Guest blog by Leanne Scott
Do you remember: ‘You are what you eat?’. I have got to admit to not really having watched this programme, but the phrase is one that I am overly familiar with.
How many times have we heard that phrase?
‘You are what you eat’
What you put into your body affects who you are: it affects your moods, your health and so on.
How many times have you heard the all too important phrase:
‘You are the words you tell yourself’
My guess is not often enough.
The words we speak over ourselves are immensely important, they can play a major role in
transforming our day. When we become parents, we often read and want to find out a lot about our baby: what is the best thing for me to be doing so that my baby thrives, feels loved, is nourished? As new parents, how many of us read or find out about the things that will help ourselves thrive, feel loved and nourished?
Parenthood changes us, sometimes beyond recognition.
Lack of sleep, loss of identity, the mundane routine of those early days – all have an impact on how we feel about ourselves. As the broken nights wear away at us, we can start to become judgmental about ourselves, we can begin to lose our confidence, we may even tell ourselves that we can’t do this, that we are not good enough to be parents.
Believe me when I say that I have been there.
As a mum, I went through a dark time when I could not see anything positive about who I was, what I was to my children. Years (and I do sadly mean years – 4 in fact) of broken sleep, not much of a support network, a child who I struggled to take to baby and toddler groups due to his behaviour; all led me to believe that I wasn’t good enough.
For a long time, I told myself over and over again that I wasn’t good enough. That I didn’t deserve my children. But with time things started to change.
You see that’s the thing about parenthood, people always tell you that things will change and they do get better but when you are in the midst of the darkness, the sleepless nights, those days feel like they will never be.
One of the tools I started to use that had a massive impact on changing things around for me are affirmations. I started to become aware of the way I spoke to myself.
I started to speak positive words over myself, reminders of why I was a good mum.
I want to offer you this tool too as I am a huge believer in the power of affirmations.
Using affirmations will enable you to feel loved, nourished and help you to thrive in this ever-
changing journey called parenthood.
Affirmations are positive statements; they can be a single phrase or they can be as long as you want them to be.
The more we speak those positive statements over our lives, the more we use them; the more we start to believe the words we are speaking over ourselves.
Affirmations are a great tool to use to help us as parents to start our day right, to remind us of our inner strength, to allow us the grace to be kind to ourselves. As we speak affirmations over ourselves, they start to become beliefs we hold about who we are.
This then allows us to take positive actions in our lives.
Powerful affirmations can come from within.
We can create our own affirmations by simply writing the following sentence down on a blank piece of paper:
‘I am a good parent because….’
then set a timer for ten minutes (5, if 10 feels too daunting) and finish off that sentence as many times as you can.
Examples could be:
‘I am a good parent because I choose to get out of bed.’
‘I am good parent because I fed my baby in the middle of the night.’
‘I am a good parent because I change my baby’s nappy.’
‘I am a good parent because I choose to say no to the things that will harm me.’
Go ahead and give it a try, you may be amazed at what you end up writing down.
For further information about affirmations and their power ‘A Wee Book of Affirmations for Mothers’ is a ten-page PDF written by me to help you on your journey of motherhood.
About the author
I'm Leanne, a mum of 3, wife of 1.
I coach mothers, helping them move from overwhelm to a self-belief in their amazingness.
My wee family lives in Dunfermline, Scotland.
I love reading, tea and cake.
I am the Founder of REAL MUMS Facebook Community.
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