The story I’m telling myself is…

Perception

Everything that we experience is our perception of the experience. It’s not what actually happened. It’s how we perceive it. That’s why you can have three eyewitness accounts of the same incident and have three completely separate accounts. How we experience something is a combination of what happened, the way that we view the world, the split-second assumptions that we make about what’s happening, and the stories we tell ourselves about the other person. So, for instance, if my husband always makes me coffee in the morning and brings it to me in bed… but today he didn’t. My experience is in one part factual: I’m in bed with no coffee. And one part perception: My husband didn’t bring me coffee because….

And then my brain fills in the blank. Maybe he’s mad at me because we got into a little spat last night before bed. Maybe he’s not feeling good. He forgot about me. I’m not important to him. I’ll tell you right now, our brains don’t often fill that gap with something good… they have to be trained to do that. Now, because I’ve perceived something as a problem with me, I get out of bed, and I’m “off”... nothing major, just off… and the morning unfolds from there. 

Sound familiar?

What’s the tool that we can use here? It’s a simple phrase that changed my life, “The story I’m telling myself is…” We stop our brains from making assumptions about other people and their motives when we say this sentence. In this example, “The story that I’m telling myself is that he intentionally didn’t bring me coffee because he’s mad at me from last night.” Next question. “Is that true?” 

Listen.

When we’re in relationships with people who are hard for us to love, we tell ourselves a lot of stories. In fact, the stories that we tell ourselves are part of why it’s so hard to love them. I’m not telling you to stop telling yourself stories (it’s human nature), I’m inviting you to become more aware of what you’re telling yourself.

Boundaries

Lord, have mercy, we have to talk about boundaries. As grown adults, we are responsible for very few things. I am responsible for my time, behaviors, choices, thoughts, values, desires, feelings, limits, attitudes, talents, and love. That’s it. I’m responsible to a lot of things… like, showing up for work. To be clear, I’m responsible for my children’s safety, security, and attending to their physical and emotional needs in a loving and nurturing way. Other than that, though, it’s back to this list. What am I not responsible for? This list, but for everybody else in my life. I am not responsible for my husband's time, values, feelings, etc. I am not responsible for my children’s behaviors, attitudes, thoughts, etc. I am responsible for mine. 

I don’t know about you, but learning this took me months, and some significant life circumstances that forced my hand into learning it. Even then, I had to put this list on every screen on my phone and memorize it. It became a daily mantra. I highly recommend it. You know why? Because it releases you from needing another person to show up a particular way in order to love them. I don’t need anybody else to show up a particular way for me to love them because I, and I alone, am responsible for my choices, my values, and my love. I don’t need a child to behave well to do the repair work that is mine to do. Why? Because I have a high value for connection in my relationships, and I know that repair is one of the ways that you protect and strengthen connection. I am a mother who repairs. Can you see it? Can you feel the difference? This list helps you define your parameters, and live within them… because nobody else can do it for you. What are you willing to live with? What do you value? How do you want to spend your time? You need the answers to those questions if you’re going to be in a relationship with somebody, especially when it’s in a hard season. 

In the scenario that I talked about earlier, I had to define what our home would look like and feel like. I would not provide free room and board for an adult who didn’t care to have a relationship with us. I would, however, have an open door for her to come back to whenever she needed it. The decision to stay or go was always hers; the clarity around what she was saying yes to if she stayed was mine to provide.

Control

If boundaries are hard, control might be even harder. These three things together, though, pack a powerful punch when it comes to stabilizing your own heart and mind. There are roughly 1,000,000,000^10 things in this world that I cannot control. Maybe more. Do you know what I can control though? The color of paint on my walls. If my bed is made or not. When my car leaves the driveway. The amount of energy I expend on problems that aren’t mine to fix. Understanding what is in our control (and what is not) is one of the most freeing things that I have ever experienced as an adult. I have agency. You have agency. The person next to you has agency. Your children, I hope, have agency. So, I can exist in this world as a kind, considerate human being aware that I’m in a relationship with other humans and consider them in my actions… but I don’t have to be consumed with how those actions are going to affect them if I’ve done my work of making sure that I’m not harming somebody. That’s a run-on sentence, but it matters. I don’t want, in any way, you to walk away from this post and think, “I can do whatever the heck I want to… I have agency! Other people be damned.” I do want you to walk away from this post and think, “What am I not doing because I’m worried about what other people will think?” “How am I showing up as a mom in situations where I’m worried about how my kid will react?”