And no, it's not to reach for the wine (although that can help)!
Hey, how are you? Are you having a good week? Mine's been pretty good, well, apart from Monday when it was just god awful! It was one of those days when I woke up in a bad mood, and everything seemed to go wrong for me. Then the real pièce de résistance happened when I locked myself out of the house as I was I leaving to do the school pickup.
I had my son in the pram, and assumed my house keys were in my coat pocket! Nope! To make matters a million times worse, my husband had left a couple of hours previously to travel to Manchester (we're in Hertfordshire) for business and he was staying overnight. No windows open, no spare key under the flower pot! Nothing!
Then I remembered my husband mentioning ages ago that he'd given a spare key to a friend of ours, so off I popped to her house to get said spare key. She knew nothing about a spare key, so there I was, back at square 1. In the end I had to call a locksmith who came out and within minutes had opened our front door. Not for free might I add. Getting locked out isn't a cheap mistake to make. This is where my intentions of not having wine during the week went out the window and the Malbec was opened!
Anyway, I digress! The point of me telling you this story is because when I told my mum what had happened, she commented that she would have been so annoyed with herself if that had happened to her. And a couple of years ago, I might have felt the same way. But this is where all the mindset work I'd been doing on myself came in. Rather than beating myself up mentally and letting my inner critic voice convince me that I was stupid, irresponsible, thoughtless - all the things I might have told myself years ago, I instead acknowledged those inner critic thoughts, but then dismissed them and CHOSE to think different thoughts. Ladies and gentlemen, I chose to show myself more compassion.
As a society I honestly don't think we give ourselves enough compassion when things don't turn out the way we wanted. Instead we automatically believe those negative thoughts that pop into our head, which doesn't achieve anything apart from we feel rubbish about ourselves. So next time you start to feel down on yourself or guilty for something you did, catch your negative thoughts as they come in, disregard them and choose a more positive, compassionate thought that serves you. On Monday, I chose to think, 'Natasha, you're doing your bloody best. You're looking after both the kids, while your husband is away and you're trying to balance all that while running a Coaching business! So what, if you locked yourself out? You've got so much to think about. You're doing a great job!' And you know what? I felt so much better. I stopped those negative thoughts in their tracks, and continued to drink that lovely Malbec I'd opened without crying into my wine glass!
