that really is the question

story by | jodee bock

What’s really on the mind of your average mom? For many of them, I’m betting it’s whatever the next family activities are. When do moms—or really any busy people—have a chance to reflect?

Well, I’m going to let all of us off the hook. I truly believe that all of us—moms and dads, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, employers and leaders—are doing the best we can with what we have and what we know. How can we possibly take different actions if we don’t know what those actions are? Reflecting allows us to evaluate our intentions, actions and results.

remember when

I’m of the firm belief that moms are using their experiences as daughters to parent their own children. In fact, we are all products of generations of thinking. So it should come as no big surprise to us when we hear ourselves using some of the same terms and ideas we heard coming from our parents’ mouths when we were kids.

what do you want to be when you grow up?

One of the phrases that probably made its way into our listening as kids was the question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” In fact, some of us may still be asking ourselves that question today! When you’re a kid, they don’t ask you what you want to DO to earn a living. They always ask you what you want to BE.

Take a minute right now to think about what you wanted to be when you grew up. A fireman? A ballerina? A teacher? As a kid, you just knew in your heart what it would be like to actually BE that. You raced around the house with your toy fire truck, wearing your fire helmet making siren noises. You danced around the living room as if you really were a ballerina. You set up classrooms for your dolls and bears and younger siblings and “taught” them everything you knew.

Yet when we grow up, we seem to be much more focused on the DOING of our lives than the BEING in them. Instead of asking what we want to BE, we start identifying with what we DO, and begin to be judged, categorized and standardized by the labeling process called “what we DO.”

We start understanding that the way to judge success—ours and others—is to decide first what we must HAVE enough of [usually it’s time or money] so that we can DO what we want so then we can finally BE happy.

intention & doing

There is a huge distinction between intending to do something and doing something with intention. None of us will ever find the time we need to do what we really think we want to do. The same is true for money. All the