinforce the troubling patterns within their kids.
Awareness is curative and liberating,
Not only for you but for everyone you influence.
When you do your own inner work,
You stop unconsciously passing on your emotional baggage to your kid.
You become the kind of parent who inspires instead of triggers.
Remember,
Your kid's freedom starts with your own.
The hidden force.
You're beginning to see how your inner world shapes your outer experience and how that directly impacts your kid.
When you're triggered and reactive,
Your kids become defensive and distant.
When you're centered and aware,
Space opens for real connection.
A lot of parents get stuck here.
They understand this intellectually,
But they keep falling into the same patterns.
They know they should stay calm during conflicts,
But they get pulled into power struggles.
They know they should listen without judgment,
But they can't help trying to fix everything.
So why does this happen?
Because knowledge isn't enough.
Most parents know what they should do,
But unconscious patterns keep sabotaging their best intentions.
And two patterns sabotage parents more than any others.
