Tag Archives for " gratitude "

Find the hidden good in the bad!
Jackie Hall

This is one of my popular catch phrases.

Often we only focus on what we don’t want and what we’ve missed out on (that we believed should have happened), but the reality is, you are here now and this is your reality.

If you keep rolling in that story of what you don’t have, your brain will keep finding evidence of what you don’t have and you’ll keep feeling crappy.

If you’ve done any of my courses, you will have learnt how to start finding what’s good, beneficial or helpful about unwanted situations by asking yourself:

• What can I be grateful for in this situation?
• What am I /my child learning from this unwanted event?
• Where is this unwanted event leading me that is wanted? (all highs lead to lows, all lows lead to highs)
• What is the opportunity that can be found in this event?
• What am I getting from this event?

Ask yourself these questions and see if you can come up with the ‘hidden good in the bad’ for yourself.

Get into this practice every time you catch yourself focusing on what you DON’T want or what you’re missing out on.

Shift your focus…

Jackie

Happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy. There’s going to be stress in life, but it’s your choice whether you let it affect you or not.
Valerie Bertinelli

When you’re having a crappy day and someone says to you (or posts it on Facebook) that happiness is a choice, don’t you just want to slap them (or unfriend them).

Here’s the truth about happiness:

Happiness is an emotion we feel when life’s going to plan.
The reality is life doesn’t always go to plan, so we’re not always going to feel happy!

But what we can feel is at peace with whatever is happening in our lives. Let’s face it, you won’t always like your reality, but you can learn how to accept it and deal with it.

And that’s what is really needed when you’re having those days that makes you want to run away or hide in a corner, not trying to create a facade that this unwanted event makes us happy.

But sometimes we just don’t know how to see life differently and we just need to learn.

So seek out the information that will teach you how to see the bigger picture and not get consumed by the ins and outs of parenting and life in general. Learn how to find peace in this moment…because what we’re really looking for is peace of mind. We all know that happiness won’t always be possible.

Ommmmm…….

Jackie

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Melody Beattie

I know, we hear it all the time. Be grateful. But how much effort have your really given it?

I once did a two week gratitude program where I had to write 15 things a day that I was grateful for.  I was in a state of depression at the time and couldn’t believe the turnaround in how I felt in such a short time.

It was incredible!

Because my mind kept focusing on what I was getting or what I did have, I kept finding more and more things to write down.

Where your attention goes, your energy flows.

Whatever you put your attention on expands in that direction.

Why not try it for yourself? You will be amazed at the transformation it will have on how you FEEL towards your life and how patient you become about parenting.

Peace is closer than you think.

Jackie

I have just ordered a book about conscious parenting, as I always like to keep learning and growing and seeking out new information to help me do so.

It got me thinking as to the way I’ve been parenting lately and the effects it’s been having on my children.

You see I’ve been a little distracted lately.  With the launch of my new The Be the Change Program and also signing a distribution contract to get The Happy Mum Handbook into all major Australian bookstores, it’s meant that there is a very large workload on my shoulders to juggle with the many family demands I have as well.

With all this has come limited sleep and a lot of stress.  Needless to say that my parenting has been a far cry from what I’d like it to be.

This happens every once in a while, I think, to every parent, but then you get triggered back into being conscious and aware of what you are doing and the consequences of that.

This has been highlighted by the incessant whingeing, complaining and general unappreciation for anything that has come from my six year old (and increasingly from my five year old too).

What I realised is that in the mix of all the tasks I had to do, I was not giving enough attention to how my children were perceiving life and what they were learning, and now that I’ve been snapped back into awareness about this, just from ordering this book about conscious parenting, I have realised just how much I’ve been relying on DS games, Wii games and Foxtel to help me raise my children, and it’s not good enough!

So it’s time to teach my children a few lessons about appreciation (and probably myself too) and with the school holidays coming up at the end of this week, I’ve decided that we are going to have a ‘live like an ethiopian child’ day.  I am going to add a few things into this day to teach my kids that what they have are privileges that they need to appreciate.

I have received some good ideas from my facebook page on how to do this, but one that stood out to me was having my kids go without food for as long as possible (hours, not days of course) so that they can feel what it feels like be hungry and contemplate what it would be like if they couldn’t just go to the cupboard/fridge and grab what they want to eat.

I am, of course going to take it further and ban the TV, Wii Games, DS Games and all inside toys.  We will have our ‘lunch’ which will be very basic, out on the back deck where it is likely to be cold and place mats on the wooden back deck.  I am also going to show them a video of how less fortunate kids in ethiopia live, so that we can have a discussion about it.

Although my attempt at simulating the life of an ethiopian child will not even come close to the conditions that these poor children have to live in, I am hoping that this small example will be enough to help my children appreciate their lives a little more and become more aware of how good they have it.

I anticipate a lot of arguing, complaining and backchat on the day, but I’m going to just have to deal with it and you know what, just from screening youtube video after youtube video to see which one is appropriate to show the kids, I am remembering this appreciation and gratitude for myself.

It will be an interesting day and I look forward to seeing my children grow from the experience. 

I look around this house and it’s messy…..again.  I spent hours cleaning, folding washing and feeling organised on the weekend only to turn around and find it messy again.  In fact yesterday I cleaned up again, but you wouldn’t know it today.

There’s popcorn, paper, clothes and towels all over the floor and dishes to be done (I just spent 40 minutes doing them last night, how did they all get dirty again?).  I have bed wetting washing to do…..again (when will that ever end).   I really don’t want to do any of it and am feeling quite overwhelmed by the constant chores that seem to invade my life.

I can feel the annoyance kicking in and these feelings simmer within me as I attempt to clean it up and are continually met by extra demands of the boys.  I am desperately trying to stay calm and not take my annoyance out on the kids, but I feel my attempts becoming very strained.  This anger and annoyance is sitting in my throat, just waiting to escape by way of yelling, slamming something down, or simply falling apart momentarily.

I’m hormonal (that’s not helping), I’m annoyed, I couldn’t be bothered and all I want to do is sit down with a cup of tea and watch a movie in the comfort of a nice clean house and no interruptions.

So what do I do?

Firstly, stop.  Right now, stop in my tracks, take a few deep breaths and reflect on what I’ve been thinking.  Look at this opening paragraph.  It is full of conversation that is in conflict with the reality of what is presently going on and the reality of life as a parent.

It is this resistance of reality that is causing my stress and the simmering emotion of anger.  Anger is caused because we enter into these conversations in our minds about how something shouldn’t be the way it is.  We are in conflict between what is and what we believe it ‘should’ be.

The house is messy right now!  This is reality.   As part of the agreement made between me and my partner and how we share the workload, I am responsible for the upkeep of the house.  This is reality.  The kids need me to help them with things.  This is reality.  As a mum there are lots of tasks I need to do.  This is reality.  This is not the only part of my life.  It is just part of the goods and bads that come with everything in life.  That is also reality.

There is no point allowing myself to enter into conversations in my mind about how it should be different to the way it is and how I don’t want to do it, because this is only going to cause me to feel angry and resentful.

Do I really want to feel angry or resentful? Do I enjoy having these feeling?

Of course not.  So if the reality is that you have to do the housework and are regularly interrupted, how are you going to stop feeling angry or resentful?

Change the way I think about it.

The first thing we need to do when we start to notice how bad we feel, is to shift your focus from what isn’t happening, to the reality of the situation, and then on to what you’re going to do about this new reality.

So how can I look at this situation differently?  What are the good aspects to my life that I can focus on?  I get to work from home.  I have a husband who doesn’t care about a bit of mess here and there and doesn’t pressure me to keep it pristine clean.  I have two healthy, happy boys.  I am grateful that I even have so many things that it can make a house messy.  I have a roof over my head.

This is good.  I can feel that heavy feeling in my body starting to lift.

This part of my life is not the only part of my life.  I went to the movies the other night, I met up with friends for coffee,  I had a bath the other night and relaxed, last night the kids were in bed early and I got to watch Masterchef and the biggest loser finale, sometimes my house is clean, sometimes I am up to date with the washing, I get quiet time three days a week when the kids are at school/daycare and I work from home.

So what am I now going to do?

Well because I changed my thinking to being back in alignment with reality and have consciously decided to look at the situation from a different more expanded perspective, I am now ready to tackle the reality of the messy house again.

Do I like it?  No.  Am I going to all of a sudden love doing housework and chores?  No.  But I’m not feeling angry and overwhelmed by it and if I start to again, I need to repeat what I’ve done above, because it is NEVER the events in your life that cause you stress, it’s because you get sucked into that conversation that is in conflict with reality and only focus on the small picture.

When you get into the practice of recognising those thoughts, changing them to be in alignment with reality and expanding your mindset to seeing this situation in the context of the bigger picture of your life (this situation is not the be all and end all of life – it is part of the ups AND downs of it –  then you stop your negative emotions from escalating to breaking point.

Now, time to stop writing and start cleaning!