2 Sentences that drive perspective

I'm trying to pay more attention to what comes out of my mouth.

For context, I speak and write for a living so the sheer volume that does come out can be a little staggering, so I'm focusing on two statements in particular.

One I'm trying to use a lot more, and one I'm trying to eliminate entirely.

"I've got nothing to complain about"

It's a lot.

All the things we're meant to be doing.

Build your career, plus a side hustle, eat your greens, cold plunge, hot sauna, journal, meditate, support your partner, raise amazing kids, be there for friends and family, mow the lawns, walk the dog, write a book, captain a ship, act cool, look hot.

On any given day my life resembles not so much a well oiled and productive machine as it does a stolen ambulance, driven by a cigar toting monkey, careening down a highway whilst being chased by ninjas. And the ninjas are on fire. So's the ambulance.

The parenting bit alone seems like an impossible gig somedays - if you're a single parent (and I'm not, I have a very supportive Wife who works very much full time) then I take my hat off to you. You should wear a cape and your undies on the outside because you may be a legit superhero.

But for me, by the time I juggle school lunches with social posts, business development, writing (second book plus keeping substack and linkedin running) catch up on study (postgrad psyc), train (next ultra in 8 weeks) plus deal with the tsunami of washing that comes with a household of two adventurous young boys plus an Airbnb - it's a bit. (and then the Elden Ring DLC came out, there goes my sanity too, iykyk)

And in amongst all that there's plenty to get cheesed about.

Gigs you didn't get, meetings you've cancelled once again because one of your kids licked something at school they shouldn't have and are now waking you up at 3am to announce the impending high velocity evacuation of their stomach contents. The dog ran away, again, the washing machine has died, again, and the sun isn't even up yet.

It was damn easy to find plenty to attach my 'woe is me' badge.

Then you realise that you get to do that.

To 'complain' about having that much in your life.

Healthy kids that get up to stuff, a loving Wife, a job that allows you to do the school pick up and drop offs and sport runs, a property big enough that you can have fences that break, because you have sheep and cows and chickens and a wayward dog.

So I've consciously reintroduced the phrase 'I don't have much to complain about' when people ask me how I'm doing.

And not in the 'no point complaining because no one listens kinda way' - but in a genuine, you have a helluva lot going on, what a privilege.

It's sat me back on my butt a bit to see how far I'd fallen from being grateful for problems that most people would kill for.

"It never ends"

I have to cut that one out, savagely.

It crept into the lexicon as an extension of the above discussion.

You just hit a run of seemingly everything going wrong, there is always the next boondoggle hiding around the corner to derail the well curated 'to do list' that was going to be your day.

At one stage we had a waterpump blow, the heater, the dishwasher and the hot water service all die within the space of a few weeks.

It never ends...

Then I started using that phrase when the kids do that thing where they drive you mad, by just being normal - forgetting what you asked then to do 1 second after you asked it, leaving everything they own strewn around the house, getting sick, being busy, flipping between trying to beat each other up or hug each other to death, arguments over everything from tech to feeding their pets. You know, kid stuff.

And then I realised what it means if that does end.

What the alternative is.

An empty house.

No more bedtime stories and hugs, no more games of thumb-wars in the school drop off zone because your kids want that last minute together whilst other parents in cars behind you go into total apoplexy, because you're holding up the flow of traffic and they are already in a zoom meeting - in their car - and need to get to work like yesterday.

And you realise you don't want it to end.

Ever.

I'm an action drives thoughts and behaviour kinda guy. A strong advocate of controlling the mind with the body, because you can't control it with the mind.

And I still believe in the macro sense that's true.

But of late I've been paying much greater attention to some of the less blunt actions I can take to reframe perspective. And just repurposing those two sentences - one to the front of the queue and one to the scrap heap - seems to be delivering outsized returns.

What's falling out of your mouth on the regular that you either need to promote or annihilate?