As I delve this week into the third of my must-haves for a thriving motherhood, I feel I need to preface it with a confession.
I’m one of those people that truly believes our mindset can change the world around us.
Maintaining a positive mindset is not particularly easy. Certainly it gets easier over time, but it remains something of an inner struggle. There will always be people, ideas, experiences and events that block the work of a positive mindset. And let’s be honest -no one actually wants to totally stop the feeling of unhappiness. We want to feel the full gamut of emotions in our life which isn’t always sunshine and lollipops. Stuff happens. And it’s important to allow ourselves the time to fully experience whatever emotions arise during difficult times.
But a positive mindset can help us not to STAY in those unhappier moments. A positive mindset can help to draw us up and beyond those moments or to put them to a beautiful use.
There are the unhappy moments of when we lose a loved one.
There are the stressful moments of job losses and paycuts.
There are the uncomfortable moments of dealing with change.
There are the monotonous moments of mothering.
And this is what I want to focus on today: how to maintain a positive mindset during the monotony of the daily grind.
Give it meaning
The easiest way to see the positive in daily life is to give it meaning. What do I mean by this? Let me use an example. If you run a business from home, you’ll find that having a mission statement front and centre of your workspace helps to keep you focused and on track. Similarly, in motherhood, homeschooling, family life – we want to be creating manifestos or missions statements that help to keep us on track or pull us back when we start to float. It helps to really nut out our vision for our life and this is something we cover very deeply in Simple Life, Peaceful Home.
For information about how to develop a manifesto for your home Click Here.
Time out
Taking regular, even if only short, time out from our daily duties will help us to appreciate our season of life more and give us the energy we need to continue with a positive attitude. I strongly recommend 5-10 minutes a day of uninterrupted self care- more if you can manage it! Some days you might be able to manage an hour, other days only 5 minutes. Just make sure it happens regularly.
Download 49 simple, practical ways to nurture a habit of self care.
Self talk
One thing I’ve had to work hard on throughout my mothering journey is the habit of negative self talk. I’ve found that when I am conscious of this and really make an effort to turn it into positive self talk, it has a huge impact on the present moment and also on the ensuing hours.
There’s a great saying that the way we talk to our children will become their inner voice. And guess what? The way we talk to ourselves IS our inner voice.
When was the last time you looked in the mirror and told yourself that you look beautiful? Not, “I really need to lose weight” or “well, that’s as good as it’s going to get.”
When was the last time you told yourself to just let it go when you made a mistake, instead of calling yourself an idiot or questioning how on EARTH you could let that happen!?
When was the last time you accepted a compliment with a simple “Thanks” instead of making excuses or deflecting it?
Our children listen to the way we speak to ourselves and they will copy it.
Final note
Developing a positive mindset is a constant work in progress, and personally, I don’t think we can ever say, “Yep, I’m done. This is the best my mindset can get!” There is always room for improvement. But it’s important not to get stuck on how much further you want to go, and just appreciate how far you’ve come. Mothering is hard. Really hard. But working to develop a positive mindset around mothering can and will pay off -both in the short term and the long term.
Further reading:5 easy and effective ways to create mindset shifts
