Your Kids Should NOT Listen to You, Here is Why

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I have taken a six-week course with my favorite parenting coach and author, Susan Stiffelman called Parenting Without Power Struggles.

One of the tools she reminded us to use is the turnarounds, which is part of the beautiful exercises created by Byron Katie in her books and website thework.com.

Using the turnarounds as parents and caregivers means that we need to notice the assumptions we have about our kids and then turn them around by living on their planet for a little while.

For example, if we say: “My kids should listen to me the first time I call them to get ready for bed” instead, we say: “My kids shouldn’t listen to me the first time I call them to get ready for bed” and then we add justifications why this turnaround makes sense; why, in their planet, they are right.  

Here are some great reasons why the turnaround is also true:

  • They shouldn’t listen because playing is more fun than sleeping.
  • They should not listen because they do not like to sleep while adults are still awake.
  • They shouldn’t listen because they want to spend more time with us.
  • They should not listen because their prefrontal cortex, responsible for their logical reasoning, is still developing, and it will continue to do so until their early twenties. They can’t easily associate lesser sleep with their overall wellbeing and mood the next day. 
  • They should not listen because they only live in the now and don’t see how sleeping late is a problem.
  • They should not listen because they still see it daylight outside, especially with daylight saving, so it does not make sense for them to sleep before nightfall. 

Do you see how our expectations and the shoulds we impose on our kids could make us all miserable?

If only we pause and remember why they are also right to feel what they feel and not do what we say, right away, we will be a little more patient with them and take time to acknowledge their disappointment for stopping their fun activities. We will tell them we know it’s hard to stop, listen to them as they try to negotiate their way out, notice as they express their angry resistance, and finally reach acceptance. 

Our job as parents is to let go of our expectations of how our kids should respond to our requests by anticipating their reactions and be ready for their no and non-cooperation, even taking it into account time-wise before transitions. 

I also got beneficial advice from a workshop I took with the fabulous mothers’ coach and friend Muna Shakour, who said, “Just accept the fact that you will keep reminding them to brush their teeth, possibly until they are ten years old.” “Embracing this reality”, she advised, “will remove frustration from our constant evening reminders”.

Being ready for kids to behave as kids by using the turnarounds technique is terrific and releases you from the grip of an ideal picture you are holding onto that could cause damage to your precious relationship.

What turnarounds could you apply about a belief you have? 

Think of your situation and the should you believe about it, turn the should around by negating it, then make a list of reasons the turnaround makes sense.

Thank me and my teachers later.

Your Kids Should NOT Listen to You, Here is Why

Don’t Wake Up Early: Advice for 5 AM Club Wannabees

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Waking up at 5 AM since late 2016 is the keystone habit that has turned my life around. Waking up early, however, is not for everybody. I meet many people who complain about not being able to wake up early, and after a bit of probing, I discover that one or more of the behaviors below applies to them. 

If you still have not conquered the waking up early habit yet, you might realize the reason now.

  1. You go out almost every night and do not come home before 11 PM.
  2. You like to keep your options open for nights out with your partner or friends, and you pride yourself on being the first to say yes if someone makes plans on the same day.
  3. You like to spend an hour or two every night on your phone scrolling social media or binging on Netflix.
  4. You hate your day job and believe that nighttime is the only time to chill, so you sleep late or enjoy what the Japanese call bedtime revenge.
  5. You don’t have a big enough why to get you out of bed while it’s still dark outside. You don’t have something to look forward to doing in the morning. 
  6. You have plenty of time for self-care habits such as meditation, journaling, and reading during the day, so you don’t need the early hours to do that. 
  7. You are organized and don’t feel rushed in the morning; you usually arrive to work ready to kill it. 

If the above applies to you, stop kidding yourself by saying I wish I woke up earlier. You really don’t want to. Life, as it is now, is working out fine for you. You don’t wake up early by choice. Your daily actions reveal your priorities. There is nothing wrong with waking up at the time that suits your lifestyle. Embrace your reality.

However, if you want to get up earlier and think it’s the best time to give attention to yourself first before giving it to your world, to reflect, to move, to enjoy the quiet, and plan the day, then, could you tell me which of the above behaviors is blocking you? 

Defining the problem is the first step to solving it.

Check my 14 tips to wake up earlier here.

Don’t Wake Up Early: Advice for 5 AM Club Wannabees

Six Tips for Writing Consistently

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Last year, I started my writing practice and succeeded in shipping daily for more than 6o days in a row and a total of 117 posts throughout the year, so here is what I learned from the success and failure of my experience to implement this time around. 

1. Create fixed time and space triggers for your writing habit.

Example: “When I arrive at the office, I will write for 30-40 minutes” or “After I take my lunch break, I will start writing at my desk”

 If your space changes over the week, for example, you write in the office, but you’re home for the weekends, you need to customize your trigger so you can write with no interruptions. 

Example: “In weekends, I will sit in my home office at 7 am and write for 30-40 minutes” 

Setting your writing practice later than that means your kids would interrupt you when they wake up, and this almost ensures you spend your day chasing another time slot to finish writing or even going to bed without posting, like what I used to do.

3. Start a streak by tracking your writing habit on a habit tracker. 

It feels rewarding to see that chain growing and confirming your new writer identity. Don’t break the chain, and start another one as soon as you do.

4. Create public accountability for your writing habit by announcing that you will write daily for a month on your social media. This way, you will feel more inclined to respect your promise and not miss a day.

5. Create a ritual to begin writing. 

Here is what I do, I set my favorite visual timer Time Timer to 45 minutes and place it in front of me, then select the same duration for focus music on Brain. FM and listen to it using my noise cancellation headset. Whenever I do these three steps, I signal my brain to get ready to start writing.

6. Use full-screen mode when typing to stay focused.

 I either use MS Word or Scrivener, and I keep typing any thoughts that come to my mind as if I was journaling until meaningful, shareable words start appearing on the screen. 

Are you thinking of starting a daily habit? 

Do the same. 

  • Create time and space triggers for the habit to live.
  • Make it small by limiting its time. 
  • Eliminate distractions while pursuing it, until the timer goes off at least. 
  • Track it and share it with others. 

 

PS: I am still working on enhancing #4 using the course I am currently part of Ship30for30. 

Six Tips for Writing Consistently

You Will Find Your Way Back

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I am posting this right after I finished teaching a 2.5-hour workshop on journaling, my favorite part of my morning routine.

At the end of the workshop, a bride-to-be participant shared with me that she’s afraid to lose herself when she starts a new life with more responsibilities and commitments. She asked me: how would she keep her good habits, like journaling, then?

My answer to her was this: Yes, you will change as you enter a new life, and yes, you will have less time for yourself than you do now. However, I’m here to remind you that you have a head start. You are already on the path of self-awareness; taking this workshop is one example, and this means you will notice when you wander away from your best self as you adjust to your new life. It will take time to figure out the person you would like to be in the relationship, to define your boundaries and your non-negotiables, but nothing works if you abandon yourself. The relationship thrives when you are happy as an individual. Journaling is one way of taking care of yourself among many. If/when you stop it as life gets busy, I promise you this; you will find your way back.

You are not the same person you were years ago. You are aware enough, you worked so hard on yourself, and you grew so much that no matter what changes disrupt your life, you will endure and find your way back. That even if you fall, you will not stay down for long nor dwell on your failures; instead, you will rise up, way faster than the past you.

  • What if we get quarantined again for some reason? We will find our way back.
  • What if we grow our family and life gets too hectic? We will find our way back.
  • What if we travel and stop some habits we worked hard for? We will find our way back.
  • What if someone needs us to step up and constantly be there for them? We will find our way back.

Isn’t that the definition of resilience?

Give yourself this reassurance as fear creeps in when you embark upon the unknown: If you start and stop or if you get lost, you now know your way back. Trust that you have created an anchor you’ll return to again and again. You can restart as many times as you want.

Liberating.

You Will Find Your Way Back

How does Planning Help You Be Present?

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Last year, I recorded a video series with a dear friend discussing the Power of Now book. We enjoyed this collaboration and went deeply into the topic, and the outcome was 36 episodes averaging 15 minutes each.

By saying that the now is all there is, and that we are happiest when we live in the now, many felt I was contradicting myself as someone who promoted time management and planning in my podcast and other videos.  

How can we think ahead while also living in the now?

Planning and being present do not contradict each other; planning helps you live in the now. 

  • When you schedule your time in blocks, you don’t need to keep thinking of the future because you have already decided what you would work on next. 
  • When you plan, you ideally write your top 1-3 priorities of the day, so when other shiny things show up, you stay focused on those priorities or switch them up to deal with emerging demands. 
  • When you plan, you don’t suffer from that sudden sinking feeling of remembering an overdue task. 
  • Planning your time helps you stay present and confident that you are right where you need to be, doing the right things. There is no sense of wanting to escape the moment to a past or future one. This state empowers you to block distractions and promotes deep work mode, the most important kind of work that advances you in strides, versus the shallow fire-fighting mode that still takes place but much less so. 

When we plan our goals, it’s the same; we set our destination then focus on the daily habits and actions that we can control today to reach it or something better, we hope. Attachment to outcome is when we stop living in the now; releasing attachment is a life lesson we need to be willing to learn. 

So go crazy planning, but don’t get stuck there.

Action is in the now. It is where the magic happens. 

How does Planning Help You Be Present?

By Now

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By now I should be able to be calm and patient with my kids.
By now I should have my home decor and design taste all figured out.
By now I should have a proper dining table for guests.
By now I should be driving that fancy car I always eye in the street.
By now I should be making that amount of money.
By now I should have my emergency fund up and running.
By now I should be able to cook extravagant meals.
By now I should have upgraded my beauty routines.
By now I should have the body of my dreams.
By now I should have started my own business.
By now I should have a much higher number of followers.
By now I should have traveled the world.
By now I should have had a third kid.
By now I should have had kids.
By now I should have registered my kids in extracurricular classes.

How did you feel reading the above?

Have you noticed that dreadful word; should?

Should is such a heavy word that we need to question constantly; coupling it with an arbitrary deadline, such as “this many years into adulthood”, makes us feel much worse.

We feel less than, not enough and late to the party. Who decides who is invited and when the party starts, no one knows. We are just late. That’s what society taught us. So, we set too many goals but achieve none, and knock too many doors but don’t stick enough to see if one opens. We are too late to wait and find out.

I am here to tell you that yes, time is finite, but that makes it all the more worthy to spend doing what matters most to you, not what others say you should do.

Yes, you can’t do it all and have it all. Once you stop fighting that and accept it, you will see that the gift of time is to sharpen your big-picture most important goals, so you would seek only them and forsake the shoulds that are hunting you.

Your big picture goals are probably very different than mine, but the question is, why are you checking mine?

Reflect on where you want to be at the end of your life to uncover your most important goals and work backward from there to now, to your very next step right here.

Your timing is perfect.

By Now

Reminder to Mid-Day Self

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When you timeblock your day first thing, you don’t have to think or decide what you should do next; the decision has been made by a saner, calmer version of you already. You simply need to look at your schedule and start working.

I needed this reminder today, did you?

Reminder to Mid-Day Self

Are You Taking Fun Seriously?

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Yesterday I recharged my battery by having fun.

I went laser-tagging for the first time thanks to a generous invitation from a friend who arranged the whole event. I wouldn’t have thought about going if it was not for my friend, which makes me wonder about the fun element in my life. It went missing in the last two months of my personal hibernation.

True, I was enjoying the quiet this period of the year uniquely offers, so I did not get together with my friends while many of them were, unfortunately, busy recovering from COVID. Not to forget we all got worried about the peak we witnessed in cases here in Jordan in the last month. I discussed the fun aspect with my friend and we agreed that the pandemic indeed changed our gatherings habits, thus diminishing the fun we have. A lot of us are not even considering going out anymore.

Thankfully, this is coming to an end, and we are ready to embrace new habits as COVID is withdrawing and the days are getting longer and warmer.

I am planning to have more fun, starting this month, by:

1- Going to a dance class once a week. It’s been on my goals for nearly three years and I hope it’s going to be as cool as I imagine it.
2- Using my magical Saturdays (What I call Saturdays when kids are at school while I’m off) not just for podcast production and appointments, even if they were beauty appointments, but also for meeting up with friends for coffee or lunch.
3- Going out at night once every two weeks with hubby or some friends who can’t do mornings.

If we want fun to happen, we need to create space in our schedule for it, just like we schedule family and work events. It will not occur spontaneously, as lovely as that would be, not with our responsibilities, not until we initiate that group text chain about a meet-up date that suits most of the gang or make that “Hey, I miss you, let’s get together” call.

I am so serious about fun that I got Catherine Price’s new book on it The Power of Fun. I will share more as I go.

Are You Taking Fun Seriously?

What Would Make Today Great?

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This is a question in the morning section of the Five-Minute Journal -which I adore-that did not sit with me right when I first used it; because the answer, in my opinion, is always: me.

I used to think of the answer by looking over my day and what events I was expecting to happen, like receiving a shipment or a meeting going well. Then I shifted the way I read the question. I now ask myself every morning: How will I make today great?

It’s up to me to make today great.

I will make today great through my actions and attitude. Therefore, I answer this question with my intentions for the day such as being kind, leaving to/from work early, respecting my writing practice, and enjoying my time with my kids. Or I answer this question with my top three priorities for the day, or what the book Make Time calls “the highlight of the day”, which could be work-related like finishing a presentation or as simple as spending time with my husband.

So, yes, good things are about to happen today; YOU will make them happen.
New perspectives are going to emerge; YOU will start seeing differently.
Fantastic progress in your goals is actualizing; YOU finally realize progress is more important than perfection.

It is totally up to you.

You get to choose how you will show up today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your life. Please, don’t let yesterday’s mistakes ever hold you back from starting over. Not giving yourself permission to start over is, in fact, self-punishment. You are not making amends by remaining stuck. Choose to forgive yourself and move on. Forgiving yourself means believing you are worthy despite your mistakes. You are worthy of new beginnings. No matter what your darkness is trying to tell you, believe in your light because that is who you truly are.

P.S: Happy March, subscribe to my newsletter here to get the Sunday Spark.

What Would Make Today Great?

Notice the Mosquitoes

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I’m currently reading a book called How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters by Michael Bungay Stanier. It’s an excellent book/workbook about goal-setting for what he calls Worthy Goals.

I want to share a brilliant exercise in this book called Listing Mosquitoes.

“Your Worthy Goal comes with a cloud of its own Mosquitoes. These Mosquitoes are all the things you’re currently doing and not doing—secular sins of commission and of omission—that are contrary to this Worthy Goal you’ve set for yourself. You’ll find they’re numerous. Some are tiny, others more significant. No single Mosquito is fatal in and of itself, but together they irritate you, weaken you, slow you down, and distract you from your Worthy Goal.”

“Notice Your Mosquitoes: Write down the things you’re currently doing and not doing that are not leading towards your Worthy Goal. Actions and non-actions, big and small. Make them tangible and real.”

“This is you confessing, owning up to the ways you’re actively undermining your Worthy Goal, colluding against your own ambitions, scuttling your dreams.”

It especially resonated when he gave the example of his goal to “Launch a new podcast that is in the top 3 percent of all podcasts within 12 months”.

Michael shares what he is currently doing that is hindering his goal:

“Things I’m doing that are contrary to this goal include: investing in a consultant then ignoring her recommendations; setting a standard then immediately downgrading the ambition of the podcast to make it smaller; starting another, unrelated podcast that I can do in my usual small-scale way; being timid about the guests I’m inviting to the unrelated podcast; buying expensive podcast equipment then not learning how to set it up properly. Refusing to figure out the marketing.”

What he should be doing but is not:

“Things I’m not doing are even more numerous. They include: not creating a vision for the podcast; not setting a budget (time or money); not listening to other “role model” podcasts; not hiring a professional podcasting agency; not attending a podcasting conference; not learning about podcast marketing; not calling myself a podcast host; not exploring distribution partnerships.”

It made me think of my podcast as I approach its 2nd anniversary with host-on-mic only episodes. Do I want to maintain it or take it to the next level? What is this next level?

Thank you, Michael, for this rich book and enlightening concept. I am working my way through it.

Notice the Mosquitoes