How to become the calm, serene and happy parent that you want to be?
Discover how our thoughts influence our daily parenthood and how to act on their quality in 4 steps to become the calm, serene and happy parent that you want to be.
For a long time I wondered how to become the mother I wanted to be.
Namely, a more calm, serene and happy mother.
You know this parent, not perfect because chasing after perfection often only leads to maternal burnout, but this super parent that we want to be.
Because it is a wish, a choice of life and not a fantasy that it is.
We want to be a listening, patient and loving parent.
A mother (or a father) fully present, available, open and who has a harmonious relationship with her child.
In fact, a simply happy parent with the family.
And yet, sometimes the reality is quite different …
We are subject to uncontrolled and inadequate reactions.
We have difficulty reacting correctly and positively to our children and the problems they pose to us.
Our relationships are sometimes at logger heads.
For my part, it happened to me, much more than wished, to cry out on my sons in spite of myself.
I said violent words that I never thought I would say.
I have more than once blamed myself for my inappropriate behavior.
I also did not understand why I could not be this great parent that I wanted to be despite all my good will and all the tools at my disposal.
In fact, no matter how hard I tried to implement good caring parenting practices, I quite regularly found myself facing a wall.
It was as if I had a split personality:a Doctor Jekyll who wished above all to be a caring mother and an angry Mister Hyde who got angry and frustrated all efforts made.
It took me a long time to realize that before becoming a calm, serene and happy mother, I had to be, first of all, a calm, serene and happy woman.
That the changes that are seen on the outside (as in my relationship with my children) come from within.
Because everything starts from oneself! To put an end to this angry Mister Hyde and finally become the mother I wanted to be, I understood that I first had to understand my own mode of operation, my conditioning, my thought patterns in order to free myself from them.
This work on myself was carried out in 3 concrete steps which I will now detail for you.
Step 1: Understand that everything starts from our thoughts
We may mistakenly think that we are powerless and victims of our feelings that direct our actions.
Indeed, we often have the impression of not being able to escape our emotions, as if they were taking command.
In fact, we are forgetting an essential notion. It all starts with our thoughts.
As Allen James so aptly put it in Man is the Reflection of His Thoughts , “Just as a plant springs from the seed, without which it could not exist, our actions originate in the secret seeds of thought, and could not materialize without them.This applies as much to so-called spontaneous and unpremeditated actions as to those carried out deliberately. “
This is why listening to your emotions and becoming responsible for your thoughts allow you to be in control of your behavior and actions.
We no longer behave like victims, because we can take back control of our life.
And since we are the only ones who can control our thoughts, our beliefs and therefore our emotions, we are the only ones who have power over our life.
So let’s change our thoughts, our beliefs and our life will transform naturally.
Remember that the doors to change first open from within and our real changes will have their natural repercussions and will be seen on the outside.
Step 2: Develop your level of self-awareness
To be aware of oneself is to welcome without judging, criticizing or fighting everything that happens in oneself, in terms of thoughts, emotions, feelings, behaviors.
It is therefore having the capacity to observe oneself in all circumstances.
Observe his actions, thoughts, emotions, feelings and reactions.
It therefore goes through stages of questioning.
What triggered my emotion? Where does my feeling come from? What is the thought behind my reactions? Is my reaction logical and appropriate for the context? What are the physical sensations felt?
The goal here is to gradually understand your own way of thinking and reacting.
It is by understanding their cognitive patterns that we will be able to detect their inner landscape, their beliefs, their fears, their blockages.
For my part, by becoming attentive to my thoughts, my emotions, the physiological signs I felt, I understood that I had a tendency to interpret the signs and to constantly build myself all personal representations of what could be / had to be said or done.
This is how I identified my ability to interpret, rightly or wrongly, intonations, gestures, facial expressions, looks.
Little by little, I put my finger on my beliefs, my judgments, my a priority, which completely transformed my perception of events.
I understood that I was constantly waiting for my children to do or say exactly what I expected of them.
And it was when it wasn’t done or said to my expectations that Mister Hyde would then take control and cause an emotional coup. 
Step 3: Create a transformation in oneself that will last over time despite the external situations that will present themselves to us
In order to stop graying out events, it is important to change your thought patterns according to reality and what matters to you.
Because to take control of your life, you will need new cognitive patterns, new thoughts.
The first step is to admit that our thoughts are essentially interpretations even if these beliefs seem legitimate and quite rational to us.
Then, it is advisable to adopt, for each thought, a new state of mind lucid, pragmatic and based on facts and not opinions.
It also involves questioning: Is what I think is true? Does it make sense? How do you know? Where is the proof? What is the reality? What are the facts?
For example, your child has not tidied up his room as you hoped, ask yourself if for him his room is that messy? Didn’t he tidy up his room in the best way for him? Or was he really on purpose not to tidy his room when you asked him? Wasn’t he busy with something else?
It is through this work that I understood that things don’t have to be the way I think they should be, the way I want them to be.
It allowed me to get out of an excessive and unrealistic expectation that could only end in the infernal spiral of Deception – Anger – Guilte to finally experience lasting happiness.
The one that we keep in the ups and downs of life.
This new lucid, pragmatic and fact-based mindset has also had other collateral benefits.
Indeed, it also allowed me:
– to hear the needs of my children but also mine
– to be fully present to them, without ulterior motives, without interpretation of what they could say or do
– to finally be able to apply the good practices of benevolent parenting because by being at peace with myself, I could finally be at peace with my children.
In conclusion, the next time you see yourself acting with your children the opposite of what you would like to do, I invite you to try and hear the thought that is causing your reaction.
Discovering your internal saboteurs, your blockages, your beliefs, your interpretations is the starting point towards your happiness, your amazing journey for better parenthood.
But as always on the path to personal development, take it one step at a time.
Getting to know each other takes time.
So above all, stay happy towards yourself.
And never forget that everything starts with you and that the solution is within you.
Finally, if you know of someone who could help, please feel free to send them this article.
It is all together that we will co-create a better world!
