#Family Purpose

What makes a good parent?

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Good parent

What skills does someone need to be a good parent? Are there objective truths? Is there a “maximum level”, a “right way” to act as parents? And who gets to give the verdict?

Before I had children I never gave the question much thought. I think I just believed that I would figure it out as I went along. When Linnea was born it took about six months of physical caretaking before I started to realize what a responsibility I’d signed up for. This innocent little human was completely dependent on us to give her everything she needed. And not just food, cuddling and a change of diapers. She needed us to teach her about the world, the dos and don’ts.

I became very aware of how I would pass on my beliefs and actions without even thinking about it. How my daughter would watch me and do as I did not as I said or wished she’d do.

So I began thinking about what would make me a good parent. And I realized I had some ideas and expectations that I didn’t remember choosing. When did I decide that being a stay at home mom, welcoming my kids with prepared meals and cinnamon buns was a definition of being a good mom?? When did I think up the idea that as their mother I should always have energy for whatever they needed from me? And what made me think that always having all the answers would be a good way to teach my kids about the world?

Your kids have expectations and desires

Last week I posted a blog from Linnea regarding ”The parenting scale”. She wrote about some factors that she believes are important to focus on as a parent. She’s old enough to have realized that some rules, that she didn’t like when she was younger, actually are good for her. Like the fact that there is a set time for going to bed and that there is a limit on candy consumption.

Being a mother means, to me, that I’m the grown up that needs to make the tough and sometimes unpopular decisions. That I need to stand my ground regarding some issues like safety, health (on some levels) and ways of interacting with other people.

“Put on the seat belt or the car won’t start”, “We eat candy on Saturdays” and “You can’t go around treating your sister harshly just because you’re in a bad mood.”

Don’t cave in to the feeling of wanting to please your children. Your idea of how a good parent should be won’t always correlate with their ideas. But it’s not your children that should decide.

Who decides then?

Well, you do! Only you know what your family needs. Do you know what values and convictions that drive you in this area? Humans lead with values. That means that the values you have will determine how you act. Your values and beliefs aren’t always conscious but you can uncover them by asking and answering questions.

Notebook

Bring out pen and paper and start writing down as many answers you can for each of the following questions. Note: If you’re a father or a grandparent then ask these questions from your perspective.

  • What is a mother’s role?
  • How does a good mother act?
  • What does a mother have to do to be a good mother?
  • What should a mother do for her children?
  • I’m proud of myself as a mother when I…
  • I’m ashamed of myself as a mother when I…
  • What does a mother do differently than a father?

Your answers will uncover the values you have regarding your role as a parent. When you analyze your answers, reading through them and asking yourself what value underpins your answer you will be able to write a list of values. Maybe you will see values like tidiness, authority, control, self-sacrifice.. maybe you’ll see values like family, cooperation, fun, teacher.

Look at your list.

Which ones of these values were passed on to you from earlier generations? Which ones has society ingrained in you? Which ones have you actively chosen?

How are these values impacting your actions today? Which of these values do you want to keep and which ones do you want to replace?

Once your values have been uncovered you can adjust them to support you and the kind of family culture you want. Sometimes all it takes to change a value and the behavior connected to it is to become aware of it. Knowing about it and consciously deciding to change it is at times all that is needed. For values and behaviors that are a bit more ingrained you might need to work more intentionally maybe together with a professional therapist/cognitive behavior specialist.

Celebrate and focus on the values that bring good things to your family, that way you will intensify those even more. 😀

BeBrave

Why are you talking? – Goals for communicating

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Goals

Ever met someone who just won’t stop talking even long after you and everyone else in the room clearly just want the monologue to end? Ever wanted to get your children to START talking when all you get is silence or a non-committed “I’m fine” when you ask about their day?
What would happen if you zeroed in on the specific goal you were after before you started talking?

Talking.. Putting words to thoughts is not very easy in and of itself. To then ensure that the words generate the same meaning, to the ones you’re talking to, that you actually intended is master class level of communication.

Why are you talking?

Have you ever stopped to think about it?  There could logically be a number of reasons, here are some examples of the answers I’ve gotten.

  • To be heard – get a feeling of being understood
  • To get someone to do something you want/need
  • To make someone feel loved

I’ve also spotted a few other “reasons” during the years when I’ve been consciously watching, myself and others.

  • Because something someone said triggered a story/memory in you that you just couldn’t stop yourself from blurting out.
    You’ve told that story a thousand times but you can’t stop yourself from repeating it. (That’s because you’ve told it a thousand times and the brain gets good at what the brain does).
  • To get back at someone
  • To hide behind some story to avert the attention from other more tender, potentially scary subjects

Start with the end in mind

In NLP, a leadership and communication toolbox I’ve studied, there is a base belief that states;

“The purpose of communicating is the response you get”

The background to this theory is the idea that communication consist of two parties, the sending and the receiving one. In true communication, compared to a monologue, both of you dance back and forth between sending and receiving. As the sending party you cannot really control what the receiving party interprets. But you can be sensitive to the response. Pay attention and be flexible in your approach until the message you’re trying to send actually results in what you want.

If you say “I want you to clean your stuff from the living room” to your daughter the result can vary from time to time. One possible result is that your daughter grabs her things and goes to lock herself in her room for the rest of the evening. Maybe that is what you want to happen ;p

Maybe the result you were looking for was an active help in taking care of the house, a clean living room as well as a happy daughter.

The key to be able to achieve your goals is to be very aware of what you actually want to happen. To set a very specific target.

Is the channel open or closed?

When it comes to children, and most adults, there is one specific factor you could benefit from payinng special attention to. Is the channel open or closed? If you’re trying to send a message the channel needs to be open. If it’s closed then it won’t matter how well you pick your words or how flexible you are in your approach. The message won’t get through.

Make sure that you have an open channel and your child’s full attention before trying to communicate. As an example, if you’ve ever trained a dog you know that there’s a huge difference in the level of attention that you can get from someone. If there’s a cat walking past the training ground… or if you’re all alone and you’re holding a piece of that favorite treat in your hand. Similarly the level of attention you can get from a child can vary enormously.

In my experience the most effective “tool” to use for attention and opening the communication channel is to be working on your connection. Take some time to connect to where your child is at before trying to work on going somewhere new.

Tips

  • If you want someone’s full attention then ask that person when it would be a good time for them. When I plan for our Saturday family meetings I ask each daughter when it would be a good time for her. I ask something like “would it be ok to have the family meeting in 5 minutes?”. That gives them the opportunity to plan in regards to what they’re up to at the moment and to commit to the meeting.
  • Don’t say “don’t” 😉 The brain cannot disregard information that is given to it. If you say “don’t scream at your sister” you’re not giving the brain the information it needs. It still “hears” “scream at your sister” and will register that.
    In this example what you might want to say is something like: “Be nice to your sister. She gets so happy when you’re being caring towards her”
  • Take some time to consider where the person you’re going to talk to is coming from before interacting. How does she seem to be doing today? What are her goals and needs? If you can understand her background and current situation you will have a much better connection and chance of finding a win-win-proposal.

Want better results in your life?

If you were to analyze what you’re after before acting, before opening your mouth to speak, the chances of getting there will go from random chance to at least probable. The next level would be to pay close attention to the result you do get and adjust your communication accordingly until you get the desired results. But let’s start with level 1: “Defining the desired result”

The next time you’re about to interact with someone try the following:

  1. Stop and ensure you get some alone time. Excuse yourself and go to the bathroom if you need some time, it always works 🙂
  2. Take a mental step back from the coming dialogue and ask yourself;
    • What would be the most amazing outcome for me in this situation? How would I like to feel when we’re done?
    • What is the person I’m going to talk to want out of this? How do that person want to feel?
    • How can I approach this situation so that we both get what we want while our relationship remains strong?
  3. Breathe deep and smile. Walk into the dialogue with an open heart and the knowledge that there is a way for you to both get what you want out of this. Walk in with the certainty that you are flexible, strong and non-judgmental enough for the both of you if needed.
    Stay in the present and pay attention to the feedback you’re given and adjust your approach until you you get the desired results for the both of you.

BeBrave

Christmas – Do you want to help your child focus on giving?

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Christmas – Do you want to help your child focus on giving?

Is it okay to look forward to gifts on Christmas? How do you handle expectations and gifts in your family? Do your relatives ask your children “What do you wish for Christmas” or “What have you asked Santa for?”?

Christmas is around the corner and my girls and I are sooo looking forward to it! Although I don’t like the consumeristic idea of the holiday I really do enjoy coming up with surprises for the ones I love. One of my favorite times of the year is that night when I get to do the wrapping. It’s an all-night event. I get the girls in bed or out of the house, nowadays it’s easy since they’re at their dad’s house every other week. Then I pour myself a cup of tea (or a glass of wine 😉 ), put on some Christmas music and overflow the kitchen table with wrapping material. I wrap gifts and think of making my family happy – I love this night!

Excitement or agony?

I know that there is a great divide in people who loves this holiday and those who think it’s mostly agony. True agony for all the people who don’t have anyone to share it with or for those parents that have barely enough to make it through the day let alone get gifts or special Christmas treats for their kids.

I’m incredibly blessed in my life and so there really isn’t any agony to talk of. I still have mixed feelings towards the holiday though. The potential stress for me is when I either can’t think of something for someone I love or when I just can’t afford it. In contrast, when I do find something and actually can get it, I feel giddy and exited and can’t wait for the day when I get to see the surprise and happiness.

The potential stress is still real, although I know it’s a blessed situation. I remember actual uncomfortable dreams about it when I was in my teens. Dreaming that it was the day before Christmas and I had completely forgotten about it. Trying to find something for the people I loved at the local gas station. As I grew older I implemented the strategy of keeping an eye on Christmas from about the end of September. Whenever I hear someone I love talk about something they’d like to do or get I take a mental, and later written, note.

Give children the gift of giving

My girls loves getting gifts, but they really love giving them as well. They’ve been making gifts at school and crafting things at home. Given a glue-gun, some pens and paper and they can create the most creative objects you can imagine. Having a creative studio set up at the kitchen table has kept them occupied for many evenings in November/December.

As they’ve grown older they’ve become more aware of a difference in price between what they can afford or create and what they usually get. It’s been a challenge for them trying to come to terms with this. My eldest came into a period where she no longer wanted to create things because it “just wasn’t good enough”. I saw she was struggling to explain, to herself more than to anyone else, why she didn’t make or give gifts. It took some of the joy out of Christmas for her.

I try to help them out with finding things or activities they can do for the ones they love that don’t require a lot of money.

  • One of my girls loves to write fiction so I asked her to write a story for someone
  • Sometimes we bake candy or cookies
  • Making a painting of a mind-map over all the reasons she loves someone and frame it
  • Making a gift card of an in-house massage or a clean house

Balancing excitement and disappointment

Like most children, in privileged homes, my girls look forward to this holiday – a lot. The countdown starts when it’s about 7 weeks left and the days seam to slow down just to tease them. The excitement is heightened by the people around them asking about what they wish for Christmas. A child doesn’t have any problems asking Santa for things. Kids don’t care what the cost is or if it’s doable or not. My daughters have wished for ponies and puppies and a swimming-pool..

When you ask a child “what they would reeeeeally like if they could wish for anything they wanted” they will start wishing for it. I know we ask out of a nice intention, we want to know if there is something they want that we can give to them, but maybe we should shift more of the focus away from the getting towards the giving?

I remember that sorrowful feeling when high expectations weren’t met, I remember it personally and I’ve seen it with my girls. They so longed and hoped for something that they didn’t get. At first I was a little provoked by their reactions. They weren’t acting out or anything, there were just tightly held tears that I could sense. I thought they were acting spoiled and ungrateful for everything they have. Then I realized that I’d participated in creating this situation by the way I was acting. I and the other people around them had asked and gotten them to talk about all their wishes.. Not once had I worked to downplay their expectations or to reason with them about their wish lists.

Downplay the wish list and focus on being connected

Are there any things you can do or focus on to enjoy the Holiday with your kids even more? Maybe these tips can help:

  1. Plan ahead, do your Christmas shopping as early in November as you can. That way you can relax and thoroughly enjoy this time. A connected family will give more happiness than any gift you could ever buy.
  2. Downplay the wish list and talk about how lucky we are to have so much. Join in a charity or action towards giving to those who have nothing. One example that we’ve joined in is The Basket brigade.
  3. Focus on giving and seeing the joy on the faces of grandparents and family members and help your children come up with good examples of gifts if they can’t think of something themselves. Give them the gift of giving

BeBrave

Life happens – Planting flowers in your mental garden

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Planting flowers

Your mind could be likened to a garden. You can spend your time removing weeds or you can spend it planting beautiful flowers. If the weeds are a metaphor for beliefs, values and feelings that are not empowering you, and you have a lot of them, then you should spend some time on understanding them and clearing them out. But for the most part your focus is better aimed towards cultivating beautiful flowers.

I will argue that a life well lived is a life where you spend most of your time in beautiful states of mind. Finding or placing yourself in a state of for example love, gratitude, contribution, pride or belonging will trigger a physical response in your body that feels amazing. This goes back to raising the baseline of your happiness level.

What flowers do you want to plant?

The flowers in your garden can be of many sorts. If you’re a beginner at planting then pick the ones that are easiest to nurture; gratitude, curiosity and contribution are three that are easy to find and that will bring immediate energy and ambiance to your life.

Work yourself towards investing in flowers that require focused and deliberate practice such as love, compassion and faith. With time and some effort on caring for the possibly toughest plants to sprout; self-love, discipline and grit you will finally earn a garden that will fill your heart with feelings of pride and accomplishment.

The more space you claim for powerful flowers the less room there is for weeds to grow in the first place.

Playing mind games

The garden of the mind is clearly a metaphor. Have you noticed how much easier it is to understand and remember a new concept if the teacher finds good metaphors for likening the concept to things that you already understand? The more time you spend thinking of a concept, i.e. practicing that concept, the better and more efficient you will become in thinking it. Telling a story, which in the very construct is something the brain also loves, and using a metaphor will activate that practice skill in the brain and let you fertilize the soil so your flowers can grow strong and healthy root systems 😉

Life happens

I believe that life happens. To me that means that you can’t control everything that actually physically happens. The weather, death, accidents and sicknesses are part of life. Layoffs, politics and the impact in your life that comes from other people’s fears are also facts that mostly aren’t efficient to spend too much time trying to mitigate. Life happens and the best thing we can do is manage how we deal with it when it does.

When we spend time practicing the good feelings we build ourselves up. We build a level of resistance that inoculate us from falling into darkness when and if life throws a curve ball our way. When we practice gratitude and love, discipline that leads to a sense of pride, self-love and compassion we are more likely to come back to those feelings even if we falter for a short while.

Enroll your brain to camp

So how can you ensure you have a mind full of beautiful strong and resilient flowers? You start practicing. Practicing and repeating again and again so your brain and your subconscious gets the message loud and clear. You bring your focus back to the feelings and thoughts you want to promote and live in every time you feel you’re drifting.

This conscious practice is why coaches instruct their clients to create empowering mantras and vision boards. You want to practice as often as possible. Daily at least.

Your brain stores information according to your senses; visual, audio, feelings (physical and emotional), smell and taste. The more senses you can get involved in the feelings you’re working into your life the more deeply they will stick.

Create triggers in your daily routine

Many successful people have routines built into their days that include getting up early in the morning and focusing on themselves and their goals in life. I apply this theory partly in my morning routine. I begin most of my mornings on my stationary bicycle waking my system up. While I’m there I focus on two things; everything and everyone I’m grateful for and my goals and dreams for the future. Nowadays I don’t have to be guided through the mental exercises, now I know exactly where to go mentally.

Another thing we do in our family is that we use our wall space for visual triggers for positive emotions. In my bedroom I have a large photo of a warm sun and the text “Step up!” as a reminder of the incantation “I am the Voice” – shout out to my Date with Destiny peeps!

In our living room I’ve drawn Thank you in 40 centimetre letters and laid out pens so that, we in the family, as well as our guests can write things that we are grateful for on the wall.

When my daughter turned 9 I wrote a message by her bed to remind her of everything she is. Translated it says; “I have everything I need within me. Love, courage, laughter, the ability to ask for help, compassion, imagination, gratitude, faith, curiosity, determination, power”

Emelie wall

There have been many evenings when I’ve been lying next to her before she falls asleep when we’ve told each other about situations from the day that relates to each word.

Another strong and valuable trick is to keep filling your head with positive and motivating sounds. Keep searching for inspiring talks on www.ted.com or on Youtube; I can recommend Your world within  or Mateuszm . Keep pouring good things in – they will activate that pattern recognition and help rebuild your brain.

Enjoy your garden

Like any gardener you should reap the rewards from your hard work. Remember to stop and smell those metaphorical roses now and then!

Stop and really let the feelings in. Snuggle your nose into your child’s neck, kiss her forehead. Sit next to her and if she’ll still let you then pull her close and wrap your arm around her whenever possible. Enjoy the sunrises and sunsets, the starlit sky, the amazing play of sunlight on the autumn leaves. If you look for it you will see lovers holding hands, parents lovingly and with inhuman patience help their kids with small and big things, dog owners caring for their four legged babies and people being helpful to other people.

Give yourself a whole lot of praise and love when you show up, do the work and follow through on the things you’ve committed to. Be good to yourself and find reasons to celebrate often. Lean into life. Share your happiness with the world. Be a force for good!

BeBrave

Threats, punishments and bribery

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Threats, punishments and bribery

I can be very convincing and persuasive, make my point and argue with conviction for my ideas. Coming from a background of a fixed mindset this was an inevitable skill I needed to master to make sure I came out of every argument “on top”, being right, having all the answers… (*sigh*). Having kids was part of what eventually made the cracks in my mindset large enough to let the light of growth and tolerance to begin to seep in. If by nothing else then by the sheer volume of situations where I finally just had to admit that the way I was acting or thinking was NOT working and that I needed to change.

Before I had kids I had a dog, a beautiful huge Giant Schnauzer (Riesen), named Gimli 🙂
I learnt the importance of an assertive and dominant leadership style, to ensure that my instructions were always clear and consistent and most importantly to make sure that my commands were respected. A fellow dog-loving friend told me “Think before giving a command! if you’re in your new beautiful shoes and your dog is in the mud field doing something you would rather he didn’t – then decide if you really want to shout “no” to him, because if he doesn’t stop you HAVE to follow up with going out there!” I learnt a lot about impulse control, consistency and alpha leadership from Gimli.

Threats, punishment and bribery

Sometimes the clear, assertive and serious attitude is hard to find…  Gimli wanted to help with the painting.  #Family Fun?

A CHILD IS LIKE A DOG – RIGHT?

When my kids came along I thought that raising them would be pretty much the same in theory as being the alpha for a dog. Be clear, consistent and follow through with consequences if not respected. I don’t know if you’ve tried the dictator leadership style with your kids.. it sure wasn’t working for me. I spent a lot of my time and energy on endless conflicts, trying to tell myself that this was just a phase and that they would grow out of this rebellious behavior. I used to say, only partly joking, that the three pillars of parenting were “threats, punishments and bribery”. This belief was one that I finally had to admit was not just flawed but actually completely inappropriate and destructive.

A child is not an inferior creature that you need to guard and put into place. A child need to know the rules that apply in interacting with other people, so yes you need to be clear, but they need to understand the rules and the reasoning behind them to be able to become questioning and self-reliant adults. It is also important that a child realizes and gets to experience the consequences that comes from choosing to act in a certain way. And consistency is important, the rules and consequences we’ve agreed upon should apply the way they do with everyone else they will encounter in life. But a child needs to be able to question rules, to choose their actions (and decide to suffer the consequences) and to test their limits and abilities to grow.

BEING A  PARENT IS ABOUT GETTING THINGS DONE

Besides the Alpha leadership idea I held another messed up belief that I think was primarily what pushed me towards the threats, punishments and bribery mindset with my kids. I believed that my life needed to be efficient!  I ran my family as if there was a diploma on the line. We needed to get things done! A lot of things! And that meant we didn’t have time for managing conflicts or individual desires. This also meant that there was very little time for letting my kids learn to do things for themselves. I dressed them, I washed them, I brushed their teeth and hair, I cooked all meals, I cleaned the house, I cleaned their room… We needed to be efficient. Get things done. And so the short term solution was to threat or bribe my kids into just doing what they were told. No surprise… I was a very tired mom.

The thing is that I have actually always also believed that one of my jobs as a parent is to teach them to be self-reliant and to be able to take care of themselves. I was feeling increasingly stressed about when I would get enough time and energy to get to that teaching. As if teaching was something isolated from our everyday life.

I’ve come to accept that the teaching I do is primary through the way I live my life and that the lessons are there every day in our interactions with each other and with the people and circumstances that life put in our way.

BEING EFFICIENT vs LIVING YOUR #Family Purpose

Have you considered what your job as a parent is? Your answer will be unique in detail to you and your background. Are you running to be efficient or are you effective in making progress towards something important in the long run and enjoying your life?

Threats, punishments and bribery are not strategies that will contribute to #Family Connection and probably not to any of your long term goals. If you want more information to be convinced I can recommend reading the book Kids are worth it! by Barbara Coloroso.

But if you, like me, have been using these strategies you can actually get good use and golden nuggets out of them even as you work towards eliminating them from your life. You can use the situations where you tend to stumble into these strategies as beacons for finding situations to change. Often one or two changes that are of core importance is all it takes to make a huge difference.

TAKE ACTION – Get a piece of paper and write down the answers to these questions:

  1. In what situations during a normal day do we get into conflicts where I start using threats of punishments to get my way?

  2. What is the real reason that my child is digging his/her heals down in that situation?

  3. What do I want to happen?

  4. What can I do differently to still achieve what I want but without losing our warm connection?

BE PATIENT AND OPEN

Be kind to yourself while working to change. And be patient. It takes time for your child to trust the change you’re trying to implement. He/she will test you several times to verify your resolve and commitment.

I had a continuous fight with one of my daughters about getting out of bed in the mornings. She was always tired and in a bad mood.

We talked about it after dinner one night and I asked her if she could think of a way that I could wake her so that she would wake up happier. She knew exactly what she wanted; “I want you to attack me and tickle me with kisses!”  I thought “Yeah right! She will bite my head of for rudely wakening her!” but she actually loved it! Sure, she was a bit chocked at first but almost immediately she realized what was going on and was both laughing and cuddling me. 

Stay true to your needs. Listen to your child. Find ways that works for the both of you!

BeBrave
 
 
 
 

What’s the point?

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Meaning of life

Okay so let’s look at one on the Huge questions 🙂 What is the meaning of life?

Do you ever think about it? I do. I refer to the personal approach; What is the meaning of my life? Have you ever been asked that question by a child, by someone who looks up to you and trusts that you will be able to provide some answers or at least some clues? I’ve noticed that the level of my own commitment and trust in my answer differ some depending on what state of mind I’m in when I‘m asked.

When I’m in a low state I tend to not even remember my theories. It’s as if some part of me don’t want to get it together. In a low state my internal answer is usually somewhere along the lines of “I have no frigging clue!”, “Leave me alone!” or “To eat massive amounts of sugar!” That’s not what I say out loud.. of course. Out loud I usually get myself together enough to recite some version of the truth I really know to be true. I latch on to pure faith in that I will feel that truth again and I stick with what I’ve so far been able to piece together as my current version of an answer.

Easy answer – difficult to do

There are so many different tastes and views on meaning and happiness. Self-help sections intertwined with mindfulness practices. I believe that we’re all looking for pretty much the same basic thing;

To enjoy this human experience!

But if the end goal is the same for everyone, shouldn’t the solutions then be pretty easy to define? Nah, the thing is that we pursue this goal in endless different ways depending on a myriad of factors.

I’ve come to visualize this diversity of guiding principles as a “cube”. The core is the same and represent the universal human goals and needs. The sides of the cube represent different mindsets and approaches to finding your personal answers and vehicles for experiencing these feelings and to satisfy these needs.

Meaning of life

The sides might very well consist of even more/different aspects/mindsets/approaches to life, the ones I’ve used are just examples.

How You describe Your guiding principles is personal and depend on your background. It depends on how you were raised, the people around you and the level of awareness you’re at i.e. how well you can hear and moderate your inner dialogue. I believe it’s also related to how well you’ve learnt to manage your fear.

Still an all too easy answer?

You might argue that, even with the different approaches according to the cube, the goal to enjoy being alive, sounds deceivingly simple. If the goal is to have that feeling then just go ahead and enjoy! Right?

Maybe.

Enter the concept of timeframe, the difference between short term and long term. Is the pleasure of the moment valued differently than the feeling of achieving goals that demand restraining from instant temporary pleasures?
Yes, because the enjoyment is different. The positive consequences and the case for resisting short term pleasure and for combating urges in the moment is well described in the book The Marshmallow test by Walter Mischel.

Personally I rely on neuroscience when it comes to this topic. Short term pleasure is SUPER great! But it’s by its very definition a temporary experience. You do something that makes your body/brain produce the feel good hormones, endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. These hormones feel great and believe me I also seek them out and thoroughly enjoy them when they flood my system. But these feelings will recede, the body will work to get back into balance, and you will be back to your personal baseline. There is nothing wrong or sad about this idea, to me it’s just truth.

Two ways of living the meaning of your life

So basically you have two ways of optimizing this life experience;

  • Participate in experiences that give you that chemical mix that feels SO good and/or
  • Raise the level of your baseline.

What activities raise your baseline? What short term pleasures bring valuable energy to your life?

These distinctions have been important for me when choosing what activities to spend my hours on in regards to this concept of happiness.

  1. Pick short term pleasures that support the long term goals
    When choosing a short term pleasure I try to make sure that the activity is not something that I will regret participating in when I come down from the high. Eating a piece of cake is fine – eating the entire cake will NOT be. Spending an hour with a fantasy novel on my balcony is relaxing and lets me rest while I will regret mindlessly surfing channels on TV that hour.
  2. Enjoy the short term pleasure!
    Also; when actually choosing a short term pleasure that might not be according to my long term goals, eating even that one piece of cake when I’m on a low carb diet, I’ve realized that I used to give myself a shit load of pain (blame) even as I was doing it. This of course seriously damaged the high that I was after and made the whole experience a LOW rather than a high. The trick is to choose quickly and stick with your choice no matter what! Decide and enjoy!
  3. Focus most of your energy on raising the baseline
    In the end it will be far more effective, to your happiness, to spend your energy on raising your baseline of happiness instead of chasing temporary thrills. The short answer on how to do this is to follow your intuition and to forcefully focus on the activities that will make you proud of yourself. Not proud in a bloated egotistical way but in a dignified and sublime manner. If you can do something, that you know is truly good, without anyone knowing about it then you’re on the right course.

Becoming a parent – angst, guilt and never enough

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Becoming a parent

Becoming a parent. To be a mom. It’s sort of insane really. It’s said that humans are wired to propagate so the desire to have kids ought to be a natural and irresistible urge for pretty much everyone. It was for me.. to some extent. I somehow just knew I was going to have kids, it was never a question of ”if”.. just “when”. Maybe that comes from being the oldest child and therefore more likely to follow given rules and family traditions. Maybe it was because my friends started getting pregnant and having children. Maybe it was my biological clock telling me to hurry up. Maybe it was because I was curious as to how it would feel to have a baby growing inside or that I wanted someone to flood with fierce and passionate love. Maybe it was all of that. Somehow I always knew I would have kids. Two of them actually. And that’s what I’ve got.

But being a mom is nothing like I thought it would be. It’s been better and more than I could ever imagine and it’s also given me countless hours with darker thoughts than I believe is politically correct and that makes my ego cringe when I think about it.

Everything I do I do with the awareness of how it might impact them. It gives me strength to carry on when I’m way past just “a little tired”, it makes me really want to be a better person, it makes me question my motives and my values. To be their mother, to be the one they come to when they are unsure, scared or worried about something and just want that little push to get going. To hold their hand when going to the dentist, to see their recitals, to laugh with them at silly jokes or whimsy stories. It gives me the feeling of belonging. Like my life have meaning. I was part of creating them – these two creatures with the ability to spread so much joy and laughter.

But with that achievement came a sense of responsibility and worry and the distinct thought of – “Ehh hello! I’ve got a complaint! There wasn’t a manual delivered with this baby!”, What have I’ve gotten myself into?! What if I fail completely and all my theories about parenting, that I’m more or less wildly just testing out on these two little guinea pigs, pushes them over the edge into angst and stress or into just being lazy teenage brats without an ounce of empathy or ambition?

Yeah, those fears probably says a lot more about me than about who they are actually growing up to become. But for a long time I really felt burdened with the huge responsibility. That it was such a huge and important job to lead two human beings towards adulthood. That it really should be done with more conscious, deliberate and informed strategies than I ever had the time to formulate or implement.

I finally realized two things that have helped me just get on with it:

  1. I’m doing the best I can and I try to live my life with some conscious congruency between what I think, feel and act upon. Kids do as you do not as you say so if I focus more on how I live my life instead of how I should be instructing them it should turn out okay in the end.
  2. We were all “damaged”, one way or another, by our parents and by the experience of growing up. Either you were smothered too closely or ruled too strictly or something in between, it’s part of the set up that you test your limits and push you boundaries with your parents. It’s an inevitable fact that there will be misunderstandings and poor programming that later will need to be re-scripted to serve us better. I came to accept that I with 100% certainty already have screwed them up in some ways and that I most assuredly will continue to contribute to anchoring and convictions that aren’t empowering them. And that that is okay. That I can’t go around feeling guilty or bad about what has been or what might happen. Walking around with those thoughts will NOT make me a better mom. No more remorse over failures in the past or torment about the future – I’m doing as well as I know how to with good intentions.
    And even good intentions are sometimes not enough – I got yet another proof of that one morning not long ago. At breakfast one of my daughters told me about how daring and courageous one of her class mates was acting the other day and how she wished she could have as much courage. In our family we define courage as in doing something in spite of being scared. My daughters friend had defied the gym teacher and misbehaved and therefore had been dismissed from gym class. My girl, who didn’t want to participate in the class, thought it was very brave to talk back at the teacher like that…

I’m doing as well as I know how to. And when I know better I do better. We’re working on that definition of courage… 😉

Let go of any guilt or worry about doing “parenting right”. Worrying doesn’t make it better and it definitely won’t be worse by letting your shoulders down and just doing it with a laugh. Doing it is what we do anyway – a well as we can!