Monday 6 January 2014

New Years Resolution No. 1 "Cleaning the Windows to my Soul"

New Years Resolutions.

Are they a waste of time? Lets be honest most of us only ever stick to the half hearted ones for a few weeks. We give our selves this list of unrealistic demands and slap a date to comply on it.

Well this year, I have decided on making my new years resolution a year of growth, talking the things that are important to me, as a mum as a person, they were not the simple eat better, exercise more, make more money types of resolutions but something deeper, something that when I looked into the mirror and saw the windows of my soul, that I would be proud and feel accomplished, more at peace, more INNER PEACE.

So my New Years Resolution No. 1 starts in 2013. As a business owner, you read lots of blogs, facebook pages and the sorts, you mostly skim over these and take it all with a grain of salt.

 But there was something I read and saw of the course of 2013 that stuck with me, like a little screw slowly getting deeper in my brain. It was Ngaire from Brisbane Kids, who was doing some posts about taking more photos with you in it with your children, about losing her Mum early. Initially I thought, yeah I should do that, and looking back through the photos on the computer, there was basically none of me, and the ones that were there, the kids had taken, and I hated them all.
The thought slowly faded, until other one of her posts graced my newfeed about photos and how the kids don't care what you look like, (that screw winds in a little deeper) and later that day Master Jude (5) shoves an ipod in my face, takes a photo, smiles and says it's beautiful. And then it all started to hit me, I am so busy that I only take photos of the kids when we go somewhere, or it's something on at school like book week.

Although I am here I am absent in their lives, where are the little important moments. How can I be so blind by the one thing in live that gives me passion. I work from home to support educators around Australia and be here for my children, yet I am not there for them, not in the way that matters to them at all.

And no wonder I lost my spark??????????????????????????????

I lost my passion, my passion as a Mum for the moments of joy, of stupidness, of craziness, of happiness, so I slowly stopped sweating the little stuff, understanding that I could not control everything, but taking pleasure in the things I could control like.......

who cares if dinner it not done until 7.40?????
I started to spend some time talking, playing and reading rhymes even if that means bed time was later.
I don't constantly say we will do it tomorrow, we NOW fit it in that day.
I started telling them stories about what I did as a kid and teaching them how to play games like trouble, throwing a Frisbee, and doing the hand clapping thing to Miss Mary Mack, Mack Mack.

I started treating myself like a person, not a 24/7 answering service to my business, I had managed to exploit myself and I don't know why. I mean I know it's OK for every other business to be shut outside of business hours, why did I think I should run myself into the ground. I have always told other educators to look out and look after themselves first, because if you compromise on who you are you will not be the best educator that you can be..... or the best Mum you can be......

So that is my new years resolution No.1, a work in progress, not set time frames to comply, just taking each day's moments and capturing them together.

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