That Just Happened
I’m pretty Brene Brown was the first to say that if you argue with reality, you lose. But only every time.
Frustration is the gap between reality and your expectations.
If you expect that your kids will happily get up, get ready, eat breakfast, get their backpack together, and get out the door for school with. no drama, no wonder you feel so frustrated every morning! Because the reality of how the morning goes does not look anything like that!
So, your brain hack for today is to remember to think “well, that just happened” or “this is happening” or some sort of similar acceptance of reality phrase.
Cause your current thoughts are arguing with reality. Anything in the realm of “this shouldn’t be happening” “this is ridiculous” “I can’t believe he…” or “she should be able to….” are not useful and those thoughts are what’s causing your mornings to be so stressful. Not what your kids are and aren’t doing.
Let’s remember the model:
C: Kid is sleeping after I told him to get up
T: I can’t believe we have to go through this every morning!
F: Frustrated
A: freak out, start yelling to get up, literally drag him out of bed ranting and raving
R: I continue to go through this every day
An optional intentional model could look like this:
C: Kid is sleeping after I told him to get up
T: This is happening
F: Acceptance
A: calmly try again. get curious about why he is so sleepy and what we can change tonight to get him to bed sooner, play some fun peppy music on the alexa to lighten the mood and get everyone moving.
R: I have the morning experience I want to have
We cannot control our kids But we can still have the results that we want in our lives. What your kid is doing is in fact a neutral circumstance. You can neutralize it in your mind with accepting the reality that it is happening. Then you can decide on purpose what meaning you want to give it with your intentional thoughts and then show up the way you want to as a mom.
All of this is possible. Not easy. And you’re never going to be perfect at it. But with practice, you can retrain your brain to have new more useful go-to thoughts. That is what we do in coaching. We find out what you are currently thinking that is causing that frustration gap. We accept reality and intentionally think what we want to think on purpose about whatever chaos is swirling around us in order to create peace.
Drop the war on the frustration by accepting the reality of what is. And then use your powerful mind to create whatever results you want to no matter what your circumstances are. I’d love to help you do that. Click here to sign up for a free zoom chat and we’ll get started.