As the saying goes, “Sometimes you have to fall before you can fly”. Welp, then I’m definitely going to be reaching for the moon pretty soon because I certainly fell far down the rabbit hole yesterday. Not a great day for positivity for myself. But today’s a new day, and a new opportunity. Today I’m going to focus on one thing that always puts me in the negative on a daily basis
Day 3:
Something I'm Thankful For: My mom being in town. My kids, especially my son, are best buddies with her. She stays on Eastern Standard Time here so she can be there when the wake up any time between 4-6:20 AM. When she comes, it’s such a nice little break for me and a brief reminder of what sleep used to feel like.
Challenge O' The Day: That stupid, dumb smart phone. That thing is a terrible addiction, and is an awful habit. I’m so embarrassed how frequently I check my messages on it, and it’s a terrible example to set for my kids.
Lesson Learned: At last night’s Positive Parenting class, the teacher spoke about consistency. It’s important to be consistent with your values, and your example is instilled in your kids at a young age, so by the time they are teenagers they are given the proper tools to make the right choices. Every time I check my phone when my kids are around, I send an awful message to them that they are less important. One of the things I loved most about my parents growing up was that I can’t remember I time when they weren’t focused on me. (Well, actually I can – and it ended with me accidentally cutting my hand with a razor, straight to the bone, and resulted in needing stitches, but that’s another story). I’m sorry to say I am failing in that department, and the phone is overall an energy suck for me. All I see when I check my social media and e-mail are bad news, gossip, and funny animal videos. While that last item is a great way to balance the first two, none of those are worth my precious time that I spend looking at them. And while work e-mails are important, we all know that once we check our work e-mail we get suckered into all the rest of the messages as well. So today, I will limited my e-mail checking to specific times, for 5-15 minute windows (depending on if I have to respond to an important message or not), and will try to stick to them. I’m hoping that by putting it all in a schedule, and programming it into a phone, it will help my productivity and outlook for the day.
Daily Insight: When I’m stressed and not sleeping, every little thing bothers me tenfold. I personally think that cell phones are the downfall of humanity, but that’s a debate we can have another time. Nothing bothers me more than when someone tunes you out to play games on your phone, or to check it for something that is clearly not THAT important. But I can’t change society, I can’t change one person, and I ultimately won’t be able to tell my kids what to do once they’re bigger. I can only try to change myself, and I need to treat myself nicely too. I can’t change overnight, but I will try to change over time, with one small challenge at a time.