It’s Mother’s Day soon, a special day in which we take time to acknowledge and celebrate the special gift of our mothers. So, I want to dedicate this post to all the beautiful, brave, courageous, strong and hard working mums all over the world.
As women we have come to believe that we can do it all. From a very early age we start creating these images in our head of us as a “Super woman or super human”. We dream of the perfect marriage, perfect job, perfect children, perfect home! No wonder most of the time we feel as if we are not measuring up. Trying to do it all and expecting that it all can be done to perfection is a recipe for disappointment at best and paralysis at worst. Most of us do a great job worrying and comparing ourselves to other women. We spend a lot of our precious time worrying and feeling as if we are failing both at work and at home.
So mums, let’s agree on this one; “No, we can’t do it all!” What we can do is learn where to focus our attention on. We have to decide on what matters and what doesn’t and start focusing our attention on the things that really matter. It is coming to the realisation that not everything has to be done at 100% and that there are certain things that we can decide not to do or things that if done at 70-80% will still be good enough.
From a mental health perspective it is important that we choose what we focus our attention on carefully. Our brain can only process so much “data” at a time, therefore the RAS (Reticular Activating System) acts as a filter and only lets things through that it thinks is important for our survival. So how does the RAS know what’s important? It does by what we focus your attention on most. Knowing this, it is important to choose our thoughts carefully and what we focus our attention on, because this will also determine how we feel.
To feel happy, we have to focus on things in our life that will make us feel happy. Perhaps its asking questions like, “What am I happy about in my life right now?” or even remembering happy moments from the past, like a fun birthday.
Whatever you focus on, you feel.
In the same way, to feel depressed you have to focus on things entirely differently. You need to be deleting all the good that’s going on in any given moment, and focused on the negative. If you asked yourself, “What really sucks in my life right now?” I’m sure you’d be able to find something and end up feeling really bad. Or if I said, “Remember a time when you felt depressed”, – you’d feel those emotions you felt.
What’s wrong is always available, and so is what’s right.
I know that sometimes I spend time focusing on what I’m not doing well at home and work. What I find is that when I dwell less on these issues, and focus more on being fully engaged with the present moment, I feel happier, at peace and become more productive with what I’m doing.
I bless and express gratitude to my own mother, and to all the mothers in the world!
Happy Mother’s Day!