Came across this via the Action for Happiness FaceBook status / page:
http://ranchobernardo.patch.com/articles/five-ways-to-stay-present-and-appreciate-your-kids
After a week of trying to become a more present mom, here are the tools that actually helped Abi Cotler O'Roarty in her quest:
Gratitude Journal: Gretchen Rubin suggests keeping a one-sentence journal in an effort to chronicle topics like lessons learned, a child’s first year, or gratitude. She likes the one-sentence-a-day way of journaling because it is manageable to keep up. I try to list at least five specific things that happened that day with my kids that I’m grateful for. I try to keep to specifics because the broad generalities, like: my kids are generally healthy and happy, are easy to come up with, but it’s the actual daily events that I’m more interested in, like: my daughter read her little sister an entire book three times over today.
Turn Off: Turning off your phone, especially if it’s 'smart,' is one of the easiest ways for most of us to significantly bump up our attention and focus on the present. I notice that even if I put the phone on vibrate, or in another room, I find myself checking it when I see my kids are otherwise occupied. When it is all the way powered down, I now get it through my skull that there’s no reason to go through turning it back on just to get distracted — what’s important is right in front of me.
Post-it Up: Jot down a few ideas about what it is you’re trying to accomplish here—set the intention. Then create little reminders on note cards or post-its and place the reminders around your house. Right now, there’s a purple post-it in our bathroom that reads, “Enjoy every little breath.”
Put Some Love Into It: One time I was making my daughter’s cumbersome bed for what felt like the fifteenth day in a row when she was having trouble with nighttime accidents. Grumpy as all get out, I suddenly found myself thinking that if I put all the love I had for her into making the bed, I would feel so much better. So when you find yourself cursing the eighth creative mess you’ve dealt with that day already, try putting all your love for your family into it and see if it doesn’t help let some light into the gloom.
Planned Neglect: I once asked an octogenarian artist how he managed to produce so much art over the years. He told me about something he called “planned neglect.” He said that he had to force himself to ignore some of the household chores that needed to get done every single day in order to prioritize his art. All these years later, nothing bad has happened to him as a result of letting laundry and dishes pile — and the work he had to show for this seemed stunningly fulfilling.
As a stay-at-home mom (the article goes onto say) I find one of the biggest challenges to staying present with my kids are of the demands of the home. But lately I’ve been trying to lower the standard of what I need to have done each day in order to feel that I’m taking care of my home. Sometimes breakfast dishes don’t get done until I am cooking dinner. Sometimes the house is not all the way picked up at the end of the day. Becoming more relaxed about domesticity has really helped me not feel like I need to constantly pull away from the present moment, whatever it holds.
Try starting with just one of these things above and then perhaps switch to another if it does not do the trick for you. The last thing we want to do is worry too much about not appreciating our kids enough, because nothing makes you feel unappreciative like stress and guilt. If you’ve already faced personal tragedy to a great degree, perhaps you don’t need these techniques. But I hope we can all start trying to live in a world where you don’t need to face down death to appreciate life — because life, after all, is the name of the game.
http://ranchobernardo.patch.com/articles/five-ways-to-stay-present-and-appreciate-your-kids
After a week of trying to become a more present mom, here are the tools that actually helped Abi Cotler O'Roarty in her quest:
Gratitude Journal: Gretchen Rubin suggests keeping a one-sentence journal in an effort to chronicle topics like lessons learned, a child’s first year, or gratitude. She likes the one-sentence-a-day way of journaling because it is manageable to keep up. I try to list at least five specific things that happened that day with my kids that I’m grateful for. I try to keep to specifics because the broad generalities, like: my kids are generally healthy and happy, are easy to come up with, but it’s the actual daily events that I’m more interested in, like: my daughter read her little sister an entire book three times over today.
Turn Off: Turning off your phone, especially if it’s 'smart,' is one of the easiest ways for most of us to significantly bump up our attention and focus on the present. I notice that even if I put the phone on vibrate, or in another room, I find myself checking it when I see my kids are otherwise occupied. When it is all the way powered down, I now get it through my skull that there’s no reason to go through turning it back on just to get distracted — what’s important is right in front of me.
Post-it Up: Jot down a few ideas about what it is you’re trying to accomplish here—set the intention. Then create little reminders on note cards or post-its and place the reminders around your house. Right now, there’s a purple post-it in our bathroom that reads, “Enjoy every little breath.”
Put Some Love Into It: One time I was making my daughter’s cumbersome bed for what felt like the fifteenth day in a row when she was having trouble with nighttime accidents. Grumpy as all get out, I suddenly found myself thinking that if I put all the love I had for her into making the bed, I would feel so much better. So when you find yourself cursing the eighth creative mess you’ve dealt with that day already, try putting all your love for your family into it and see if it doesn’t help let some light into the gloom.
Planned Neglect: I once asked an octogenarian artist how he managed to produce so much art over the years. He told me about something he called “planned neglect.” He said that he had to force himself to ignore some of the household chores that needed to get done every single day in order to prioritize his art. All these years later, nothing bad has happened to him as a result of letting laundry and dishes pile — and the work he had to show for this seemed stunningly fulfilling.
As a stay-at-home mom (the article goes onto say) I find one of the biggest challenges to staying present with my kids are of the demands of the home. But lately I’ve been trying to lower the standard of what I need to have done each day in order to feel that I’m taking care of my home. Sometimes breakfast dishes don’t get done until I am cooking dinner. Sometimes the house is not all the way picked up at the end of the day. Becoming more relaxed about domesticity has really helped me not feel like I need to constantly pull away from the present moment, whatever it holds.
Try starting with just one of these things above and then perhaps switch to another if it does not do the trick for you. The last thing we want to do is worry too much about not appreciating our kids enough, because nothing makes you feel unappreciative like stress and guilt. If you’ve already faced personal tragedy to a great degree, perhaps you don’t need these techniques. But I hope we can all start trying to live in a world where you don’t need to face down death to appreciate life — because life, after all, is the name of the game.
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