If you've laid in bed at night or woken up in the morning with that feeling of dread of this is just all too much. It feels like we're failing in every space and we are trying our best to do all of the things, but it's just not working. There's a loneliness that comes with that, and what our default is often is to say, we are not enough.
We are not doing this enough. We're not doing that well enough. Um. That it's us. It's us. That's not getting it right. I guess I'm here to share as a mom of four, as someone that's been in the workforce right through that time and largely carrying a huge mental load at home as well, trying to take care of my own wellbeing, often felt that feeling of not enoughness and what I think it probably really is, is not.
Necessarily that it's anything that I'm doing wrong, and certainly imagine it's the same for you guys, it's that there's a sense of loneliness on the journey and a sense that, um, we are not feeling safe and secure enough to share how we're feeling and to share the burden of responsibility that comes with that.
We're seeing this really unrealistic. Um, notion of what life should look like on our social media and through the TV shows that we're watching and through what we're seeing from our friends and, um, the other moms at the drop off or the people at work is that there's this. Unwritten expectation that we're gonna be killing it at work, that we're gonna be killing it with the kids, that we're gonna be killing it with our own physical and mental health, and that we're gonna have these beautiful, clean homes and the perfect healthy diet and all of the other components to that, and the most healthy relationships with our partners, et cetera, et cetera.
And I think that expectation is just setting us up to fail. And what the play way is about is. It's about speaking into the truth of what's most important and helping you sift through all of the shoulds and all of the perfectionism and all of the expectations that we're seeing out there in the material world, and getting to the crux of what actually matters here.
And when I think of that in my journey over the last 20 years in the child development space and sort of over the last 10 years of parenting. What I've come to learn is that we are our own worst enemy in terms of the pressure that we are putting on ourselves and the expectations and perfectionism that we're placing on ourselves to get everything right when so much of what we're worried about.
Doesn't even matter. I love something that I saw from Maggie Den just recently, um, in relation to the movie scene where she talks about how the science is telling us now that we just need to get it right 30% of the time, we don't even need to get it right, like 70, 80, 90% of the time. We only need to get it right 30% of the time.
And if. If our kids have just one person in their world that genuinely loves and cares for them, then the, the odds of them turning out well and well-rounded and successful is. Significant. So I hope that that brings you a little piece of bit of peace of mind is that you don't have to get it perfect. And if anything, what's best for our kids is that they see our imperfections, uh, because if they see us striving to be perfect, if they see us beating ourselves up, if they see us being super anxious, because we are constantly rushing to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing.
It's that that we're modeling to them, that's the default programming that we're setting them up with. So by cutting ourselves some slack and by taking care of ourselves first, we're actually setting them up for the most success possible because they are really resilient little humans, and there's so much that we are already getting right with them.
What I hope that we can help support you with through the play way is cutting through the crap and getting to the. The crux of these are the things that matter most at the play, where we've got six foundations for raising happy, healthy, and confident kids. Comes down to, to things that we know. We, it's, we've known about this stuff for years.
We're seeing it coming out in the science all of the time. It's super simple, basic stuff, but we often overlook it or overcomplicate it. So our six foundations are quality, sleep, real food, time in nature. Love and connection, movement and free play. And so based on those fundamentals, incorporating those into our own day, prioritizing those in our own life, it's gonna calm our nervous system.
It's gonna help us regulate, and it's gonna make it so much easier for us to. Get out of our own heads to get down into our bodies and our, and listen to our gut around what feels right, because we're often looking outside of ourselves for the answers into how we should be supporting our kids and what we could be doing better and.
And all of the solutions when the answer is sitting inside of us most of the time, and our gut is telling us exactly what we should be doing, but we are not trusting it or we're not getting still enough and quieting our mind enough to hear it and to listen to it. And so whilst. It's handy to have a guidebook, a bit like what we're providing for you.
That can be that reference point when you need it to just get the validation that what what you're doing is on the right track and that, um, and that you're not overcomplicating it, and that these are the things that are gonna sort of take you closer to your goals, particularly if you're coming across a challenging time like a fussy eater or a child that's having some difficulty with sleep or maybe some, some challenges with their regulation.
It's definitely handy to have that trusted guidepost when it comes to those, those hurdles. But there's an element as well of what we are here to do is to say, you've got this. That through taking care of yourself and supporting yourself and being able to still yourself and quiet your mind, you'll be able to feel in your gut what the next right step is.
And there is so much gold in that for raising happy, healthy, and confident kids, is that when we start to listen to our gut, when we start to trust our instincts and come from that place of calm, we are subconsciously modeling that to our kids. Our kids have got their mirror neurons firing all of the time, and they're picking up on our energy all of the time, and so the most powerful thing for them that we can do.
Is manage our own state. So when you, you're taking the time before you fall to sleep at night, and you are worrying about all of the things that you're not getting right? Take a moment to think about all of the things that you have got right for a start, but all of the things that you want for you and your child in terms of, um.
In terms of your health, in terms of your wellness, in terms of your happiness and your joy, what are the things that matters matters most? And when you go to sleep with that intention in your mind, instead of all of the worries and the stress, then you're subconsciously already starting to attract those solutions into your world so your subconscious mind can get to work on.
Finding the solutions to those things. We've got a part of our brain called our reticular activating system, and when it's constantly on the lookout for threats, and so when our nervous system and our brain is feeding at things to be wary of and things to worry about, then it will go looking and finding those, um, evidence of that in our surroundings equally so when we find, when we, when we're feeding it.
Um, information that's more positive, then it's going about finding validation of that as well. I guess a silly example is when you're thinking about buying a new car and you're thinking about, oh, I want this particular type of car and this particular type of color because I never see that out and about, and then all of a sudden you start seeing that car everywhere.
That's your reticular activating system. There's millions of pieces of information coming into our, um. Environment at any given moment, and our brain is having to filter out all of those bits of information to focus on the things that matter. And our reticular activating system is helping our brain to filter out the bits that aren't important and to just focus on the bits that that are relevant.
And so if we are feeding in that we are keen to buy this. A bright purple sports car and we've never seen one on the road before. Then all of a sudden our our brain is gonna start noticing. Those bright purple sports cars everywhere we look. And the same is true when we're focusing all of on all of the things that are not going well in our our lives.
All of our failures, all the things we stuffed up, all the things we could have done better, all the things that could go wrong. Oh my gosh, that's probably been my biggest challenge since I've become a parent, is my default setting As soon as there's a happy moment. In my life, and I'm sitting there and I'm looking at the kids with so much love.
Maybe they're asleep and they're quiet and it's like, oh my gosh, you're just so beautiful. You're asleep. And then the very next thought is, oh my God, what would happen if something happened to you? And you start running through all of the possible things that could happen to them, and they're just outrageously crazy things.
And maybe it was something you saw on the news or maybe it was something you, you read on Instagram about all of these horrendous things that could possibly happen to your child and. Then you go straight into this worry mode instead of this calm, beautiful joy that you were experiencing a few seconds earlier.
So what I'm saying here is that's normal. We all do it, but we're also our own worst en enemy When we allow our brain to keep thinking about those things, because just because we have those thoughts doesn't mean we need to give them any energy. It's okay for us to have that thought and go, oh gosh, don't be ridiculous.
And to tell that fear part of our brain to. Let that go and to refocus on the things that are helpful. So going to bed at night, really focusing on what your ideal looks like is going to allow that subconscious part of your brain to start finding those solutions and attracting more of those. Things into your awareness and your brain will start noticing more of those things in the days that follow.
And from that, you'll start to notice these tiny little shifts in your energy towards the more positive things rather than noticing all of the things that are not going so well. So I guess, uh, that's a very little snippet of, uh. Of, I guess some of the, the challenges that many of us are having, and what I'm hoping that we can achieve by bringing great people like you into our community is that together we can have these conversations.
We can recognize that we're not alone on this journey, that so many of us are having the same worries, the same fears, the same challenges, and there's this. A sense of calm just in knowing that you're not alone and that other people are having these exact same worries. And then together we can look at simple, practical ways to work through this because parenting is the hardest job you're ever gonna have.
And that's probably only true for the good parents. Um, more so, and we wanna make, like, this is such a magical time of our lives, really, but we lose so much of the magic. Because we're up in our own heads and we are worrying about what's happened yesterday, what's happening tomorrow, what could happen next week or month, next month.
90% of the things that we're worried about don't even eventuate. But that default to go to that fear and that worry and that self-protection just overrides so much of the joy that we're experiencing in our lives. And we wanna make sure that as a community we can be supporting each other too. Call that stuff out, to cut through the crap and to get to the bits that really matter and the things that are really gonna take us closer to one, feeling more joy and happiness in our own lives.
And two, supporting our kids to become the best humans that they can be. And that's ultimately what we're here for. So check out our hub, see if it's, uh, the kind of thing that you think might. Be what you need right now, and we would love to join you on this journey of helping to raise happy, healthy, and confident kids.
