"Don't cry over spilt milk"

We've all heard this saying over and over again.  We know it in logic, but why is it that we continue to get caught up in the small stuff until we boil over or break down.

I can literally feel it in my body when I have attached myself to certain outcomes and hang onto the picture in my mind of how things were 'supposed to go'.

I clean the house and expect it to stay tidy.  I go to bed and expect to get a full night's sleep.  I ask the kids to get dressed and expect them to comply straight away.  I expect to eat my dinner without having to get up.  I picture the nice long, hot shower I'm going to have without having the door opened.  I picture being able to watch Oprah without noise.

None of this happens every single time the way I picture it.  In fact rarely does any of this happen.  Yet I continue to hang onto the picture in my mind that says it 'should' happen this way and then get all cranky when it doesn't.

I think it's time to just let go, relax, realise that this is the reality of parenting and that there is NOTHING I can do about it.  NOTHING, I say.  I mean I can sit here and go over and over in my head all of the reasons why I should be able to do things uninterrupted and how annoying it is that I can't and how in the good old days I could do this and do that and be free.

However, and this is the cold, harsh reality of parenting that we MUST accept if we are going to stop motherhood stress, SOMETIMES THINGS AREN'T GOING TO GO TO PLAN! 

As a mum we are constantly going to be dealing with fights, messy houses, changed plans, literally spilt milk, tantrums, sleepless nights or broken sleep and noisy, whingeing children.

This is the downside to being a parent and it's not going to change.  However what can change is your mindset.  You have the choice to get bogged down in all this 'not getting what you want' mindset, or you can start to train your mind to look at things in a different way.

Here are 5 things that can help you to do this:

1.  Look at what you ARE getting out of that situation.  What is the benefit of this situation either for you or your child (they are learning, you are learning, they are healthy, this happening means......., etc)

2.  What can you do about the situation?  Yes this has happened (reality), so what am I going to do about it, rather than let your thoughts go into that unproductive internal rant that only leads to stress.

3.  How can I set me and my kids up for success?  If it's a meal without interruption or a shower, how can you set it up so that it happens that way, rather than you just expecting it to miraculously occur (denial!).  How can I manipulate the situation to get what I want (this is where bribery....er....sorry....I mean negotiation is awesome, or distraction). 

4.  When things don't go the way you expected them too, recognise that the picture is now different to what you had envisaged in your mind and let it go.  That picture you had is not reality.  What you are experiencing is the new reality.  You MUST accept this reality to stop your stress and do not let your mind get into that destructive conversation about your preferred outcome. Once you accept this new reality, then go back to point 2.

5.  Smile.  Seriously, this will make you feel better.  Keep that smile pasted on your face until you start to feel better. There is a lot of power in this tip, so try it when you feel yourself getting stressed out.  Try to think of something funny that happened in the past while you are doing it too, as this will help the smile feel authentic.

At the end of the day, motherhood is full of some of the most unbelievably rewarding and gratifying moments life could offer, yet it is also filled with the biggest challenges life could offer. 

It is always going to come down to our mindset and what we are saying to ourselves that influences how we feel about these ups and downs and it is this mindset that I urge you to (and continue to myself) work on over and over and over again so that you can enjoy more of this motherhood role instead of getting stuck in 'what's not happening'.

For more information on how to change your mindset, purchase your copy of The Happy Mum Handbook.

Lately I must admit that I have had my cranky boots on.  I've been wandering around my house cranky at the mess, cranky because I don't have enough time to do all the things I want to on my website, cranky because the kids ignore me and I have to repeat myself over and over, or threaten to take privilages away if they dont do what I ask, and cranky because where I live gets cold in summer when I am so used to constant warm weather.

Even though I have half heartedly tried to talk myself out of this crankiness, it was the words of my darling husband that turned me around.

He said, quite simply the other day when I was whingeing, "But that's reality babe. That's how it is.  There will always be mess to clean up. There will always be housework to do and 10 loads of washing a week to wash, dry and put away.  The kids will always be doing one thing or another that will be frustrating, so why get so upset about it.  This is reality".

It's funny how I could've said those exact words to myself, but sometimes it just doesn't have the affect that it does when it comes from someone else's mouth.  It really made me wake up and realise that he was right.

There will always be something that I have to do that perhaps I don't really want to, so I have the choice to either walk around being constantly cranky, or I can just accept it and go about it in the best way I can.

After Steve made this very logical comment, I started to observe just how often I was wandering about the house doing my thing with a permanent scowl on my face.  I even laughed at myself at one point and said "Look at me grizzling away in my head getting annoyed by all this mess and all the things I've got to do.  What's the point?  I have to do it anyway, so why not do it with a smile on my face."

Another strange thing that happens when you start to put your attention on the solutions and changing your approach to things, is the answers that start to appear around you.

My mum came to visit last weekend, and she said to me (in her most non-offensive way), "I'm not picking on your house, but if you live with clutter around you all the time, you become cluttered in your head."

I didn't take offense to that, as I know that she was coming from a helpful place, and as I looked around my small three bedroom house, I really started to see how cluttered it really was.  Now I spend a lot of time in my house, so this clutter probably is largely contributing to my frustrations.

After my mum said that, I spoke to Steve about all the plans I had for my website and how I was pressed for time and he suggested that his parents take the kids for a few days in January to help me get on top of everything.

Feeling armed with a plan to declutter my house and time manage my work schedule a bit better, I felt empowered.

On Saturday I cleaned the back deck, caught up on the 10 loads of washing, plus folded and put them away and cleaned out the kids toy room/spare room.  I came out with 4 garbage bags of give aways and 4.5 garbage bags of rubbish - from one room!

On Sunday I relaxed a bit, but went on a big tidying spree later on so that I could wake up to a clean and tidy start to my week today.

This morning the boys had had their breakfast, got dressed, had their shoes on and their teeth brushed and ready, half an hour before we had to leave!

Over the last few weeks I have been reminded that sometimes we just need to start looking at the solutions to our problems, rather than getting stuck in them and that when we start to come out of our stressful thoughts that are in conflict with reality and we start to look around, there are loads of ways that we can change what is causing the problem.

I now have a plan for how I'm going to de-clutter the rest of the house, still work on my website, keep the house tidy and hang out with the kids and hubby.  I can do this because I have stopped looking at what's going wrong and what I'm not getting and have started to do something about it.

I wanted to share this story with you for two reasons:

1.  Because I wanted to show you that even though I teach self help to mums, I still need to be reminded to get my head out of those frustrated unproductive thoughts that are in conflict with reality and shift my thoughts to aligning with reality and thinking about how I can change the situation.

and

2.  Because, knowing that I need reminding of this, I wanted to be the one to remind you of these important steps so that you start to become aware of your unproductive thoughts to and change them to start searching for the solution too.

Time Management is often a big issue for mums.  That's why in The Happy Mum Handbook I help you to create a schedule that will include everything that you want in it - all housework, quality time with the kids, quality time for yourself and with your husband, work and anything else you consider important.

Have a great day and I hope your mind starts to feels as uncluttered as mine right now!

This weekend I went to the wedding of my Brother-in-law down in Lorne.  It was the most beautiful wedding I've ever been too (with the exception of mine, of course) and you could really see the intense love this couple had for each other.

We flew my mum down from Brisbane for the weekend so she could look after our kids while my husband and I went and it was the first night out together that we'd had in a long time - socialising that is.  We had had a few nights here and there where we had gone to dinner, but it had been ages since we had had a good night out with lots of other people, child free.

The afternoon of the wedding, because my husband was part of the bridal party and I was not, he was with the groom and his mates and I found myself having a relaxing afternoon with some friends that I knew who had come all the way from Kununurra, WA, none of which had any children.

It began to remind me, as I sat there enjoying a few drinks and the conversations that were flowing (complete with foxtel music, instead of Nickelodeon), how incredibly freeing it felt to just hang out and not have to get up and down to the demands of my kids.  Their lives seemed so easy and effortless and I found myself missing a little bit of my pre-child life, or at least regretting that I did not appreciate this 'freedom' when I had it.

The subject came around to talking about kids and I was explaining how, although it was an awesome and enjoyable experience, it was full on and it totally changed your life and things like what I was doing now felt like a mini-holiday.

Fast forward to after the wedding, and quite a few drinks later and I was at a pub with another group of girls, all of which had children between 0-5 and were enjoying their child-free night out too.  I remember saying to one of the girls there, "How free do you feel not having any kids with you tonight?  Isn't it awesome!"

I was quite emphatic about it and as I woke up the next day, and as I sit here now typing, it occured to me just how emphatic I was.  I'm wondering, if I felt so free without my kids, does that mean I consider my life to be very restricting and prison-like when I'm with them?  Why do I feel so free when I'm away from my kids?

I mean is this the way that I view being a mother?  Sure there are lots of things you always have to do when you are a mum, but it's really not that bad, is it? 

I started to think about all the things that I love about being a mum, and of course, I would never ever want to live without them, so I just think that perhaps I need to start seriously becoming aware of how I see this role.

I can choose to see it as work, or I can choose to see it as enjoyable and look for the 'hidden good in the bad'.

I guess I just surprised myself upon reflection that I still consider motherhood to be a lot of hard work over the enjoyment that I get from it too.  So my next job is to start teaching my mind to think about this in a different way.  Because after all, if that is where my attention is, this journey to being a happy mum is going to be a continually relentless job in itself.

I don't want to feel like this job is hard and laborious.  In another 10 years when my boys are teenagers, I don't want to look back at this time in my life and wish I hadn't taken this precious time with them for granted.  It's time I started to appreciate all the great stuff about being a mum, just a little bit more, because it's not going to be forever that they are young and precious.  And its certainly not going to be forever that they are around me all the time and wanting my attention.  Rather than seeing this as hard work, I need to change this view to start seeing how lucky I am to be able to enjoy my kids at this age.

I need to change the way I think about my role as a mum.  In fact, even calling it a role makes it sound like a task; something I have to play.  Stuff it, I'm going to enjoy my kids while there young instead of missing a life I don't have anymore and wishing that they would grow up and get 'easier'.  If I change the way I think about it, then I will change what I think about, I'm sure.

What do you think?  Do you feel this sense of freedom when you are without your kids? Or do you feel pretty complete with or without them?  Let us know what your secret thinking about parenting is (and whether I may just be a normal mum thinking the same as other mums)?  I can't wait for your feedback.

Have a great day
Jackie

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