Refinding Me

So I may have mentioned before (on FB and whatnot) that I've recently been listening to a podcast called Better Than Happy by Jody Moore (It was called Bold New Mom); anyway, she's an LDS life-coach, and she does a bunch of podcasts (she's been doing them for a while now, and there are over 100) on different topics. Sometimes it's about being a parent, sometimes it's about setting personal goal, but it is ALWAYS about how our mindset determines our outcome.

Here's the thing, a year ago, I would have said "Yeah, right. Okay, sure" and brushed it off as new-age nonsense, but the way she describes it makes 100% sense. It's not sitting in a room, repeating "I am a millionaire" 150,000 times a day. That would be insane, but that's always how I had understood it. I had heard of "abundant mindset" before, but what I previously described is how it had always come across to me: totally nuts. What she says the difference between abundant and scarcity mindset isn't what you're telling yourself, but it's what you actually believe. She gives the example of time. If I'm constantly saying (generally unwittingly), "I don't have enough time." Then my tendency will be to panic, procrastinate, and then no, I won't have enough time to accomplish the tasks I wanted to. She says that if you have an abundant mindset, you say "I have enough time." There is no sense of panic, no sense of a looming clock tick tick ticking in the background; you do the things on your list because they're not overwhelming (because you have enough time, remember?), and then, yes, you do have enough time. Now she also warns that you can't just jump from scarcity to abundant because you won't believe it. You can't spend 20+ years telling yourself you don't have enough time, and then expect 20 minutes of repeating "I have enough time" to just change everything over night. You have to move to neutral territory before you move to abundance. So the move goes from "I don't have enough time, " to "Time will come." The concept of "I'm not there yet, but eventually, we'll get there."

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, time, money, love, patience--these are all things I've struggled with feeling like I have enough of (I mean, I have enough love, but do I dole it out enough??). I've been practicing "____ will come." Time will come. Money will come. Love will come. Patience will come. The other thing Jody Moore talks about is human's natural tendency to have an "All or nothing" attitude; basically, if I set a goal (say I want to work on my book for 2 hours), then the only way I succeed is by fulfilling that goal 100%. If I work on my book for 10 minutes, I've failed, but REALITY is I didn't fail because I did something. AND if I can only put in 10 minutes, then why bother at all. So either I work on it for 2 hours (all) or I don't work on it (nothing). If I work on it for 10 minutes, I may not have gotten it perfect, I may not have achieved exactly what I set out to achieve, but I did SOMETHING. Life is not all or nothing; every effort counts. Knitting is where I see this most clearly: If I'm knitting a sweater, and I only knit 3 stitches today, that's still 3 stitches closer to being done than I was at the beginning of the day. That's progress. Progress is success. Moving in the direction of your goal, even if it's just baby steps.

So when it comes to moving towards abundance, especially in the time and patience areas, every effort counts.

Again, why am I telling you all of this? Well, because you might see some changes I'm making, and I'm making them with my happiness and my family's happiness in mind. I fully understand that life is supposed to be hard, it's supposed to be a test, but that doesn't mean we have to go drudging through it, and if there are things we can take off our plate that lead us more toward that abundant mindset where we can say "I may not have been perfect today, but I sure tried, and that makes me happy," then I think that's a good thing. Every effort counts. Every stitch counts.

3 years and 1.5 kids later...

Well, I don't know how many of you noticed, but I kind of fell off the blogging bandwagon after I had Julia. Mommy-dom consumed all. Hahaha.

So for those 3 readers of you I have....well, had....(assuming we're not friends on Facebook or in real life--if so how did you find me??) I've had another kid--Ginny. We call her "The Bean." Like jellybean, but Ginny-bean. (I'm not original...watch Practical Magic and you'll see what I mean). Anyway, she has added a whole new dimension to our life, love, and chaos. Coming in October, we'll be adding our first little boy into the mix: Edmund (yes, like from Narnia. No, we don't like Peter more.)

I've thought about jumping back on here and starting up again probably a million times, but life has a way of getting in its own way. I came to the realization (last night while watching Escape to the Country with Jake on Netflix--if you haven't watched it, you really should) that our kids should never be our excuse as to why we didn't do something (except sleep, because that's legit); I know people who don't want to travel until after their kids are all grown, and I just don't understand why. Why wouldn't you want to teach your kids that more than your tiny corner of the world exists? Why wouldn't you want to open their minds to new cultures and peoples? Why wouldn't you want to be there to see the wonder in their eyes? I mean, don't get me wrong. Traveling with toddlers can be a nightmare--believe me, I know--but no one is saying that traveling has to mean Europe or Asia. Traveling just getting out of dodge. We're in Pocatello, Idaho. Traveling is going to Salt Lake City.
Anyway, I digress.

Kids. I wanted kids. I have kids, and I'm not using them as an excuse (Seriously, you don't want to know how many times I had to get up while writing this post just to tell them to stop fighting long enough so Mommy could finish what she had to do).

These past couple of years have been a whirlwind of crazy love and adventure, but not much of it is documented--which makes me sad. Basically, I'm back, and I'm hoping to get back into documenting our life. If you're interested in our adventures, join us. If not, that's cool too. :)