Honing in on your goals & the power of positive speech
There is something about labor that allows you to have a single-minded focus on the goal at hand. I have two friends who are pregnant and preparing for natural childbirth, so I sent them my birth story from my first child’s birth (I had both my children at a midwifery birth center with no drugs). Re-reading the birth story was pretty funny and rather enlightening.
The biggest theme from my labor was how I dealt with negative thoughts. Whenever I had a negative thought, I filed it away, and didn’t act on it, much less talk about it. I was so focused on preserving my energy and focusing my energy on my goal—delivering my child—that I set aside every thought that didn’t relate to helping me achieving this goal.
All of the negative thoughts at the time were laughable afterwards. And they fell into two categories: the well-informed and the ill-informed.
The well-informed thoughts related to our doula. Her comments weren’t unhelpful, they just weren’t helpful. When we called her to tell her we were in labor, she asked if she should meet us at the birth center when we arrived. I thought, “Why else would I spend my time (pant/contraction) calling you now? And “Aren’t I paying you a set fee to help throughout the entire birth?” But I didn’t argue she should meet us right away. If she didn’t think she’d be helpful, she probably wouldn’t be. And later, after she had finally arrived, when she told me that I was far enough into labor (pant/major pain) to begin pushing, I didn’t bother to respond that I had been pushing for the last four contractions.
The ill-informed: Our midwife left the room at one point, telling me she was going to fix the water fountain. I was thinking “What the hell (yes, I ought allowed that thought in labor) do I need a drinking fountain for now?” But I was in labor, and saved my energy for the next contraction (pain/breathe/pain/count/pain subsides/breathe more). Later in even more intense labor (pain/breathe/pain/breathe/etc.), they moved me back to the bedroom, and they had one of those soothing fountains where water flows over rock with an awesome dripping/pooling/gurgling sound, and I loved it. That was the water fountain she had fixed, God bless her! And that was one of the first sounds our baby heard other than our voices.
In the first case, my husband and I still giggle about the doula. We were competent enough and he was supportive enough that I didn’t need one, and it was so refreshing not to have wasted any negative energy on bashing her. We hired her, she was useless but it didn’t matter because we didn’t need her, she wasn’t outrageously expensive, so it was over and it was all behind us. No energy spent, and actually energy gained laughing at our nervousness about childbirth in wanting a doula and discovering our strength in dealing with it with a useless doula. It was sort of like an “Amazing Race” win (we think we would ROCK on that show). We didn’t even talk about getting a doula for our second birth—it was a non-issue. Instead of focusing on how bad she was, we focused on us, and how well we dealt with it.
In the second case, I was so grateful I had kept my mouth shut. There wasn’t anything the midwife could have done in my room at that point in my labor, and if I had spoken up, it would have created negative vibes between me and the midwife, my husband would loyally have taken my side exacerbating the division, and I would have beaten myself up for being horrible when I had found out what she was really doing. I laughed at myself, during my later more intense labor, when I realized what she had done, and later was able to revel, guilt-free, in the spa-like environment.
In both cases, not speaking my negative thoughts brought me much more positive outcomes, and outright joy–in my marriage, my husband, my child, and the whole experience.
I’ve realized, just after the four year anniversary of that birth, that this attitude can have a profound effect on my life—both in business and personally.
What’s your goal? And what does it take to achieve it? Most of the time we’re not as single-minded as a woman in labor, but it’s not a bad ideal. Defining your goals helps you reach them.
What are your goals? Most of us have multiple goals, and most of them are derivations of: to have good relationships, to be happy, to be successful, however we define all these.
Drama trains don’t usually play a role in these definitions. So being negative rarely helps you achieve any of these.
So, since I’ve reread my birth story, I think differently about voicing negative thoughts. What is my goal? Is saying this (which is the same as focusing on this/spending energy on this) going to help me reach my goal?
I have curbed my tongue ever since (not 100% of the time, I’m still working on it), resulting in giggling at myself over the outcome, and laughing at the results.
Does this remind you of the saying, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all?”
Who says we can’t learn from those that came before us?
Visionary Thinking 