9/30/09

Affirmation: All my experiences are part of the richness and fullness of my life.
(Affirmation from "Meditations to Heal Your Life" by Louise L. Hay)

With every test comes a challenge and testing the power of positive thinking is no different. Over the weekend I woke up in a crappy mood both days and for no particular reason. Saturday I was able to switch my mood fairly quickly but Sunday proved to be much more difficult. I started getting frustrated with myself for not being positive which was even more unproductive. Consequently I decided to just accept my mood and not fight it. I’m not sure why I thought that it was unacceptable to be in a bad mood. It’s part of life and I actually discovered that accepting my mood and not trying to change it actually helped it dissipate faster. Sometimes we just have to accept who we are and how we are feeling.

While change is important, today I want to focus on self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is really self love and in order to make positive changes in our life we have to be able to accept some of our faults and recognize the things we are good at. One of my biggest worries in life is whether or not I am being a good mom. I want so badly to provide an excellent, loving home for my babies so they will not end up on a therapist’s couch detailing the horrible things I did to them that have screwed them up forever. Then I opened a parenting magazine, Cookie, and found an article by Nell Casey entitled “The Optimist’s Child.” The article states that “you have to work pretty darn hard to screw up your kids.” The article talks about how parents’ choices do affect children but they are not binding for the rest of their lives and if you parent with love in the best way you know how it will all be ok. Essentially our children will not be forever scarred if we are not in a good mood everyday or put on an extra cartoon here and there. What a relief! In the spirit of self-acceptance I decided to make a quick list of those things that I do well as a parent:

I feed my children healthy food and am teaching them how to cook

I play with my children and give them a lot of attention

I am willing to work hard every day to make a better life for them

I know in my heart that despite whatever mistakes I am making I am also doing a lot of things really well. I adore my children and I think that in the long run that is what they will remember about their childhood so I have to give myself a break. As my very wise 84 year old grandmother said, “Stop thinking about it all so much. It’s obvious to everyone but you sometimes how much you love your children.”

I want to leave you today with a positive story in which my 4 year old son taught me an invaluable lesson. He adores baseball and hits left handed. His grandfather was pitching to him yesterday and he was attempting to bat right handed and not doing particularly well. I said to him, “you should switch back to left it’s easier for you.” He looked me straight in the eye and said “don’t worry mom, I can do it.” And he did. He had no question of his ability and proved to me that if we say we can do something than we can do it. I hope his ability to think positively will carry on throughout his life. I am so proud!