THIS Is Stealing Your Joy And You Don’t Have To Take It

Lately, as you may well be aware, I have been focusing on living a more simple life. A slow life, where I am present, where less is truely more and where I spend my time and effort on things I enjoy.

To live a life full of things that bring me joy, I had to realise what things killed my joy. For me, and I’m going to take a guess and say for most people, aside from sickness and grief, there were two clear cut winners for the title of JOY KILLERS.

EXPECTATIONS & COMPARISON.

Expectations, whether spoken or unspoken, place so much pressure on you to perform. The follow on from this is you then compare yourself to see how you are 'measuring up'. While this may be fine in a competitive sporting circumstance, in everyday life, it’s a joy killer.

When Spencer was born, breast feeding was a nightmare. I will spare you the gruesome details, but it did not work for us. I began to dislike my son and didn’t want to be around him because I knew he would want to feed. That should not be the case for a new mum. I had an appointment with a lactation consultant who prescribed me a synthetic hormone pill to boost my milk supply because “breast is best” and so I bought an expensive electric pump and away I went. After a few weeks of utter misery, I went to a different nurse, who looked me in the eye, held my hand and asked me if I wanted to keep going this way. I burst into tears and said “No”. Oh my goodness, the weight that lifted off me in that moment. All because someone gave me permission to do what I wanted to do, what I needed to do.

That’s when it started. I would be out at a cafe, pull out the bottle and formula and get comments from random strangers as they rolled their eyes. I would have friends asking me what went wrong and tell me that there is a way to keep breastfeeding. No there is not, not for me and my baby, there is not.

There was an unspoken expectation of me as a new mum that breastfeeding was not only the better but my only option. I would compare myself to other new mothers and the message I constantly received was that I had failed.

That’s what comparison and expectations do. They tell you that you have failed because you didn’t meet the requirements that someone else set for you.

Wait, what? You didn't meet the requirements that someone else set. How does that even work? Why are we chasing something so unrealistic?

Unfortunately, the truth is that there are always going to be expectations people put on you. Not to mention those we set on ourselves. How you should have your hair, what clothes should you wear, how long you should date before you get engaged and then married (I stirred the pot and actually lost friends over this one), how long you should be married before you have kids (again, we turned the table on this one), what job you should have, what course you are studying, where you are living, how your house is decorated and the list goes on.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LIVE BY THESE EXPECTATIONS SO STOP COMPARING YOURSELF TO THEM!

The people that are placing these expectations on you, are not living your life. Only you are living your life. Only you know what is best for you, what works for your children. So stop comparing yourself to others and how they dress themselves and their children, how they do this or don’t do that. Don't sit and wait for someone to give you permission like I did, and if you are sitting and waiting for permission here it is.

Just because something works for them doesn’t mean the same thing has to work for you.