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

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!