Are you a stressed-out mom? Do you spend your days making sure everybody else is taken care of and forget about yourself? Do you believe that if everybody else is taken care of that, you’ll be OK? If you’re feeling stressed out and anxious, then taking care of everybody else and putting yourself last is obviously not working for you.
You don’t need to be self-sacrificing. In fact, being self-sacrificing is not a healthy trait to model for your children. You may have unconsciously learned from your own mother that mom’s come last. Do you want your children especially your daughters to grow up believing that they also need to be self-sacrificing? Do you want your sons to grow up believing that girls and women should put everyone else first? I’m sure your answer to both these questions is a definite no.
If you’re stressed and anxious, you’re probably not meeting enough of your needs. Everyone has five basic needs: survival, love and belonging, freedom, fun, power (success and acknowledgment). Everyone has these needs to varying degrees. You can download your Needs Profile Questionnaire to see which needs are most important to you and work out how well you’re meeting them.
Do you believe there’s enough space in your life to meet your needs? Can you not see how you can meet your needs without disrupting your whole family? Do you think that to try would be selfish?
If this is you, you’re not alone. Many mothers of young children take medication or just put up with stress and anxiety for the sake of their families. Until they can’t put up with it any longer, and then things can really get messy.
In order to begin meeting your needs, It’s important to find a balance between being selfish and being selfless. Selfish When someone is behaving selfishly, they focus too much on their own needs. They forget that those around them have important needs too.
They think that other people should fall into line with what they want and how they want things to be. They use control and manipulation to get what they want. People who often behave selfishly usually find partners who are selfless because selfless people are more likely to cooperate with them and put their own needs aside.
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As a parent, you have the important job of teaching your children how not to be selfish. Selfless When a person behaves selflessly, they focus too much on the needs of others and put their own needs aside. They will prioritize the needs of others above their own needs on most occasions.
This is the kind of behavior that women can adopt when they become mothers, believing that it’s part of being a mother. They put aside their own needs, put them on hold, or hope that someone else will notice and take responsibility for meeting them. This inevitably leads to unhappiness, stress, and resentment.
Firm, Friendly, and Fair To relieve stress and become happier and more at peace, it’s important that you’re neither selfless nor selfish. You want to learn to be firm, friendly, and fair.
When you behave this way, you care equally about your own needs and the needs of the other important people in your life. You take responsibility for meeting your own needs, and you help your children to meet their needs.
You’re supportive of your children’s needs, but you expect them to respect your needs. You do this by being wiser and stronger, but also kind. You show delight in them and enjoyment with them, but your role is also to protect them within boundaries.
When you’re firm, friendly, and fair, you’ll cooperate with your family to create an environment in which everyone can meet their needs fairly. In the next blog post… How to Build a Great Family Mindset, we’ll look at how you can work together to create an environment where everyone can meet their needs.
This will remove a huge amount of stress from your family dynamic.
