Who’s Stronger, You or the Problem?

Problems can feel overwhelming and impossible to solve at times. If we continue to think about them the same way as we always have, then they likely always will be overwhelming. However, changing we the way we see the problem and changing the way we see ourselves can make all the difference in our ability to solve the issues in our lives.

Bigger Than Me

I recently visited a gigantic boulder in India called Krishna’s Butterball. The rock is so large that a human pales in comparison. I took a humorous picture of me trying to push the gigantic rock. Sometimes our problems can feel a lot like Krishna’s Butterball—so large we are incapable of solving them.

Who’s Stronger?

I learned a powerful lesson from my great-grandmother Genevieve about how handle a problem that feels completely overwhelming.
Genevieve was a strong woman—she had ten children after being told by a doctor she would never be able to have any at all; she and her husband created a successful coal business after losing everything in a previous business venture; and she was the first woman elected to the Salt Lake City School Board, despite opposition from many due to her gender.

When Genevieve felt a problem was getting the best of her, she would stand in front of the mirror ask herself: “Who is stronger, me or the problem?” She would square her shoulders on her tiny 90-lb. frame, lift up her chin, and declare, “I am.” Then she moved forward to solve the problem.

How to Believe You’re Stronger

A few simple changes in our thinking can help us see that we are stronger than any problem we may have.

Bring the Problem Down to Its Actual Size

We usually think about a problem through the filter of our beliefs about it. This often causes the problem to seem much larger and more challenging to overcome.

Stripping a problem down to the “facts” can help us see the challenge in a much more manageable way.

As a young mom one of the biggest problems I faced was sleep deprivation. I constantly felt miserable. I never felt rested and as a result I often felt irritable. Then, to make matters worse, I felt guilty for feeling irritable. No matter what I tried, my baby would not sleep through the night. The problem felt hopeless. I felt I had to get up with my baby in the night to be a good mom. But yet, I felt like I was not a good mom all day because I was so tired. I felt like I had tried every book and every system to get my baby to sleep at night, but nothing seemed to work. The problem felt impossible to solve—it felt miserable and hard. I felt like I couldn’t be the mom I wanted to be and I couldn’t enjoy my baby because I was so tired!

When I stripped down my story to the facts it was simply this:

I have a child. I put my child to bed at 7. They wake up at 2 and 5 to nurse and go back to sleep. They wake up at 7 for the day. I sometimes feel tired in the day.

When I looked at it this way, the story didn’t seem quite as dramatic. I was just a mom with a young baby—a baby who was healthy and growing and eating well. In fact, I noticed that actually it sounded normal to be tired and I even felt lucky to have a healthy baby.

Size Up Ourselves

Most of us underestimate our own abilities. But our brains are powerful, and as we change our thoughts we realize we have a lot more control over our circumstances than we think.

When we think of problems, most of us unconsciously choose thoughts like “This is impossible.” “It will never change.” “There’s no way that I can do that.” “It’s too overwhelming.” “I don’t know how.” These thoughts keep us from taking action and are often self-fulfilling—the problem seems so big that we don’t solve it because we don’t even try.

Instead, more empowering thoughts could be: “I got this.” “I’m going to try this, and if that doesn’t work I’ll try something else.” “I don’t have to fix all of it, I’ll just work on one piece.” “I wonder how much of this I can do?” “It’s possible.” If these thoughts don’t work at the beginning, try to add on a phrase like: “What if this is possible?” “What if I do know how to solve this?” Sometimes offering your brain a question can help open it up to think about solutions.

With my last baby, I had some better tools to keep myself emotionally healthy. My baby still woke up during the night. I still felt tired. However, I also reminded myself that I could feel tired and still be pleasant. I didn’t have to choose to be grumpy and irritable when I was tired. I could still have a pleasant day and be tired.

Take the Power Back

This simple shift in my perception—sizing down the problem to the facts, and sizing up my own ability to deal with the problem—changed everything. Instead of constantly feeling resentful and irritable because I was exhausted, I was able to really enjoy mothering my baby. My circumstance never changed, but my perception of it did. Essentially, I looked the problem in the mirror and saw it for what it really was—not the drama I had made it into. Then I sized up my own ability to handle it. The result was that I got to be the pleasant mother I wanted to be, and I got to enjoy my baby, something I had felt deprived of previously.

Problems in our lives only have the power to overwhelm us if we don’t see them and ourselves accurately. When we fix our perceptions, we are often able to come up with solutions and carry them out. Sometimes that means we change our circumstance. But sometimes the problem is solved simply by changing the way we think about it, which in turn changes the way we feel about it. And when we feel better, sometimes there’s nothing else that needs to change.

Essentially, when we size down the problem and size up our abilities we make the problem something manageable—instead of looking like Krishna’s Butterball, it appears like a large but moveable rock. When we see our problems in this way, we can have the courage to look at our problems head on and say, “Who’s stronger, me or the problem?” “I am!”

Be Stronger Than the Problem

What’s a problem that feels impossible or overwhelming to you?

Bring the Problem Down to Size
Write down your “story” about the problem. Then strip the story down to only the facts. Everything else you wrote down is just thoughts about your facts. Those thoughts you are choosing are causing the stress, overwhelm, and drama around your problem. The good news is, those thoughts are optional and you don’t have to think them if you don’t want to.

Size Up Yourself
You are absolutely capable of dealing with this issue. Your brain is the most amazing tool on the planet. Look what you believe about yourself. Are those beliefs helping you solve the problem. If not, then change them. Our beliefs are all optional. Often, I love to imagine how someone I admire might think about this problem. Then, I like to adopt the thoughts I imagine they would think.

Take Back the Power
Now that you see the problem in its true size, and have also recognized your own true strength, look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I’m stronger.” Then move forward and start solving.

Stop Saying “Should”

The word “should” seems innocent–even motivating but a closer look reveals that it leaves a trail of damage.  It highlights inadequacies, robs us of motivation, and leaves us stuck in anxiety, disappointment and frustration.  Removing the word “should” from your lexicon can make a big impact in how you feel about yourself and others.

“Should” is Everywhere

I used to say the word “should” all the time.  “I should have gotten up earlier this morning.”  “I should have been more patient with my kids.”  “I should have started dinner earlier.”

I even used “should” when I thought about others.  “My kids should listen the first time!”  “People shouldn’t cut me off in traffic.”  “They should make this website easier to navigate.”

Sometimes I used it to describe situation around me.  “This shouldn’t be so hard.”  “This meeting should be shorter.”

I also used to feel discouraged, overwhelmed and anxious a lot of the day.

“Should” Seems Responsible

At first glance, the word “should” seems like a benign or even a helpful word.  It seems like it’s helping us notice how things need to be different.  By recognizing how things should be, it’s almost as if we feel we’ve compensated for the fact that they aren’t that way.  It makes us feel more decent and more responsible.

However, as I’ve become more aware of my internal dialogue.  I’ve realized that the word “should” is quite insidious.  It leaves a trail of devastating damage behind.   Should doesn’t help me do or become more.  It has the opposite effect.

The Problem with “Should”

The word “should” causes me to notice all that I am NOT doing and all that I have NOT become.  It accentuates others’ faults and weaknesses, and highlights the less than ideal in circumstances around me.   Because we feel that we and things around us are inadequate, it can decrease our motivation and leave us feeling anxious and frustrated.  You can’t beat yourself up into being better.  You can’t beat others into being better either–“shoulding” others strains relationships because it feels like criticism.  It doesn’t mean we stop making requests of others or ourselves, it just means we don’t keep flogging ourselves with the expectation that it “should” be different.

What to Say Instead of “Should”

Here are some alternatives to the word “should” when you notice it creeping into your own internal dialogue.

Focus on the Benefit

I feel _____________ when I ___________.

Instead of saying “I should have changed out of my yoga pants before I picked my kids up at the bus stop.”  Say, “I feel so much more confident when I take the time to get ready before my kids get home from school.”   This helps you focus on the end result which motivating instead of on the action you didn’t do, which is discouraging.

State What You Value

It’s important to me to ________________.

It’s easy to say “I should be on time to church.”  Instead say, “It’s important to me to be on time for church.”  It’s much more motivating to be on time when it’s couched in terms of what you value instead of what you “should” do.

Change the “sh” to “w” or “c”

I could _______________.
Just substituting “would” or “could” instead of “should” can make a big difference.  It makes our requests much more pleasant and loving.

“It would make our home so much more pleasant if you could hang your backpack up when you get home.”  Consider the difference between that and this.  “You should hang your backpack up when you get home so our house doesn’t look trashed.”

Get Curious

I wonder why I am/they are  ________________.

Using should takes us out of the present—it makes us think of something that didn’t happen in the past, or something that needs to happen in the future.  Most of these thoughts come with stress and other negative emotions. Bringing our attention back to the present can help us abate some of this negativity.

Instead of thinking, “I shouldn’t have yelled at my kids.”  Think, “I’m feeling really irritated right now.  I wonder why I’m feeling irritated?”

Getting curious about what you’re thinking and feeling has a powerful impact on helping us become more of who we want to be instead of just reacting to things around us.

Stop saying “should”

Getting rid of “should” can be so freeing.  I’ve been working on this for a long time and I’m still working on it.  My shoulds everyday are a lot fewer than they used to be.  As a result I feel a lot more confidence, and I feel a lot less frustration with others.

Shoulds are a fixture in our lexicon.  It takes some practice, and some patience but the payout in personal peace and motivation is big.  Saying less shoulds to ourselves allows us to focus on what we ARE doing, and what we WANT to be doing instead of what we’re not doing.  Removing “should” for others can give space in relationships allows people to feel loved as they are; this enables deeper connections.  Eliminating “should” thoughts about circumstances lets us accept the things we cannot change and move forward instead of staying stuck in wishing things were different.

How many times a day do you say “should?”

Try observing when you use “should” and how it affects you.
Try substituting a different thought when you notice yourself saying “should.”

Emotions Are Contagious

Just as we can be infected by a sick person passing along their germs to us, our bodies have a built-in mechanism for “catching” emotions from others.  Without even realizing it, we pass along and receive emotions many times a day.  This has a significant effect on how we feel and on the emotional environment we create around us.  If we aren’t aware of the emotions we are giving off and receiving, these emotions can sabotage our moods, relationships, and our success.   

Emotions are Contagious

Do any of these experiences sound familiar: Have you ever winced when you saw someone stub her toe?  Have you ever yelled at your children to stop yelling, only to realize the irony that you just did the thing you asked them not to?  Have you ever been having a great day that turned sour because your children came home from school and started fighting and complaining?  Have you ever given your spouse the silent treatment because he was giving it to you?  Have you ever noticed someone who looked skeptically at you and later softened when you smiled at them?

Emotions are contagious.  Our brains are wired to mirror the emotions of people around us.  Check out this interesting demonstration of contagious emotions in a YouTube Video of a man laughing on the Metro and people around him starting to laugh until almost everyone is laughing.

Mirror Neurons

Obviously, we don’t “catch” emotions in the same way we catch disease.  However, there is a scientific explanation for the contagion of human emotion. The American Psychological Association describes this phenomenon as something called “mirror neurons.”   Essentially, mirror neurons are the brain’s ability to feel what someone else is feeling.

A group of researchers studied the neural reactions of some monkeys when they bit into a treat and other monkeys as they watched their companions eat the treat.  The pre-motor cortex of the monkey eating the treat responded in the same way as the pre-motor cortex of the monkey who only watched the other monkey bite into the treat.  Researchers were later able to find similar reactions in the human brain.  In other words—when we see others experience something, our brains have a similar reaction.  Literally, the same areas of the brain are affected when we watch someone experience something as when we experience it ourselves.

The Upside of Mirror Neurons

Mirror neurons serve a crucial purpose in connecting us to others.  They help us learn in our early development.  As infants, we observe how our parents and caregivers respond and feel about things, and we pattern our actions after theirs.  We’ve all seen mirror neurons in action as we watch a baby learn to smile.  These neurons help us determine what is safe and good around us.

These neurons also give us the ability to feel empathy.  When we see or hear about someone experiencing something, we are able to actually feel (or imagine) the same biological stimuli they do.  For example, when we see someone bump their head, we might wince.  Mirror neurons let us feel what we think the other person might be feeling.  This allows us to act with compassion or concern.  In the same way, these neurons can help us feel excitement for someone else.  We all love watching a romantic movie or seeing someone we know fall in love.  Our brains experience a portion of that same feeling.  This mirroring of emotion allows us to be excited for and supportive of people. The ability to mirror others’ emotions is at the crux of helping us connect with others.


The Downside of Mirror Neurons

The downside of mirror neurons is that we sometimes unwittingly become susceptible to the emotions of others.  When others are frustrated, angry or impatient, we may find that we have the same experience.  Several years ago, researchers studied mirror neurons in public settings. They watched the impact of one person at a metro stop who was visibly impatient—sighing, looking at his watch, and rolling his eyes.  The study showed that others around him became impatient as well.  In contrast, in the absence of someone who was visibly impatient, others at the metro stop did not become as impatient.  If we are not aware of our brain’s unconscious mirroring of emotion, we can easily be swept up into the drama of other’s emotions.

How To Avoid Mirroring Negative Emotion

Simply knowing that negative emotions can be contagious can give us leverage as we choose not to mirror back negative feelings.  Below is an example of how choosing not to mirror back emotions has helped our family during “morning mayhem”:

Getting out the door in the morning sometimes feels like a race.  From the minute the alarm clock rings, we rush around trying to get ready and eat breakfast in order to get to the bus in time.  My kids would much rather play and take their time—they don’t like rushing.

I’m constantly nagging and reminding my kids to “hurry.”  They are irritated that they “have” to do something and they are bothered that they have to do it quickly.  Without realizing what I am doing, I often mirror back their emotions.  I’m irritated that they aren’t hurrying.  We get caught in a yucky collusion of my nagging and reminding them to hurry, and they show their irritation by being grumpy, talking back, and moving slowly.

Using the same principle of mirror neurons, I decided to try a different approach.  I figured my kids would probably get ready more quickly if I was calm and supportive.  At the very least, I hoped a calmer environment would help us start the day and get out the door on a happier, more positive note.  I got up and reminded myself I wanted to set a calm tone—I woke my kids up by rubbing their backs and talking gently.  I smiled at them and handed them their clothes.  During breakfast, I put on calm music, I used a calm voice, and I tried not to nag.  My kids reflected calmness back to me.  I noticed a lot less talking back, frustration, and distraction.

We didn’t beat any Olympic time records, but we did make it out the door in decent time and everyone was so much happier starting the day.  I was floored at the power of mirror neurons to change how I felt and my kids felt.

Avoiding mirroring negative emotions first requires that we become aware of our capacity to both receive emotional cues from others and give them out ourselves.  Second, we must make a conscious decision to choose the emotion we want to feel instead of simply responding to emotions around us.

Mirror Neurons and Difficult Conversations

Almost everyone cares at least a little about what others think of them, and we often predict what others might think about what we do or say.  We might assume others won’t like something—or that they will.  Interestingly, we often make our assumptions true by the way we present something.  We read other’s feelings (or project the way they will respond) through our mirror neurons and mirror back that emotion.

Instead of being reactive to the way other’s may feel, we can determine how WE feel.  When we genuinely express our own feelings, others will often mirror back the same emotion.  This can be particularly powerful in difficult conversations.

I completed a Nutrition and Dietetics degree at small women’s college in Boston.  I enjoyed my time there and found some wonderful professor-mentors. Many of them encouraged me and my fellow students to pursue challenging career paths and to seek out positions of leadership in our field.  I had many of these opportunities available to me.

Near the end of my degree program, my husband and I decided to have a baby.  I became pregnant and we were thrilled!  I planned to complete my program, but I decided to complete it at a slower rate and I knew it might change some of my career choices afterward.  I was worried about how my choice to have a baby would be received by my professors.  I was afraid they would be disappointed, and view my baby as a road block to my success.  All summer I stewed about how I would tell them about their pregnancy, worrying about their reaction.  I felt awkward telling them, and my first inclination was to approach it awkwardly.

When the time came to tell my professors, though, I decided to exude my genuine emotion, which was excitement!  I shared my exciting news and told my professors how thrilled I was!  I was curious about their reaction and I was delighted to see that they responded with excitement and support for me!

In fact, they were so generous—they allowed me to take time off for the delivery, told me that I could bring the baby to class, and supported me in several research projects, including my thesis on pregnancy-related diet issues.  I have always wondered how they would have responded had I gone in feeling uncomfortable and awkward about telling them—I wonder if they might have responded with discomfort and awkwardness about it as well.  I don’t know, but I learned a powerful lesson about emotions.

People often mirror our emotions back to us.  It’s counterproductive to anticipate their response and come to them with that emotion, because we simply create the result we feared.  Making a deliberate choice to be authentic in our feelings may or may not result in a positive response from the person we’re talking to.  However, being authentic brings us personal peace.  As we learn to care less about what others think, being authentic becomes easier.  Check out my article about getting over people pleasing.

The Emotions We Express Matter

The emotions we exude to others matter. We play a pivotal role in co-creating the emotional environment we live in with others.  Being deliberate about our emotions, instead of simply mirroring back the emotions of others, gives us more control, more peace, and more satisfaction.

Act Emotionally, Don’t React Emotionally

What is the dominant emotion you feel when getting ready in the morning?  What emotions do you feel most often when you are with your spouse, your children, or your friends?  What emotions from others are you mirroring?

1.   Be aware of others’ emotions and how you might be mirroring their emotions.
2.  Choose what emotion you want to feel and project that emotion for others to mirror.


Sources
Scientific American.  “What’s So Special About Mirror Neurons?” Ben Thomas, Nov. 6, 2012.
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews.  “Connecting Minds and Sharing Emotions through Mimicry:  A Neurocognitive Model of Emotional Contagion.”  Eliska Prochazkova, Mariska A Kret.  Vol. 80, September 2017, Pages 99-114.
Mind Spring. “The Connection Between Mirror Neurons and Workplace Success.” April 5, 2018.

What The Chinese Teach About Confidence

Confidence is how we feel about ourselves.  It sets the stage for everything we do, and determines how well we will do it.  It also determines how we feel and how we interact with others.  Having self confidence is worth a high price.

How the Chinese Understand Confidence

The direct translation of the word “confidence” in Chinese is, “a person who believes their own words and stands by them.”

信心

I love the way the Chinese define confidence–I think it’s insightful to learn how other cultures construct meanings of concepts.  We DO feel confidence when we can trust ourselves to do what we say we will do.

Believing Ourselves

Many times a day we talk to ourselves—sometimes we make informal kinds of resolutions without thinking about it: “I’m so tired, I’ve got to get to bed earlier tonight.”  or “I really should take dinner to my neighbor.”  Other times we promise ourselves specific things.  For example, “I will lose 10 lbs.”  or “I am not going to yell at my kids again.”

The way we follow through on our goals, aspirations and promises begins to add up to how we see ourselves and how we feel about ourselves.  We quickly learn if we can really believe what we say to ourselves.

If you think about it—it’s the same as any other relationship we have.  If I agree with a friend to go to the gym at a certain time each morning and she doesn’t show up, I lose confidence that she will come.  If I see that my child rarely responds the first time I ask them to put their shoes on, I stop counting on the fact that they will do it. The same is true for ourselves.

Sometimes it feels less urgent to follow through on our own promises to ourselves because we rationalize, “it isn’t hurting anyone else, right?”  Wrong.  When we don’t follow through on promises to ourselves, we lose confidence and self-respect.  Confidence is the foundation for all of our relationships, our contributions in the world, and our ability to bless others.  It matters.

Keep Your Promises to Yourself

One way to build confidence is to make a simple promise yourself, and follow through.  For example, a few months ago I decided I wanted to run a 5k race.   I knew that meant I would need to work up slowly since I hadn’t run in many years—so I mapped out a plan for increasing my distance a little each month.  I have tried to honor that commitment just like I would honor a commitment to a friend.  I started with .5 miles.  Each month I have increased the distance a little bit.

Last week, it was rainy and cold.  I hate running in the cold, so I didn’t go running on my usual morning.  Instead I did weights promising myself I’d go the next day.  But the next day my girls were sick and it felt too hard to get out.  Then Saturday was busy and pretty soon several days had gone by without running.  My one little quit made it SO easy to get derailed.  Of course, it wasn’t the end of the world, and I just got back on track the next week, but I was disappointed in myself and lost a little of my self-respect knowing I could have gone running even though it was a little uncomfortable.

This morning as I was getting ready to run, my muscles felt tight, and my husband mentioned he needed to leave a little early for work which meant I less time for my run.  My brain kept suggesting I could just walk today, or I could do a shorter distance so I wouldn’t have to run faster to get back in time.  But, I decided I wanted to honor my commitment to myself.  I set my mind to running and decided I wouldn’t stop till my GPS said 3 miles.  I really had to book it to make it back in the time I had.  But, I did it!  I had such a feeling of satisfaction when I saw my GPS clock 3.0 miles this morning.  Talk about a hit of self-respect!

I was able to train and run my race.  It was incredible to look back and see the incremental progress I made as I stuck to my pain regardless of how I felt.  When I lost focus or had little quits, I got back to the plan.  It felt amazing to finish the race.  Not only did my confidence in running improve, but I learned that I can trust myself to set goals to do hard things and follow through.  I know I can count on myself.  That is true confidence.

Be Confident

How would you rate your confidence on a scale of 1 to 10?

To increase your confidence, promise yourself to do something small, and follow through.  Every time.  Even when you don’t feel like it.  Even when things come up.  You will be surprised at the incredible self-respect you begin to develop.

Define It: Find More Peace in Your Role as a Mom

Undefined expectations for ourselves and the roles we operate in always lead to disappointment. There is a simple solution for increasing success and satisfaction; defining exactly what it means to be a “good mom,” or a “good person,” or a good wife” etc. allows us to know what we’re shooting for.

When Dorthy set off along the yellow brick road in her sparkling red shoes and eyes wide with hope, she didn’t know much about Oz.  She just knew it was where she wanted to go because she had heard the Wizard of Oz could help.  When she arrived, it was disappointing to find he was just a man behind a curtain.  It’s easy to put up false Oz’s for ourselves without  even realizing it.

My False Oz

About 2 months after we moved into our new neighborhood in Taiwan, rumblings and mumblings started about Halloween.  We live in an old military neighborhood on a mountain overlooking the city of Taipei.  Because Halloween isn’t a “thing” in Asia—those who do know about it are curious.  Over the years our neighborhood has drawn crowds from all over the city.  Many are local Taiwanese who want an American cultural experience.

My neighbors told me, “Halloween is a BIG deal here.”  “No matter how much candy you have, “you’ll run out.”  “Everyone in the neighborhood decorates.  You should have seen what the people who lived in your house before you did!  Everyone really goes over the top.”

I was new and trying to fit in, so I started scheming and ordering on Amazon.  Our family decided to do a Wizard of Oz theme.  We all dressed up as different characters and we built a set with the Emerald City and Dorthy’s house with the legs of the wicked witch underneath.  My husband figured out how to broadcast the Wizard of Oz movies on the outside wall of the house.  It was pretty awesome.  I thought I had rocked the “Go Big!”

The day of Halloween arrived and I thought it was strange that none of the neighbors had many decorations up.  But, I figured they must be last minute people like I was.  Around 5 I started setting things up.  Still no neighbors setting up…eventually I saw a neighbor set out a table with a cloth and a pumpkin and I saw another neighbor hang an orange pennant banner that said happy Halloween.  One neighbor had a few skeletons sitting around, and another had hung out some lights, but nothing too big yet.

By the time the masses started coming around we were the only spectacle around.  The kids loved it and we had a ball, but I had to laugh at myself.  Apparently my idea of “a BIG deal” was slightly different than theirs!

Definitions Prevent Needless Discouragement

Definitions are so crucial.  I could have saved myself a lot of headache (and money) if I would have simply asked a few more questions to define exactly what “BIG deal” meant to most people.  Apparently to them it meant dressing up as an adult and sitting outside with several bags of candy and a cute Halloween tablecloth.

I find that defining things—even if it’s just for myself can reduce tons of headache and extra work.  Steven Covey says, “Disappointment is the gap between expectation and reality.”  If our expectation isn’t even realistic, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment.

How to Define Your Roles

One area that seems to have a big expectation-reality gap is our roles as mothers.   I know it is for me at, at times.  I think most of us have amorphous sort of ideas about these pieced together from what we saw our mothers do, what we think others are doing or things we’ve read in parenting books.  My old definition of a good mom was a conglomerate of the compassion of Mother Theresa, the influence of Oprah, a home like Martha Stewart and hair like Jennifer Anniston.  I often measured my success by how my children acted and performed.  It’s no wonder I often felt like I was falling short.  My expectations were completely  unrealistic!

Be Realistic

If we take time to actually DEFINE what a reasonable mother would do—it gives us a more attainable goal and cuts out the disappointment gap between expectation and reality. There are many ways to do this.  One is to look around and find someone who has accomplished what you want to do or be as a mother.  Ask them how they define success and how they got there.  Another way to be more realistic about role definitions is to take your big vision goal and break it into smaller step-ladder goals.  Make sure the first step is something you know you can do!  Define success as the first goal, then move to the second one when you are consistent at being or doing the first.  Success helps build momentum a lot faster than failure.

Make Sure Your Definition of Success Doesn’t Depend on Others’ Behavior

In addition to unrealistic ideals, sometimes we set ourselves up for disappointment by including things in our definitions that we can’t control.  For example, we might include the choices our children make, or we might include the way our children treat us as part of our measurement tool for being a good mother.   What our children do cannot be an accurate measure of success, because it is something we cannot control.   (Clearly we may want to change what we’re doing if our children aren’t responding the way we hoped, but it’s important to consider children may not respond no matter what we do.)  Our definitions of success must include only things that WE can control.

Be Specific

One of the great creators of discouragement is generalities.  Words like “always,” “never,” and “everybody.”  While we know intellectually that no one is perfect, we often expect it of ourselves.  We assume that others are able to someone achieve perfection.  Our subconscious definitions of success often include things like “never yell,” and “always take time to listen,”  “everybody else takes their kids on amazing vacations during the summer,”  “always make a healthy dinner.”  While these are excellent ideas to strive for they make it hard to live up to success.  Getting specific and thinking through what we actually can and should do can help. “I will try to make a healthy home cooked dinner 2 times a week.”  Or “When I want to yell, I’m going to snap the rubber band on my wrist.”

Define success in a very specific way.  Here’s my new definition of a “good mom:

Love my children.  Teach them things I feel are important.  Model being a happy and healthy woman most of the time.

The Emerald City wasn’t all that Dorthy had dreamed it up to be; it was something she had built up in her mind as THE ultimate destination and the solution to all problems.  When she actually saw the man behind the curtain it was a bit disappointing, but it turned out it was even better!    Define what you expect of yourself.  Make sure it’s realistic, specific and only YOU control it.

Define it

What is your current definition of a good mom?

Get a piece of paper and define what it means to be a “good mom”  Is your definition realistic, specific?  Are you completely in control of the outcome or are others involved?

This works well for other roles too–define what it means to be  a “good wife” a “good employee” a “good person” a “good daughter-in-law.” etc.

Abundance

“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend… when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present— love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure— the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.”