This week my husband and oldest are gone to scout camp. Wahoooo! I was gonna get so much done!!
Evenings to myself, and a break from my persistent pre-teen. Get ‘er done!

But Monday came and in the early evening I lost it on my kids.
It’s been a while since I’ve been so short on patience. I had so many good intentions for this week!
What happened?!
Luckily, I had a session with my coach the next day, and she had some amazing insights.

They were so good I wanted to share them with you too.

It wasn’t that I was a bad mom… it was that I hadn’t set boundaries.

We were off having fun swimming with friends, and I knew there were things we had to do when we returned home. But I also knew my kids would complain and wish for more time.
So I procrastinated our departure waaaay past when I wanted to leave. I also underestimated how much the day in the sun would take out of me.
Instead of allowing for the space/time to recover and get on with our evening commitments, I felt defeated and irritable.
If I practice what I’m learning about setting boundaries, the day could have gone a lot differently. And I could have felt a lot differently.

Here’s how it could have gone:

• We have a great time playing together.
• I let my friend know that we have evening plans we have to prepare for, so we can play until 2pm.
• Then when the kids are complaining when it’s time to leave, she’ll know what my boundary is and can support me as well in getting the kids out of the pool.
• We get home, have time for snacks and play, while I rest for a little.
• Then we all clean together, and get ready for our dinner guests.
• I don’t lose my cool.

If I can conceive of a peaceful day, I can make it happen.

I am a human BEING, not a human DOING

One thing that kept coming to me is that I wanted to get so much DONE this week.
I wanted to purge and sort and move things into other rooms, and paint a room or two… which in hindsight miiiiiight be more than I possbily can do.
But my coach encouraged me to ask myself: instead of asking myself what should I DO right now… ask instead: How can I BE right now to help me feel better?

Choose your BEING and then find a DOING to help that being happen.

For example: I want to BE calm. My DOING can be 5 minutes in my bedroom to gather myself and then face my tasks again.
Or another one: I want to BE joyful. My DOING might be to go out my front door and find a little piece of nature to hold in my hands for a few minutes. Or sitting in the sunshine. Or breathing deeply for 20 breaths. Or journaling what I am grateful for.

One thing that’s saving me this week:

Our Club project for this month– patriotic banner/hanging. It’s the first time I’ll have made festive decorations for the 4th of July. And it’s coming a long nicely. Here’s where it was before our call this week…

And since then I’ve painted the fan-circles to match the scrapbook paper stars– Americana theme.

Question: Do you want to see a tutorial on creating those muted colors from primary color paints??

Hit reply/comment and tell me!

hugs and love, my friends

amber