A few weeks ago I was driving home from Mothers Day lunch with the (ex) mother-in-law. Too-ing and fro-ing in anxiety about whether I should have let my son drive home to get his driving practice hours up, but feeling the need for an hour without that anxiety.

My mother-in-law lives in the ‘posh’ part of Sydney.
Down by the harbour.
Down by all the nice houses.

My car and body knew the way home automatically, so that allowed me the luxury of daydreaming.

I looked at all the houses, and silently said to myself...

‘You aren’t like them. You’ll never get to live in a gorgeous place like that’. 

And I sunk into the familiar 'mood'. 

But suddenly, the ‘knower’ that is listening to the pity-voice said, ‘well if you keep thinking like that, you’ll only keep thinking like that. The people in those homes you love aren’t any better than you, so go on, see yourself owning one.’ 

My left cheek stung from the slap. 

And my other familiar 'mood' put on its party shoes. 

I wriggled in my seat, feeling suddenly proud of myself for ‘leading my mind’ at that very moment. Leading it a little better that a few minutes ago.

I said nothing out loud, and navigated onto the highway. 
Still on autopilot. 

Suddenly, a gorgeous new blue convertible mini passed us on the ‘fast lane’.

Oh wow - we both said in unison!

Immediately my default brain silently said, 

‘I’m the person that doesn’t get to have one of those’.

But this time, as I was already a 5 minute mindset expert from my previous self-coaching effort, 

So instead, I said out loud: ‘You know Luca, I see that dream car go by and I say to myself, ‘Poor me, I’ll never have one of those’, 

Proudly stroking my own ego because I was about to launch into giving my son a lesson on life and how our thoughts determine our lives. 

Luca stopped me before I got that far.

“We all think like that mum”. 

My right cheek also now stinging!

Out of the mouth-of-babes, right!

And so we both agreed to change the internal dialogue to ‘oooh, there goes my dream car... I can see myself in an orange version of that’.

But before we got to the eye-rolling stage of mum over-doing the life-lesson, Luca switched up the volume on the music.

And we both rode the mood home, singing along to The Greatest Showman soundtrack at the top of our lungs.

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