more do's--less don'ts

Listening to women around me, I am once more reminded of how often we think negative thoughts. All the things that we have done wrong seem to remain in our heads forever. New Years can be an especially bad time for lists of things that we aren't doing. We aren't exercising enough. We aren't starving ourselves enough. We aren't skinny enough. We aren't cleaning enough. Sometimes I feel personally like the number of voices shouting at me that I am not doing enough is going to drive me insane.

Today, this is what I think:

more do's--less don'ts

(The grammar witch in me is very confused by this, by the way--any better ideas?)

What I mean is that instead of focusing on all the things we are doing wrong and should STOP doing, I think we should focus on things we are doing right and should do MORE of. Does that make sense?

It's like when my daughter had first been diagnosed with ADD, the doctor told us that we shouldn't worry about her becoming a functioning adult who contributed to society. She just had to find one thing that she was good at, and focus on that. All the things she was bad at that bothered the school wouldn't matter as long as she found the one thing she was really, really good at. It turns out that she is good at more than one thing, but I think the principle works for more than just kids with ADD.

As a writer, it is important to remember what I do well, and to continue to do that to have success. Reviews can be devastating for this, because they make us forget what we do well and focus instead on what we may possibly not do well. But not doing those things badly may in fact do very little to contribute to success, if we forget what we do well.

As a parent, there is a long list of things I don't do well. Managing homework, keeping kids from fighting, showing them how to get along with others. But I do some things very well. I am not sure that I am ever going to do the things well that I do badly right now. Maybe I shouldn't just give up on those. It's one strategy to try to fix them. But it's another strategy to try to fill my kids' lives with more things that I do well.

My thoughts on how to fix the world, anyway.