Over the past few months I’ve been working really hard on marketing my book, and it’s been making me tired, irritable, detached from my family and a little bit run down. Every waking moment I could get has been taken up with doing ‘just one more thing’ to get the information that I have to share out there.
Sometimes in our lives certain events can consume us. Whether its work, a family drama, the behaviour of one of our children, or even being consumed by your own destructive thoughts, this allows very little time or energy to simply enjoy life as it is now.
It is times like these where we deliberately have to make our self pause and widen back from whatever it is draining all of our attention. Instead of doing whatever it is you are doing to make life go right, simply pull back and start observing instead. Start practising the art of letting go.
You see being raised in a get your life right world we sometimes feel as if we always have to be doing things in order to get what we want. While action is always involved in achieving our goals, sometimes inaction can be just as valuable to achieving them too.
If we have our attention clutched so tightly on what we want for fear of not getting it, then our attention is really on the fear of not getting it, which is exactly what you end up getting more of. I don’t say this necessarily in a esoteric law of attraction kind of way either. I simply mean that what you put your attention on, expands. Have you ever wanted to buy a certain car, or something like that, and then seen that make and model everywhere you go. You started to see it everywhere because this is where you had your attention.
If you have your attention on the naughty behaviour of your child, or how your life is not going right, or how big a problem is and how it’s effecting your life, guess what you keep seeing more of?
Sometimes its worth just stopping everything that you are doing in regards to the problem and just start observing it, allowing it to be what it is with aceptance and being quiet about it. Let it play out for a bit without your influence and see what happens. What you will find is that the problem will either resolve itself, or by stopping your influence and becoming the observer, you begin to receive more insight into the situation and possibly see a potential solution that you may have never seen before.
The message for today is to widen back, stop trying so hard to achieve what you are trying to achieve and start to quietly observe the situation instead without participating in it. If you are at work, then obviously you still need to do your work. If you are home with the kids, obviously you still need to do the things that you do for them, so I’m not saying to stop doing everything. I’m saying stop trying so hard to get it all right and get it all done in a certain way.
Just slow yourself down for just today and start to really see what is going on. Rather than judging the situation with your opinions and labels, just look at it as if you are an observer looking in from the outside, but is unable to react. If you notice yourself getting riled up or annoyed, then simply feel that feeling and allow it to come and go naturally. Watch the situations with the kids unfold naturally. If they are doing something that requires action, to teach them appropriate behaviour or to keep them safe, then follow through with the action required (eg time out or making the situation safe) quietly and calmly with little conversation and see what happens throughout the day as you continue to be this way.
If you have trouble doing this, whenever you feel your emotions starting to trigger, put your attention on your breathe instead, close your eyes and keep bringing your attention back to your breathe until you feel calm enough to continue on with the situation.
Sometimes, as parents we are constantly juggling many demands at once which often cause us to feel under pressure. When you start to feel this way, this is the time to STOP what you are doing for a few minutes. Stop trying so hard to get it all done at once and instead, calmly go about the first thing that needs the most attention. Not everything has to be done at once, it’s just your thinking that believes that things should be a certain way.
If you want to be calm and relaxed then sometimes we need to stop actioning so much and just start allowing events to unfold naturally, without our constant interference. You will be surprised by how life unfolds the more often you do this.
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