Are you looking around and realizing that you have stay at home mom expectations? Life isn’t looking like you thought it would be? I know I do even though I’m a Certified Life Coach. Let me show you how I handle those unmet expectations when life doesn’t look like I thought it would.
What did you picture?
The first step is realizing that it’s different than I pictured in my mind. For example, I pictured my kids being able to handle social settings with grace and ease. You know things like sitting still at a restruant or when we have company at our house for dinner. Or how about at dinner time at all? I also thought I would be able to take my grade school aged kids in public and not have to worry about them not having basic social manners.
What is it that isn’t looking like you pictured it? I’d love to hear all about it. Feel free to email me how it looks different than you expected.
It’s normal to look different.
And it’s all normal to have reality look different than we anticipated. That’s part of the human parenting experience. We grew up thinking we could control these little humans and they come to us with their own unique personalities. Please don’t beat yourself up over the differences. It’s not about how hard you try. There is nothing wrong with you because your children don’t always behave how you expect them to.
Grieve through it.
When things aren’t going as we expected it’s normal to feel grief. Grief is a normal human emotions, and all human emotions are needed. Both positive ones and negative ones. It’s the negative ones that make the positive ones so good.
So allow that grief to naturally work its way through your body. Notice how it feels in your body. Where does grief hang out in your body or does it move around. Be aware if it stops you in your tracks or if you notice it and carry on with your day. Get to know how this grief feels in and affects your body.
If you are coming up with sentences about grief, you probably aren’t feeling or allowing it. You are still in your head about grief coming up with thoughts about it. You can notice those too, but try to find in inside your body rather than in your brain thinking about it.
If you need to carry grief around with you like a purse or a chapstick. Just let it tag along with you everywhere you go. Maybe it gets a little annoying at times, and others you completely forget it is there. Just be an observer of your grief without judging your grief. It will amaze you how healing this can be. (Want more information on allowing or feeling your emotions? Check out this blog post.)
Evaluate Expectations
Now that you’ve gotten good at feeling the grief and noticing the difference in expectations, you can decide if you like those expectations. I know for me, that thinking my kids should be able to sit still at the dinner table leaves me feeling angry.
I don’t enjoy feeling angry at dinner time. So I decided to alter my expectations around dinner time. Some nights we sit at the table and practice sitting down while we eat. Other nights when it has been a rougher day we eat in front of the TV. I dropped the expectation of them always sitting at the table to eat.
This simple mindset shift has changed the dinner dynamics in our home immensely. Rather than having an angry mom who thinks they can’t do it right and gets after them non-stop, we have enjoyable evenings sharing a TV show and others practicing our sitting and conversation skills. In this situation, it benefited my family to change the expectations.
But it is totally fine if you decide not to change your expectations. Maybe this is something you feel strongly about. You can totally look at the results you are getting and decide to not change them. There is nothing wrong with this option either. It’s all about what you want in your life. You get to be the author of your life. Use that power that you have to create the one you want.
Sometimes we get stuck trying to handle when things are going as we expected. This is where a life coach can come in helpful. A life coach can help you learn to process the grief, see how your expectations are affecting your life, and help you walk through the journey. A good life coach should never presume to know what is the right answer for you, but help you recognize your right own right answer in yourself. If you think a life coach would help you walk through this process, sign up for a free 30 minute discovery call with me. We can start to work on this together, decide if we make a good team, and answer any questions you may have. Not sure if a discovery call would be useful for you, please send me an email. I’d love to chat with you.
Until Next Time
-Keira
