Why is our life so hard?

Why is our life so hard?

This has been a question that keeps coming up at the dinner table, especially when my husband and I are wrestling our 3 year old to stay at the table and eat at least one bite of the food we rushed home to prepare.

Why is our life so hard?

I know this is a relative question. There are a lot of things that we are lucky to have (good jobs, health, running water, shelter), but raising young kids can still feel challenging and overwhelming.

The first step in making a change, is to create a vision.  So I did an exercise to envision our ideal life. What would life be like, without so many struggles?

First, we would get a full nights sleep.  We would be in bed and asleep by 10pm.  No midnight wakeups.  No early morning visitors, until the alarm went off.

Second, my son would be done potty training. No more dirty pull-ups. No more accidents to clean up.

Finally, we would enjoy quality time together in the mornings and evenings, when we were not at work.

Dinner would be easy to prepare and everyone would enjoy it.

I would have meaningful conversations with my husband during dinner, without anyone screaming or leaving the table.

Bedtime would follow the routine without arguments.

It does not seem like too much to ask for, so how do we get there?

Consistent routines and planning. And patience and flexibility when changes happen.

When I take the time to think about it and try to be in the moment, I realize we already have the key elements. We have a lot of great quality time, especially in the evenings and on weekends.  Most of the struggles are usually when something happens to break our routines.  

So it is time to keep our eyes on the prize (the vision) and get back into the ring to try again.