What you do want is to feel good

What you do want is to feel good

 
A young father found himself at his wit’s end because his young son was wetting the bed every night. Not only was this father frustrated about the physical disruption of finding wet bedding and clothing every morning, but he was concerned about the emotional ramifications of this continuing for such a long time. And frankly, he was embarrassed by his son’s behavior. “He is too big for this,” he complained to me.

He said, “Every morning, as soon as I walk into his room, I can tell by the odor that he has wet the bed again. And at this point I feel helpless, angry, and frustrated.

I told him that he was actually perpetuating bed-wetting. I explained: “When the way you feel is controlled by a condition, you can never influence a change in that condition. But when you are able to control the way you feel within a condition, then you have a power to influence change in condition.”

“What do you want?” I asked.
He said, “I want my son to wake up happy and dry and proud of himself and not to be embarrassed.”

I explained, “When you enter son’s bedroom and become aware that something you don’t want to happen has happened, if you would stop for a moment to acknowledge the thing that has happened that you don’t want — asking yourself what it is that you do want and then further enforcing that side of the pivotal equation by asking yourself why you want it — not only would you immediately feel better, you would soon begin to see the results of your positive influence.

This young father called very soon and happily reported that the bed-wetting had stopped.