This past weekend Kyle was away for a men’s church retreat and to be honest… I was not super excited for him to go. Yes, it is great that he is doing these things, but I like to have my partner here to help with things around the house, with the girls and just in general…
I could have chosen to be grumpy because he was not here and I can almost guarantee that the girls would have also been grumpy with me the whole weekend if I would have chosen that path…
But I did something different. I decided that we would make the best of it!
What I did was I reframed the weekend… instead of it being a weekend where Dad was gone, we had a ‘Girl’s Weekend’ instead! We choose a few fun things that we wanted to do, we went out for lunch, we made desserts and ate ice cream! And I made sure to stay in a good mood, even when I was starting to get tired and exhausted and you know what, we had a great weekend!
The simple act of me choosing to make it a fun weekend instead of feeling overwhelmed by being responsible for all of the things really made a difference. And the reason for this is something that I try to bring to light when talking to my patients.
That reason is that we think our life into existence! What we think about is what we bring into our life. If we are peaceful and calm, life usually reflects that back to us. But if we are cranky, moody, upset, then life reflects that back to us as well!
And I have found this to be even more true since having kids… if the girls seem to be extra moody or fighting with each other a bit more, I know that I need to check myself. When I do, I usually find that there is something that has been bothering me, or I am tired, or one of my own needs are not currently met… and when I work to regulate myself I see a change in their behavior pretty rapidly.
This is because how we do things matters! How we approach life makes a difference!
We get to wake up each morning and choose what type of day we want to have!
Do we want it to be fun or do we want to be grumpy?
Each morning I CHOOSE HAPPY!
What do you choose? Let me know!