Stop wishing for everyone else’s life and start loving your own.

Moms, have you ever found yourself talking about the future as if somehow when you get to the next phase of life or the next phase of motherhood all of a sudden everything is going to get better? It’s all rainbows and unicorns in your head as if the future is some mystical place where everything aligns and kids magically listen and we don’t have any more troubles. The whole “the grass is always greener on the other side?” 

I’m raising my hand over here because I’ve been guilty of this too. 

But I want to teach you something incredibly valuable that I have learned…

If you can’t find joy in the now. You won’t find joy in the future either.

Let me say that again – if you can’t find joy in the now. You won’t find joy in the future either. 

You won’t magically find joy when you arrive at your desired destination. It just doesn’t work like that!

We have to stop wishing for “someday” and start enjoying the present

Because All we ever have are the moments that we are in right here, right now

The change in our perspective has to start now!

It’s easy to justify why we aren’t happy and you might catch yourself saying things like

I’ll be happy when…

When the kids get older, when the kids are in school, when the baby’s not in diapers, when I get a new job, when we have another baby, when we get a vacation, when 2020 is over we blah blah blah

You fill in the blanks on the things that you feel are keeping you from happiness right now. Or the perceived happiness you think you’ll have in the future. 

But here’s the thing…. You have to start creating that dream life right here right now. In the messy, in the crazy, you need to find the beautiful moments and learn to appreciate them. But The only way you are going to actually find them is if you look for them! 

Our brains are wired to search and find answers to the questions and the beliefs that we have about ourselves. 

Are you constantly asking yourself these questions?….

Why are my days so hard?

Why are the kids always whining?

Why is the house always a mess?

Why are my husband and I always fighting?

Why do I never have enough time?

Why does my husband never help me?

Why am I always stressed out?

Did any of those questions resonate with you?? I bet some of them did. 

Are you using all of that energy and brain space for negative things to support the negative thoughts and the negatives questions you keep asking yourself every day??

That’s a lot of wasted energy.

I’m guilty about it and I’m sure you are too.

And if you really pause for a second and think about the things you’re thinking about, you’ll start to realize that our minds tend to drift to the negative things. We have to make a conscious effort, we have to be intentional to think about the positive. 

We are only capable of taking in so much information- there’s actually a limit as to what our brains can take in, so its constantly filtering the information around us.  Like when you get a new car and start to notice it everywhere, its not that all of sudden a lot of people bought that same car right,  it’s just that you’re focused on that so your brain is looking for it. Or when you’re pregnant all of a sudden it seems like everyone around you is pregnant. You get the point. 

Our brains are amazing, but so many times we don’t even understand how it operates on the most basic level. 

But if we can get a better understanding of the way our brains work, its going to make a huge difference. 

We’re given one body, one life, one brain and you’re going to save yourself a lot of frustration if you can start to understand the way it all works. I’m not saying you need a degree in science or health… fun fact I actually do have a degree in Health Promotions but a lot of the things that I have learned about mental health came from doing my own research and learning from others who know more than I do. Someone I really love to follow is Dr. Caroline Leaf. She has some incredible books that will really help you understand your brain better. 

But I know you guys have a lot on your plate so my goal is to give you the cliff notes version on these podcast episodes and some application so you can start taking your motherhood and your life to the next level. 

So mama’s let’s put some application to what we learned today, keep in mind what you focus on expands! So I want to challenge you to start seeking out the beautiful moments in your days, instead of longing for beautiful moments in the future that may or may not ever happen. I want you to start celebrating the little victories now, instead of waiting to only celebrate the big things. Let me reassure you that nothing is too small to celebrate! You take a shower, celebrate! You got dressed, celebrate, you got the kid’s breakfast to celebrate, you drank your water celebrate, you smiled when you woke up this morning, celebrate! The kids were only 5 minutes late to school instead of the usual 10, celebrate! Come on!! We celebrate our kids ALL day long about the littlest thing, you drew a line on that paper, way to go, baby, you peed on the potty we’re so proud of you, you ate your dinner tonight, gold star for you, you twirled around looking like a crazy person, yay you are so talented. Yet when it comes to us as moms, we don’t celebrate ourselves like that at all, we don’t come close to that level. Let’s be different and let’s be a community of moms who celebrate like crazy! 

Also, let’s start looking for more opportunities to be grateful no matter how small the blessing may seem and your brain will start to gravitate towards those things. You will start noticing them more because your brain will no longer be looking for the negative. But if something a negative thought pops up, because remember we are in the process of retraining our brains, it doesn’t just happen overnight and no one will ever “arrive” when it comes to mindset and personal growth. there will always be curveballs or something new for us to work on, BUT you can start retraining your brain now with the small things. I’m certainly not saying if you do these things you’ve never have a negative thought again because we’re all human, but those negative thoughts will no longer steal your joy, you’ll know how to flip the script and turn that negative into a positive because remember you have the power to do! You have the power to create new pathways in your brain. And as you start to do that, the negative thoughts will happen less and less. And you will get quicker at catching the negative thought when it does come up, and quickly shut it down with truth. You’ll get quicker at pivoting to the positive!  

So that’s what I want you to focus on this week, celebrating everything and having a grateful heart. In fact, this week when you have moments where you are celebrating or moments of gratitude where normally you would have just brushed by it, post about it in your stories, tag me on IG @megan_milakovic Let’s start a trend of being grateful moms who celebrate everything instead of being moms who complain all the time. Let’s dare to be different and let’s model this behavior for our kids!