So maybe you are on the team of thinking that setting New Years resolutions are dumb because either you never keep them or you see others don’t ever keep them.

So – you just don’t do it.

But – WHAT IF you kept it up for just 21 days……???

AND what if you started in MARCH after the whole bull crap of daylight savings time passed???

AND …..WHAT IF you suffer from SAD, (seasonal affective disorder) ? The hardest months for YOU can be August-October and then again in January-February. So starting during those times can be equally as HARD!!!

✔️

It took having panic attacks in different cities for no “apparent” reason and checking myself “in” for heart related observation and testing for 3 years in a row during the exact SAME TIME of year for my doctor to say, “Amy, this happened at the same exact time of year last year and look you said almost the same exact same things”…..Noticing these patterns isn’t always apparent to the person going through them.

Communication.

Had I not communicated to anyone I was struggling – that pattern may not have been discovered. We have a problem in this society of thinking that maybe we don’t need help. We think along the lines of “we-should-be-able-to-control-it-because-it-isn’t-that-bad” type of thoughts.

Additionally, if we don’t otherwise note it somehow for ourselves we have no way of tracking our progress and analyzing where we are, our “true north” or where we “should be”. Being reflective is a skill we can teach little humans early on to develop. Understanding our weaknesses and our strengths helps us later in life when “fight or flight” mode kicks in.

Another really important side bar- I constantly have to remind myself when my kids are “down” to stay away from saying, “you’re OK”.

My youngest of 4 helped me with this one. When he’s crying and I say “you’re ok”….. he always responds with, “I am NOT ok”.

Omg buddy. You are RIGHT. You are NOT ok and THAT IS TOTALLY OK!!!!! Right?

If we are constantly telling a kid they are ok when clearly they are not ok, they are conditioning themselves to quickly dismiss whatever it is that’s bothering them or hurting them. We are diverting the attention from the problem and minimizing how it’s making them feel verses helping them through the steps to feeling better.

Sometimes we have to allow THEM to sit in that space. We cannot be so quick to FIX IT FOR THEM. We have to remember that letting them sit in that space to feel the feels and then talking about how it might take some time and some tools to help them out……is a much better way long term even though it stings for us and them in the short term.

Tools. Tomorrow on Day 3 I’m sharing some tools.

xo