As Ferris Bueller so simply said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
As moms, we have so much going on in our life. Whether you stay at home with your children or work full-time, you’re busy. Whether you’re married or single, you’re busy. We look at our kids’ school pictures every year, and comment, “Wow, when did they grow up?”
We have sports schedules to contend with, academic requirements to keep up with. I was a single, co-parenting mom with a schedule booked to the hilt with commitments. Even now that I’m remarried, I’m still non-stop busy! Whether I am driving the boys back and forth to their father’s house, or meeting up to drop off a pair of sneakers they left at my house, or going to a soccer game on weekends I don’t have the boys, life is non-stop.
Intermingled with all the craziness of a non-stop mom life, how often do you find yourself collapsing at the end of the day, trying to figure out what exactly you did that day? Let’s see, I made sure homework was done, I yelled at my kids yet again for not cleaning up their mess. I bugged my husband about not doing the dishes. I complained that the trash was overflowing and no one helped me around the house. Negative Nelly.
Stop. Just stop, breathe, and take a break. Why do we, or maybe it’s only me, but why do I think that anything is going to be accomplished if I’m always so negative? I make a pro and con list, but fail to make my list weighty in the pro side. Why do I constantly focus on my negative attributes? As a mom, as a wife, as a woman? Unfortunately, I am guilty of this each and every day.
We have SO much in our lives to be thankful for.
- As a mother, I’m grateful for my children after miscarrying twins.
- As a wife, I’m thankful for a husband who truly loves me, even at my worst.
- As a co-parenting mom, I’m thankful for a good relationship now between my ex-husband and his wife to the point that we can all attend family activities together and spend time together.
- As a full-time working mom, I’m grateful for a job that I *usually* enjoy going to most days and ensures that my bills are paid and I have a roof over my head.
- As a human being, I am beyond grateful that there are smarter people in the world to invent medications, perform life-saving surgery, and design computers to help me organize my life and keep me gainfully employed.
So we can make a pro/con list for ourselves on a daily basis, but do other people in your life know how thankful you are for them? Do they know what attributes of their persona you are grateful for? When was the last time you told someone you didn’t know that you liked an outfit they were wearing?
Recently, a friend of mine passed away after getting lost while hiking. She had sent me a belated wedding gift just about 6 weeks ago and I never got around to thanking her for her kindness. I’m still behind on my thank you cards from my wedding. Again, that non-stop busy mom life has been overrunning my life. I hate knowing that I didn’t get an opportunity to thank her. She was always such a generous, kind woman. Did people take the opportunity to tell her?
My children are my world, and I would move heaven and earth for them. Do they know that? Do they hear me telling them positive affirmations, or do they hear me dwelling on the negatives of their day?
My husband is my best friend and he really has made me a better version of myself. How often do I tell him that? Do I thank him when he goes out of his way to help me around the house? Or does he hear me “nagging” him for forgetting to take the trash out or complaining about everything I have to do?
We are busy. Our lives are scheduled to the max. We sleep when we can and survive on coffee in the morning and a glass of wine at night. It may sound cliche’, but we need to stop and smell the roses.
In this season of Thanksgiving and the constant reminder to be thankful, we really need to take this to heart. Take the time to show others you are grateful for them. Be more positive. Reach out and compliment a stranger. Find 3 positives of each day and quit dwelling on the negatives. Uplift instead of tear down. You’ll be surprised how much changes in your day when you stop and take a moment to be thankful.
Take a moment to admire all the beautiful things you take for granted every day. “Chose to see the world through grateful eyes. It will never look the same way again.” (Doe Zantamata)
