Presence In Parenting: The Importance Of Staying Present Throughout Motherhood

This was orignally posted on http://blog.earthmamaangelbaby.com/importance-presence-motherhood/
It is my blog post, and I am a current member of the Earth Mama Angel Baby Mama Bump Squad as seen in this link
http://blog.earthmama.com/tag/kati/
I just wanted to share the info with everyone on the steemit community!
Imagine yourself walking on a dark,foggy path. At first you are a disoriented with no path set ahead or behind you. Then, you remember to turn on your flashlight, and the light cuts through the darkness, creating a narrow, clear space right in front of you. In this analogy, the fog/darkness represent the mundane daily routine of motherhood, our flashlight is our presence or conscious with the clear space being our present moment and the path being our ultimate purpose or journey. Most of us travel through motherhood, forgetting to turn on our flashlight, and ultimately, end up lost in the fog! By using a simple method of Recognize, Re-frame and Resume, we can bring consciousness, or shine a light on the present and learn to enjoy the journey on the path of motherhood!

The first step is to recognize when we're resistant to what is. Perhaps it's a spilled sippy cup on a freshly mopped floor, a traffic jam with a screaming kid or a picky eater turning up their nose to a meal we spent all evening preparing. What ever the issue, the resistance is the egos fear pretending to be strong when faced with a circumstance it judges as threatening. We can recognize resistance to the moment through physical signs such as: shallow breathing, increased heart rate, tension and overall bad vibes. Emotionally, we may be feeling judgement, negativity or frustration. Most of us will subconsciously identify with these symptoms, causing us to put labels on the current situation, which will only attach us to the "fog" on our path. For instance, verbally expressing our frustration in having to clean up a mess on a perfectly good floor instead of using it as an opportunity to teach our little one how to clean up a liquidy mess. Once we bring recognition to our resistance, we allow for the adjustment of our mindset and "re-frame" the reality of our present moment.
We can re-frame our reality by bringing awareness to our inner aliveness or being. The best way to direct our focus inward, is to focus on our breathing, drawing the breath from deep in our gut/diaphragm, instead of our chest. Feeling the energy of life as the breath cycles through our body. This focus inward gives us the chance to put ourselves in check, to reassess the reality. This can be done by asking yourself a few questions: 1. Can I do anything to change this life situation? (seek to understand why our child is upset, offer something else to the picky eater, etc) 2. Can I improve the situation? (take an alternate route during rush hour, put on songs your child enjoys, laugh at the spilled cup remembering that accidents will happen) 3. Can I remove myself from it? (leave the room during a battle of wills with your child or put yourself in a time out till you calm down). Once we have addressed these questions, reconnected with our inner being and re-framed our reality, we are ready to move forward!

By moving forward, we've made a choice, a choice which began the moment we dis-identified from our mind and its' conditioned patterns in order to bring forth a better reality for ourselves. It is also a time to determine how you're going to make peace with the present moment. That peace can grow deeper by consciously deciding to experience reality on 3 basic levels, each one more important than the next: Acceptance, Enjoyment and Enthusiasm. Once you accept the fact that motherhood can sometimes be mundane, you can learn to enjoy every day (no matter how similar each day may seem) and then approach each day with enthusiasm! An easy question to help you gauge which level you're on is, Am I being friends with the now? Choosing to resume, means you are continuing through the fog with your flashlight turned ON!
Learning to recognize, re-frame and resume, we can connect our doing with being. As a result, we will have a new inner peace from relinquishing our mental/emotional resistance to the present moment!