Friends Don’t Let Friends Lose Their Mind

A new year tends to bring new anxieties for me.

Because I own my own company, every year, the financial health of the company basically reboots on January 1st. Whatever we earned the previous year becomes meaningless, and suddenly it’s game on to repeat or exceed the financial performance from the year before. Thankfully, it’s exciting work that includes new clients, new projects, and new ways to help moms, but, those blessings don’t come without pressure.

As you probably know all too well, if you’re anxious in one area of your life, it can cause you to be snippy, grouchy, and downright ugly in other areas of your life too. Like when you’re under a big deadline at work, and you yell at your husband for looking at you the wrong way, snap at your mother for trying to lend a helping hand, or erupt in a rage of fury when you see your daughter’s socks in the hall outside her bedroom.

You know, when you’re at your best.

Luckily, I have lots of friends who have embraced the mindfulness movement, and we regularly share tips and tricks for how to avoid losing our minds as busy moms. Recently, my friend Robin shot me a text on a random Tuesday touting a new meditation guru she started following by the name of Kyle Gray. Her timing couldn’t have been better.

The very next day, I started listening to Kyle’s guided meditations first thing in the morning, and I came across one of Kyle’s favorite mantras — “I surrender to peace.”

OK. Let’s do this.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been known to make life look easy on the outside while making it harder than it has to be on the inside by worrying unnecessarily about future events. But,I must admit, this mantra has started to help me curb that behavior. Take last Wednesday, for example.

• When I found out at 6 am that our school system was on a two-hour delay and I had to cancel an important morning meeting, instead of moaning and complaining, I took a deep breath and said, “I surrender to peace” and started solving the problem instead of bitching about it.
• When I found out the school bus broke down and delayed my departure even further, rather than calling my husband and blaming him for leaving me on kid duty, I closed my eyes and said, “I surrender to peace.” Then I enjoyed a nice conversation with my two kids as I drove them across town to school.

• When I found myself worrying whether we’ll make our revenue goal this year,  I once again surrendered to peace and made the conscious decision to simply believe that we will. I mean why not?

• When my kids were fighting over who had to help set the dinner table, rather than playing referee, I said to myself, “I surrender to peace,” walked out of the room, and hid in the bathroom until they figured it out.

It really was a magical kind of day. That was, of course, until my daughter and I got into a huge argument over whether her book report should be written in past or present tense. As soon as I heard myself yelling, “Don’t ask for my help if you’re not going to listen!” I thought to myself, “Oh shit, I forgot to surrender to peace.”

Nobody’s perfect.

I’m not here to profess that I have this gig called life all figured out. I’m a work in progress and some moments are better than others. But, I must say that this mantra has been a real game-changer for me. It calms me down, keeps me from over-reacting, and helps me live in the present moment. At least most of the time.

Give it a whirl. Surender away.