YOU Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For

What are you waiting for?  Are you waiting for your spouse to stop being so critical or help out more?  Are you waiting for your kids to start being more respectful? Are you waiting for someone to invite you over and reach out to you?  Are you waiting for a job offer to come back?  Are you waiting to lose weight?  Are you waiting for someone to change the curriculum at school or someone to who shares your value system to run for political office?  Most of us are waiting for something.  Whatever you’re waiting for, I have great news.

YOU are the one you’ve been waiting for!

It’s easy to feel that we are at the mercy of others for things to change.  I want to remind you that YOU have tremendous power to change your relationships just by changing YOU and the way you think about them and by being brave to take action.   Here are examples of two women I admire, who chose to BE the change they were waiting for:

Change Yourself Instead of Trying to Change Others

First, several years ago a woman shared with me once that she was very embarrassed by the way her husband acted in social situations.  He was awkward and seemed to say things that only he found funny.  For many years she bit her lip but inwardly felt humiliated.  Sometimes she even tried to ‘clean things up’ for him socially.  Ultimately she realized her embarrassment about social situations was eroding her own relationship with him.

She decided that she wanted to be proud to be with him, no matter how he acted.  So, when he was awkward and made his jokes SHE decided to be the one who laughed.  She began to wonder what HE found so funny about his jokes.  Over time she began to seem more humor in them and she even found enjoyment in watching him enjoy himself.  She sincerely began to enjoy being with him more in social situations, and she found herself falling back in love with her husband.  Interestingly others relaxed and seemed to enjoy her husband’s jokes more as well. That was a nice bonus, but by then it didn’t matter as much because she sincerely enjoyed him regardless.  SHE was the one she’d been waiting for.

Change Your Environment Instead of Complaining About It

The second example is even more recent.  In 2016 around the time of the US Presidential election, Sharleen Mullins Glenn was feeling frustrated and concerned about the corruption and self-interest she saw on the political stage.  She kept wishing something would change, and that someone would do something about it.  Finally, she prayed to know what SHE could do.  The answer that came was to start, “Mormon Women for Ethical Government;” an on-line community of women who are concerned about ethical values in US governance and policy.  They are non-partisan advocates for honor, decency and accountability in politics. In just a short time it has grown to over 6,000 members and has representation all of the US and even the world.  They have been able to write press releases, hold rallies, talk to legislators and advocate for policy changes.    She chose to BE the one who she was waiting for.

Change Your Perspective

The first time we lived in China I was shocked at how people behaved in public places.  Trying to get on an elevator felt like a Herculean event, especially with young children.  The minute the doors opened, people began pushing and shoving and elbowing their way to the front.  There was no respect for lines or who was waiting first. It was survival of the fittest and whoever was the biggest bully won!  It felt rude and disrespectful to me.  One time I will never forget was trying to get off the plan after 24 hours of traveling alone with 3 young children; an anxious 5 year old, a busy toddler and a new baby.  I had survived the flight and was trying to get my luggage from the overhead compartment while helping a crying newborn in my front pack and trying to keep my toddler from running off.  Before the plane had even stopped.  People were up in the isles shoving each other to get off the plane.  When I tried to stand up people knocked me over and my daughter got shoved up against the seat.  Not one person stopped to let me get out.  We had to wait until every person got off the plane.  This might be fine if it is simply a short trip.  But his was my every day.  I could not understand it and it began to affect my experience living in China.

While we were living there I read the book, Wild Swans, which details the true story of 3 generations of women from a woman who was a concubine, to her daughter who was part of the cultural revolution, to her daughter who became a modern, educated woman and immigrated to the US.  Through it I learned much of the recent history of China over the last century.  Not just the facts and dates–but the emotional toll it took on people.  For example, I read about when the government asked many of the big thinkers for criticisms telling them they would be rewarded for improving the country.  Then, he punished them by imprisoning them, relegating them to rural labor or forcing them to leave the country.  Others were forced to give names of family members that the government would punish in return for sparing their own jobs.  These are just a few examples, but I began to see how a culture of self preservation had prospered here.  I understood how people could push each other down getting to the elevator or off the plane. They knew that to survive they must depend on themselves.  They knew that trusting others might be dangerous.  While I don’t espouse this type of social pattern, understanding it from a different perspective helped me feel less frustrated when I was in those types of situations.  Increasing my information on the subject helped change my perspective about it, and I felt less frustrated.  I was the change I’d been waiting for.  They weren’t going to change any time soon.  See All Things Brave and Beautiful for more perspectives on changing the way you see things.

Be the One You’re Waiting For

What are you waiting for?

Whatever change you’ve been waiting for, YOU can make it happen.  Change yourself instead of waiting for others to change.  Change your environment instead of waiting for others to do it.  If you don’t know how, ask God and get moving.  The world needs you.   Your friends and family need you.  YOU need you.  Stop waiting, and be the one who makes it happen.  You’ll be so glad you did.

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.

Are You Lucky or Unlucky: Making the Everyday Better

When most of us think of luck, we think of shamrocks and superstition–like luck is something that happens to us.  But lucky can be a feeling we have about our lives, and whether or not we feel it is not dependent on finding our Leprechaun or pot of gold.  Feely lucky is something we can feel at any time, and we can feel it simply by choosing carefully what thought we compare to our current situation.

Laundry

When my husband was attending law school in Boston, we lived in row houses.  There was a community laundry that was a few doors down.  Boston winters are no joke…the temperatures get so low they freeze the little particles of moisture on your lips.  One winter morning, I found myself trying to tromp through knee deep snow with my 4-month-old, a hamper and soap in order to do my laundry.  I had to prop open a heavy wood door open with my bottom to try to load everything piece-meal inside (including my baby) and get it all down the stairs to the wash room.  When I got down there I discovered I was short enough quarters!  “This is so hard” I thought.  I dreamed of having my own washing machine and carrying a basket of clothing through a heated home to drop in the washer.  That would be so much easier, I complained to myself.  Meanwhile my baby was crying and I had to trek out to get more quarters.  Every week was the same.  Multiple trips in and out of the snow and stairs.  Each time I became a bit more disgruntled and frustrated.

Lucky or Unlucky?

One afternoon I attended a lecture up at the university given by a positive psychologist named, Shawn Achor. He was doing research on law students, who are known to be some of the least happy in their careers compared to others and and have some of the highest suicide rates of any profession.  In his early research on happiness, one of the biggest determinants of happiness was the thoughts that individuals compared to their situation.

He shared a scenario of a man who walked into a bank and was shot in the arm.  He asked people if the man was lucky, or unlucky.  About half of the people responded that he was unlucky, because most of the time when people go into the bank they are not shot. However, half of the respondents said that he was lucky, because he could have been shot in the heart and died.  Interestingly, the thought they compared to the situation determined how they thought and felt about it.  I was fascinated by the idea of determining my perspective by choosing the thoughts I compared my situation to.

Lucky Laundry

The next week when I did the laundry and caught myself grumbling about how hard my task was, I stopped.  Instead I thought about when I had lived in Africa.  We had to haul water up from the well in buckets.  Then, we heated it and washed our clothes by hand with powdered soap in buckets. The red dirt made clothes impossibly stained and it seemed like no amount of scrubbing remedied the mess. When we had washed and rinsed the clothes, which often took a couple of hours, we hung them them to dry on clothes lines.  We took them down when they were hard and crispy from the African sun a couple of days later.

When I compared doing laundry in my public laundry in Boston to my experience in Africa, suddenly tromping through snow with a baby and carrying multiple loads through doors and down stairs didn’t feel so hard.  The convenience of a washing machine and access to warm water through a hose felt luxurious.  Being able to simply push a button felt almost magical.  Having liquid soap that dissolved easily and having stain removers I could spray on my clothes seemed like such a blessing.  Being able to put a load in the dryer and pull out warm, dry clean clothes seemed incredible.

Changing the thought I compared my laundry experience to, changed my whole experience from resentful to grateful–unlucky to lucky.

Be Lucky

What part of life feels unlucky to you?

Feeling lucky is available any time you would like simply by comparing your situation to another situation that helps you see it as lucky.  If you just can’t get there, try getting out and working in a less fortunate situation like a soup kitchen or homeless shelter.  Even watching a movie about war torn countries or challenging times in history can give insight into the abundance that exists in your situation.