November is over! I have been very slow this past month, looking after my physical health, completing tasks for the classroom and working on all the end of year jobs that needs to be done…. But as part of my November focus, I wanted to have a closer look at my relationships. At this point I was focused on my relationship with my husband and my daughter.
Things that I learned:
- My reactions are my responsibility. For someone to “push my buttons” first I need to have them! If I didn’t have those “buttons” in the first place no one will be able to push them!
- Telling the truth from my heart leaves no space for resentment, anger, frustration, fear…
- Listening to the other with an open heart and a flexible mind create more space for love, compassion, understanding, kindness, peace and clarity
- Understanding that NO ONE is here to neither make me happy nor unhappy is key to living a peaceful life.
- We are here to support/push each other to grow and evolve
- To support others I cannot be in my emotional brain or survival brain, I need to be in my executive brain
What ACTIONS did I take?
- The most important one was to observe myself first, I had to Slow Down for that and keep an open heart and mind.
- Then I really had to commit myself and take Action in the moment (Tell my truth, Listen with an open heart, remove myself to self-regulate, reflect and take action again…)
- Something else we did was to reintroduced Family Meeting with a focus on THE FAMILY (not child centred or couple centred). We started writing our family values. We all share ideas on how we can create more bonding time as a family. We also allocated chores based on preferences and practicality. We started our meeting with a meditation so we are all in alignment with our true selves.
These are the actions I/we took but there are more steps which I will share with you in the future. To achieve a goal successfully, we can only focus on the small steps and only one step at a time.
My Relationship Mantras:
- I choose to Lift Others because it helps me rise
- I choose to Tell my truth because it sets me free
- I choose to Be kind because it brings me peace
- I choose Quality time because it creates more precious moments
I used to think I needed to spend MORE time with my daughter/husband.. and spent a lot of time planning/organising and then things get in the way and then I was back to feeling guilty… Then I realised something liberating this year, if I can make every moment about quality then I will be spending more time with my daughter. The Tao Te Ching share this teaching with us “In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone (48)” Quote/Passage taken from https://www.sloww.co/tao-te-ching/ .
As part of this month’s investigation, I also found out that I have been neglecting my physical health and thus I have been feeling a lot of physical stress which of course affect other areas of my life including my Relationship with my family because stress puts me in reactive mode. So this is something I will be focusing on next!
I hope that this has been of value to you.
With much love and TO THE BEST IN YOU
Corinne xoxo
PS: This photo was part of a family photo shoot in 2016 by my one and only brother Jason check out what he is up to via the link at the top
PPS: This is a post from my FB page to which I have just added a little more.
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