hi there
I had recently felt quite frustrated in my job as stepmum.....so I wrote a little piece about it......apologies if it bores you!
So I began writing an article this week all about expectations. I was not managing to meet my own expectations as a stepmother. In being this way I had started to resemble a drowning dog. I looked frantic, barked a lot, behaved in a panic stricken manner and only just kept my head above water. My hair, staying in character, often resembled a soggy dog due to a combination of the recent humid weather, and the amount of sweating I was doing through worry about my performance in said role. I was driving myself mad.
Expectations can often be fulfilled beyond your wildest dreams. Only last week a man got stuck in a giant vagina in Germany. Yes this is true there is a photograph to prove it. Said vagina was a sculpture. Having one, I can report it looked very realistic if not a little on the big side. He was eventually removed by a collection of 22 firemen and their accompanying 5 fire engines. It was a difficult re-birth from the sound of things. I am fairly sure though, despite the global embarrassment he faces, many males will be envious. If even the lovely John Snow, Channel 4 news reader and all round gorgeous man admits to thinking about sex every time he meets a woman, then getting stuck in a giant vagina will have been on most men’s bucket list.
Conversely, some of our life expectations will never change, no matter how much we would like them to. We as women were reminded again by the press that sport and our mammary glands do not mix. It reminded us to be pragmatic in our expectations and accept that the gain from exercise on our bodies would also bring a certain amount of chest pain. Worse still, if the wrong undergarment were worn, some day in the future, our breasts would resemble an award winning cows udders.
So what of my own expectations. Well they have not been met and are in fact being honest, an eternity away from ever being so. So what do you do next in cases like mine? Well I will simply have to lower my expectations and be a bit more mindful when they do not work out after all I cannot spend the rest of my life looking like a drowning dog. I am going to try and use a combination of the repetition and persistence principals. I must admit they are not new to me. They are my ethos on life in general, if at first you don’t succeed and all that crap has been how I finished IRONMAN triathlon races and overcame bullies in the school playground. But in my current point in life, before yesterday, they were being applied in the wrong direction with the wrong set of expectations.
So new direction. More mindfulness. In brief it’s the power to enable yourself to think before you speak, and quit moaning about the various things in life which on occasion get to the very strongest of us. From the celebs going gooey over it, to Cameron calling for it on the secondary curriculum, it’s all the rage. I thought I would give it a go to overcome my current inability to let things go and zip my gob shut.
The technique is basically good old fashioned meditation, with a modern angle on it. The modern angle being, thank the lord, that there are an endless number of apps on your iphone to get busy numpties like me into the swing of it. Apparently ten minutes a day is all you need.
So I gave it ten minutes a day and what did I find? I fell asleep every day without fail. The relaxing voice and need to close ones eyes to meditate, meant I was sent to sleep every time. Pleasant yes, who does not love a quick nap at any time of the day. Mind improving, no. I woke up each time thinking s**t how long have I been asleep. I also suffered from that horrible feeling post unplanned nap, of lethargy and anxiety. I did not know where I was nor what I was supposed to be doing. Did it make me more mindful? Yes. For the better? No. I was frustrated initially that I could not keep my mouth shut in certain situations. I had now discovered something else I could not do, I could not meditate without falling asleep and missing the whole point of the exercise.
So we are where we are. Mindfulness meditation did not work for me. I cannot give you a more detailed description of my 10 day 10 minute experience as I slept through a lot of it. My search continued.
It was then the lightbulb flashed. I suddenly remembered a very good piece of advice my dad gave me, ‘choose your battles’ he said. In other words do not always dive in with both size 12 feet first.
The penny dropped. I cannot be everything to everyone in the dynamic that I live in. Trying to do it all, will lead to straight jacket wearing, personal insanity. I realised that keeping my feet firmly fixed to the ground, and sometimes stepping away might be all I actually needed to do, to be an all-round happier, sweat-free, calm and collected woman. The stepping away will not be a world record breaking leap in distance, more a small lean back on my heels when certain situations arise. Stepping back instead of stepping in all the time, in a bid to be the ultimate Mrs Fix-it champion 2014. Well it’s a knee jerk reaction which just is not sustainable, physically possible, or always good for the situations that arise.
I set too high if not unreasonable expectations. In hindsight, with the situation as it is, I was fairly naïve to think they were realistic. Lesson learnt and reiterated loudly, always be honest with yourself about the actual situation when setting expectations. Live in the real world not those of Hollywood movies, where everyone gets along, and they live happily ever after in a giant bra sharing commune.
So it’s a new direction and I will not lie it’s a bit odd. Leaning back on my heels as much as possible when situations arise which deem it necessary is actually hard to do. I am hoping that with repetition and persistence it will become second nature and I will learn to do it automatically. I am also armed with some heavy duty brown tape. So when my heels will not let me step away, I can do what a teacher recently did with a naughty child in his class, and tape the guilty over energised gob shut.