When you’re so busy being a parent, do you find that you are the least important thing, and everybody else, not just children, but partners, relatives, or maybe work, takes priority?
So I might not be a mum, but the amount of kids in my life and friends with kids I see it all!
When we spend so long focusing on everyone else, making our house a home, and keeping on top of everything, we might look at the mirror one day and don’t recognize the person staring back at us.
We’ve changed so much that it is frightening. And when we lose sight of who we are, either inside or outside, this naturally impacts our confidence.
Being a parent can knock your confidence somewhat, even though you’ve got a little person that looks to you for everything, when you’re so caught up in this world, it leaves little room for anything else.
But when our children get old enough that they are self-sufficient, we can find making that transition back to so-called “real” life very difficult. So what can we do to help nurture our confidence when we’ve been a parent too long?
That All-Important Time To Yourself
You might think this is almost impossible, but we all need to be ourselves.
We can realize that we’ve become, for want of a better word, boring. When we are inundated with diapers, meals to cook, and things to clean, conversations tend to revolve around those subjects. And you realize, just as soon as you manage to get out of the house and spend time with friends, this More Confidence When We’ve Been A Parent Too Long is all you have to speak about.
And we can all be a bit fed up with talking about these mundane tasks, but we have nothing else to speak about.
As a result, if you’re speaking with friends that have no children or any of these duties in life, you might feel a little out of the loop.
This is why it’s essential to have some time to yourself, not just to hang out with your friends but also to pursue things that aren’t just for the sake of your family. When we feel emotionally dry or have no inspiration, we’ve got to have some hobby that helps replenish our mental stores.
We’ve got to do things that make us feel good. Because if we look back and see that we’ve spent months and years looking after the house and not doing anything purely for us, it’s time to make that change.
It doesn’t have to be anything epic, and you can take an hour once a week and do the things that are for you. And even if you’re tired, you will be surprised how much this restores your energy.
Making Yourself Look Good, So You Feel Good
We can save up for expensive beauty products over a year, which could be our indulgence. But if the years of parenting have taken their toll, and you are just plain unhappy with how much you’ve aged, you could quickly approach facelift surgeons for a procedure to reinvigorate your face.
After all, if you look good, you feel good. And if this isn’t your cup of tea, there are simple ways to replenish the skin.
Something as simple as a spa day doesn’t just do wonders for the skin but can calm us down. When we are constantly on the go, a day in the Jacuzzi, sauna, and steam room with a few beauty treatments can work together to make you feel so relaxed that you will float home.
Sometimes we don’t realize how stressed we are until we’ve taken that opportunity to relax, and once we’ve got this feeling, we want to recapture it as much as possible, as we know we do everything much better as a result.
Taking The Time To Practice Being Confident
As soon as the kids wake up, we go until they go to bed at night. This feeling of going a mile a minute isn’t good for anyone, especially when you want a coffee to ease you into the day.
And when we are depriving ourselves of the things that make us feel good too, it can go one of two ways: we can develop some sense of resilience or buckle under the pressure.
Sometimes, both can happen, and this is life’s veritable ups and downs. But when we have lost all sense of confidence in our own abilities, as parents and as people, we have to find ways to improve our self-worth, and quickly. If time is not a luxury, sorry to say this, but you have to make time.
It doesn’t have to be 3 hours a night; it’s about those little practices that performers and athletes do to make themselves believe in their abilities more.
It can feel silly talking into a mirror, but something like positive self-talk isn’t a silly approach, not when you realize that there is science behind it.
Because our brains cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined, when we engage in positive self-talk, our brains accept this as the norm after a while. But it depends on what your own perceived idea of confidence is.
Maybe you want to relax; in which case, some basic breathing exercises will help you to bring in more oxygen and reduce CO2.
Or maybe, you need some more energy, so doing a little bit of exercise before everybody else gets up can destress you and increase your energy for the day.
Whatever makes you feel good about yourself, you need to practice this. We all lose confidence now and again, and this is why building that muscle back up regularly is vital.
As rewarding as it is being a parent, if we don’t look after ourselves, how can we expect to look after our children to the best of our abilities?
If we’ve been a parent too long, we can lose sight of some of the things that make us who we are, which is why we have to practice the little things that replenish us.
