Taking the enlightening advice from the many expert guests and heartfelt listeners on the program each day and every week has not always been easy for us.
“Slow down” they say. “Enjoy the moment” they advise. And, we’re thinking “hurry up, so we can move on to the next guest, conference call, meeting, carpool duty, family dinner, sports practices and on and on”. This past week personal and business coach Barbara Didion shared her thoughts on a related subject that has stuck in our head. We were talking about guilt- the kind of guilt that wears on most working parents. No matter how hard you try, you feel like you are not giving everything you should or could to your children, spouse, job, business, parents, sister, brother, friends, and the whole list of obligations. So Barbara quietly looked through the tangled microphone cords and said “Why don’t you stop focusing on what you aren’t doing and celebrate what you are doing and all you have accomplished.” Okay.
We’ve been so busy, we can’t remember if she said it on air or during the commercial break. You can listen to our conversation with Barbara via our podcast to find out.
1 comments:
Jacquie & Caroline
I’m sorry I missed responding to your posting. I’m still learning more and more each day about technology. I do love the sharing of information and ideas that the internet provides.
I don’t remember any longer our conversation but I would like to add some comments re what I said and meant re: guilt. When we put our energy and attention into something, it tends to grow. That’s true about guilt too. The guiltier we feel, then we start feeling guilty about it. And we even feel guilty talking about it. Silly isn’t it. Once we buy into the circular process of guilt, we don’t seem to get out of it. We can never do enough. Sometimes just accepting that yes, I’ll never be able to do enough for everyone and that what I do is just going to have to be enough no matter what is the way out of it. We can choose to feel guilty or not. Do I want to put more energy into that negative place or do I want to choose otherwise?
Once we let go of that guilt and accept that we are doing the best we can each day, we can see that we can better focus our energy on what is good in our life and grow that. It gets down to affirming all the time that I am a good mom or dad or just a good person. Sometimes when we speak of our guilt, we are looking for others to tell us we’re ok with whatever it is. And there is a lot of information in the world telling us we’re not ok in order to sell us something. We get beyond guilt when we change that self talk for ourselves.
It would be great to spend more time with my child but I know I am doing my best. In fact I realize that doing more isn’t the answer. It just might just be to recognize what is good about our relationship and growing that rather than bringing those feelings of guilt into everything I do with them. Of course doing this every day means practicing letting go all the time. If we don’t get it right just yet, well nothing to feel guilty about, just continue moving forward.
I hope this is a better explanation of what I meant with that short comment. Thanks for bringing it up.
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