Ordinary Wins

So in the Catholic Mom Calm membership we gather in a place called slack. It’s like a Facebook group, but it’s off Facebook, which was really important to me called a slack group. And we have this place where you can post wins. And so I want to read some of these winds to you for the purpose of showing your brain how you can celebrate. The progress that you’re making in your own life because as you hear these wins it requires this mom of two to notice that this was a win in her life and to go to a place. Our slack community and to type out this when and then other people celebrated it with her good job. That was amazing!

And I just think it’s so important as moms that we do this because there are no motherhood awards. There’s no award season, there’s no raises, there’s no Christmas bonuses. And so, it’s just us high-fiving ourselves. And so I want to share these wins with you so that you can see that you are doing some of these things so that you can celebrate the progress that you’ve made, the hard work that you’ve done and how special you are. You are a special unrepeatable mom. You are so important to your family and I think because the world is not going to throw us a party, we have to throw it for ourselves, not in a prideful way, right? but just in a like, hey girl, you’re doing a good job.

Okay. So this first mom, she says “I had to bring some desserts to three parties and she said, I talked to myself and I decided I was going to be totally okay with store bought desserts. I am not beating myself up for not loving to bake with children. And I am very much okay with how this is unfolding. I am peaceful about bringing store-bought events. Store-bought desserts to these events.” I just love that. This is a mom who’s looking out at the world and the internet that says, hey, you need to also bake with your kids and bring homemade things to everything that you’re invited to. And she just went, I’m not doing that. And it was a win for her to say no, and to not beat herself up for it. I also do not love baking with children. It is not my favorite activity. I do it sometimes but I don’t love it.

This is how we just do modern parenting with peace. We pick our battles. Because she was busy doing other mom things. Instead of making these desserts, she just, well, we would say coached herself in her mind until she was just, okay, bringing store-bought desserts. Okay, another woman, she said, “My husband was sick. And so I was very intentional about my thoughts about him being sick. I often get resentful and frustrated but I tried really hard to manage my mind and be kind to him and to be a generous wife.” I love that. This is so ordinary. But that’s everything, isn’t it? Because we all think we shouldn’t be annoyed at our husbands for being sick, especially if they’re not a great version of themselves there. They’re sick or when we have to do everything anyway, even when we’re sick, it’s so easy for our brains to be grumpy, but this mom was like, no, I’m not going to do that. He’s sick and I’m going to manage my mind, which means, decide to think certain things on purpose to be kind to him and to be a generous wife.” Now, this is not a woman who’s a doormat. This is not a woman who was saying like, oh, you should just let your husband treat you. However he wants to find her power being empowered by thinking, you know what, I’m just going to be kind to him. And I’m going to be a generous wife to him right now. I think that’s so beautiful.

Another mom said “her wind was, she used her virtually no sleep protocol today. So a protocol is where you decide ahead of time. What you’re going to do on a bad day or when any particular thing happens. So she made a protocol around getting virtually no sleep. And oftentimes it will be like, we’re going to let the kids watch a movie, or we’re going to make some frozen meal from the freezer or whatever you just decide ahead of time because sleepy you isn’t great at problem solving. So you want to decide when you’re not exhausted and then all you do is follow your protocol on a day when you get virtually no sleep. I love this. This is how we just handle our lives better. We don’t pretend. Like we’re going to sleep well for the rest of our lives. That would be silly. But we can decide ahead of time what we’re going to do when we don’t get sleep.

Another win “instead of taking it personally, I got curious about my teenage daughters’ moody behavior.” It’s amazing! Like, I just want this mom to picture that we all just got out of our chairs and we clapped for her and we said, good job. That is amazing. Because when teenagers get moody and mean we just take it personally, right? We’re like, well, It’s about me. I’m a terrible mother. I didn’t raise her well. Whatever our brains are very mean to us instead of just being like, huh, what’s going on with that kid today? Maybe it’s hormonal, maybe something happened at school, maybe she’s hungry, maybe she’s growing. Who knows.” Love that. I got curious about her behavior instead of taking it personally.

Another win: “instead of taking my husband’s concerns about a few issues we’re having with homeschooling personally, I was confident and open to his suggestions.” Yeah. So oftentimes when we have conversations with our husband, particularly when we’re not yet on the same page, we can take it so personally, and then we get defensive and now we’re arguing; we’re not even talking about the thing that we were initially talking about. And so she was able to kind of voice her concerns and then we called it, watching him have a reaction. You’re just watching your husband have an emotional reaction and process things and think about things.

And if you can stay clean, if you can stay confident with yourself in that moment. You will be more open to his suggestions. Instead of thinking he doesn’t believe in you or he’s thinking that you’re doing a bad job or that you can’t handle it. Husbands have great suggestions. So I think this is just a huge win to be able to talk through things and to not spiral is what I call it. Right when we take it personally, then we get defensive and then we’re going to be in a stress state either, you know, fighting with them or withdrawing.

Another one, “my daughter had someone tease her at school and she was upset and I was able to show her how to change her thoughts about it and not listen to the lies, and to see the truth.“ I love that. I think one of the greatest things about us as moms is learning. These tools, emotional regulation, and how to manage our thinking and how to change the thoughts that fly through our heads is that we can then turn around and teach them to our kids as well. You know, we can sit with them and validate their pain, like, oh, that is really hard when somebody teases us. But then when we get them to be calm, we can show them, hey, here’s just another way that you could think about this situation.

I pulled this one from December because I thought it was so great. This mom said this year is advent and holiday planning gave me permission to tone down. The decor as we welcomed our newborn son and we’re in a bit of a survival mode. I gave myself permission to not do a tree or outdoor lights and lawn decor. And it was so freeing and I just love that sometimes the win is not doing something. And I love this mom, and this was when we had lots of sentences, actually, I just pulled out this one but she loves decorating and Christmas. But she said, you know what? I just knew that this was just not the year for it. And I let myself not do it. And this is what it looks like to have peace, even in survival mode, by the way, right because she is a newborn. So we know that she wasn’t like, I’m doing great, it’s tough. But to be at peace in a season of survival, looks like this. And I just want you to have hope that you can do this.

Just by listening to these wins, you’re going to see what’s possible for you in your life. You don’t need a program to teach you that you can do what makes sense for you and your family right now. Like right now, we already I’m in, this is going to come out I think in March. And so we’ve got, you know, Easter season coming up, we’ve got first communions graduations. For us, I think soccer season starts in the spring. We know these things are coming up and they can create stressful environments, right? When you have five of your six kids playing on soccer teams. Managing the schedule is intense. But I can think about it ahead of time. I can set myself up for success and I can be at peace with the intensity of it. And so, I don’t think there’s any way that we can escape the everyday challenges of life. But I think that we can just handle them so much better.

Okay. Next one. I love this one. “We did an experiment in homeschool today about whether eggshells are semipermeable or not. And for some reason, the experiment didn’t work. Last year, I probably would’ve freaked out and had her redo the experiment so that it would have gone correctly. And she would have gotten the right results instead. I’m just having her write up the experiment and the results as they happened. Writing lab reports is a skill too, and she is learning whether the experiment went as planned or not.”

This is just so beautiful. This is where we notice our own disorders. Right? We notice and that’s a strong word. I just mean when we have a, you can have just like a slightly disordered approach to something. And so if you have an inclination to be a good student and to put a check in the box and that things have to go the right way you could run a science experiment with your kids and have the experiment not go the way that it should. And it could just bother you. Like bother you so much, steal your peace so much that you would redo the experiment. from this disordered place of like, almost like a tick, like no, no, it has to be right.

And this mom was like, you know what? It’s fine. This is actually the real lesson, which is that in science, sometimes the experiment doesn’t work. You don’t have to redo it. You can just write it up. Now by the way, I don’t think that it’s wrong to have redone the experiment, if that’s what you wanted to do, and you did it from peace. But I think this mom recognized that It wasn’t from peace. A desire to do it, she said, I would’ve freaked out and had her redo the experiment. And so we’re not saying that redoing the experiment or not is the right thing to do, but as moms, the more that we can pay attention to what is driving my desire to do this? Is it healthy or is it disordered in some way? Am I trying to prove something? Do I not feel good enough? Am I sitting in feelings of guilt? And that’s why I’m doing this.

Another mom says “I tried trampoline math with my eight year old son. My calm goal is to help him improve his math skills. And this was a great idea because we made it through addition doubles, multiplication up to five all while he happily bounced away.” So I had mentioned this on a call that humans, particularly of the ADHD variety, why are things better when they are moving? And so if you just got one of those bouncy boys, those struggling with math or reading or girls really getting one of those little trampolines and teaching them while they’re bouncing. It’s just perfect for some kids. It’s not for everybody, but it’s just really great for some kids. And she did that. She tried that. And so, In year of calm, we had everybody set goals. And so one of her calm goals, which was something around a topic that is stealing your calm. Right? So there, there must’ve been some chaos for her around teaching this kid math. Cause we start there. we’re like, what’s stressful about your life? And then we go, okay, how can we create a system or try something? To solve for that? And so I love that she just tried this.

Another mom said, “my first leveraged action to lose 20 pounds was I bought a YMC membership. I set up a schedule to get there and to walk Monday through Friday, my son is also going to go to lift weights. And I laid out my workout clothes before bed.” I love this. So, leveraged action is something that you can do to make all future action easier or unnecessary. And so if she wanted to lose weight and she thought, okay, I want to walk more. Deciding to walk and planning to walk and doing everything to make the walk happen. Gets a lot easier when you buy a membership. And create a schedule with another person, right? So it was a leveraged action, which makes the walking easier to get done in the future because of this decision that she made. So I love that. This mom says having a calming method to try each day has been really cool.

I have found rainbow breathing, breathing in for X and then out for Y time to be helpful. It was especially great. When my toddler was having a severe meltdown I stayed calm and was able to help her through her situation without losing my cool. This is huge for me because I absolutely despise whining and crying, sending me through the roof, anxiety wise, not knowing what to do. Then I had this thought of, I don’t need to know what to do. I just need to be present and this has been powerful. I really wanted to share this one with you, because I love her vulnerability in saying, hey, I really despise whining and crying. I don’t think some moms feel like they have to hide that. Like good moms don’t despise, whining and crying. We can be maternal. We can be connected to our kids. We can have healthy attachments and still not like whining and crying. It can make us feel anxious. And I love this thought. I don’t need to know what to do. I just need to be present because we do, we kind of get tricked into this. There must be a magic tool or a silver bullet or a process. But really, if I am with a mom, who’s got a six month old, a 12 month old and an 18 month old. All the way up to two and a half. I’m just like, yeah, they just whine and cry like, that’s just part of that age. And it doesn’t mean that there aren’t tools or things that we can teach them, but she’s part of the gig at that stage. And a lot of times just being present with them is what we need to do. And then they get older. I love that, okay. This mom says, I let my toddler ride her trike in the basement and wear wireless headphones to listen to her favorite music. So the baby, and I didn’t have to hear it. Why have I never thought of using them for her before? I just thought that was so fun. I’m just picturing like this adorable girl on her track in the basement, listening to obnoxious kid music, but then the mom does not have to listen to it. So I think that’s really great. And again, all of these moms took the time to write this down.

So to me, the mega win of all of it is that they are celebrating their own progress. And you can do that everyday. You can get to the end of the day and just go, hey, what am I proud about today? And by the way, sometimes the thing we’re the most proud of is like, I didn’t get more angry or I didn’t, scroll on my phone for longer than half an hour. Something like that when it’s still within a behavior that isn’t where we want to be yet, but we’re just doing less of it. I love this one, okay, this mom says, “I was dreading going to church this morning because it’s been so draining getting through mass with kids. So I asked my husband to give me a pep talk and it was such a good pep talk. I should ask for more pep talks from my husband.” You guys, that is so fantastic. I love that idea. Just knowing that sometimes we need a pep talk like, if you think about it, There are usually some forms of pep talks in jobs, right.

Even if it’s just like an earnings report or a team meeting, like if you have a job, there is someone somewhere being like, hey we’re going to do this thing. We’re doing this thing as a company or a team or a project. There’s kind of built in moments for pep talks. Well, we don’t have that as moms. And so I love enrolling the husband in this. She’d be like, hey honey, I need you to just give me a pep talk about whatever it is I bet he would love it. First of all, men want to be the heroes of your lives. Like really? He does and I bet it would work. You’d be like, okay, I can do it. So, ordinary wins my friend. One, I wanted you to, just to hear some of these wins so that you can have hope for your own life.

We as humans are always growing, we’re always learning. The brain has neuroplasticity, so it changes and it learns things. And so, I want you to have hope for things that are hard. Can it feel easier or better in the future? It doesn’t mean that life ever gets easy. I don’t think any of us get to the age that we are now when we just think like, oh yeah, it’s going to be easy. And there won’t be any more challenges. But some of the things that are challenging right now can feel easier and these were all such ordinary things. But I think in each one of them, you can hear that there was a challenge that something that this woman was struggling with and then she decided to work on it. And she experienced a little bit of a win. And she gave herself a high five. And you can do that for yourself. You can look back at today or yesterday or the last week or this. You know, the last couple months and just say, you know what? I’m really proud of you.

Here’s how you’ve been showing up. Here’s how you handled the cold season. Here’s how you. Managed to help this kiddo with their school stuff. Here’s how you hung in, in a difficult season in your marriage. Here’s how you’re handling tight finances. I’m really proud of you for. Your prayer life, showing up, going to mass, choosing to be Catholic in a world where it’s really hard to be Catholic. I’m really proud of you. Ordinary wins, my friend. I think it’s really important. And if you feel extra brave, you can tell your friends what you see them doing. You can tell your friends, hey friend I see how you’re showing up, good job! Takes a lot of vulnerability to celebrate someone else. So that’s why it’s the PhD level. But let us be women who see the ordinary wins, the goodness, the progress.

All right. My friends. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.