“I don’t know how you do it,” people say. For Pete’s sake, I don’t know either!
I’m a full-time, single working mom. I do it because I have to. I have no choice! That was my mindset for years. I have no choice. By thinking that, I was handing over my narrative control. It was not a great thought to have rattling around in my mind (see: Container). It was a bad apple rotting the rest of my mental barrel.
The “I don’t know how you do it” comment was said with love, but it annoyed me. I suppose it’s because the person recognized what I was doing was impossibly hard, but then didn’t lend a hand.
It reminds me of how the Dalai Lama makes the distinction between empathy and compassion in The Book of Joy.
“Empathy is simply experiencing another’s emotion, compassion is a more empowered state where we want what is best for the other person … if we see a person who is being crushed by a rock, the goal is not to get under the rock and feel what they are feeling; it is to help to remove the rock.”
I just wanted someone to help me move the rock.
Nowadays I don’t get annoyed. Everyone has impossibly hard things happening. It was just a painful reminder that I was (and still am) doing a lot. Every day, after day, after day, after day, after day with no one to pass the baton to, no margin for error.
As a single mom I used to feel like every day was some sort of tactical navy seal mission where I could never let my guard down.
Just recently, a single mom posed question on a FB group I belong to. “How do you do it?” she asked. It’s the kind of question that elicits so many funny and heartbreaking responses, but also some good methods of how we are “doing it.”
What’s behind all of them is the deep metaphor of Resources.
Here’s the thing you need to know about Resources – we need resources to survive. Whenever you feel like you are in survival mode, there’s a good chance you need to take a hard look at your Resources.
Resources are “capacities or abilities to restore or achieve certain states.” In other words, Resources help us achieve our “important conscious and unconscious goals”* (the “it” in how you do it).
As the authors of Marketing Metaphor explain it, Resources can be:
Tangible (tool, person, or organization)
Intangible (skill, body of knowledge, network of relationships)*
Here a few examples:
Food and shelter (e.g., Eating a snack so we’re not hungry, but also eating comfort food because we want to feel cared for)
People (e.g., Family and friend support when you need one of those next-level, I’m-about-to-lose-my-shit kind of break)
Products or services (e.g., The phone or computer you are using to read this essay)
Knowledge and information (e.g., Going on a FB mom’s group to find out how others are “doing it”)
Environment (e.g., Natural resources like the sunlight coming through my window)
Health (e.g., Calling the doctor to set up that appointment to get that pain in your shoulder checked out)
Bottomline, single moms have a Resource problem. Raising kids was never meant to be a one-person responsibility. Resources can help with that. Next week, I’ll take us through a day in the life of a single mom to help you see how Resources are a game-changer.
In the meantime, I’m going to give you a Resource hack.
There’s this book called Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way by Jonah Berger. He’s a marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business. He looks at how language influences consumer behavior. So cool! Anyway, he has this section on self-talk.
We tend to opt for positive self-talk by using “I” statements. “I can do this!”
However, studies find that talking to yourself in the second person (“You can do this”) is a million times more motivating than the first-person narrative. Substituting “You” for “I” helped people feel more confident, less nervous, and perform better.
What’s interesting is that in times of serious stress, before I knew about the power of second-person narrative statements, I’d done this without realizing it. I’d use my mom’s voice to talk me through stuff. She died in 2012 but she’s always there when I need her. She’s in my head. So, I’d conjure her voice, saying to myself, “You can do it honey.” Feel free to use any amalgam of your mom, God, your best friend, anyone who supports you.
You Can Do It! Exercise: Shift your first-person internal narrative to second-person. Whenever you feel like you don’t know how you can do it, use your magic words. You can do it! I hope this helps move your rock a little today.
As always, this is a rough-cut excerpt from a book I’m writing about how to change your narrative as a single mom. What follow up questions do you have?