BEING PRESENT - PART II
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 77.
Hello, friends. Here we are in the midst of the holiday season. Last week, I delved into the topic of being present and decided it really deserved at least two podcasts.
The opportunity to be present doesn't just exist for us during the holidays, but this time of year really does lend itself to trying, more intentionally, to stay in the moment because, well, it just seems like we should be happy and more present and peaceful this time of year, right? This expectation we have for ourselves and how we feel, that we should feel happy this time of year, it's a terrible lie. I'm not saying that we won't feel joy and happiness, but this expectation that this will be our experience all of the time, particularly this time of year, it honestly just sets us up for disappointment because reality never really quite meets our expectations. We have this view of how things should be or how other people should behave, even how we're supposed to behave, and the truth is, our vision, it's just a fiction created in our minds about what we think we want.
And if reality doesn't quite match it, well, it's easy to feel let down. So one of the big takeaways from the last episode is this concept of holiday ambivalence. Honestly, we could extrapolate this to apply to our lives in general, not just the holidays.
It's not ambivalence in the sense that we don't care. It's really the state of caring a lot, but caring in a way that creates a state of cognitive dissonance in our minds. We love the holidays and we hate the holidays.
We love our lives and we hate our lives. We love our bodies and we hate our bodies. You can apply this dissonance, this ambivalence, to many things in your life.
In fact, I think the more you care about something, the more potential there is for this dichotomy, this really contradictory state of feeling, and it doesn't feel great. And so as a reminder, I want to offer you that if you have this love-hate relationship with the holidays or your relatives or even your teens, your life, if you feel this way, nothing has gone wrong. Last week, I invited you to accept the ambivalence you feel about your life.
I invited you to become awake to the fact that your brain is creating this ambivalence, and therefore that's what's true for you right now. Now, truly accepting and being open to this feeling opens up the possibility of you becoming the watcher of your mind, to really get curious about what's creating joy and also what's causing pain in your life. What is your mind saying that's creating these feelings for you? Believe it or not, this is actually the first step to being present.
I mentioned last week that many of us think that being present is the same as appreciating and being happy in the moment, that being present is the same as being in this constant state of being grateful and calm. In reality, being present is being open to the reality of the current moment exactly as it is right now. We want so much to be present, and I put that in quotes, and somehow that seems to be easier said than done.
So this year, I decided to do an experiment as I went through Thanksgiving. I decided I would intentionally be in the moment. My parents came to our house, my boys were both home, I was with the people I love.
We weren't cooking for 30 people, it was a manageable group, and everybody pitched in. One would think that it would be easy for me to be present. Where else could I possibly want to be but here in this moment? And yet what I found is it is truly surprisingly difficult to be and stay in the moment.
Throughout the holiday, I noticed my brain continually wandering, going off course. Eckhart Tolle will often say, you are not your mind. If you've ever tried meditation or yoga, you've probably noticed this tendency of your mind to just wander.
You'll be in the middle of Downward Dog, and all of a sudden you'll be thinking of something you need to add to your grocery list. Or you'll be breathing deeply, closing your eyes in meditation, and all of a sudden you'll remember something annoying someone said, and your blood will start to boil. Our minds are literally like toddlers, totally unsupervised, but with a lot of power.
You may have been listening to the Mindset Trap series I've been doing on this podcast, and I still have a few traps to cover. But in that series, I've gone into detail about how our minds are essentially motivated to keep us safe, seek pleasure, and to be as efficient as possible. Our brains want to keep us in the cave.
But in life, we can't just hide out in our rooms and never expose ourselves to pain. We live, we love, we're mothers, we have children. Our hearts are literally walking around independently in the world, just waiting to get broken.
Every single day, we have more than 6,000 thoughts. Interestingly, if you google it, you'll see some people reference 60 to 70,000 thoughts per day. Whatever the number, it's a big one.
Even taking the smaller statistic, 6,000 thoughts a day, that's 250 thoughts an hour, even while you're asleep, and 4 to 5 thoughts a minute. Other studies say that the vast majority of our thoughts are negative, many of them falling into the Mindset Traps I've been covering. Confirmation bias, catastrophizing, all-or-nothing thinking, perfectionism, among many others.
But our minds do this for a reason. They want to keep us out of harm's way, safe, and comfortable. So how does this relate to being present? Well, as I mentioned, here I am on Thanksgiving, looking to be present, just in the moment, accepting the holiday ambivalence.
Honestly, looking to observe it, observe my brain as I went through each day. So there were a number of trains of thought I noticed, because I've also coached a number of women on this topic. I'll also add in some of the thoughts they've experienced, and frankly, that I've also experienced in the past.
So let's go through them. The first emotion I noticed was boredom. There were parts of the day where I was bored out of my mind.
It wasn't at all about the people I was with. These are the people I love most in the world. But also, the holidays are very different from our daily lives, Thanksgiving in particular.
It's like you're cooking all day, so it feels like there's always something to do, and even more to clean. So you find yourself kind of waiting around for the next step. It's like you're in limbo, and your normal schedule of activities is out the window.
You can't really be productive with anything other than cooking and cleaning. You're not getting anything done, yet there's so much to do. And meanwhile, you're sitting around, and you're talking with whomever is around.
And I noticed it was a revolving door of people in my life, eating food at every hour of the day, and so there were always more dishes to do. We think of boredom as being in a state of not having anything to do. But in fact, it's a feeling that arises when we're not particularly interested in what we're doing.
And don't get me wrong, I love my family. But I probably spent eight or more hours in the kitchen cooking. As you might know if you're a regular listener, cooking is not my favorite.
And cleaning up after everyone on repeat, even lower on my list of favorite things to do than cooking. The reality was, I felt boredom. Punctuated by the beautiful moments of love and connection.
Wonderful conversations with my mom. Boredom interrupted by my oldest son coming down and opening up about some of the things he doesn't like about school and how grateful he is to be home. Boredom and laughter.
Boredom and love. Joy and boredom. Boredom is one of those emotions that isn't painful or terrible, but have you ever noticed how uncomfortable it can be? If the emotion were as easy to solve as just doing something more fun, we would usually just choose that, right? But the thing I've found about boredom is that it usually implies that you're in a situation where you don't think it's easy to get out of.
You don't like everything about what you're doing, but you're also kind of stuck. Women will often share this experience when they transition to the empty nest. They don't want to feel bored, and yet they feel stuck.
They don't know what to fill their time with that will make them feel fulfilled in the way raising kids has made them feel. And so they feel stuck in boredom. Over the holidays, I've found it's a different kind of stuck feeling.
It's like we've put our lives on hold to help orchestrate the holiday and entertain everyone. And yet the moments of joy are surrounded by many more moments of boredom and overwhelm, actually, because there's so much to do and clean. It's honestly no wonder that many of us eat and drink too much during the holidays, because this boredom can feel so stifling.
It's like you need a release valve, a little dopamine hit to make this experience fun, because it's the holidays, damn it. It's interesting to consider that the boredom is the reality of the present moment, and yet we're programmed to escape it, like we shouldn't be feeling it. As a society, we're almost brainwashed to have a certain set of expectations around what the holidays are supposed to look like.
Ultimately, it's about how we think we're supposed to feel during the holidays. And as moms, we're not worried about just ourselves. It's important for everyone we love to feel wonderful during the holidays.
So how do we want to feel? Well, we want to feel joy, love. We want our hearts to feel full. We want to have fun and to laugh.
We want to feel grateful. And it would be amazing if we could also just feel calm and peaceful during the whole thing. Let's be honest, friends.
As I mentioned before, if we truly had to define what being present means to us, it's this. Feeling peaceful. Joy.
Gratitude. Love. And so, not surprisingly, when the holidays roll around each year, we have this anticipation of what the holidays could look like.
Much like that anticipation I used to feel coming home on a Friday night, looking forward to kicking off the weekend with a glass of wine. You can almost taste what that experience might be like. You even feel a little bit of what you want to feel ahead of time.
It's crazy when you think about it, actually, that you feel joyful, excited, loved, and grateful just thinking ahead about the holidays. Anticipating the holidays. That is 100% the power of your mind, my friend.
I'm sure I don't need to remind you of all of the reasons you love the holidays. Because I imagine that you have experienced joy and love and peace over many holiday seasons you've experienced in your life. Maybe you hold onto memories of your childhood or memories of when your children were little, and they were so excited about every tradition.
There's something truly magical about experiencing holidays through the eyes of children. I've always loved the Christmas holidays, but when my boys were born, it was like my chance to create a magical version of this holiday for them. Whatever holidays you celebrate, I imagine you too have put your own spin on how you try to make these holidays special for your families.
So unsurprisingly, the other emotion we can feel that makes us want to escape the present moment is overwhelm. We take on so much responsibility when it comes to making the holidays special. And why do we do this, really? Maybe it's different in your family, but most women I know bear the responsibility for executing the magic of the holidays.
But I would also say that we women tend to be the ones to create the vision of what we want the holidays to look like. We create the expectation around what we want to happen. That could be how we want to feel, or how we want the specifics to look like, what we want other people to say, do, and feel.
As I said before, we want to feel joy, love, and gratitude, if possible, a little peace. But if we're honest, we also want others we love to feel joy, love, and gratitude, right? And in our minds, we have a picture of what we think the holidays need to look like so that both we and those we love can capture those feelings. Think about the circumstances you're anticipating, that you think if it happens just the way you want it, you'll be able to feel joy, gratitude, and peace.
Is it having your kids home, back under your roof? Is it just that, or is it having your kids home, spending time with you, acting happy, showing gratitude? Is it finding the perfect gifts and then having people light up when they open them? Is it having your extended family over or going to their homes and having everyone get along? Maybe it's your partner pitching in to help keep the house clean or get groceries for all the guests. Maybe it's having the house perfectly decorated, someone commenting that they love your holiday card. If you were really honest with yourself about all of the things that you have planned or things that are on your to-do list, why are you doing any of them? And I'm not saying you shouldn't be doing them, but I want to invite you to explore why you are.
Why are you buying gifts for people? Because you want to show them you love them and appreciate them? Or maybe because you think you should get gifts for them? It depends on the person, right? Do you sometimes feel pressure to get an extra special or even extravagant gift for someone? Does that imply that you're giving them extra special love and appreciation? None of this is a judgment, it's just so interesting to consider. What is our motivation to buy gifts for people over the holidays? Is it so that you can feel the pleasure of having given someone something? Or is it to avoid the pain and embarrassment of not getting a gift? It could even be a mix of both. And why do you decorate for the holidays? When you look at the decorations all lit up in your home, what does that make you think? That the holidays are approaching? Maybe it's a literal reminder to look on the bright side, to look forward to the holidays.
Why are you hosting 10 people for a holiday dinner? Maybe you think it'll be fun, that you love having friends and family over for the holidays. Here's something to consider. There is a big part of the holidays that involves creating a feeling, or us trying to create a feeling in someone else, or setting up an experience in just the right way so that we can create a positive feeling for ourselves.
Let me break that down. So think about any of the things we do or want for the holidays. We want our teens and young adults with us for the holidays.
Is it enough for them to just be in our home or is there something else we want from them? We want them to spend time with us. Why? Well, looking at the obvious, what do we make it mean if they don't spend time with us? Or what do we make it mean when they do spend time with us but they don't talk to us or they roll their eyes at us? Do you make it mean that your child doesn't care about you like they used to? That they don't want to spend time with you? Or that your relationship isn't what it once was? Maybe that you've lost something. I don't think anything can truly prepare you for the roller coaster of emotion that you can experience as a mom of teens.
Our kids experience these dramatic highs and lows. Or alternatively, they could just shut us out entirely so we're left entirely in the dark to know if everything is okay. If someone could just guarantee for us that everything was all right with our teens, then we could be okay, right? But it doesn't work that way.
And things don't necessarily change just because it's the holidays and it's supposed to be merry and joyful. If anything, the strain in our relationship with our teens could feel even bigger because we're spending more time together. Or at least the school schedule is tied down so there are simply more hours when everyone's around.
And we could apply this to anyone in our lives, right? Not just our teens. Any family member or friend where we have a strained relationship. The holidays can sometimes magnify those difficulties.
Isn't it interesting that when we look ahead, when we anticipate the holidays, we hope that somehow things will be different. That everyone will get along, that everyone will go along with the traditions, want to be at the dinner table. Is it so much to hope for a little love and appreciation? I truly believe one of the biggest thieves of joy and peace is expectations.
Look, you get to have expectations. People throw around the phrase setting boundaries as if it's a surefire way to get other people to respect us. Guess what, my friends? Setting boundaries has very little to do with other people.
They are literally about you. Here's what happens. We look at our kids and we have expectations for them.
A simple one might be having them come home by curfew. So that's the expectation. The consequence we can establish is that if they're late, they lose time off of their next curfew, the next time they go out.
So the boundary we as mothers set is the curfew and how we will respond if our kids come home late. Setting this boundary is about communicating to our teen how we will respond if the boundary is crossed. What kind of boundary are you supposed to set when your teen doesn't want to talk at the dinner table, or when they spend the whole holiday in their room, or roll their eyes at you? Sure, you can do what many of us do, ask countless questions in hopes of an answer, demand they come out of their room, accuse them of being rude when you see the eye roll.
I know I've done all of this and more just hoping to coach a connection with my boys when they're clearly not in the mood. The holidays magnifies all of this because we're supposed to be happy, right? We look forward to and we anticipate this joy. We set our expectations high.
How could we not? It's the most magical time of the year. Until our expectations are met with reality and we're left feeling disappointed and frustrated. We can blame this on our teens, or honestly anyone in our lives that seemingly robs us of our happiness.
Maybe it's our mother-in-law, our own mother or father, our brother or sister, whoever's coming to the house for the holidays and isn't playing by the rules, not living up to our expectations. Isn't it funny that every year it's typically the same people who cause the same drama? Haven't we learned by now that our mother-in-law is going to say something snarky about how disorganized our pantry is, or that our sister's going to show up and not bring anything but herself, or that her husband's going to watch football all day and not help, or whoever is in your life and who's constantly disappointing you? Haven't you learned by now that this is who they are? Not someone who disappoints you, but literally a person who is just doing this thing that you think isn't good enough. What if it's just what is? Not good, not bad, just what it is.
I've talked about boredom, overwhelm, disappointment, frustration. I haven't even gone into anxiety, which seems to be a regular part of raising teens. Even during the holidays, we don't escape negative emotions, my friends.
Just because we think we're supposed to be happy and grateful doesn't mean that we're not also feeling bored, overwhelmed, angry, and anxious. If you really want to be present, you're going to have to be willing to be open to the reality of your life. This means two things.
You need to be willing to look at your life just as it is, and separately, observe what your brain wants to make all of it mean. I was listening to a podcast recently where the host said ego loves control. Now, if you followed Eckhart Tolle, you might have heard him define the ego as the part of your brain that thinks.
Your ego literally creates your identity, your sense of who you are. It's a mix of your social status, your profession, your possessions, level of education, how you look, your relationship, your history, your belief systems. It's your mind's way of making sense of everything in your life, and creating your identity as something separate from that.
It's the story your mind tells you about who you are in relation to everything in your life. So this concept of your ego loving control, I can so identify with this. My mind doesn't want to be bored, hurt, frustrated, overwhelmed, or disappointed.
And so it thinks that it has to control the circumstances of my life to make me feel better. But what my ego or my subconscious mind isn't taking into account is that it is actually that same mind that is creating these negative emotions. It's like my mind wants to escape my mind.
Again, it's really no wonder that we think the only escape is to drink or to eat or to scroll endlessly on social media. It gives our minds a break from cycling through all of the negative thoughts that create the boredom, frustration, and disappointment as we go through our daily lives. Add to that overwhelm, sadness, anxiety, and guilt, all of these painful emotions.
They are all created by the way we perceive or think about our lives. So here's the truth. Being present isn't always a feel-good experience.
It isn't actually about being happy. Being present is about accepting exactly what is. I shared the quote last week, acceptance is not the same as passivity.
Because I know your mind is arguing with me. You're thinking, well that's depressing. I need to just accept that my teenager is acting like a jerk or that they won't talk to me.
I need to accept that my mother-in-law always puts me down or that there's so much to do and no one ever helps out. And let me be clear, this is not at all what I'm saying. Being present is seeing the world for what it is and seeing what your brain wants to make it mean.
It's seeing your teen not talking, maybe even rolling their eyes and not making it mean that they don't want to be with you. Just accepting your teen for who they need to be right now. Accepting the reality that they have a reason for not talking and maybe you don't need to fix them.
We can accept this reality but we don't need to be passive. Accept that this is who your teen is right now and make the decision to keep the door open to them. Tell them you're here if they want to talk but also respect that maybe they don't, at least not right now.
And it's not about you. This is being present. Accepting other people for who they are and then making a decision about how you want to show up.
Being present means hearing your mother-in-law say it would be nice if you kept your house a little tidier and you accepting that this is her opinion and it doesn't mean that you have to do one darn thing to change your home. Being present means considering all of the ways you could prepare for the holidays and taking responsibility for the decision to decorate or not. To buy a hundred presents or only a few and letting the decision be okay.
Being present with the discomfort of deciding to only buy a few gifts and not a gift for everyone or being present with the discomfort of buying a hundred gifts and dealing with the overwhelm of managing all of those different decisions. In some things there's discomfort either way. So choose your discomfort.
Witness the truth, the reality of your life. Notice the stories your brain wants to make up about all of it and decide what you really want. As I observed my life on Thanksgiving, I noticed my boredom but was also fully present during each and every conversation with people I love.
I didn't need to escape from the boredom because then I would have missed the beauty of those precious moments. We spend so much time trying to escape the present moment because we don't want to feel uncomfortable. But what might change about the experience of your life if you were willing to be present for all of it? For me I found the beauty of my life to be that much more powerful and I found that I can handle my discomfort.
The byproduct of this strength and the trust I've developed in myself is that I'm not afraid to take on the discomfort of growth. Being present is more than finding peace and happiness. It's actually a skill set that's the currency to everything you've always wanted to create.
Peace, joy, accomplishment, connection, love, purpose. As long as you're willing to face a discomfort, observe your mind and then decide. This is the work we do in my coaching program Mom 2.0. I teach you how to observe your mind to see the reality of your life for what it is and then decide how to move forward.
Whether you want a better relationship with your teen, to find purpose, or just to feel less anxious and unhappy, the first step is becoming present. I'll quote Eckhart Tolle again, most humans are never fully present in the now because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.
Your life is never not now. Every moment you get to observe and then decide. It really is that simple.
Until next time friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program Mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think my friend.
