Adventurous Mom

Posts Tagged ‘growing up’

I would be lying if I said that being a mom was what I wanted to be when I grew up. In fact it was the last thing on my mind. Our old­est son came into our life a total sur­prise when I was 24. At 18 years old, I walked out of church ser­mon when the pas­tor was insist­ing that a woman’s place was at home with her kids. No way, no how.…hell no!

It was 15 years later that I would even think about step­ping foot into a church again. Why? For my kids. Curi­ous isn’t it?

It is such an inter­est­ing evo­lu­tion that one’s life takes from being totally solo, to now fly­ing with lit­tle wing­men. I’m the mamma plane and they fol­low my every move. For the last 7 years, I have to admit, I was some­what annoyed that I couldn’t fly on my own, they were in my flight formation.

I really fought being a mother, every last ounce in me. It wasn’t that I didn’t love them, I loved them so much. What I hated is what I thought being a mom meant. I thought it meant I had to bake cook­ies, I had to be extra car­ing, I had to be atten­tive, I had to be “soft.” That wasn’t who I thought I was.

The fun­ni­est thing is that, when I decided to quit fight­ing moth­er­hood, I learned an inter­est­ing fact about myself: I don’t think I’m a typ­i­cal mom, and that’s okay–it’s really okay. And then, I found out that I really really like these lit­tle wing­men! In fact, I find that I learn more from them per­haps than they do from me for instance:

Life is Sim­ple and Not Complicated

Chil­dren do not see a rea­son to com­pli­cate life. They wake up…no…they bounce out of bed, hop-hop-hop down the hall to the kitchen table. They’re just happy to see the sun shin­ing and be awake! They don’t carry the bag­gage from yesterday’s events with them, they’re excited to see what today brings!
Rarely do they scour their closet for the per­fect out­fit, won­der­ing who they may need to impress today. Nope. They get dressed in what­ever clothes fit, and carry on about cre­at­ing fun!

Ques­tion Even the Basic Assumptions

My older son asked me one day: “Mom, why do peo­ple con­fuse their Left and Right, but they don’t con­fuse their Up and Down?” *Silence* Um…ummmm…hmmm… That’s a really good ques­tion son, I am not quite sure how to answer that. Up, down, left, right, all direc­tional, but maybe if our head was mounted in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, we wouldn’t be so con­fused about the left and right? I have no idea.

For­give­ness is Natural

Yes, we get frus­trated with our kids, and some­times irra­tionally so. We get tired, we get cranky, and then they have to screech at the top of their lungs the most annoy­ing sound in the world! Then here comes the evil mommy scream and yell.… Only to feel guilty about doing that 10 min­utes later. We go to apol­o­gize, and they eas­ily and read­ily accept the apol­ogy, it is nat­ural for them to for­give. Car­ry­ing grudges, hat­ing peo­ple and dis­dain is very for­eign to them.

There is Fun Around Every Corner

As I am writ­ing this post, my 5 year old has found my kitchen rolling pin, sit­ting on the office chair and play­ing “make the pizza” with his older brother. (Although hon­estly, I am wait­ing for one to hit the other over the head with the makeshift weapon!) Every wak­ing moment is fun and excit­ing. No won­der they love to pop out of bed! Where did we lose this fun and excite­ment as adults? Per­haps we don’t see the won­der and fun in everyday…everyday becomes a chore for us.

Since I became the Adven­tur­ous Mom, I have real­ized that I appre­ci­ate my chil­dren more than they could know. I strive to become more like them, more curi­ous, more for­giv­ing, liv­ing sim­pler, ques­tion­ing assump­tions, for­giv­ing quickly and hav­ing fun…every day!

What have your beau­ti­ful chil­dren taught you?

Are you still try­ing to decide what to be when you grow up? Regard­less of what you con­sider grown up: Are you doing what you want to right now? How did you get here?

When I blasted out to my Face­book friends ask­ing them about “What did you want to be when you grow up?” I got var­ied responses and some said they are still try­ing to fig­ure it out. But one good friend sticks out in my mind when she said: “I cer­tainly didn’t want to be a Dish Washer when I grew up.”

Your story is dif­fer­ent from my story but what might be the com­mon thread is that you may be in a life that you feel trapped or it is in con­flict with your val­ues. What I mean by this is not that your boss may be ask­ing you to steal….but per­haps you have a strong value for cre­ativ­ity, and you are audit­ing spread­sheets every day!! Ugh!

Are you really hear­ing that voice inside of you that is dis­sat­is­fied? Is your value free­dom? Free­dom from feel­ing trapped by a job? Or is your value secu­rity? Do you like hav­ing a secure job? None of these val­ues are wrong, they are yours and you should own them.

YOUR PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT

Some are strug­gling with clar­ity about what is their true call­ing in life. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!!! And let me tell you that this is okay too because no one needs to decide right now. But when you find that call­ing, you will know it because you will stay awake all night and be excited all day to bring into fruition your new found occupation.

Per­haps also, we should view this from another angle: Instead of decid­ing what you want to DO every day to cre­ate money (which is what so many peo­ple fall prey to) What do you want to BE???

One tool that I use to deter­mine what I want to be is a per­sonal mis­sion state­ment. It is sim­ple to write a per­sonal mis­sion state­ment here is mine.

My per­sonal mis­sion state­ment defines what I want to be:

• I want to be a cre­ative entre­pre­neur that makes pas­sive income allow­ing me time and money to spend with my fam­ily, to also have adven­ture, and help oth­ers lead suc­cess­ful lives.

No where does this say what indus­try I will work in, nowhere does this exclude me from cer­tain things. This is impor­tant because your mis­sion state­ment should be flex­i­ble to allow for a change of mind, yet be struc­tured enough to give you a roadmap. This mis­sion state­ment out­lines your per­sonal val­ues, what you want to BE and what you WILL achieve by being this per­son. My per­sonal val­ues are tightly linked to free­dom, time and help­ing oth­ers. What are your val­ues? Hon­esty? Power? Fam­ily? Love? Adven­ture? Etc…

What val­ues do you think are impor­tant to you? What do you like doing and as a result, what might you like to be?

I found great sat­is­fac­tion in work­ing as a Para­medic because I was able to both have adven­ture and help oth­ers. Yet, it ended up not being totally ful­fill­ing because it did not allow me the time with my fam­ily that I needed.

Exper­i­ment with your per­sonal mis­sion state­ment. I would love to hear it! What’s hold­ing you back from Liv­ing your Dream?

Rec­om­mended Reading:

The Monk and the Rid­dle by Randy Komisar

Crush It! Gary Vaynerchuk

Refuse to Choose by Bar­bara Sher