Mistake #8: Listening to others more than to your own wisdom
When it comes to parenting, everyone has lots of opinions on just about everything. Advice starts coming even before you have the baby.
There are ideas about when you should get pregnant. What you should or shouldn’t eat while pregnant. How active you should be. When you should stop working. When you should set up the baby furniture or have a baby shower. (In my family, don’t even think about doing these things before the baby arrives!)
Then the baby comes and there’s ideas about whether you should breast of bottle feed and for how long. The kind of food they should eat. How and when to potty train. (Apparently I’m told I was advanced and just placed over a pot and knew what to do by age 1, so I inferred that my kids must lack intelligence and I must lack effectiveness as a mom when this did NOT happen with mine!)
There are opinions about whether they should go to daycare or have a nanny. What kind of school they should attend. What activities you should expose them to and at what age.
The list goes on and on, whether they are three months old or thirteen years old or much older.
As my father always says, opinions are like a$$holes, everyone’s got one. (I did not appreciate the humor of this expression when one of my children was actually born with an imperforate anus and I had to tell my dad that he was wrong, but I digress … ).
It is true; everyone has opinions about everything. So why do we often listen to other people’s voices more than our own?
I remember so clearly reading all the parenting books when my first child was born so I could be prepared. One thing that really stuck with me was the benefits of breastfeeding, so I was determined with a capital D. I did everything in my power. I used a lactation consultant. I pumped night and day. I ate special cookies. I used a nipple shield. I even used some plastic tube contraption taped to my chest with formula flowing at the same time as breastfeeding so the baby could suck and try to extract milk from me. I was dangerously sleep deprived and emotionally and physically drained, but my baby was still starving and screamed bloody murder every few hours.
I knew inside that I should stop, that I was missing this precious time with her. But I pushed that voice aside and instead listened to the words in the books and the magazines and all the people who kept saying breast is best.
So I suffered and so did my baby. Until my wonderful pediatrician took one look at me at one of our visits, with tears streaming down my face, and demanded that I stop right then and there. It was the first day that I truly enjoyed being a mom. Yes, I listened to someone else again, but I was finally also listening to what I knew was true all along. I just didn’t want to believe my own truth until she gave me permission to do so.
We don’t need anyone’s permission to hear our own voice.
We don’t need anyone’s permission to hear our own voice.
Mindful Doc Mom
That voice has so much knowledge and wisdom, if we are just quiet enough to listen.
The more we take time to pause, be still, filter out the noise, and pay attention to our own mind and the beautiful thoughts swimming inside, the right answers will always come to us.
If you want help finding your voice, the first step is to become aware of your mind and thoughts. As a coach, that’s exactly what I help you do. You will learn to find YOUR beautiful voice with all of its wisdom and start to pay attention. This one thing can change your life. Sign up for a free 30 minute call with me on my calendar link below or email me at mindfuldocmom@gmail.com with some other preferred days and times and we’ll make it happen.
