Overcoming Frustration with your Circumstances

Do you find yourself frustrated with your current circumstances?
Wish things could drastically change or just improve even a bit?

Whether you’re a fulltime parent battling to balance parenting, your marriage and work pressures, or a fulltime parent battling to find balance in raising your children and finding some personal time, know that you aren’t alone. You can however, do something to change things. As the wise old adage goes

‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail’

3 STEPS TO IMPROVING YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES

1. Take time out and evaluate things objectively
Sometimes being in the situation, in the heat of it all, can cloud your judgement and view on things. Take a half day off on a Saturday, sit at Seattle with a latte’, or [insert favorite relaxing activity here], and evaluate what you are frustrated about, what you’d like to see changed, and make sure you have a goal or end point. I personally pray for guidance when I do this. Maybe you’re a fulltime career person battling to spend enough time with the kids, or find you aren’t fulfilled in your chosen career. Perhaps you aren’t spending enough time with your spouse, or you’re battling to meet deadlines at work because you stay up too late with your family and are exhausted every morning at work. Maybe you’re frustrated or bored being a fulltime parent, and want to find a way to make some money. Whatever your problem, and no matter how impossible it may seem to solve, know that there is always a solution 🙂

2. Get some help!
A lot of the time, our problems can be solved slightly, if not fully, but just saying ‘I need help.’ I personally battle to do this, but am learning to. As a fulltime mom, for instance, I found trying to juggle kids, dinner, bathtimes, bedtimes, dishes, laundry and cooking all too much. By four PM I was exhausted, and then had to think about starting our evening routine of cooking, bathtime, dinnertime and bedtime stories. I had been sick for three weeks and was just burntout and not getting better! So I wrote up a ‘household contributions chart’ and put in everyone’s name at least once a week, in a task next to mine. So every evening while I am bathing the kids, someone else is preparing dinner, or doing a load of laundry. What I need to add to the list in order to solve the overall ‘burntout mom’ problem is most probably some time off on weekends, and an earlier bedtime, but the start has been made, and the busy busy role of being fulltime mom has been eased that much by just yelling HEEELP 🙂 Who can help you in your situation?

3. Work at the solution until the problem has been solved entirely.

It would be a waste of everyone’s effort to help me, if I didn’t make sure I solved my circumstance problem (burntout fulltime mom) entirely – if I didnt make sure I got that extra sleep, or took time off on Saturdays to do a hobby, or worked harder at my commitment to having a devotion time in the mornings (my grounding and sanity preserver). Likewise, be sure to make a complete list of ways in which your problem can be solved to the extent you’d like it to be. Ask your spouse for support in letting you work that hour later each evening until your deadline is finished, with the promise of a weekend away once you’re done. Get a babysitter in and do date nights once a week if your marriage is needing some TLC. Set some mommy/daddy-child dates for each child for the upcoming month if you are battling to spend enough time with your kids each week.

I encourage you to be proactive this week in solving your frustrations, be they big or small!

Good luck! x

The beauty & importance of devotion times!

So I’ll start off with a question for you.. 🙂 What do you do in your quiet time that keeps you stimulated, growing and excited to jump out of bed at sparrows?

Nothing brings to light the importance to me of devotion/quiet times, than a few chaotic mornings where I don’t have any. I have a few laaate nights, and can’t get out of bed the next morning, or my phone dies in the night and my alarm doesn’t go off, or I turn my alarm off under my pillow without remembering I’d even done that, when I roll out of bed at some late hour. Whatever the excuse.. That sinking feeling settles in really fast as I juggle making oats, getting hungry kids out of jarmies and seeing my hubby off. The day’s hit with a rush and I have no peace. I don’t have a grip on the day, and man do I feel it.

The more this happens, the more I really value that time. I love the days/weeks in a row where I do get up, where the alarm goes off and I don’t care that it’s 4:50am, I’m  hungry for that peace, for that grip on the day, for those prayers over my situations and family, for that time with God listening and pouring out my heart, the time of reading and learning and growing. Because once the kids wake up, the day goes on in the usual homeschooling, housecleaning noisy rush and I don’t have the time or the quiet to hear His still small voice. But the stillness and the peace of that devotion carries throughout the day. I know God has my day, my family, and others that I pray for, in His hands. I feel secure and confident and in control of the day as opposed to a that feeling of being a step behind the kids and the day, trying to play catch up.

A few things I find handy for making sure my quiet times happen are below:

KEEPING QUIET TIMES SMOOTH:

1. Set two alarms
The first is awful, the second gets you up if you put it in a place far from the bedside 🙂

2. Make sure your books, music, bible, etc. are all together in your ‘spot’
Nothing worse than groggily looking for a pen twenty minutes into your quiet time! Cue muttering.

3. Keep a variety of things to read/study
This helps me keep interested and excited; nothing gets ‘dry’

4. Know and get rid of distractions for good
Turn off wireless if you know FB is a weakness first thing in the morning, or move to a room where the kids and dogs won’t hear you and wake up the neighbourhood 🙂

I would love to hear what your variety of things to read/study/pray about is. Here are some of mine:
THE INTRIGUING DEVOTION  VARIETY :

1. PRAYER MAP:  Open Doors is awesome – I have a prayer map (link to it here) of the 10/40 window from Open Doors magazine (read more about them here, which lists the persecuted countries in the world. I pray for one a day, sometimes I pick one for a while.

2. DAILY DEVOTION BOOK: the authors vary, but I love the fresh topic and scriptures each day.

3.  KIDS PRAYER CALENDAR: I made up my own from the scriptures/ideas in the back of the book How to be a God Chaser & A Kid Chaser – by Tenney & Tenney. What a stunning idea, each day has a scripture focus, a prayer declaration & something to claim over your little ones. Love it!

4.  POWER OF A PRAYING PARENT: by Stormie Omartian. A short prayer a day, praying the scriptures over our children. Got to love this book too!

5.  THE BIBLE: I pick up where I left off the previous day, and just read a few chapters at a time. The Word transforms us from the inside out.

6. BOOK OF INTEREST: I plough through a book every 1-2 weeks, it is surprising how fast you can read, when you have that quiet uninterrupted time.

7.  PRAYER LIST: Unsaved family/friends, personal stuff you are praying about on a daily basis, and so on. Someone once said that prayer moves God’s hand, and I absolutely believe that.

8.  DIARY: Not to forget the diary where everything I learn, or want to remember, goes.

What do you do in your quiet time that keeps you stimulated, growing and excited to jump out of bed at sparrows? 🙂 I’d love to hear!

In closing, I read an interesting article recently about how putting ten thousand hours into something makes you an expert in that field. Well, the same thing applies to quiet times. Think over forty or fifty years of daily devotions with God, and reading and learning and studying, and what that accumulates to. Powerful stuff!
In my busy days, where I am rushing and busy and distracted, I remind myself that sometimes, God speaks to us in a ‘still small voice’ (1 Kings 19:12). He may speak in other ways too, but sometimes what I really need is some alone time with him where I keep my mouth closed and just listen 🙂 Life is too loud. Make time!

I encourage you to zealously pursue having your quiet times, and protecting that time, even when you really battle to wake up, or tend to procrastinate. It is hard to wake up super early, but know that that time is a great headstart to your day on many levels! Be strong!

No, you can’t have THAT now.. the art of delayed gratification!

What is it about waiting, that we just don’t like?
In a world where everything is instant and easy, how hard do we find it to just..wait. We get impatient in traffic, give the waiter a hard time if our order is slightly late & heaven forbid if the train is a minute off schedule.

At the end of last year, hubby (who works for himself mostly) and I sat down to chat about our list of debt to pay, medical appointments to make, etc. All feels great when you have a list, and know where you’re going..
This year, business has it that for  the first time in our blissful married lives, we are getting a set salary, not the ‘make as and when we need’ which we (meaning I!!) have become so comfortably accustomed to. My ideal list has since gone from exciting to gobsmackingly horrid – I will have to wait painfully as we tick off only one item per month, as opposed to most  urgent few first. Oh the horror.
This, after a good subconscious scrutiny, has been the reason for my red flag mood this week. Which has led me to mull over that thing that is so foreign to so many of us.. delayed gratification!

Do you recall the Deferred Gratification Test that was done in the ’70’s?
If you weren’t around then, like me, and have no idea what that was about, no worries, here’s the short of it:

In 1972, an experiment was conducted by a psychologist – Walter Mischel –  on a group of four year olds. Each child was offered a marshmallow. They were then given the option of having it now, or waiting a few minutes, and having two. Some children grabbed the marshmallow right away, while others were able to hold off and wait. Interestingly,  Mischel followed up on the children as adults and discovered that those who displayed deferred gratification and didn’t eat their marshmallows that day, were considered emotionally intelligent, were  generally more self-motivated and successful in school. On the other hand, those who simply couldn’t wait generally had low self-esteem and had suffered in school, labelled by both their teachers and parents as being easily frustrated, stubborn and envious.
This got me smiling, and thinking about my grumpiness over not getting what I want..now.

4 Tips to Feeling Great about Delayed Gratification

1. Have a long term goal
Having a set, written goal as well as specific smaller goals inbetween, helps you stick to the plan and not be swayed by emotional moments and temptation. Reward yourself for sticking to each small goal. We all like rewards, even if given to ourselves, by ourselves 🙂

2. Prioritise!
Think about what your priorities are, and then write them down if need be. In a moment of weakness, recall that food on the table is  more important than your shoe cupboard, or that nonurgent camping gadget, say, and walk away!

3. Projection
Envision how great  you will feel the moment you reach your goal. The pain of saying no to fifty cheeseburgers will be sweet when you set foot on the beach with your toddlers for the first time. Hold out!

4. Remember the marshmallow test
If some four year olds out there can say NO!, heck, so can you! Seriously though, it is something that you can learn over time. It can help you overcome irritating habits, like overeating and overspending and help with getting out of debt.

Go for it, sit down and write. Regardless of your bad habits, where would you like to be in a year, or five. What would you like to have, or do or be? Make some financial goals, or study goals, whatever it is you need to, set some smaller goals to help you stay on track, and go for it!

How to kick some New Year Resolution butt!

What is it about human nature and new year’s resolutions? They seem incompatible from the start.

We make a nice list of things we’ll begin, let’s say, getting up early every morning to do bicycle crunches. January first, you begin. Easy does it, but a start is a start, feeling good.  By day three, you’re feeling the effects of that extra hour less sleep, and you’re snoring on your back mid-crunch. Evening of day three you’re googling other ways of getting great abs that doesn’t require as much .. change in routine. By February it’s all crashed & burned and forgotten as a ludicrous idea anyway, and you’re back where you left off last year, still working off those christmas mince pies. Why do so many new  year’s resolutions end up that way?
I think it has to do with Wiki’s quote of  Isaac Newton’s 1st law in ‘ Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ‘

“The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line.”

In normal English, that means an object, (that would be you), will continue moving at its current velocity (zero, and no, walking around the office does not count as exercise) until some force (reason or motivation) causes its speed or direction to change.

So, how do you kick some new year’s resolution butt?

Planning, people. We all know deep down how really difficult it is to change, to keep the ‘oomph’, to keep the habit alive. Here are some tips to getting things going, and keeping them going..hopefully permanently:

1. You need a solid reason WHY
Why do you want to get a six pack? ‘Because it looks hot’ isn’t solid enough. ‘Because it would make me feel stronger, better about myself, and happier in my marriage because I know my wife loves it when my body’s looking it’s best’ Now we’re getting warmer.. analyse your deep seated reasons, write them down, stick them somewhere where you can see them every day. On the fridge, in the car, on the bathroom mirror. Your WHY.

2. Have a specific goal in mind
Cycling like a speed demon for months on end because you enjoy it may work for some, but you’ll likely land up back on the couch if you don’t have a goal in mind. Do you have a set number of pounds or kilo’s you want to lose? Put a number to it (be realistic too). Do you have a race in mind that you’d like to train for? Print out a training schedule and grab a friend or join a club. Set a goal, and then plan your baby steps inbetween today and your goal. We did this one year, just 5 months prior to a half marathon, and felt like absolute champions when we got over the finish line. We’d never run before, let alone finished a race in another city, but planning prevailed. Set a goal, plan a path to it, go for it.

3. Accountability is a winner
If your goal isn’t something you can do with someone, like training for the yoyo championships or for long jumping, say, then write up your goal and your WHY and stick them somewhere where others can see them. This gets you out there, lets the world know of your intentions and goals, and keeps you from slipping into December’s-old-self. People are watching, and expecting great stuff from you, come on!

4. Believe in yourself, self talk!

Get out of your old bad self talk habits that may try and creep in and sabotage everything at 5am in mid winter when you’re battling to crawl out of bed. I find a handful of small cards with affirmations work wonders. They don’t have to be lengthy or lame, just find a few lines that really motivate you deep down, that talk to you and inspire you, and carry them in your wallet, or stick them on your fridge (or inside of your cupboard if you prefer them to be private). ‘I value myself deeply and love eating healthy food’ etc.
You know what I mean.. what works for you?

5. Pray

Personally, I believe wrapping it all up in prayer does wonders. Asking for help to keep disciplined, to grow in character & faithfulness, from God who sees everything and every heart, is the best accountability of all. When I’m trying to get up at 5 for a workout, or to write, even if noone else on the planet is aware of my trying to open an eye, I know He knows. He knows my WHY’s and my dreams and frustrations, and that I’ve asked for His help is.. reassuring and powerful in a way.

Start today. It’s only the 9th Jan! Never too late to begin 🙂
Sit down somewhere quiet where you can think, dig deep and plan to make resolutions that excite and inspire you, and then plan to succeed.

You can do it!

How does she do that.. & I’d give my left thumb for those shoes..

Don’t you sometimes find yourself dissatisfied with some area of your life?
I definitely do!

The lead couple kissing in the driveway before leaving for work, in the movie you watched last night plays clearly in your memory while you’re carrying out the garbage in your PJ’s, seething over an argument you’ve just had with your spouse about dog food. SERIOUSLY?! Get a room, you mutter.
I’m a lousy wife, says the voice in my mind. Sigh.

The picture perfect family on that billboard over the highway smile down at you from a sunlit beach, while you drive home in traffic with two hungry, irritable children and no glimpse of a holiday in the foreseeable future. Your heart takes a dip – every good family goes on holiday. My kids are being deprived, I’m a bad mommy. Sigh.

From then on, for a week, every advert showing holidays has you gritting your teeth in frustration and misery. The joyful attitude of the last two years’ mutual decision to save instead of going away seems like some distant craziness. I.WANT.A.HOLIDAY!  (and I feel darn lousy for not being able to be that perfect family) is what’s really chewing at me.
Intro snappy wife and mum.

What is it that makes us get into thinking like that? What is it that makes us feel utterly miserable and dissatisfied about certain parts of our lives or ourselves? Where do we get our picture of what it means to be a beautiful woman, have an awesome marriage, and a beautiful home?
Have you ever stopped to dig deep and ask yourself?

I have to laugh at myself as this is an example of my train of thought sometimes:

I’ll wake up in the morning on a, say, Tuesday, subconsciously mulling over that fashion mag I read yesterday in the dentist waiting room, and open my shoe cupboard. (well, more like..my shoe microcollection of 5 pairs). Slops, slops, boots, brown heels, black heels. I’m a 30 year old attractive wife, no slops for me anymore. I can look as great as that model.. Heels it is! I whip out the sexiest pair, dust them off, and put them on, feeling instantly sexier for having them on. A flash of fashion mag model streaks through my head. Hot shoes..check. Great wife… double check.. and off I head to a normal morning of two toddlers, housework and general chaos. Sitting on the loo five hours later, I look down at my aching feet and wonder who the heck I’m kidding. Heels and my stay at home mom lifestyle don’t seem to gel as easily as expected.
Back they go in the shoe cupboard, and are replaced by the old trusty slops. Joy . They may not be hot, but they are comfy, I tell myself, feeling unsexy again. Some days I just want to feel more exciting and more important than just a ‘comfy’ wife. I want my norm to be that hot magazine model. I mean, isn’t that the norm? Can I not just step out of bed and into hotness? Every magazine I seem to read lately says so in picture form, or so I believe.

My realisation is that if we’re yoyoing with our emotions and pictures of ourselves, we are getting our skewed pictures from media, a lousy liar of a place.

4 Ways to Get Over that media Malarkey

1. Scrutinize what you see and watch

When Jennifer Aniston wakes up in that movie with perfect bed hair, and that stab of ”oh my word, she is beautiful and I wish I woke up like that, I must be wierd’ runs through your mind subconsciously, STOP right there, look at her and go ‘Really? Do people REALLY wake up like that? Nope, they take half and hour to GET like that. I’m normal, she’s misrepresenting, darn woman!.. move on.’

2. Dip into the Scriptures and take a look at what it says about YOU.

The looking glass for our ‘perfect wife, mom, family and home’ should really be the Bible, not media and everything it portrays. Learn what it says about who you are, who you are meant to be and what your levels are. And then LOVE THE HECK OUT OF YOURSELF while striving for your best.

3. Write/Consciously work out your pattern for your life

Immerse yourself in God’s Word, find what it says about you, your family,  your role as wife and mother, and then set in your heart ‘This will be my ideal, my standard;  this is what I, by God’s grace, will allow to be the pattern for my life and family.” Settle it in your heart & find your peace.

4. From today, be aware of your internal dialogue & master it

Be aware of what dips your mood, your esteem or your outlook on certain things, and nip them in the bud. Become a more self analysing person, questioning what you believe and why. Dig deep and change!