My girlfriends and I had to laugh the other day when we were discussing the fact that many things that are bad in a woman’s life start with the prefix ‘men’.
For example….
menstruation
menopause
mental breakdown….
If we get rid of the men would our lives be a lot nicer?! Can you give us some more to have a laugh over next time the girls catch up for a Chardonnay?
I know I spout on about being positive and happy because lets face it, life is what we make it but it’s also perfectly normal for us to feel sad at times and all of us, no matter how great our lives are, feel upset, frustrated and sad from time to time. (Kids and partners can do that to you!!)
Allow these feelings, recognise them and try to identify why you’re experiencing them. Avoid feeling guilty about having them but when you’re done wallowing and you’ve scoffed all the king size chocolate bar, pick yourself up and do something about them then move on.
Often mums set unrealistic expectations on ourselves or others and our reality does not live up to these unrealistic fantasies and so we experience sadness.
Think of sadness as a feedback mechanism to guide us to set more realistic goals and expectations, or clarify realistic strategies to achieve our desires.
And bingo….we’ve turned another negative into a positive 
Yes, it’s something man has been pondering for many, many years. And it got me thinking when I was out shopping last week, frustrated at the price of cheese, the queues, my frizzy hair and car that wouldn’t bloody start…..’What came first, the happy person or the great life?’
Normally up-beat and positive, I was having a bad day and wallowing a wee bit (we all have them!) As I sat in my car waiting for the mechanic, I was looking around at the people passing by. Some seemed so content, so well dressed, had well behaved kids and many had lovely cars that WORKED. They looked so happy.
Are they happy because they have great lives, or do they have great lives because they are happy?
I know what I believe, what are your thoughts? Lets get a discussion going
The right/wrong paradigm is a context for looking at life in which one person is right and the other is wrong. Further, the belief is that in order to give up making the other person wrong then they, themselves, have got to be wrong. Within this paradigm, one of us has always got to be wrong. If you can get outside this mode of thinking, then all of a sudden you’re in a space alive with possibilities.
I come from a family that values education highly. Everybody in my family went to college. However, my oldest son, Kelly, did not like school. It isn’t that he’s not smart; he just wasn’t into school. From within the right/wrong paradigm, one of us had to be wrong and because of the importance I placed on education, I definitely made him wrong for not being into school. As long as I made Kelly wrong, he turned around and made me wrong. This continued to the point that when he was thirteen or fourteen I almost drove him out of the house and into a boarding school. But I eventually came to my senses. I examined all the prices – not just what I was paying, but what my wife, daughter and both my sons were paying – and I stopped resisting Kelly. (Resistance is really what is behind the right/wrong way of looking at circumstances. It comes from thinking that the situation isn’t the way that it should be.) When I could say, “Okay, this is the way he is, where do we go from here?” possibilities opened up. I may not have gotten Kelly to work hard at school, but at least now we could communicate. Now we could have an intimate relationship and talk about alternatives. He was open to my input, even though we saw this one area differently. As it turned out, Kelly ended up going to college and graduating, anyway!
Great stuff from Brian Klemmer
Me with Willie Lose on NewstalkZB, Saturday 20 March 2010.
A lovely friend sent me this quote….
“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” —George Bernard Shaw
Very applicable for us mums to remember!
Herald on Sunday, by Andrea Milner, 6Dec09
A Kiwi Mother-of-two saya a technique called “vibrating” and feeling good can improve your financial situation, and is telling how in her new book…
Central Leader, by Janie Smith, 30Oct09.
When Lisa Folland found herself getting stuck in a rut after having her children, she decided to do something about it and help others do the same…
Book Review in Stretton Publishing’s Her Magazine.
Well actually, I seem to forget a lot lately.
I never really noticed it at first. My anti-natal group would talk about how forgetful they had become as their bellies grew rounder by the month and then they would laugh at their ‘baby brains’ once little Jonny had popped out. But not me. Oh no, not sharp-as-a-tack, elephant-like Lisa, or was I? Perhaps I just forgot that I was meant to do or say something????
Anyway, recently I have to admit, I too need to start taking Ginko by the bucket load. The day after a girls dinner out, my hubby asked what I’d eaten and I could not for the life of me remember (no I hadn’t been drunk either!) I felt very frustrated and Dale probably thought I’d actually had a steamy night with a hot Italian not in a hot Italian.
I was very relieved to remember at 2am the next morning. So much so, that I woke Dale to tell him. For some reason he didn’t seem to care anymore.
So now I’m monitoring it and I must admit, I need my lists more than ever. Without them I definitly become a bit of an air-head… Forgetting what I went to the shops for, who I have to buy presents for, where the kids are going for play dates and where I put the Summer clothes I’d bought for the kids last year in the sales.
Pehaps it comes to us all. But hey don’t worry. Write those lists or put post-it notes on the bathroom mirror. That way you’ll notice that you forgot to take out your rollers when you put on your lipstick before you leave the house late again for the school run because you forgot where you put the car keys!