Turtle Steps
There’s nothing that will stop your progress faster than feeling overwhelmed and like you’re just never going to get there!
That’s why it is *so* important that you break down de-cluttering and organizing into bite-sized chunks. These tiny chunks are called turtle steps, and I learned about them from my mentor, Martha Beck.
Turtle steps are the tiniest steps you can break a task down into. The criteria for a turtle step is that it feels RIDICULOUSLY EASY.
Here’s an example that illustrates how easy turtle steps should be.
Jenni wanted to take better care of herself by doing yoga so her back injury could be healed and she would be able to play outside with her kids (her WHY!!).
But the thought of yoga was so daunting and made her so anxious that she just never, ever did anything about it.
Finally she went through the exercise of breaking it down into turtle steps.
Simple Household, Peaceful Parenting 13
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Her first ridiculously easy step was… wait for it…
for 1 minute every day, Jenni would think about maybe, possibly doing yoga. She would just think about it. I am not kidding!
Jenni did this every day until it didn’t cause her angst anymore and actually seemed like a possibility, then she went to the next turtle step.
She knew she needed clothes for yoga, so she thought her next step should be buying yoga clothes.
But everyone seemed to have special clothes, and the thought of showing up in those tight clothes made her cringe. She realized going to buy clothes was too big a step.
So she made her next turtle step even easier – she would go online for 2 minutes every day and look at yoga clothes. Just look at them. Until they didn’t make her cringe anymore.
Next step was driving to the store to look at the clothes in person.
Then she actually bought the clothes and brought them home but left them in her closet for a week and peeked at them every day.
Then she put the clothes out on the bed and picked them up and looked at them every day.
She went on like this, with ridiculously easy steps, until she was finally doing yoga and loving it.
You may think this is silly, but this is how any difficult task can be overcome.
Try it! As you complete each turtle step, reward yourself! You are MAKING PROGRESS!
Secret #1 for a Simple Household
I always started out with grand plans for a simple household.
” I’m going to organize every room and closet! I’ll throw tons of stuff out so things aren’t so cluttered! And I swear I’ll keep things clean by doing a few minutes of picking up every day! “
All good intentions.
But my grand plans kept fizzling out, sometimes even backfiring and making things worse!
Trying to create and maintain a simple household became this annoying, overwhelming goal that I felt I would never achieve.
It was so frustrating!
What I finally realized is that I kept losing sight of WHY I wanted a simple household in the first place.
And that is the core of secret #1.
Secret #1: If you aren’t crystal clear about WHY you want a simple household, you’ll find it difficult to stay motivated.
In this secret, WHY is capitalized on purpose. That’s because I’m referring to your deep-rooted motivation for doing whatever you do.
Humans don’t do anything without a compelling WHY.
Sometimes it’s fear, and sometimes it’s love. The WHY behind everything we do can pretty much be boiled down to those two motivations.
Sometimes it’s confusing to figure out our WHY. Society, expectations of others, career pressures, family, money – all of these factors can motivate us to do certain things and mask our real WHY.
I’m sure you have lots of reasons why you want a simple household.
They might be pretty similar to some of mine -you’re tired of clutter; you want a calm, clean home; you want to stop feeling embarrassed about the state of your house.
These are all super reasons.
But they’re likely not enough to keep you going when it gets irritating and hard.
To maintain your motivation, you need to get down to the *real* reasons WHY you want a simple household, and then you need to set up reminders of WHY you really want it, so when you get tired and frustrated you’ll keep going.
One of my specific WHYs for wanting a simple household is:
I want my house clean and organized so that I can enjoy watching my daughters learn through creative role-play without me squashing their imagination by stopping them.
You can read more about that WHY in ‘3 Secrets to a Simple Household’.
So let’s do it, let’s find your WHYs!
The way to discover them is to play the WHY Toddler Game, and that is your homework for this week.
Take Action!
1. Get comfortable and eliminate all distractions (this means Facebook, too!) Do a Dirga Pranayama Grounding (If you forgot how, see your welcome email.)
2. Open up the ‘3 Secrets to a Simple Household’ and go through the WHY Toddler Game, starting on page 3.
3. Email me and let me know some of your real WHYs.
This week, try to ask yourself many times during the day WHY you are spending time on a particular activity. This is especially helpful if the activity is super annoying. Maybe you’ll find out that activity doesn’t actually match with any of your WHYs and you can stop doing it!
How to Avoid Epic Parenting Fails
So you’re supposed to live your life from a “core of peace”, right?
That sounds good doesn’t it? There are no epic parenting fails in the core of peace.
Well, this morning I was living life from a big fat core of chaos.
It was time for my daughters’ school camping trip. All the kids love it and get super giddy as the day approaches. They have so much sleepless fun that when they return the next day, the teachers look like zombies. They deserve sainthood. Or at the very least a full spa treatment.
The trip is an exciting but stressful time for my girls, and that’s why I wanted to send them off on a calm, positive note.
Instead, I plowed through the house getting increasingly irritated, emanating waves of stress so strong they were probably visible. I could feel my energy whipping around and building on itself. My body tightened and my breathing got quicker and shallower. My brain refused to perform simple tasks I’m usually great at, like checking items off a list as I organize and pack them efficiently.
L took one look at me and asked why I was so angry and about to cry.
When M couldn’t find the bug spray because she had hidden it in her room, I lashed out as if hiding bug spray represented a character flaw that would get her booted from a college admissions interview.
In fairness to myself, I admit I was extra nervous because of the weather. 1000’s of people’s lives were just majorly messed with in Oklahoma’s tornadoes, and we’d been getting strong storms locally for the past couple of days.
Even if you don’t live with anxiety, it’s tough not to be nervous about sending your kids into the woods with 80% chance of severe t-storms, possible hail, and 60mph winds.
But I know better.
I know that unless I’m being chased by a lion or some kind of commonly occurring danger like that, things will go infinitely smoother if I’m calm and centered, that is, you got it – living from a core of peace.
I wanted to be a grounding presence for my girls to start their day out right. So where did I go wrong? How could I have avoided this parenting fail? One answer lies in Intention, the first concept in i.l.u. parenting.
Here’s how you can use Intention to avoid parenting fails
Intention for your kids over time
It’s critical to spend time thinking about your intentions for your relationship with your kids over time. Looking at the big picture, what values do you want to pass along? What talents and strengths do they currently have that you want to make sure you continue to nurture? Where are some areas where they’re challenged and might need some extra help? How do you want to feel in your relationship with them?
It may seem strange to think about your parenting in this way, but think about a business without a mission, goals, or operating procedures. Nobody knows what they’re working toward, WHY they’re working toward it, or how to achieve success.
Parenting isn’t a business, but it needs the same elements in order to achieve success. And just as a business changes, so do you and your kids as life dishes out its normal ups and downs. To adapt, you need to think about your intentions on a regular basis.
Had I thought about my own intentions, I would have remembered that staying calm and not freaking out is important to me, and something I was working on. I could usually avoid it by preparing for stressful situations ahead of time.
This means I would’ve spent a few minutes of time the night before thinking about what I wanted the morning to be like. I would’ve gathered & packed most of the items needed for the trip and planned breakfast to make sure the girls would hike on a full stomach. I also would’ve gotten up early so I didn’t feel rushed and stressed about getting there on time.
Intention in every interaction
Intention is also critical in the short-term, in every interaction you have with your kids.
It’s always helpful to keep the intention of being fully present in the moment instead of having your thoughts in the past or in some imaginary future.
When you interact with your kids, focus on what’s in front of you, in this very moment.
Put down your phone, iPad, computer, and all other distractions and give your child your full attention.
Even when your kids are whining, yelling, or melting down, work on staying calm by breathing slowly and deeply. Ask yourself “What is my intention for this interaction?” The second question should be “What is needed in this moment to achieve that intention?”
If you feel yourself getting fired up anyway, get out of there and take a break. This is a great way to show your kids how to handle getting upset. I try to use words like “Mama is getting really irritated, and I need some time by myself to calm down. I’ll come back in a little bit and we can deal with this.”
(Then I rush off into the bathroom and bite my hand to keep from screaming.)
Your child will get the message that if she’s upset or mad, it’s ok for her to take a break to chill out and regroup.
Had I focused on my intention of being present, I would’ve felt my body tighten and my energy start to rise. I would’ve tried to breathe deeply and slowly. I would’ve asked myself what I wanted out of this situation and realized that to achieve that, I needed to relax and slow down. When I realized the bug spray disappeared into the black hole of M’s bedroom, instead of exploding I would have taken a time-out for myself.
Keeping intention in mind and staying present would have produced a very different result this morning, and I did up feeling like crap for a while. I regretted how I acted.
But I got over that as quickly as I could and tried to figure out what I could do differently next time.
Intention is a powerful tool to avoid parenting fails! Try it!
Now I want to hear from you!
How has Intention worked for you in your parenting?
What could you do differently going forward?
Would you like to learn how to stay calm in heated moments?
Check out this free resource!
Boston: Hate Sucks
The angry, vengeful energy in the air is terrifying.
“Find him! Torture him! Kill him!”
So many good, loving people with twisted faces of anger, fists clenched, ready to kill. A virtual angry mob with burning torches, calling for justice that we can’t even define (was it really served?)
So many people roiling in hate.
Hate sucks.
Nothing good ever comes from hate. EVER.
What will serve the victims and their families (and that is our collective, primary goal) is not hate but compassion.
Since the older brother is dead, I’m talking specifically about extending compassion to the younger brother, Dzhokar Tsarnaev.
And I’d like to clear up some confusion right away.
You see, compassion is not condonation.
I don’t want to run through a field of flowers with this guy. Or give him a big bowl of ice cream, pat him on the head and say it’s ok, I understand.
In fact, I wanted to tear his face off. I wanted to HURT him. I wanted him to SUFFER. I HATED him.
But as that feeling rolled around inside me, I noticed how horrible it made my body feel. It made me feel tense, desperate, frustrated, crazy.
I noticed that when I felt that way, I was turning my back on the people who needed my healing energy and love because I was so busy channeling hate.
The victims and families won’t benefit from a swirling cloud of hate and revenge tornadoing outside their hospital window.
So I stop and breathe and try to allow the situation to be turned like a strange object in my hands.
Because I want to check this object out. Study it.
I want to understand it so I can get clarity on what I personally can do to help heal this horrible wound.
And I can’t do that if I look at only one side.
To look at another side of it, I ask myself a question.
What good will come out of hating him?
It isn’t rhetorical. I really want to know the answer.
If you do hate Dzhokar Tsarnaev, when did you start hating him?
Was he born with horns and a pointed tail, as perhaps he would have been if he were really “evil”?
Did you start hating him when he was a baby? Was he evil as a cute 3 year old?
Just 11 years ago he was a gap-toothed 8 year old like the little boy he killed, Martin Richard. Did you start hating him then?
Dzhokar is 19 years old. That’s still a kid.
It’s a pretty safe bet that someone fucked him up pretty seriously starting from an early age. Someone fed him hate and lies. Someone probably told him stories of evil and horrific acts committed on his people, acts just like this bombing. Someone convinced him that he needed to avenge those acts.
Compassion is not letting this guy off the hook.
Compassion is not excusing or pardoning his horrific offenses.
Compassion is taking some time, even just a single minute, to stop and think about what might have brought this kid to the point where he thought it was ok and maybe even noble to maim and kill innocent people.
Compassion is turning away from hate and focusing energy and love where it’s so desperately needed – on yourself, your family, and your community.
Every single one of us can do something differently today, something that comes from a place of love and compassion instead of hate.
That’s the best justice there is.