Most of us are lucky to have private living spaces, many do not. Let’s have gratitude for this before we go into our weekly blog.
As I walk around, I see a lot of construction. This made me realize that we put more thought and effort into renovating a home than we put into renovating ourselves.
Imagine that you are living in a house with moldy walls, peeling paint, dirty carpets, and dust everywhere. This is how I imagine our insides look like when we are living unconsciously carrying our anxiety and suffering. Making changes to our home is like changing our mindset.
Do nothing is a choice if you are satisfied with your living space/situation. Or, if making the change is not feasible, then it’s best to stop dwelling and give gratitude for what you do have.
For a surface refresh: A deep cleaning, re-organizing closets, and a new coat of paint will create a new look. The mindset refresh includes changing habits like eating cleanly, committing to physical movement, adding an activity that fuels our passion, or giving time to help others.
For a space that we want to expand or add a window to allow for more light. This will require going deeper where the walls will be ripped down to the studs and the electrical wiring will be rerouted. This is where most of us fall regarding a mindset renovation. It’s important to reflect and then purge our current beliefs to allow for new information to be received. In both situations, more time must be devoted to the transformation.
Finally, if the entire house needs an overhaul, the old house is demolished to build the new structure. In this instance the entire foundation will be dug up because we cannot build a new house on an old foundation. When it comes to a mindset shift, if we don’t take the time to purge our old beliefs before introducing new information, we encounter resistance. Imagine leaving the old original house in place and building walls and rooms around it, then trying to live in that space? Think about diets that don’t work. The old moldy mindset is still there so the outer walls fall away and we find ourselves back in our original houses year after year.
For parents: When we dig deep and renovate our mindset, we start to show up for ourselves and our children in a different way. This has a ripple effect on the entire family. If the dynamic in the house is one of tension and unease, we can only change ourselves to improve the situation. Just being part of the conversation makes us co-creators in the dynamic so breaking our part of the cycle is essential to changing the cycle. I remember being exhausted and not knowing whether to give my children abundant love or harsh boundaries to improve the stressful situations. I noticed the harsh boundaries made me feel worse and spiraled the tension in the house. The worst part was that I vacillated between the two emotions of patience & love or placing harsh boundaries based on my own stress level which created added confusion. I was lucky that our pediatrician had a call-in hour every day and when I needed a voice of reason, I would call in. I remember him saying, “children are aliens until they are 3yrs. They have no reasoning and without language this is the only way for them to communicate. So don’t become them.” My training further taught me that children are unaffected by society’ norms until they are around the age of 6 years and then guess who ruins their pure natures? Yep, us parents!
Parenting is hard! I wish coaching was more prevalent when my children were small, but I can’t go backward. When we wish things could be different without taking a mindset Do Over, it’s like shouting at the moldy wall to clean itself.
As with renovating a home, if renovating your mindset alone feels daunting, think of me as your mindset architect, builder, and Do Overs coach.
~ Andi
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