How EQ has helped me as a new mother | 042

How EQ helps us step into new situations – new home, new job, new relationship, new baby Candice shares her 5 EQ insights and take aways, 5 months into her journey as a new mother. Investing in an education in EQ can be beneficial to navigating any new challenges or changes in life.   Looking at Expectation Developing awareness around our expectations of situations can help us to shine light on unexpected emotions that may arise when it comes time to face the actual situation. Expectations can lurk in our blind spots. Knowing what our expectations are can highlight situations we haven’t prepared for. The awareness of emotions such as overwhelm, confusion or anxiety can help us recognise unrealistic or unhelpful expectations and they can then be shifted. A useful exercise can be to write down what the expectation going into a situation or new challenge such as motherhood may have been and what the actual experience is. It can be useful to talk to a variety of mothers and hear different experiences and perspectives regarding pregnancy and parenting. Chat about what to expect during pregnancy as well as any postnatal changes that may occur in the body - there are often more surprises here as the mother not only births a child but also experiences her own ‘birth’ into motherhood. Rejuvenating breathers   Taking short breaks to connect to oneself allows us to re-centre and re-energise. Take a brief breather (2/5 or 15 minutes) - be realistic about the time you can take so that it doesn’t seem unattainable. Small breaks allow for subtle shifts that create bigger changes over time.   The Gift of Grace Practice unconditional love for yourself. Self compassion paves the way to an ability to flow with the choices you make during early parenthood. When equipped with self compassion, one is able to adapt to changes in choices or methods of parenting outside of expectations, without berating or blaming oneself. Be gentle with yourself and lay judgement aside. Maya Angelou said: when we know better we do better. If we don’t know better yet we can’t do better so we can only learn from experience and grow through it with the grace of self compassion.   What other people think If we worry too much about what other people think is best for us or for our children, we may end up making choices that go against our intuition or motherly instincts. It is difficult to shift out of the ‘mother ego’ of worrying what others think but if we let these thoughts rule our parenting style then we also let others determine our values and in so doing we lose our integrity. Emotional awareness allows us to notice when we might feel overwhelmed, embarrassed or frustrated around others. This awareness can serve as a reminder to us to re-centre and reconnect with our values and integrity (true self).   Investing in EQ EQ has already made me feel that I have more availability of choice to extend patience although I’m in the earliest stages of motherhood. I can exercise self awareness in order to understand where my feelings may be coming from. I’m able to identify when feelings arise from exhaustion and frustration and thereby choose not to project those feelings onto others.