Dear community,
I’d like to try something new with you:
Every week, I’ll send you a brief note with an evidence-based, actionable, and bite-sized well-being challenge for us to practice together. We can use the week to try it on for size as a community, sharing our experiences and challenges with each other in the comments to encourage and learn from each other as we go.
Often, challenges will build on each other in the same domain over a few weeks — like sleep or nutrition.
I’ll also include one or two longer posts over the course of the month.
Let’s try it out!
Have you seen parenting expert Dr Becky Kennedy’s TED talk, The Single Most Important Parenting Strategy, yet? If not, take 14 minutes to do so — you won’t regret it.
My key takeaways:
Every parent [or partner or friend…] messes up. Every parent yells. That doesn’t make you a bad parent [or partner or friend…].
It’s what you do after a rupture that makes the key difference for that relationship, and for the story the other person tells themselves about their role in what happened — and for children, the messages they internalize about their own worth.
Before you can repair a rupture with another person, though, you have to first repair with yourself. This looks like: Affirming to yourself that even though you messed up, you — and your motivations and potential — are still inherently good.
Many of us struggle with feelings of not being enough or not being worthy of love. These can originate from how ruptures were (mis)handled in our past. If you as a parent can model how to repair a rupture in a healthy way, from a place of accepting responsibility for your actions rather than blaming the other person for your reaction, you can change your child’s inner narrative from one of being ‘bad’ or unworthy of love to one of inherent, unassailable self-worth.
It’s never too late to repair a rupture with someone. Watch the powerful end of the talk to hear what this can sound like.
So with point 3 in mind, here’s this week’s challenge:
Practice repair with yourself whenever and wherever you mess up this week.
Take a few seconds to give voice to a self-compassionate affirmation silently, out loud, or in writing.
How does this enable you to show up differently in bridging that rupture? Share your experiences with our community in the comments.
I’d also love your inputs on domains you’d like us to work on together in coming weeks. If you’d like to nominate another area than those listed, please let us know in the comments or reply directly to this email to reach the team privately.
If you enjoyed this, check out these other posts:
Looking forward to this part of our journey together,
Dr Devika Bhushan
#SelfCompassion
#BeKindToYourself
#SelfLove
#SelfCare
#SelfAcceptance
#MindfulSelfCompassion
#YouAreEnough
#SelfWorth
#SelfKindness #LoveAndLaughter
#RelationshipGoals
#HealthyRelationships
#RelationshipAdvice #Parenting #Parenting101 #RaisingKids