My daughter drives me crazy. Not always, but when she does, it’s a downright full blown crazy. The kind of crazy that make you feel like you want to pull all your hair out. The kind that make me wonder what is possibly going on in that head of hers.
Sometimes she’ll get into a mood when she is extremely indecisive. She’ll decide she wants to play with something and will proceed to drag everything out. Then after about 5 or 10 minutes of half-hearted playing, she’ll decide that she doesn’t want to play with that but something else. So the first toys are packed away (with luck, but not likely) and she brings out the next thing that she feels compelled to do. For the moment that is, because after only 2-3 minutes of that new thing she realizes that’s not what she wants either. Again, with luck, that new thing is put away (But who am I kidding? My child leaves a “path of destruction” when she has these moments – evidence of her restlessness). She then feebly starts something different, but her heart is not in it. Soon she whines in frustration that she doesn’t know what to do. She looks around the room, at the toys strewn on the floor as well as those properly in their place, and her overwhelm is evident.
“I just don’t know what to do!”
We’ve all had those moments. When the frustration and overwhelm seem to be monumental, and no matter what we do, we know it’s not what we really need to be doing at that moment. So I remind myself to be gentle with her.
She’s five. Five and a half actually if you ask her. So she’s still learning these skills of tuning into what it is that you really want for yourself. Learning to identify that thing or feeling that you want to move toward, then establishing a way to get yourself there and achieve it. It’s of course simpler at five: If you want to be creative, grab your crayons or construction paper. If you want to use your imagination, bring out the Lalaloopsies. If you want to be entertained, turn on the tv. If you want to feel the power of your body, run and jump around the house like a super-fast jaguar. If you want to remind yourself how awesome you are, read a book.
But it’s those moments when we aren’t clear with what we want that we struggle and feel the frustration and overwhelm. If you don’t know what you want, then nothing seems right and you’re not going anywhere. Once you understand your ultimate goal, it’s easier to create the strategy to accomplish it. In order for you to understand what your goal is though, you have to shift your focus inward.
Then when you have your goal, it’s easiest to plan your success working backwards. Start from your success and figure out what you did just before that to make it happen. Then come back before that other thing and discover what steps you took to make that happen. Then back some more to those previous steps until you are back where you currently are. Only now you have a plan – a strategy – to get you there. You’ll minimize your feelings of overwhelm and frustration, and be able to zoom forward like a super-fast jaguar toward success.
All the best as you unlock your potential and experience your possibilities!
Krysti
