Becoming an empty nester can sneak up on you. Before you know it, your kids have left, maybe even your spouse or partner has moved on, and you are stuck in the same routine of always caring for someone else.
Without a new plan for your new phase of life, you can start to develop a lot of negative feelings and resentments. Maybe you feel abandoned.
This is where a shift in mindset can help. You change your mindset by putting some space between your feelings and the way you react to them. When you change your thoughts, you can change your feelings.
As mothers, we deal with so much that gets held inside. But then when someone says something that sets us off, we pounce back and yell, leaving everyone confused as to what’s going on.
I’ve let things get to me and turned them into negative thoughts. And these situations are always followed by the guilty feeling that I should’ve handled the event in a different way.
Here are the 4 strategies I discovered when I took a step back before responding to negative thoughts:
Ask yourself: Is the thought true? Usually, our gut reaction is to say, “YES.” This is our auto-pilot answer. Make sure you pause and think before you react to a situation to make sure that your feelings accurately reflect what’s happening.
Is it absolutely true? Well, maybe the statement is somewhat true, but not completely. Imagine this situation: You run into a new friend in the grocery store, but she doesn’t acknowledge you. It can be easy to start to question the relationship, thinking that you didn’t really connect after all. But what if you gave her the benefit of the doubt? Maybe she was in a rush to pick her kids up from school or she simply didn’t notice you. Don’t start a negative thought train about this woman simply because it made you feel bad. There could be another explanation.
How does this thought make me feel? Consider what storylines you may be holding onto. If your kids moving out makes you sad, is this because their leaving makes you sad or because the thought of being alone makes you sad? We need to see what our emotions are and why we are feeling that way.
What could life be like if I didn’t hold onto this belief? We have so many beliefs that we hold onto, many of which come from our parents. For example, I was never able to go out after dark, so I didn’t want to let my kids go out either. Do these beliefs hold you back? When you think about your kids going to college, do you start thinking, “What will I do? What will my life be like? How can they just leave?” Remember… this is the goal! You did a fantastic job raising them so they could become good human beings. You instead could be thinking about how you have finally reached the time to focus on yourself.
So, when you find yourself being reactive, make sure you focus on these 4 steps to help you become a more positive person. If you have any strategies that you use to help fight negative thoughts, comment below!
P.S. Don’t forget to grab my Mantra Guide to help you let go of your kids and love it! http://momsletgo.com/mantra-guide