Friday Reflections - Don't blame the person, create a new system.
“A bad system will beat a good person every time.” W. Edwards Demin
I don't know about you but my mornings have tended to be fairly stressful and frustrating. Despite years of effort, I simply haven’t consistently succeeded in re-aligning my circadian rhythm to a morning person lifestyle. My 5-year-old, Everett, is similar and could easily sleep until 9:00am, which is great on the weekend and less great on a school day.
Our combined non-morning person propensities mean that getting him out the door for school can be a less than ideal experience filled with rushing about, resistance that often devolves into tears, and arriving at school slightly later than we should.
Although we’ve created systems that worked for a time, life seems to eventually disrupt the system, leaving us operating from a place of reactivity versus intentionality.
As I heard myself say to him for the 100th time on a recent morning, “you need to move faster because we’re going to be late”, I knew something needed to change.
I felt acutely aware of the impact of those messages being repeated over time and knew that if we continued down this path, then neural pathways around urgency and time scarcity and blame would be solidified and the associated feelings of urgency and time scarcity and blame would be embedded into his body.
I recognize my own internalization of those harmful messages and the net result of behaving in ways that are consistent with the narrative that there’s never enough time and I’m always late.
I want better for him.
So last week, after yet another frustrating morning, we had a little chat on the way to school that went something like this:
Me: Hey, would you say that our current morning routine is working for you?
Everett: No, it’s not working.
Me: I agree with you. Since we agree that it's not currently working, what would you WANT your morning to feel like?
Everett: I would want it to feel happy.
Me: Okay, happy will be the goal. What are the types of things you would want to be able to experience in the morning that would result in you feeling happy? Of course, you have to do the basic stuff like actually wake up, change your clothes, brush your teeth, etc., but what other kinds of things would you want to do? For example, would you like to be able to read a book together in the morning?
Everett: Yes, I want to read books.
Me: Okay, what else? Do you want to be able to snuggle?
Everett: Yes.
Me: Okay, what else?
Everett: I want to play Fortnite but I’ll only play until my character is killed.
Me: 😅
Also me: Okay, I hear you want time to play a video game before school. Anything else?
Everett: Nope, that’s all.
With that criteria in mind, we brainstormed how we could sequence the order of all of these different activities in the most logical way. I then asked him, if all of that were true, how do you think you would feel in the morning? And he responded that he would feel happy.
I then shared with him that this conversation was an example of how we can always find a solution to every problem.
We can choose to dwell on the fact that we're having an experience we don't like and then either feel guilt or shame or blame everybody else for that experience OR we can clarify the experience we want to have and create a new system that would be more likely to yield our desired experience.
Even though Everett is only 5, he is a thoughtful, insightful, and individuated person with the capacity to contribute valuable input. Co-creating a solution to our mutually desired outcome seemed profoundly preferable to the alternative of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Having now implemented this new system for a little over a week now, it’s been working as intended so far. The first morning after our initial discussion, as Everett was waking up, he suddenly jolted upright and exclaimed “did I wake up early!?” and was delighted that he did, in fact, wake up early enough to experience the totality of what we had intended.
While I suspect this routine won’t last forever, due to the aforementioned tendency of “life” to get in the way, I will be more inclined to revisit this same process next time things go off the rails.
My invitation to curiosity for you today is:
What systems in your life are no longer yielding your desired outcome?
What kind of system can you create that would be more likely to yield your desired outcome?
Drop me a line and let me know what comes to mind.
Stay curious,
Jessica
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