We all have things we like to achieve each day. For me, it’s a work out in the morning and a café coffee before work. For one of the nurses at work, it’s a number of pages of her book during a lunch break. For my father in law, it’s a game of golf played each week to better his average to win a beat against his son.
For my wife, it was a walk of the dog with our son in the pram each day. Unfortunately, late pregnancy put a block to these plans. She experienced highly painful hip changes in the last month of pregnancy, such that she could barely walk around the house, and so definitely couldn’t walk the dog each day as she would normally enjoy. At first this was a source of great frustration and sadness. And so, she had to adjust her expectations of what she could achieve. Instead of a walk with the dog each day, it became play time with the dogs in either our back yard or her parent’s acreage.
Last week we very happily met our second son, Rowley. And needless to say, life is a little busier Now that we have welcomed our little boy into the world, I too have had to adjust my expectations of what may be able to be achieved each day. Instead of a work out each morning, a more achievable goal may be three to four good quality work outs a week. It would put undue pressure on myself to expect to achieve a work out each day, between helping with nappies, my two year old and house chores on little sleep.
It's ok to have periods where we need to step back a little. To adjust our expectations to the new normal. It’s not saying that we need to have lesser goals. But if we set our expectations too high we are doomed to fail. In the long term, I hope to get back to those daily work outs and my wife hopes to be back walking the dog each day. But for now, we have a bigger priority of keeping the family up and running, while we ourselves have a little less fuel in the tank.
Keep positive, keep those goals achievable and enjoy the small wins each day.
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