Unexpected Solution
One of my daughters has been struggling with headaches.
Every time she gets one, we run her through the litany of factors that may contribute:
Did you get enough sleep?
Did you eat?
Did you drink?
Did you exercise?
(And then I must confess, I start blaming her for any choices she made that could contribute to the headaches. Yes, I’m a bad mom. But bedtime is a constant battle in our house.)
Recently, I shared the predicament with my friend Lucy Chen, a career and life coach.
“May I make a suggestion?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, expecting her to tell me about some new headache prevention method she’d read about, like an herbal supplement or a tea remedy.
“Try massage,” she said.
Interesting, I thought.
“And tell her you love her,” Lucy added.
That’s right. I had completely forgotten.
The pediatrician had said stress is a major contributing factor for headaches in children these days, and she said the solution was to let kids “talk, talk, talk.”
I could further support my child by helping her de-stress, rather than adding to her stress.
At another point in the conversation between Lucy and I, Lucy mentioned she had written down some business goals and kept them in her pocket so she could regularly see them — a practice recommended in the book The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield that we are both reading.
When I returned home I wrote my goals on a piece of paper:
I love you
Massage
Praise
Hug
4HWW (Four Hour Work Week - I work more than 4 hours a week, but I wanted to remind myself not to overwork when the kids are in school, so I can have bandwidth to be patient with them when they return home.)
I realized my goal sheet doesn’t have to be professional.
If I can accomplish just some of these items on my card every day, I am a success.
How about you - what are you goals, both professional and personal, these days? How do you remember them? Have you come up with any unexpected solutions to challenges you’re facing?
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