Tag: Awareness

For those days…

Moms we all have ‘those days’ it’s important to be kind to ourselves when they show up!!

Hello Moms,

So on my last blog post, I talked about how I was feeling more mindful lately whilst going about my daily tasks. However, I wanted to highlight that while this is the case I still have some days that are challenging for me and I thought it’s important to share my thoughts and my approach when this happens.

Moms, even though I employ mindfulness and have a regular meditation practice I still have those days where things don’t flow the way I wish they would – and you know this is perfectly normal as we are human after all, trying to raise little humans 😉

My research and readings about the practice of mindfulness, meditation and following certain mentors that I resonate with often don’t talk about difficult times and sometimes just say you have to keep doing the work. Whilst I agree with this and it’s important to keep your meditation practice going I also think it’s important to talk about the days that are challenging and what to do when these days arise.

Challenging days for me include emotions just cropping up from nowhere, or my little one is calling me for the 100th time and I’m feeling quite drained. To wondering what time it is… as all I want to do is go to bed (however its just 1 pm in the afternoon). And/or, I know it’s time to cook the dinner and all I want to do is eat toast, not prepare a nutritious beautiful meal. When I have one of those days then I remember a few things that help me to get through it, let me share this with you:

  1. This will pass:  I remind myself as often as I can that these feelings will pass and if I need to I will have a little cry to release my emotions.
  2. Thoughts are just thoughts: I say to myself ‘my thoughts do not mean anything’  I  learned this from A Course in Miracles Workbook (ACIM), which is one of my favourite lessons from the course, it just means that your thoughts are not ‘real’ thoughts and sometimes our mind makes things out to be worse then it really is. I also use the following affirmation: ‘All is well’ and will say this as often as I need to.
  3. Have compassion: I remember to be kinder and more compassionate to myself. Oftentimes we don’t extend the same compassion to ourselves as we would to our friends/family members. So I will ask myself – if a friend was having a difficult day what would I say to him/her? And I extend the same kindness to myself and take the pressure off.
  4. Remove judgment:  I also stop judging myself for thinking I’m a bad mother, especially when I need time to myself, I will take a break, breathe deeply and make a cup of tea, and often times will write down how I am feeling. It’s surprising how writing down my thoughts will help change my energy.  However, it’s always challenging for me to do this at first, but I always feel better afterward.
  5. Move my body: I will often put on Spotify and dance around my living room (energy permitting) which always makes me feel more uplifted and helps toshift my energy.
  6. Reach out to someone I trust: Sometimes I will give someone I trust a call/text… this is a person who I know will hold space for me (i.e. just listen) and not judge me.
  7. Grateful for my awareness: And, importantly I remember how grateful I am for my awareness that I’m just having one of ‘those days’ and I’ll feel better soon because I always do 🙂

Moms, do you have ‘those days’ and if so what helps you? Love you to share this with me.

Best wishes and Love L X

Mindful tasks vs Multi-tasking

So the following is what has inspired my blog post today – as I was going about my morning, making beds and moving onto the kitchen to unload the dishwasher all of a sudden my mom popped into my mind and started thinking about how grateful I am for all that she did for me as a child…

My initial thought was to call her up and say ‘Mom this is what I was thinking this morning’, however, my mom has passed away and yes even after 10 years my first instinct is still to call her?!!

So I just spoke to her in my mind instead ;0

I digress…so after this thought two things came to me – how it seems so much easier for me to do what is considered mundane now… I can do these tasks such as making the beds, unloading the dishwasher with an ease and a feeling of contentment and gratitude. The second thing is that I usually have nice memories pop into my mind as I go about my tasks – making it all the while more pleasant (maybe that’s unique to me?!!)

My awareness of this and the fact I am sharing this with you – that I am now more present/mindful is a great realization and win for me as for years I was a serial multitasker 🙂 and never getting anywhere fast! And trying to do so many things at once always left me feeling so depleted. For example, I would start one thing, move onto another, never really get anything finished and was always rushing and feeling quite stressed.  This was the case across all areas of my life.

So how did I become more mindful and have more of a relaxed feeling about things…

I have no doubt it’s down to my meditation practice… For me, meditation brings an instant relief whilst doing the meditation itself but it also impacts the remainder of my day wonderfully.

I am curious, moms, do you practice meditation or have you ever tried to do this? If you do practice or have in the past did you find it helpful?  And, if you haven’t practiced would you consider it…

Let me know your thoughts…

With love and best wishes, L X

PS: just had a thought to do a blog post on why I started my meditation practice and what meditations I use which I find helpful – so watch this space 😉