I was in my living room finishing up my workout. I was doing push-ups so I couldn’t hear perfectly as I was trying to not keel over. But it sounded something like this…”UGHHH I’m starvinggggggg and I’m sooo annoyed because I just brushed my teeth so now I can’t eat. Ughblahwhaaa.”
I shook my head. I stopped what I was doing. Trying to catch my breath and get ready for my cool down I gurgled, “Bubbs. Did you even just hear what came out of your mouth? You have got to be kidding me with that nonsense.”
I like to say I have patience as a parent, but the older my kids get, the more cut and dry I have become…because they KNOW. They get it for the most part. And when there is a moment where my kids complain about ridiculous things, all patience goes right out the window. I want to explode while my head spins around in circles and go right to the place of…”do you even know how lucky you are? There are kids in your own town who are literally starving and you have the nerve to complain that you can’t eat because you just BRUSHED YOUR TEETH. There are kids who don’t even own a TOOTHBRUSH!!!!”
Ok if I’m being 100% honest, I went exactly to that place. I literally said that to my 9 year old. And I didn’t even feel one bit bad about it because gratitude is such an important part of our family and our values! It’s something we discuss DAILY, so to hear such a ridiculous comment sent me right over the edge.
Guys, I’m human and I know my kids are, too. We have those moments where we wanna moan and groan about petty annoyances. We all have instances where we feel entitled to being grouchy or whiny or complainy. (Yup. That’s a word!) But do we?! Do our circumstances really allow us to project on others?!
The truth: NOPE. But for some reason, we still feel it. Because at the end of the day, when we are hurting, we just want something to validate it. We either want someone else hurting with us, or we want someone else to fix it for us. The feeling of entitlement comes swooping in to justify our crappy attitude.
Now here’s the thing…A lot of people call me naïve and say I don’t live in the real world because I believe wholeheartedly in the utmost power of positivity. But that doesn’t mean that I just IGNORE the crap storm and pain. I just choose to not stay in it.
When the anger comes boiling up or the complaints start rifling out, I legit stop myself. I stop myself and take inventory on WHY I’m pissed. I get really REAL with myself. I beat it up if I need to. And then I find the positive. Because if I don’t do that, I just continue to feel like crap and treat the people around me like crap. And what good does that do?!
If you ask Bubbs, he would tell you it gets x-box taken away for a couple of days! 🤣 but to us adults, it just lowers our own energy by giving power to the negative vibes! And then the people around us get the worst of us, not the best of us. Mostly, we get so depleted that we have nothing left to give to ourselves.
That was my kiddo today, and that’s why I knew I had to share this! After my head nearly flew off my shoulders, we sat down and chatted and he was literally just unsure about why he was acting the way that he was. He just felt like he had the right to do it.
So the moral of the story is this…we are all allowed to feel whatever we need to feel and process our emotions accordingly. BUT…We are not entitled to opinions or feelings anymore than any other human on any other day. There’s a huge difference there and I truly hope this little chat helps the next time you’re feeling the complain train pulling into the station!
Oh and if you find yourself struggling with staying in a place of gratitude like Bubbs, try this: take a notebook and leave it by your bed. The moment you wake up, or even right before you go to bed, write down all the things you can think of that make you smile! That make you grateful . That make you remember how awesome it is to be YOU and live YOUR life.
Much love,
Ta xo
PS…Bubbs ended the day with a much more grateful heart…and so did I!❤️❤️🙏🏻