My biggest regret as a parent is the amount of travel I have done and the workload that I have taken on in their short lives. I know I learnt a lot and there were so many great moments and incredible work colleagues who I spent my time with. However, I didn’t always put my family first, or myself for that matter. When I was home, I was home, but I made excuses like “I’m too busy to shop” so we would have easy meals. Ham and salad platters became a regular for dinner. My children do like these, but it was still a symptom of me being too tired or busy or any number of excuses which ultimately was me putting work first again.
Discovering in my own mind this idea of Hourglass Time was so incredibly important to me and in a way, it was me identifying what I needed to change. When I look at the moments where I’m ‘not at my best’ when parenting or if I’m honest those times I’m a ‘bad parent’, I can actually link most of it to when we were in a HURRY or when my focus was not IN THE MOMENT.
Once I began implementing Hourglass time, I noticed these moments settled. I finally felt like a ‘’good parent’’ I do want to point out that I’m still not perfect and there are ‘‘those moments’’- just a lot less of them.
Many of us have parenting regrets – okay probably all of us – and in order to be the most fabulous versions of ourselves as parents, we need to let those go. We need to forgive ourselves and forge ahead with our new plan. If we keep holding onto those regrets, they will roadblock us when it comes to moving forward.
So, this… is the line in the sand. The line you draw and don’t look back. The moment you flip the Hourglass over and new moments are available. You look forward and give yourself a break. Imagine for a minute you are your best friend, I bet she/he would pat you on the back and say ‘hey, it’s okay’.
I have forgiven myself too now. So, here we go together across that line to a new journey where we are more intentional and focused, more planned and hopefully successful. I think as long as you are self-aware and working on improving yourself, whether it be about parenting, professionally or personally you are on the right track and doing well.
I’m just thinking back to how I drew a line in the sand, I don’t think it happened at once, I think I forgave myself over time. Practicing gratitude helped me to move forward and think more positively about things and that heavy guilt factor just seemed to drift.
Take a moment now to think about the things that you feel guilty about and write them down in your journal so you can leave them there on that page and get excited about your new GUILT FREE life.
