Negativity kills

They say that one of the most important things you need in a survival situation is PMA: a positive mental attitude. A self-defeating outlook is, well, self-defeating. If you don’t think you can build a shelter, it’ll only make it harder to build a shelter. On the other hand, if you believe you can build a shelter, even if you don’t really know how, at least you’re not adding more obstacles to your path. Blueprint. Whatever.

I’ve been in a pretty negative mood lately. Rebecca is teething—and this is way harder than it was for Hayden. (Think near-constant holding, squirming, nursing and interrupted sleep just weeks after we finally got her sleeping through the night.) Hayden, meanwhile, has developed a disturbing inability to sleep at night, too, but his waking is without apparent cause. Oh, and have I mentioned how much worse three has been than two so far?

My outlook has grown steadily gloomier. I began feeling my children and my life were completely out of control, mostly because I was obviously an inadequate mother. What else could explain the constant tantrums, child-juggling (and disappointing) and general overwhelmed-ness?

By Monday, I was walking in a no-sleep-constant-screaming-from-one-of-the-three-of-us haze. I was too down to care about needing a shower or the chest-high pile of laundry spilling off the couch (at least it was clean) or dinner or grocery shopping or anything else. I didn’t care if I slept, since I figured I wouldn’t.

And then Tuesday came (AKA today). In my feed reader, I came across an article on negativity and perfectionism. Sometimes the good is the enemy of the best, when we while away our days with good things but not essential things. But sometimes the perfect is the enemy of the good.

As mothers, we don’t have to be perfect all at once. I believe that our lives on Earth are a journey, progressing towards (eventual, heavenly) perfection. God doesn’t ask us to make ourselves perfect overnight, or even all by ourselves. Even if you don’t subscribe to my church, I think everybody is trying a little harder to be a little better.

Sometimes we hold ourselves back from that progress by holding up a “perfect mother” (real or imaginary) as the standard, one that we’ll never measure up to. And because we don’t measure up, we beat ourselves up. But really, that attitude only defeats us before we’ve even begun to try. It doesn’t help anything to put myself down, so this morning, I rubbed the sleep from my bleary eyes and smiled at my (constantly) nursing baby.

Though I didn’t think about this at the time, I see now that this morning, I chose happiness.

Today wasn’t perfect, but it was a heck of a lot better than yesterday. And when it comes down to it, I think that general upward trend is good enough.