Four Thoughts that Serve Me Well as a Stay-at-Home Mom
Do you feel like you have been stripped of all choice since making the decision to stay home with your kids?
Do you believe that every second of your day is dictated by the needs of your children, your partner and your home, and that their demands only get bigger and more suffocating with each passing year?
Until you change your thinking, this is exactly what you’ll continue to create for yourself.
What if, instead, you saw all the power and possibility that’s available to you right now? What if you acknowledged that, as a stay-at-home mom, you are - quite literally - the boss, and can run your home however you choose?
You don’t HAVE to do anything - the rules and routines you hold yourself to are the ones that you, yourself, have selected. There’s nothing stopping you from making a different choice except your own thoughts, beliefs and expectations.
Here are four thoughts that helped me shift from feeling exhausted and overwhelmed to more motivated, free and fun:
“I get to be ‘the fun one’ too”
As a stay-at-home mom, it’s easy to feel resentful of the way our partners get to enjoy the kids’ adoration and affection in their role as ‘the fun one’ while we work relentlessly and thanklessly in the background. It seems to fall on us to enforce rules and discipline, leaving no opportunity for lightness and silliness on our part too.
But why not take a stand for the ‘AND’? Who says that because we have rules, we can’t also be fun? This sort of black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking comes all too easily when we’re firmly in the belief that stay-at-home motherhood is intense and all-consuming.
If you’re thinking exclusively in very strong, dramatic sentences, this can quickly lead to a bitterness that gets directed mostly towards your partner, who you may accuse of not enforcing ANY rules while you’re ALWAYS having to discipline.
Yet every action taken is a decision made in a single moment. No one is forcing you to do anything or act in any particular way - that is entirely your choice. And it’s a choice you can make differently any time you want to.
As you move through your week, try the thought, “I’m a fun mom” on for size and see how you feel. If this feels too alien to you, try, “It’s possible that I can be fun as a mom”. For me, these thoughts feel light in my body, and from that lightness I show up entirely differently than when I’m fuelled by resentment at the role I actually assigned myself.
2. “My goal is not for everyone to be happy all the time”
When your goal for each day is for your kids to be happy, and for your partner to be happy, and for you to be happy too, you’re trying very hard to create a result you likely don’t truly want.
If everyone in your family was happy all of the time, there would be no contrast in your life - nothing that lights you up or sparks joy - because you’d simply always be at the same level of contentment. And how would you even know what you’re feeling? Joy doesn’t mean much without pain; excitement doesn’t mean much without boredom. So how will you know you’re happy if you’ve never experienced unhappiness?
Most people are raised to believe that happiness is the goal of life, no matter who you are. But the reality is that life is always going to be 50/50 - a mix of both positive and negative emotions - regardless of your circumstance.
What if you didn’t try to avoid or resist this, but instead accepted that you will feel negative emotion 50% of the time? You would then avoid compounding your misery and let the negative feelings move through you that much faster, simply by allowing them to be there.
And you can decide to relieve yourself right now of the responsibility for making sure your kids are happy and having a good time because you can NEVER control how someone else feels - it’s only ever their thoughts that create their emotions.
3. “Help is always available; I only have to ask”
Do you resent the fact that your partner gets to come and go as he pleases and feel that you’re always the one responding to your kids’ needs?
You may be convinced that you don’t get the help you need, but you may also be holding on so tightly to control that you’re unable to accept it.
I believed for years that my way of doing things was the best way and often criticized my husband for not doing things “right”. And I certainly didn’t hold back on pointing out what was wrong with the way he’d done things when it came to dealing with the kids. This, not surprisingly, led to him not wanting to do anything at all because he didn’t enjoy being criticized all the time.
If you find yourself doing this, ask yourself why. Are you sure that your way is the best way? Did you feel the need to micromanage your partner before you had kids?
When I realized that the answer to both of these questions was a ‘no’ for me and that, of course, I’d seen him as an independent person with his own ideas on how best to do things before our first daughter was born, I couldn’t see any reason for me to be so critical. I started to look for evidence of all the things he does for me and our family, and to express how much I appreciate him for this.
Asking for help and letting him do things his way has made both of our lives that much easier - and brings us closer every time.
4. “I have an amazing relationship with time”
If you’re telling yourself you never have time to do everything you have to do, let alone to take a moment for yourself, then this is the exact result you’re going to get.
And it can have you believing that time is never on your side, leading to feelings of resentment and bitterness.
Stop using time against yourself and start looking at how you can utilize it to create the life you want.
If you find yourself rushing and running late (AGAIN), don’t look to your past and tell yourself that this is the way you’ve always been; that this is just who you are. Your brain is selective about what it remembers and always looks for the evidence of what you already believe.
Instead, take a moment to mine your brain for instances where you were punctual - or even early! I promise you that you’ll be able to find plenty of evidence when you task your brain with answering such a specific question (even when the answers you’re searching for go outside of your preexisting beliefs).
And decide right now that you’ll never again tell yourself that life used to be easier and more fun before you had kids. This sort of thinking is always going to block you from appreciating exactly what you have right now. It will also prevent you from even seeing the possibility that you could have an easier life and way MORE fun in the future. When you’re closed off to such possibilities, you may end up feeling totally demotivated, and unwilling to even try to change things that currently aren’t working for you.
When you start to see time as an ally rather than the enemy, you’ll begin to feel more confident in your ability to use it FOR you, which then becomes the fuel to achieving whatever you want in your present. You’ll develop the ability to make faster decisions, and then to actually DO the thing - before your brain has even had chance to come up with a million and one objections as it continues on its quest to keep you safely in the same place you’ve always been.
If you’d like to work together to uncover more brilliant thoughts to fuel any change - big or small - you’d like to make in your life at home, click the link below to sign up for a free coaching consultation.