I want my family to thrive.
I was up at 5:00 a.m. this morning with Chloe after being awake with her all night while she cried. This week has been tough. Nothing is seeming to go right. I haven’t had much sleep, I haven’t worked out much. I’m not sure if the week has sucked because I haven’t worked out or if I haven’t worked out because it has sucked. Either way, I am not thriving. Chloe is teething and not sleeping well, I am having a major loss of self-control with food, I can’t catch up on Sienna’s school projects or house cleaning, and it seems like something is going wrong every step of the way.
Thriving is something I think and talk about a lot. I want to create a life in which myself, my husband, and my girls are all best set up to thrive, not just survive. Goggins says surviving is lazy. More specifically he says, “Don’t just survive life. Search your soul for your limits and kick the shit out of them!” This is the life I want to live. This is how I aspire to raise my family.
Routine is something I thrive on, and having a 5-month-old really throws a wrench in that. Also, just two kids with a husband who works an opposite schedule Tues-Fri (and lots of overtime) is not easy. But I take it as a challenge, an opportunity for growth. Some days are harder than others and some days are easier. My goal is to get to a place that our family can thrive in spite of our schedules and/or obstacles. A lot of people say to me “x y z happened” or “my kids did x y z and they are fine.” The difference is “fine” is not the standard we have set for our family. Scott and I both agree on that. We push each other constantly to be better and do better.
We are often quoting people with the no excuses mentality like Jocko Willink, David Goggins, Tim Kennedy, etc., to each other for motivation (even though it’s not about motivation, it’s about momentum, but that’s for a different post). So it’s extra unsettling when I have a crappy week or I hit a roadblock. GOOD (Jocko). Life is and will continue to be full of those. I am grateful that it makes me unsettled.
I told myself I was going to give myself till the end of this week to lock it up and get myself together, but already as I sit here writing this, I feel better. I feel a little recharged, a little relieved. I guess this journaling thing really does work. Time to go get some.
Jocko Willink – “Getting better isn’t a hack or a trick or a one change that you need to make. Getting better is a campaign. It’s a daily, weekly, and hourly fight. Against weakness, temptation, and laziness. It’s a campaign of discipline. A campaign of hard work and dedication. Waking up early, going to bed late, and grinding out every second in between.”
David Goggins – “Everybody comes to a point in their life when they want to quit. But it’s what you do at that moment that determines who you are.”
Tim Kennedy – “Stop looking for an easy way to be a warrior… there isn’t one.”
GRATITUDE: I am grateful for a husband who shares my thriving mentality, daughters who challenge me to be better, and coffee beans.