I am gonna share with you some of my top tips for being a good enough parent. So for many of us, we start the day and we are thinking about all of the things on our to-do list, and we're just struggling to find enough time in the day for. Giving our kids the attention we need. We are often up and getting and rushing them in the mornings, getting them out the door and on our way.
And then we've gotta shift gears, be fully present, whether for the people that we're we are running into next, whether it's at work and whether it's in other parts of our lives. And this constant to-do list is just running through our brain of. All of the things that we should or could do, whether we should have gone to the gym or we should have gone for that walk, or we should have had our supplements before we left the house, or we really should have done this or that or the other thing.
And we should call our friend. We should go visit our mother. We should, all of these things that that run through our brain. And so we constantly telling ourself this story that we is not enough because we could or should be doing better. And there's a few parts, to. To this, and the first suggestion that I would have is that any of those stories that we tell ourselves, none of them are helpful.
None. None of them are helpful. And there's this model, that I've learned about more recently. It's called the Drama Triangle, and I've learned about it through a fellow named Andrew Leach, and I encourage you to check him out. He's got some amazing work through evolutionary intelligence, which is his business and.
He talks about this idea of how we either come from a place of love or fear, and when we're coming from a place of fear, we can sit within this drama triangle where we're one of three things. We're either playing the victim, we're in the role of rescuer, or we're in the role of persecutor, and wherever we sit in that triangle is complete waste of time.
It's completely unhelpful because with each of those parts of the triangle comes the stories associated with them, and so what. What we then start to do is we, so we fester in that space and we might only spend a minute or two as a victim, and then we move into the rescuer mode and we start wanting to solve problems for everyone else and just getting in and doing it for them or what have you.
And then we get tired of that and maybe it's an hour or so later, or maybe it's days or weeks later that we're, we are like done with this rescuer role and then we start to become the persecutor. Come on people. Why aren't you out there looking after yourselves? Get on with it. Rah. We start pointing the finger.
And so whatever. Our reality is that any time that we're spending in this drama triangle is just a waste of time. And the shift is really to try and get ourselves moving closer to this place of love. But for many of us. We don't even stop really to acknowledge the thoughts that we have. We are just running on autopilot.
And this narrative is just running in the background of our brains all day long. And because we're not really taking the time to stop and consider ourselves in the moment and being present in our bodies in the moment, we are just on this. Autopilot, of being dictated to by the thoughts that are going through our brain.
And so one of the challenges, I guess for all of us is to create some opportunities throughout our day where we can just stop, we can tune into our body. Just be present in the moment for a minute and we can start to notice those thoughts. We can start to notice how helpful or unhelpful they are, and if they are coming from that place of fear, we can start to say, hold on a minute, this is not helpful for me, and starting to choose.
Our thoughts because our thoughts control our beliefs, which co control our feelings, which control our actions. And so the more time that we are giving to these negative thoughts or these unhelpful stories, the more time that our brain is then just focused subconsciously on all of these issues. And it's not then moving to the things that we wanna be focused on, which is.
Positive things going on in our life and that, and coming from that place of love because we wanna have not only positive thoughts, but then that'll lead to positive beliefs, positive feelings, and then positive actions. So to enable us to make that shift, we need to be stopping tuning into our body. And consciously making that choice to shift from fear to love.
The way that we do that is through finding times throughout the day that you can practice this. So first thing when you wake up in the morning, you take three deep breaths, you tune into your body and you choose to. You acknowledge the thoughts that you're having and you choose the thoughts that you want to have, and you choose to focus on something positive.
Maybe when you're on the toilet, having a shower, waiting for your coffee when you first get into the car, when you get out of the car. There's all of these little moments across the day that if we can stack these habits against of three deep breaths. Noticing what you're thinking, choosing a more positive thought.
That we are going to start to notice one that we're getting better at tuning into our body, noticing what we are thinking, and we can start then to get better at noticing what our, not just what our brain and our mind is saying, but what our heart and our gut is saying as well. So the more that we practice that, the more attuned that we come to ourselves, the more present that we are throughout the day, within lots of different moments, because we're giving ourselves the opportunity just to be.
Not to be worried about the past, not to be worried about the future. We're just being in the moment in our body. For that few seconds that it takes to do this exercise. And then when we can start to string that together for more and more moments throughout the day, what we're going to start to see is a calmness coming over us and a letting go of some of our anxieties and our worries and that need to rush, and we start going to then from there, start to see more positive things starting to flow into our lives because we've made this conscious decision to move away from.
The fear and the drama triangle and our worries and our negative thoughts to this more conscious choosing of more positive thoughts, which are gonna lead to more positive behaviors and more positive feelings. And that then energetically is gonna flow out into the people that were, that are around us.
So whilst many of us, have got more than enough going on in our world, I have this little challenge to you is to practice that. That's my number one tip I think over any other tip, is to find half a dozen times, maybe a dozen times throughout the day that you can stack the habit of three deep breaths, noticing in your body what you're thinking cognitively choosing.
To think something more positive or something more helpful. Noticing what's happening in our body and what our gut and what our heart is saying to us, and seeing how that over the course of the day and the week and the month, as we stack that habit more and more frequently, how it starts to shift our perception on the world and how we show up for the people that, that we know and love in our world.
So that's my number one tip. My. Number two tip for the good enough parenting model and for cutting ourselves some slack. And how we show up in this world is getting better at putting our own oxygen mask on first. And it's a really hard thing to do because particularly when life gets busy and when we've got a lot of things on our plate, is that we just put everyone else's needs before our own and it's so easy to let our own needs slip.
But when you get into the habit of prioritizing your own needs first, then we show up so much better for everyone else in our world. And all the things on our to-do list become so much more easeful. So in the interest of not overdoing it on the instructions for how you show up. That way, how you put yourself first.
It might be little things, it might be some discipline in the morning. As much as it's kind on ourselves to sleep in and I'm the worst for it sometimes in thinking that it's a kindness that I'm giving myself to sleep in. There's a real discipline that, so the science shows us that the first three days of setting the alarm and getting outta bed a little bit earlier are the hardest.
But after the third day, our brain cognitively adjusts to the new time and it gets significantly easier, but we've gotta be consistent. And that's the bit that I think we sometimes see it as a kindness to ourselves to, to stop the consistency. But it's actually possibly not. It's possibly more, a self-sabotage of ourselves. And that's something I've had to come to terms with a lot over the last few months is that sense of what I thought was self-care, but was possibly self-sabotage. So for some of us, it is just literally waking, like setting an alarm to wake up a little bit earlier so that we can lay in bed.
And do a little bit of breathing or a little bit of meditation so that we're not being dictated to and woken up by our kids. And then from the moment we're awake, we're at the mercy of everyone else. It's giving ourselves that tiny little bit of breathing time, even if it's just five minutes to ourselves, it makes a big deal.
It is a big deal. If you've got the opportunity and you're fortunate enough to live with other people that can help you out in this space it's having the conversation and saying, this is what I need. Getting some sort of agreement around what some support might look like in the self-care space.
So in our house, we've got an agreement. The boards goes to the gym at 5:00 AM and then from 7:00 AM it's my time for a bit. And so he'll either take over at that time and then I can go and have my time. So I do the early bit and the kids wake up at. Five, six, whatever time they're awake, he's at the gym, which is sometimes super frustrating, particularly if I've done the night shift too.
And, but then we have this agreement that at 7:00 AM that I'm outta there for a bit and he'll handle the chaos of what needs to happen next. And I will go and do my own self-care. And so. Whether that self care for you is just a five minute uninterrupted shower, or whether it's going for a walking out of the chaos of the house and going for a walk at a certain time of day so that you can come back in feeling more rested and more, more settled and ready to handle what's coming at you.
That I think is essential in giving us. Energetically the support that we need to show up in the way that we wanna show up for the people in our world. But if we don't practice putting ourselves first and putting our own oxygen mask on first, then we just can't continue to give from an empty cup.
And for many of us. We are the glue that's holding our families together. And so that ability to put ourselves first, well, we feel like it's really selfish and we've been trained generally from generations before us that it's the selfish thing to do. What you'll really notice very quickly is that one the energy of the whole house shifts when your energy shifts and two, that you are then modeling.
The behaviors that you want your kids to to be practicing when they're adults. And so it's not like monkey see, monkey do if they see you not looking after yourself. If they see you putting everyone else before yourself, then that's the skills that they're going to be. I embedding in their own lives when they're older.
But if they see you setting great boundaries and having really good discipline around looking after yourself, then as they get older they'll instill those behaviors in their life. And so in some ways, this is one of the biggest gifts that you can give them is the modeling of what self-care looks like and how you show up and do that in.
In front of them or just in, in your day to day life, they're gonna be picking up on not just the bits of that they see, but in the way that then you are showing up with them for them because of that. So. Look, I could talk all day about all of the tips, but that's possibly two of the most powerful ones when it comes to, to really getting started in this space.
And if you can nail those two, then gosh, everything else flows so much easier from there.
I recently saw a promotion for the scene movie on Instagram, and Maggie Dent was speaking about this notion of good enough parenting, and it's come from some research that happened quite a long time ago, and. The theory is, or what the research proved was that if we're attuned to our kids' needs 30% of the time, then that's good enough for helping them to develop secure attachment and to be grow into well-rounded adults.
And so whilst I'm not saying that we need to be out there neglecting our kids by any means, I think what is important for us to do is to cut ourselves some slack if we are not. If we're missing cues and we are not attuned to our kids' needs all of the time, then that's okay. In fact, it's actually in some ways good for them.
What happens when we're not attuned to our kids' needs all of the time is that it, it allows them to start to express a range of emotions and allows them to start to find some ways to. It's for them to communicate their needs to us better. If we are jumping in and fixing things all the time, as soon as they first express it, then they're not learning how to problem solve for themselves necessarily.
And so whilst I'm definitely not encouraging us to be neglectful of our kids, I think it is okay for us to know that. We don't need to be at their beck and call all of the time. What happens sometimes I think as particularly when we're first starting out as parents, is that we are constantly putting this pressure on ourselves to be perfect and we're feeling guilty when we are not fully present for our kids all of the time.
And whilst there's definitely things that we can talk about when it comes to cutting ourselves some slack in that space. That piece of the research that sort of talks about like 30 70 rule, just getting it right 30% of the time is good enough I think can help to take some of that pressure off that thought that maybe we're failing because we're not showing up as well as we want to or we could be or all of the things.
So the things that matter most. When it comes to this 30 70 model, is it in the gaps in between times say we've missed some cues, say our kids are in distress and we haven't been fully present for them. Is that when we do connect with them, that we repair the relationship, we're repairing any ruptures that might have been there where they've felt unseen or unheard or not cared about.
And we are modeling to them what that looks like because that's where the gold is for the kids. That's where they're gonna learn so much from us, is in how we show up to, to demonstrate and to model to them that healthy relationship piece of repairing relationships when things haven't gone the way that we wanted them to.
How we help support them through building their tolerance and their ability to regulate and supporting them in that manner of that co-regulation piece. So when we are tuning into them, we are modeling then to them. This is how we get through these hard times. This is how we overcome these challenges that you've faced.
And if we were showing up and attuned to their needs all of the time, if we were perfect, we wouldn't have those opportunities. We wouldn't get those chances to model for them. These really important behaviors, and it's the modeling of these important behaviors that are setting them up for success. So next time you're feeling guilty about not being attuned enough to your kids' needs or fully present in the moment with them, would you to cut yourself some slack and just remind yourself of the 30 70 rule, but also of the fact that one of the non-negotiables for kids in their world is that they have at least one adult figure in their life that loves them unconditionally and.
If you can be that person in your child's world, and hopefully your child has heaps of these people in their world, but if you can focus on that part, that is good enough.
