Good morning wonderful people and happy Friday Eve!!
Let’s talk mindset today.
You’ve been here, reading my emails, for a while. I email you a newsletter each and every Thursday and I’m sure that you’ve noticed that I call Thursday
Friday Eve.
why? why do I do that?
and why should you care?
What if Charlie Sheen Was Right All Along?
growing up, Thursdays were not fun days in our house.
My parents were tired, us kids were tired, we usually had tests on Fridays or my parents had work deadlines —
and for some reason Thursday evenings always had after school/after work meetings (PTA, girlscouts, youth group at church) etc etc
it’s not fun to feel as if you still have to DO SOMETHING when you are already tired and worn out.
So as a new mom I had the mindset already that: Thursdays Sucked.
once my kids hit elementary school and I got involved in the PTA board, I realized that I was following the exact same pattern. I began dreading Thursdays — there was always some last minute phonecall or meeting to “prepare for Friday” —
and I was spending time I didn’t want to spend on doing things I really didn’t want to do.
And so I stopped.
I stopped doing things I didn’t want to do (saying yes to PTA things, agreeing to be the classroom mom, letting my freelance writing editor throw arbitrary deadlines at me)
and decided to Take Back my Thursdays.
and that is really all that Mindset is.
Stopping.
Slowing Down.
Paying attention to the thoughts and feelings in your body — and not doing things out of pure habit or auto-pilot —
but truly deciding that you are The Adult, and Adults get to DECIDE what to do (and not do!)
If this is new to you, it may take some time to pay attention to the auto thoughts that you have — you may not even be AWARE that you have a knee-jerk thought or reaction to certain things —
it’s kind of like that fun game we would play at sleepovers —
clear your head —
now say the first thing that comes to it when I say ….
(and then we would tease each other with names of our teachers, boys in the class, etc etc)
Okay. Back to Mindset and Charlie Sheen.
He was ripped through the coals a few years ago because he got on some sort of rant on Twitter and said that he was Winning at Life.
the hashtag: #winning
was used all over the place to make fun of him (probably because before this he was widely known non-winner behavior ![😉]()
).
).
but you know what? that is what we all want.
we want to feel good about ourselves. We want to climb in bed at the end of a long day and really FEEL GOOD.
feel calm.
feel satisfied.
feel as if “all of the balls” are still in the air and that we are doing a great job of managing all of the things.
and that’s what I teach. That’s what I do.
I really and truly love so much more about my day-to-day life than what I don’t.
I wake up in the morning, walk downstairs still half-asleep to the coffee pot and the first thought I think is:
“gosh I love this house. I cannot believe we are lucky enough to live here.”
and then while I wait for my coffee to brew, I stare at a family photo of the kids taken a few years ago on a camping trip.
and my thought is:
“gosh these kids are so amazing and I am so insanely lucky that I get to be their mom”
I high-five myself each time I look in the mirror.
I get excited to turn on the minivan in the morning and warm it up. There are SEAT WARMERS in that thing! Seat warmers!!
what an amazing invention!!
–> does this mean that the kitchen is pristine? does this mean that there aren’t late night dishes left from the teenagers and that there isn’t spilled water around Sheldon’s bowl that someone tracked all over and it mixed with a clump of compost that was attached to the garden clog by the back door and now there’s a slight ring of dried steer manure in the corner? does this mean that the van from 2008 doesn’t have a dent in the side that is now slightly rusted and sun-damaged and isn’t filled with crumpled tissue? <–
Nope. All those things are *also* true.
If you need help shifting your perspective, reach out to me. This is what I am very good at.
You deserve to live out the life of your dreams. You deserve to #WIN at all aspects of your life.
This is what I teach in Simple Shortcuts to Peace and this is what my one-on-one coaching clients walk away learning to do for themselves.
If you are ready to hop on a call to see if coaching or the Peace Course is right for you, let’s do it.
xoxo lots of love to you. I think you are WONDERFUL.
steph
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