Gladiator or Ankle Strap?
We are hours away from leaving for a family wedding and my daughter is desperate to have new shoes (the ones I’d promised her a while back). I’d put off the search kind of hoping she would forget. She’s in a growth spurt and the conscious consumer in me cringes of the idea of buying a pair of shoes to wear once.
But here we are – at Nordstrom Rack. A dilemma on our hands…she’s managed to find two pairs of shoes and is feels strongly that she might “die” if she doesn’t get them both. What’s a mother to do?
This brings me to the first C in my constructive living method.
CLARITY
What does shoe shopping have to do with this anyway? I’ll tell you.
Clarity is something we tend to be more aware of when it comes to the big decisions in our lives: choosing a partner, buying a home, switching careers. But a lot of us are stuck in distractive living when it comes to the small ones.
We beat ourselves up over that extra slice of cake, binge watching Netflix on a weekday, or not making time to workout one day. None of these as stand-alone events will change anything. Except that our lives are mostly made up of these small events.
So why are we so hard on ourselves over these insignificant details? Because the small things are really small steps. Our choice to react or respond reflects our level of clarity. The small stuff doesn’t need to be a big deal, but when we consistently stop showing up for what we want in the small things, we alter our trajectory.
When we are clear, we know our why and making choices that move our goal needle are easy. We focus on what we gain rather than what we give up.
Meanwhile…back at Nordstrom Rack…
I weigh my options. I acknowledge my daughter’s desire for both shoes. (Being a shoe person myself, I really do understand her position). I calmly tell her that she gets to choose one pair of shoes. And that one pair, while less than two, is still one more pair than she has now.
We go over the usual stuff like that we had a plan to buy only one pair, we are working within a budget, and to practice shifting our focus and using gratefulness towards the one pair we were purchasing instead of focusing on the one shiny pair we were leaving behind.
And then, I walked away.
I gave her time to process. Honestly, I needed the time to practice my own breathing. I embarked on this errand thinking it would be quick and this was beginning to feel frustrating to me. I was burning more time than I expected to. But my clarity on what I wanted for her outweighed my egotistical need to use power.
There were tears and frustration, but in the end, she chose one pair and walked out with a smile. She learned she could make tough decisions. She learned to work within the constraints she had. She learned she could be grateful while wanting more. She left more confident in her abilities. And that, to me, was worth every minute we spent there.
I left feeling grateful for my clarity. I do not always make the aligned choice, but that day I did. And it felt so good. Parenting, like everything else in life, is one small action after another.
Making an aligned small choice has a significantly larger emotional payout than you would expect. It shapes who we believe we are. It’s another line we add to our story. What we believe about ourselves and our abilities affects everything, big or small.
So how do we get CLARITY? Living the Hero Lifestyle is about embracing each element of my Constructive Living Method. You can do so by utilizing four tools. Here’s how it looks.
You need AWARENESS to establish clarity. You’ve been working on this over the last two weeks (see previous posts). You need to reconnect to yourself and understand what you’re currently doing and thinking so you can take the next step.
Set your INTENTION – that’s where you want to be. Start with one big picture intention, then set an intention daily. I think waking up and stating your intention for your day is powerful. Then you’re creating momentum with your clarity.
You’ve got a Point A (current location) and a Point B (goal). Now use PERSPECTIVE to look at all your options. Judgement and comparison have no purpose here. They’ll just plop you back into distractive living. Stay open. How can you see things differently and get more clarity on what’s possible?
Then there’s CHOICE. You have a goal and can take intentional action. You always have choice – not in what happens to you, but in whether you react or respond with aligned thought and action.
