A quick recipe for positivity

Do you often pause at the words “delicious 4 ingredient recipe” or “healthy and quick family meal”?  I love the idea that we can do something that’s good for us in a quick and simple way, and when we find a quick recipe that works we tend to repeat it often don’t we.

So, how about a straightforward recipe to boost your wellbeing?  Stay with me and I promise this won’t take long – it’s just 5 quick questions to stir up your positive emotions.

1.      What’s the best thing you heard today?

Did you have a great chat with a friend or listen to an interesting or funny podcast? It could have been your child laughing or the sound of the kettle boiling in a quiet house which gave you a feeling of fabulous serenity. 

2.      What was the best thing you saw today?

We see so much in a day that you may need a moment to sort through your memories.  Look out for flashes of beauty that inspired you, or information that you found particularly interesting.  Recently after days of internet issues I saw the lights come back up on the modem!  I felt joy, gratitude and a bit of pride that I’d finally sorted out the problem! 

3.      What was the best thing someone did for you?

This is your chance to focus on feeling gratitude!  Gratitude encourages us to savour the good things in our life and regular expression of gratitude has been shown to improve mental and physical health over time.  For an extra boost of love and joy, you could let the person you’re grateful to know that their action meant a lot.

4.      What was the best thing you did for someone?

Now the spotlight is back on you!  Every day we automatically care for those around us and perhaps don’t realise we’re making a true difference.  Please remember that even the simple act of chatting to your child at bedtime means a lot to them and is worth noticing when you take stock of your day.

5.      What can I improve on tomorrow?

This final question is all about feeling hope!  It’s a reminder that you can choose what to focus on. If something didn’t happen quite as you would have preferred today, you can plan to try a different option tomorrow.  I’m resolving to pick my battles with my kids and to try to leave home 10 minutes early when I suspect parking is going to be tricky.  How about you?

How does this help?

Extensive research in the area of positive emotions show that regularly experiencing feelings of love, joy, interest, gratitude, pride, amusement, awe, hope, serenity and inspiration leads to greater positivity and increased wellbeing. We all have the capacity for these emotions but it’s up to us to notice them and pay attention to them.

We hope these 5 questions can help you to detect positive moments in your day and treasure them!

With love,
Flourishing Mothers

PS. These questions can also spark great conversations with kids and partners and make a change from “so tell me about your day darling...”

Flourishing Mothers were inspired by the work of Barbara Fredrickson

4 keys to confidence as a mum

We were recently invited to participate in a discussion forum held by Medela Australia[1] who had conducted a recent survey of almost 8,000 new Australian mums, to coincide with International Midwives day on 5th May 2017. Their research highlighted the overwhelmingly positive support provided by midwives in hospital and in the first 6 weeks after birth, helping mums feel more confident in looking after their baby. Mums also rated very highly the emotional and practical support from key people in their lives - their partner, mother and other health professionals.

Our role in this discussion was to help mums understand psychological changes we experience with having a baby. Becoming a mother is possibly the life event causing the greatest amount of change in our lives. We become mothers overnight. However, the psychological and emotional process of embracing a change in identity, and successfully functioning in our new world with our babies, partners, and societies can take much longer. No matter how longed for the baby is, most mums experience periods of stress, anxiousness or lack of confidence with the newness of everything and the steep learning curve in the early weeks!

Here’s a summary of tips we gave the mums at the Medela forum to help grow in confidence in the first few weeks or months of their baby’s life. They are equally valid for mums with kids at any age and for most of us are a life-long journey! We hope you enjoy these tips too.

1. Look after your physical self. We function much better psychologically when our energy levels are higher – we’re less likely to feel emotionally overwhelmed and are more resilient. Try to prioritise sleep as much as you can. Research shows that even 10-20-minute power naps (say when your baby is sleeping) have a positive effect on alertness, memory and overall functioning.
2. Get real. This is not a time for over-achievement! Set realistic expectations of what you can accomplish in a day. Make plans, but expect that things can and probably will change, then try to roll with it rather than getting frustrated. Accept there are many things you cannot control with a baby.
3. Don’t play the blame game. If, and when, things go wrong - it’s not useful or helpful and to blame yourself, or ruminate that this problem will always exist, or conclude that everything in your life is awful! Find a more realistic explanation of bad events - what’s happened is just the situation and not you. It won’t last forever and you can notice that even if this one thing isn’t great - there are other things that are going well. Studies have shown this “optimistic” style of thinking benefits your mood, happiness and even your physical health.
4. Be kind to yourself. If your best friend just had a baby, would you tell her daily or even hourly she’s inadequate as a mum? Or, would you encourage her, tell her she’s doing fine, that everything will work out and to stop giving herself a hard time? The latter of course! The compassion, encouragement and love we give to others we need to give to ourselves. In scientific studies, self compassion and non-self-judgement are linked to lower levels of anxiety and depression, and have a positive effect on happiness and wellbeing.

We encourage you to put these tips into use. Feeling more confident as a mum will help you cope better with the challenges that motherhood presents, manage feelings of overwhelm and help you enjoy this special time much more.

with best wishes,

Flourishing Mothers

[1] Medela provide mums with products, expert insights, ongoing research and education to support the breastfeeding journey www.mymedela.com.au

How can we clear our mental storm clouds?

Over the past few weeks there have been a lot of wet, windy, grey days in Sydney and I admit that my mood takes a battering in this sort of weather. Then, if things happen that make me feel sad and angry and helpless, it becomes more likely that a spiral of negative thinking will develop. 

I suspect I’m not alone in this, so I want to share some ideas that I’ve found useful when the mental storm clouds roll in. 

I believe there are 3 options:

a)      Continue to ruminate
b)      Distract yourself
OR
c)      Compassionately evaluate

Let’s have a quick look at each option.

Rumination - When we ruminate, we let ourselves dwell on the thoughts and we think long and hard about what we could do better next time and how we might be able to fix things.   We fiercely criticise ourselves and our negative emotions of sadness, anger, embarrassment only grow.  Sometimes self-criticism can spur us to action but it’s hard work emotionally. Our wellbeing is likely to suffer.

Distract yourself - Distraction can definitely work for a while to help us cope with negative thoughts.  We can busy ourselves with activity, give ourselves a treat and redirect ourselves to look at pretty shiny things in the way we might distract a screaming child.  The problem with distraction is that it’s a short term fix and avoids any emotional processing of the situation.

Compassionately evaluate – This option is about showing kindness and acceptance towards yourself. The aim of self-compassion is to evaluate our feelings and thoughts in a non-judgemental way and recognise that they are normal and in fact experienced by many in our community.  There are 3 key elements to self-compassion

1. Being kind to yourself – seeking to understand not to punish yourself.
2. Recognising your humanity – everyone goes through this
3. Mindfulness – try neither to ignore, nor exaggerate your negative feelings

Which option sounds right for you?

I vote for option C! 

For a quick fix distraction works well – but longer term simply distracting yourself to avoid negative thoughts doesn’t give you the wellbeing returns.  In contrast a good dose of self-compassion is going to help you in both the short term and the longer term.

Research has shown that deliberately building self-compassion leads to higher levels of life satisfaction and wisdom.  It also helps to broaden your outlook and make it more likely that you will consider various options and reach out to those around you in difficult times.  Rumination makes us feel more isolated and likely to withdraw into ourselves just when we need other people the most.

If this makes sense to you and you’d like some guidance on developing self-compassion; we’d love to send you an exercise to test out.  Send us an email at coaching@flourishingmothers.com.au and we’ll get the exercise to you asap.

With love from Flourishing Mothers

Flourishing Mothers was inspired by the work of Dr Kristen Neff, Natasha Odou and Jay Brinker