Our takeaway:
- Work out our mental muscles from Day 0 so that we are more likely to start our parenthood with internal peace and calm.
- Remember that parenthood is unique for your family. Don’t do it for social approval.
- Know that happiness is a choice. You are in control of that choice.
- Let go of what’s out of your control. Like blowing away dusts.
Browsing through parenting literature, online tips & hacks, I found no lack of (kind) warnings of how difficult it is to be (new) parents – not just physically (chasing kids around while being sleep deprived) but mentally (postpartum anxiety/depression). What I didn’t realize was that it’s already difficult to even thinking about starting a family! I know those moms and dads out there must be laughing silently and thinking “wait until you become a mom/dad”. Sure maybe the difficulties are of different magnitudes, but I think it’s worth noting that preparing to start a family can also be physically and mentally draining and we need to be ready for it. Below I’d like to discuss about how we can work out our mental muscles from Day 0 so that we are more likely to start our parenthood with internal peace and calm (hopefully).
| Notes on Mental Muscle Before we get into the details though, it’s important to understand what mental muscle is and how it works. First of all, scientifically brain itself is not a muscle. It contains blood vessels and nerves, including neurons and glial cells. So apparently here mental muscle is a metaphor. I would like to think of mental muscle as habits, a collection of habits we formed throughout the years and has been constantly running subconsciously. In other words, mental muscle allows us to operate autonomically without thinking. And since we are capable of forming good habits and discard the bad, we are capable of strengthening our mental muscle to make our lives easier. Last but not least, just like any other muscles, mental muscle needs consistent exercising to maintain and/or get stronger. |
Mental muscle exercise #1: Remember that parenthood is unique for your family. Don’t do it for social approval.
One thing that makes preparing to start a family so mentally draining (at least for me) was the vast amount of information. What makes it worse is that once you started looking into some of them voluntarily, the rest are just overwhelmingly pushed to/forced on you (thanks to targeted digital marketing!) without your (full) consent. As a result, your brain is filled with all kinds of theories, how parenting life “should” be, what a successful mom/dad “should” look like, and etc. Then you panic when you found yours drifting away from those “shoulds”. The truth is, parenthood is unique for each family based on so many variables: the personalities, health, education, upbrings, occupations, financials, living environment of parents, and those of their kids. Everybody can tell you everything they believe about parenthood. But what really matters is what works for your unique family and you should feel comfortable about it.
With this in mind, establish a simple set of values that matters to your definition of a successful parenthood. When you feel stressed, overwhelmed, confused, or hesitated, you can refer back to these values (as your North Star) and make your next move with confidence and calmness. At that point, everything else is just noises.
Mental muscle exercise #2: Know that happiness is a choice. You are in control of that choice.
There are no external forces affecting your emotions – as much as it may feel that way
– Naval Ravikant on happiness, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
It is often easy to blame something tangible when things go south. The reason being: 1) Naturally, we human beings are always looking for explanations. Think about how our ancestors figured out how fire started, why the sun always rises from the East, or how raw meat can make use sick, and etc. Tangible things are just so readily available to attribute to and thus fulfil our longing for explanations. 2) When things go south, emotions dominate us. We tend to feel that the whole world is against us even though deep inside we know it isn’t.
Practice separating feelings from facts. It’s no easy practice for sure but I found the following two concepts helpful: (from the same book mentioned: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. You can find it at https://www.navalmanack.com/)
“Nature has no concept of happiness or unhappiness. It is only in our particular minds we are unhappy or not happy.”
“What you feel tells you nothing about the facts – it merely tells you something about your estimate of the facts”.
Recently, when my husband and I felt frustrated or worried about whatever situations we were in, we like to remind ourselves about the “grand scheme” of things. Oftentimes, once we have removed ourselves from the center of the situations (so that we can set emotions aside), we found either those frustrations/worries were too minute or how we felt about them won’t change anything. As a result, we stopped worrying about them and felt so much happier.
Mental muscle exercise #3: Let go of what’s out of your control. Like blowing away dusts.
“A rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things outside of their control.”
This quote from Naval reminds me of the concept of “Being Proactive” from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Basically, we can categorize our concerns into two circles – the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence. We all have a wide range of concerns and among them there are things we can control vs we can’t. For the controllable concerns, we put them into the Circle of Influence. And the rest? We blow them away like dusts.
Take myself as an example. Regarding starting a family, I have many concerns: are we both healthy enough to have a baby? do we have enough money? can we make it to the 35-year-old threshold? do we even have the basic knowledge to have a baby? how are we going to balance work? do we want a girl or a boy first? what are we forgoing by having a baby now vs later? do we need to change any of our current diet or habits? The list goes on and on and I’m already sweating with an elevated heart beat. But if I calm down and organize them into these two circles (see the visual below), my real concerns shrank by 50% and I felt so relieved. Learn more about how we prioritize those concerns in the other post: Are we REALLY ready to have a baby?
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