​Learning To Cope With Things Out of Our Control

At some point in parenthood, you’ve no doubt had to deal with a situation that was out of your control. Whether it was a difficult pregnancy, different birth from what you imagined, poor health of you or your baby, sleeplessness, or other challenges, these events cause stress and frustration, which negatively impact your health and mental outlook on life.

Learning how to cope with events you can’t control will help keep you in a positive frame of mind and alleviate your stress.
                          
Consider the Serenity Prayer, written by Reinhold Niebuhr:
 
“God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.”
 
The words of this prayer exemplify the solution to a problem that plagues all of us. Once you’ve come to terms with the fact that you can control only your own actions (and reactions), you can begin to find some peace of mind.
 
What Can You Control?
 
Worrying about the people or events in your life that you can’t control can cause all kinds of stress-related health problems, such as angina, high blood pressure, and yep you guessed it sleeping difficulties for you are your baby.
 
If you need to feel more in control of this parenting gig, try to focus on your parenting values and actions that you can take to be more aligned with them.
 
What your parenting values are and who influences these is something you can definitely control. It may not be easy to do things differently from friends and family members or from how you imagined it or to accept how things are but do consider…

• Having a clear understanding of your values is a game changer. Try narrowing down your top 3-5 values – examples include: Love, Responsiveness, Gratitude, Forgiveness, Wisdom, Responsibility, Courage, Simplicity Trust etc…

 

• Being around negative people can drag your attitude down, since you adopt the mood of people around you. 

 

• Keeping a daily gratitude journal can help you focus on what really matters, provide a new perspective on parenting and help you make decisions aligned with your values.

 

• Gratitude should never gas light, sometimes we are undergoing very emotional and challenging situations that should rightly be acknowledged, we can make room for both acknowledging/validating feelings and finding gratitude.  

 
Live One Day at a Time
 
When you intentionally consider each day a gift, your struggles don’t seem as dire. While life does deal some bad hands, such as death, divorce, and parenting challenges, it is important to know pain and joy in life are attached, it is not possible to open your heart to love without the pain of grief for example. 
 
When you purposely feel gratitude for the good moments within each day, you can genuinely start to accept your struggles as a path to a new beginning.
 
Coping with Sleep Difficulties
 
One of the most stressful situations is coping with sleep difficulties for new parents, this is because it is often a symptom of other complex underlying issues* or normal but hard baby behaviour. 

• If you’re having a difficult time accepting that your baby is going to wake in the night or very early for example - even temporarily, it helps to remember that it is likely because they just love being with you!
  
  
• Be happy and grateful for the hours of sleep she/he has had, for him/her waking happy, for maternity leave, for grandparent walks, for having the tools to support even a little change etc WRITE THEM DOWN
  
  
• Once you know you can be content with your current situation, it is amazing how it can magically improve with no fix or solution in sight.  

 
By accepting that you can’t change some things, you’ll become more powerful in changing the things that you do have control over. You’ll free yourself from the negative thoughts and emotions that can stifle you.
 
Use these tips to help you cope with things out of your control, and you’ll find peace, joy, and the passion to persevere through all challenges.
 
*Other complex issues might be unidentified feeding issues, food allergy, big changes such as a house move, new sibling, separation of parents – again what are the things you can control and change rather than the things you can’t and also what can you still be grateful for