Dear Caring Parent,

Do you ever just want to energize your parenting or something in your life that is put aside because, parenting? Maybe you can’t see your next-steps? Or you start into them and get side tracked all the time? All of this is so natural in a parents life! There is a way through this though – here are five steps to power-up your parenting affirmations.

I have come to appreciate how bit by bit I can move things forward, or change something, even when the primary focus of my day is child oriented. It starts with realizing what I am experiencing, what’s taxing me mentally, emotionally, physically or spiritually. Being real! Then, when I move into change mode, I become aware of all thoughts that are pulling me away from the very thing I want to have happen. It becomes time to pay attention to my words, are they helping me or pulling me down? AND it also becomes time to encourage myself.

It’s a fact, positive affirmations energize our focus. We need them to stick though, through all the busy busy of life. Along the way I’ve learned some things about how to make parenting affirmations so alive to me that they stick.  Below are five steps for you to use to power-up your parenting affirmations.

We all have pretty much learned that we use positive words when doing affirmations.  But, we also all have days when we don’t quite feel the power of positivity, right? So wouldn’t it be nice if there was more than one way to ‘speak to’ our affirmations so they can better speak to us?  Well, there is! I started my learning about this through Natalie Ledwell at Mind Movies. Here’s what I’ve come to, specifically for parenting. It’s a releasing, calming and energizing process

Step One

Start your affirmation process with the down and dirty.  List out all the things you don’t like about the current situation.  For instance, I used to struggle with getting my daughter out the door on time in the morning and it would always end in me being annoyed and unpleasant. I wanted to change that so that mornings could be more pleasant. So I started with listing out everything I didn’t like about the current situation. I:

• love mornings and this ruins them
• dislike having to rush
• don’t like the guilt I feel because I get so annoyed
• have too much tension about being late

Some of my lists are longer than that!

Step Two

Identify why each of those are important to you.  Here’s my list. I:

• love mornings and this ruins them   –   mornings are a calm and upbeat time for me, I love the light outside, the sounds of the home in getting-going mode
• dislike having to rush – rushing gets me tense and distracted, not to mention unpleasant
• don’t like the guilt I feel because I get so annoyed – it stays with me during the day and dampens my mood, starts the school day with stress for my daughter
• have to much tension about being late – people count on you being there when you said you were going to be there

Step Three

Next, list what you’d like and what is important about it.  When I listed what I’d like, it kinda spilled right out of what is important in the above:

• My desire is for calm and upbeat mornings (see how that falls right out of WHY THIS is IMPORTANT TO ME above?) – fuels me, home feeling
• I want to get out the door knowing I have everything with me – more organized, not feeling like I am always scrambling
• School starts without stress from home – it’s a loving start to our day
• Mornings create a grounded feeling for the day – I need to be grounded for all that I do, I think and create best from groundedness
• I am respectful of the time needs of those who need me first thing in the work day – this is just one of the ways I show I respect another

Step Four

Create your affirmations based on why it is important.  I created 5 types of affirmative statements based on the WHY THIS is IMPORTANT to ME:

1. Goal affirmation:  80% of my mornings (I don’t ask for perfection!) are organized for readiness to leave on time
2. Thought affirmation (what kinds of thoughts are you thinking): I am grounded by my mornings
3. Feeling affirmation (how life feels when what you want is occurring):  My love my mornings; they are my fuel
4. Action affirmation:  I start the day with loving activities
5. ‘Why’ affirmation (affirm why this is important to you): I have a loving, homey start to the day with my daughter

Who’d have ever thought getting out of the door in a timely manner invoked so much!  But doing this forced me to know more about why I was getting my pants in a bundle over not leaving on time;  it was in fact connected to some important values and enjoyments. Which makes sense, as mornings have always been the favorite part of my day!  And now, if I don’t relate to the thinking part of it on a particular day, I can just focus on feeling the action or ‘why’ affirmation.

Doing an affirmation process like this gets you into the real deal about what you are trying to change.  It is about you, not somebody else. Plus it gives you the basis of expressing it to your children and partner!  And that leads to some new solutions, because you are going to see to that even if they don’t share your enthusiasm, right? They will, at least, have been given an understanding of it.

Step Five

Make a Mind Movie. Depending on how big your frustration is, you can join and make a mind movie  This is the one I did for this affirmation – My Mornings!  There are other platforms for video making  – google itself being a great one.

Post your affirmations somewhere that you’ll see them throughout the day – it will play in your mind. If the challenge is of huge importance to you, either watch your mind movie twice a day or read your affirmations out loud to yourself while standing in front of a mirror.

And, just to let you know, I’ve had many a wonderful morning with my daughter.  At first I realized I needed to just set the clocks a head!!  Eventually though, she started being on time, in a relaxed way, herself.

Step SIX

One more! It’s for if you want more structure and insight into the process for parenting affirmations, sign on for my enjoyable but get-it-done e-course, Power Up Your Parenting Affirmations. Work it at your own pace. Or, if you do parenting affirmations, but they don’t seem to stick, take a look at them with the five steps discussed here. Whatever you do, enjoy the process. The aim is to be nurturing!

Take care now, Natasha

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