Tag: accomplishment

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Fulfillment

Feeling Fulfilled Fridays 7 & 8

It’s feeling fulfilled Friday on MamaBlogga! Here’s how it works:

  1. Make a list of things that make you feel accomplished (but aren’t so huge that they take more than a day or a week)
  2. During the week, try to focus on those things that help us feel accomplished
  3. Report on feeling fulfilled Friday

Man. I just realized that I’d worked so hard on last week’s post—but never pushed Publish. Arg!

This week: I’m adding something new to my list of things that feel accomplished. Even though I’m an introvert (or possibly because I’m an introvert), taking the kids out for errands and/or something fun makes me feel accomplished.

Monday, I wanted to pick up some new conditioner and milk and eggs (conveniently forgetting the fact that Ryan bought a fresh dozen on Saturday). There was also a pet store and a book store that often has inexpensive kids’ books and activities, so I added those to our trip. And yesterday, I took the kids to play in one of the play areas of the mall.

Taking the kids out also guarantees that we’ll all get dressed and we’ll get away from the computer and the television. (I swear those things have tractor beams!)

Last week:
This week has had some of my highest recent moments of motherhood—and my lowest moments ever.

This week, a family member took me aside to praise me on how well I’m working with Hayden. He’s a pretty typical four-year-old, I hope. He throws several tantrums a day and the most common response to not getting what he wants the second he wants it is to fly off the handle.

(Ahem. No idea where he gets it.)

And every once in a while, I can look like I’m handling it well. Now that makes me feel accomplished!

What’s made you feel accomplished this week?

Categories
Fulfillment

Feeling fulfilled Fridays 6

It’s feeling fulfilled Friday on MamaBlogga! Here’s how it works:

  1. Make a list of things that make you feel accomplished (but aren’t so huge that they take more than a day or a week)
  2. During the week, try to focus on those things that help us feel accomplished
  3. Report on feeling fulfilled Friday

This week I happened to come across my list again and reread it. (The last couple weeks I’ve been working from memory.) I’d forgotten that many of the things I had on my list were so simple.

And I think that’s the bottom line of this exercise: recognizing the simple things in motherhood that make us feel good, like we’ve done something productive, and focusing on those things.

Motherhood isn’t about doing—but most of motherhood is doing. If we can do more of the things that make us feel good about what we’re doing, I hope we can feel better about what we’re doing as a whole.

Edited to add: Lindsey’s feeling fulfilled!

What do you think? What makes you feel accomplished? Are we ready to participate?

Categories
Fulfillment

Feeling accomplished—doing something you can control

So much of motherhood is out of our control. We can’t control if or when we get pregnant, despite our best efforts. And it goes downhill from there. One of the first things we learn as a mother (and then spend the rest of our lives learning, it seems), is that these are little people—little, independent people. Although you can try to create the most favorable conditions possible, you can’t make them sleep, you can’t make them eat—and the list only grows as they get bigger.

The sense of accomplishment that I’m going for with Feeling Fulfilled Fridays might be looking for a little control in motherhood—and that’s not a bad thing, I think. We have to recognize what we can and can’t control, and then focus on what we can control.

When I made out my list of things that make me feel accomplished, I purposefully left some stuff off. I feel very accomplished when my children grasp something new, when I get them to do their chores, when we all get along.

But I can’t force my children to understand something, or physically compel them to clean up, or make them not scream and hit. I can’t tie my happiness to things I can’t control—the little everyday up and downs of living with other people.

Instead, I looked for things that I can control—I can try to teach them something new (regardless of whether they get it). I can instruct them (and, if necessary, discipline them) in doing their chores. I can spend time with them doing things they like and being kind and patient with them, creating an environment where we’re more likely to get along.

Being happy, as a mom and as a person, is just too important to leave to chance—and too big a responsibility to place on our children. They can’t force us to be happy any more than we can make them fall asleep.

What do you do to help get “control” in your life? How does that work? How does that make you feel accomplished?

Photo by DM

Categories
Fulfillment

Feeling Fulfilled Fridays!

A New Feature on MamaBlogga

A couple months ago, one of my bloggy friends wrote a short post detailing things that made her feel “super accomplished.” Her list included things she’d done with each member of her family that week—specifically, time she’d spent one-on-one with each of them—as well as things that make her happy personally. A-ha, I thought. That has something to do with fulfillment! How can I steal build upon that?

The “big” accomplishment of motherhood is years—even decades—away. We can’t put off feeling fulfilled in this most important calling until our kids have kids of their own. So I want to help mothers find fulfillment in motherhood (and find it myself) every day—or at least once a week. And since Friday is not only alliterative, but a good time to review the accomplishments of a week, that’s when we’ll do it!

So, what are Feeling Fulfilled Fridays? They’re Fridays where we can look back over our week and say, “Yeah, I accomplished something this week.”

How do we know we’ve accomplished something? This can work a couple different ways. For me, I’m going to make a list of things that make me feel super accomplished. (Note: not über accomplished, like birthing a baby or finishing a first draft. Those kind of “accomplishment” milestones are a long time coming. I’m sticking to stuff I can do in a day or a week.) On Sundays or Mondays, I’m going to pick two or three things from the list and strive to complete those at least once during the week. On Fridays, I’ll share.

Great. How can you get in on that action? I’m so glad you asked! The way I most want you to participate is to think about things that make you feel accomplished as a mom and a person and make time for those things. But if you’d like to report back on how that experience makes you feel, I’d be delighted to hear about it. Next week, I’ll have a Mr Linky (or something similar) up for people to add links to their blog posts. You can also comment on next week’s Feeling Fulfilled Friday post if you don’t want to do your own.

Until then, spread the word! Let’s see how many people we can get in on this! Check back on Monday for awesome badges for your blog.

So, what makes you feel super accomplished?

Photo by Leo Reynolds