Gratitude Practice: Baby Steps
OK, so maybe a daily gratitude list is out of reach for right now. Every stage of motherhood is going to be different, there are different time restraints and different priorities and so I don’t expect every one of you to be able to sit for 5 minutes each morning and make a list.
However, training your brain toward a more positive relationship with yourself should be one of the top priorities (right under feeding that baby).
So this is your baby step - the 3:33 pm alarm.
And I want us all to share how we incorporate this into our lives on Instagram so tag me in your stories @parent_differently
The 3:33 pm alarm is going to help us introduce the concept of parenting with gratitude into your life in a very simple and easy way.
Listen to this post as a podcast!
So what is this concept of Parenting with Gratitude? Why do I want us to get deep into this?
I like to say that the recipe for achieving well-being is this:
Intention + Attention + Action + Repetition = Results
We have discussed setting an intention in the past you can read more about it here.
So we take our intention, and we add ATTENTION.
That means we are going to start to train our brains to notice what we want to notice - not what it was programmed to notice because of evolutionary biology.
If our intention is: to parent differently, we need to bring attention to our parenting.
If our intention is: to become our best selves, then we need to bring attention to ourselves!
I do this without losing my mind by looking at all the parts of parenting that fill me up. We already have the Negativity Bias to help us obsess over the mistakes, so now it’s time to shift our attention to looking at the good.
Enter the 3:33 pm alarm. The positive things we look for will be made into a short list of 3, and you will be reminded each day to make your list, and yep, its as simple as setting an alarm on your phone for 3:33 - then when it goes off wherever you are I want you to focus your attention on 3 good things, or 3 things you are grateful for, or whatever is positive and going well.
Other things we can look for are:
What went well yesterday?
What makes you a good mom?
What you are grateful for?
What did you provide for your family in the last hour?
Who made you smile this morning?
Who helped you or who did you help?
We are going to do this as a baby step to the big kahuna, which is a daily list of gratitude. This alarm will teach you to stretch your brain a bit each day and notice what may be overshadowed by stress, crying, work, and forgetting the lunch box, you name it.
I believe that Gratitude is the simplest tool we can use to ease the everyday stress of parenting.
Science shows our mindset matters but also, that our route to living a more satisfying life tends to go directly through hardship.
In our case, that hardship is also a gift pssst…its parenting.
Parenting brings with it the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. It tests us and asks of us again and again, to grow and to become more wise, patient, and gracious.
Here’s a quote from Scott Bary Kaufman from his recent article on tragic optimism in the Atlantic:
“In recent years, scientists have begun to recognize that the practice of gratitude can be a key driver of post-traumatic growth after an adverse event and that gratitude can be a healing force. Indeed, a number of positive mental health outcomes are linked to a regular gratitude practice, such as reduced lifetime risk for depression, anxiety, and substance-abuse disorders.”
Choose a traumatic event: COVID, overturning of Roe vs. Wade, pervasive school shootings, caregiver burnout - and I’ll assure you that we are ready for a healing force. Google's "Year in Search" revealed searches for "How to maintain mental health" reached a worldwide high in 2021, as well as searches for affirmations and women’s health. We are crying out for science-backed practices that work.
So this is your baby step - the first practice that will help to establish a routine of daily gratitude. To remind you to look for the good - because we need to train your brain to see just how Good AF you already are.
Listen to the podcast on the 3:33 PM Alarm for more!
And don’t forget to follow on social for all things gratitude, parenting and positivity.