Focus to Fulfill

While I was a new (and not-so-new) mother, I STRUGGLED with mothering and marriage. Day in and day out I felt: Heart-broken, stressed beyond my limits daily through the endless tasks, broke-pinching every penny, and hopeless it would never change. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but this where I was.

I would see other moms and some of my friends who seemed born for this and "had it all together". I was confused what I was missing because I thought a person cannot be sane and love doing this mothering thing day in and day out. I learned what I could from them, which was helpful; but when I saw they actually had struggles, that was sometimes more helpful.

This whole journey was messy (as most people's is). During this time my husband and I were working through, what I thought were his issues, but after years of personally working with a sponsor and counseling I realized I was just as destructive to a healthy happy marriage. When I would talk about how frustrating my life was, my sponsor would stop me and say I needed to be grateful and I needed to look for the good. And I would say, "Well that's the problem! There is no good!" But she challenged me on this. I didn't know the rules of the mind and how I was continually creating more of what I didn't want by focusing on the bad.

Stephen R Covey said,

"It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place. I admit this is very hard to accept emotionally, especially if we have had years and years of explaining our misery in the name of circumstance or someone else's behavior. But until a person can say deeply and honestly, I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday, that person cannot say, I choose otherwise." (7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Page 72)

Since I didn't have better options I decided to do what my sponsor was telling me to do and see what happened.

I was surprised with how fast it lifted my mood. Here's the principle I didn't understand yet:

Whatever we choose to focus on in our mind is a directive with what we want in our life. Whether it's hurtful or helpful for us.

Ask yourself: What do you not like in your life right now? Now ask: What do you want more of?

Since then I've learned how the spirit's mind (not the brain) works and an important principle is: You get more of what you focus on. The mind just follows the directions so when my focus was on the negative my mind took that to mean "I want more of that." So the cycle continued.

As I've learned and practiced and failed and practiced some more I started to shift my focus to the good. I took a leap of faith and started to acknowledge things I was grateful for, things around me I appreciated.

Focusing on the negative put me in a victim mentality with all my life rolls. Therefore I was seeing all bad and no good. This blocks solutions and progress. It keeps us stuck. So I started thanking God for what I did have based on truth. I said, "Thank you for the money in our bank, thank you for the monthly income, thank you for the laughing my husband and I sometimes do, thank you for my kids listening that one time yesterday, thank you they took naps a couple times this week, thank you I have friends to do play dates with, thank you the kids helped clean up their toys today."

As I sometimes remembered to do this, I continued to learn and started to get out of victim role with "life is hard". I started seeing my part in the difficulties in my life.

I learned I only had control of me so what could I do to fix my life challenges?

Everything has a solution! Every problem has a solution to fix it. This is important to trust. We just need to be open to the solution so we can recognize it.

I needed some clarity with this and my mind was open so I was led to answers. One of the most helpful was: Hypnotherapy. I was able to see where my perspectives on things came from and more important, the damage it was causing to the kind of life I really wanted. I was blaming others. I was able to start challenging my incorrect thinking patterns and really start to take control of my emotions. I started to learn how to choose how I thought and therefore felt.

With this awareness I was able to see how I was allowing others to treat me and have the inner strength to set needed boundaries. I saw how I was damaging my marriage with "safety blocks" from previous experiences, I saw how I was hurting the marriage as much as my husband. I started to see how I focused on the mistakes my kids made because I focused on my own mistakes. I saw how I wouldn't set boundaries with my kids so I would be resentful towards them.

As I saw changes that I could personally make, I started taking control of my life and shifted my view towards my family. Surprisingly, because my husband was motivated to change himself, his challenges that were once mountains to climb, became smaller.

I began to adore my kids and spouse and our time together! I continued to be aware of victim thinking and then could make a choice to continue ("how's that working for me?") or to challenge my thinking pattern. This led me to creating a different moment or reality.

Taking care of myself better I could now take care of my kids with less frustration and start creating a wonderful marriage with my husband (who was gratefully on board). Our marriage has improved, with consistent work on our part!! Our finances improved with reaching every financial goal we've made to this point.

It was just as important with what I stopped saying as with what I started saying. The principle was (again): focus on what you want.

I want to be clear here: This is not a magic potion that makes everything better. This is a guide to show us where to practice skills. It's through our work with true principles that creates changes. I use the word truth a lot, and how the truth makes us free (King James Bible, John 8:32). Truth is unchanging. It's not whatever I feel like. Whatever I feel like doing or being is preference. This is important to understand! Here's why:

These eternal laws are unchanging and we can't break the law, just like gravity is reliable. We can choose not to follow the law of gravity, but there will be reliable consequences. For so many years I was breaking myself against eternal laws. This caused a lot of frustration in my life and eventually I got to the point where I was sick of it and I actually was open and humbled enough to see I needed to make some changes. I had to learn truths and correct principles in order to start getting the results I actually wanted.

Seeing the difference between my way of doing things based on my preference over principle- based living (or living in truth), led me to discover how powerful principles are.

Join me as I share some of the most helpful principles (or truths) in my next few entries.