Hopefully you’re caught up in my Steps 1-3. But now what? You’ve turned to Allah for help, and you’ve figured out what’s making you unhappy…now what?
STEP FOUR: Don’t worry….be happy 🙂
Decide to be happy NOW. I know this doesn’t make any sense so let me explain. Happiness is a choice. It doesn’t happen because the stars aligned and you finally reached the end of the yellow brick road. Happiness happens because (even though you burned dinner and your kids have been screaming all day and your husband came home and decided to unload all his stress from work on you) YOU decided you were going to be happy.
Being happy is about being optimistic. Being content. Feeling joy. Looking at the bright side of things. It’s a choice. You have to choose it. So? Choose it! Do not continue to think that if x, y, z happens, then you’ll be happy. I’ll be happy once I find something to do with myself that fulfills me. I’ll be happy when I finish school. I’ll be happy when I get married, or when I have kids…actually, I take that back. Who really thinks they’ll be happy after kids? Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah, choose to be happy, yadda yadda yadda…you got this one right? Ok, moving on…
STEP FIVE: Work the list
Take that list you have that make you unhappy…you know, the ‘generalized’ one..the broad categories…and do SOMEthing concrete everyday to improve at least one of these categories. So what did I start doing? I started calling and e-mailing old friends. I tried to be nicer to family. I started implementing more good deeds in my life. I started going for walks (pay no attention to the previous post about failing at my walking attempts)…Anyhoo….You’ll be surprised at how very little effort made can make you feel extraordinarily better when you know you are really targeting the things that have been making you miserable. If you’re not already feeling better, chances are you didn’t properly diagnose what was really making you unhappy…
STEP SIX: Write out your passion/s
Ok so until this point we’ve been talking about happiness. This is what I did to get ‘happy’. But what did I do to find fulfillment? Isn’t that the ‘key word’ I chose for my title? In order to feel fulfilled I wanted to find a life passion. My thing. Something to get me so excited I couldn’t sleep. Now before I continue I just want to put out a disclaimer: I know that you don’t have to do anything else besides raising your kids to feel fulfilled. Let me rephrase that: I know there’s nothing wrong with feeling completely fulfilled by your kids everyday. I also know there is nothing wrong with needing something else. And quite frankly, I’m just programmed to be one of those moms who needs something else.
So the next step is to think about what excites you. What are you passionate about? What’s my thing? The answer? Kids. I love everything about them. In my two years of being at home I have extensively researched every possible detail of my kids’ lives that I possibly could. I have become a master googler on eating, bathing, diapering, potty training, teaching, etc etc etc. You get my point right? I obsess about my kids. That was my life passion. Another one? Art. Painting specifically….
So figure out what your thing is. Oh, and don’t judge it. Don’t think, I really love picnic benches but how the heck am I going to make picnic benches my ‘great project’? For years I put down my passion for art. What was I going to do with that? Try to paint and sell my art? Been there, done that, didn’t work out so well. So I would kill that passion. I wouldn’t take it so seriously. Don’t do that to yourself. If you’ve already tried to make something of a passion, and it didn’t work out, don’t kill the passion, just scrap the idea. I feel like I’m babbling a lot now so perhaps that’s a sign to move on…
STEP SEVEN: Brainstorm ideas (without putting yourself down or making excuses)
The next step is a little convoluted. Let me begin with what happened to me. I was searching for something…making lots of du’aa. And then I had a conversation with a group of moms. (Note: talk to people…it’s a good way to conquer this step and get ideas). During this conversation some of us started talking about how we’re finished with our degrees yet we still don’t really know what we want to be when we ‘grow up’. A friend was kind of encouraging me to do something with myself b/c, she said, I have a lot of gifts (Note: its good to talk to GIRLS because GIRLFRIENDS – ok and sometimes husbands – are really good at building each other up when you don’t give yourself enough credit).
Anyways, in this conversation she mentioned that she was searching for some good Muslim working-mom blogs but couldn’t find any. This started a day-dream in my mind. When I first had the twins I used to read one particular blog religiously. It was written by another girl, not Muslim, but also a mother of boy/girl twins. I remember how much it helped me through my own ‘stuff’. I had thought about blogging before but had always shot down the idea. (Note: don’t put down your ideas). The thing was, everyone had a blog, and I have this sick obsession with only wanting to do things no one has ever thought of before. I hate being a follower. I hate not being first. I ALMOST let this be my excuse to not do anything and go back to the drawing board. (Note: don’t daydream so much when people are talking to you…it’s rude).
All of a sudden, during the course of this conversation, this friend said some words to me that had a profound effect. I had an Aha! moment. She said, “It doesn’t matter if it’s already been done. YOU didn’t do it. It would be different b/c its YOUR take on things.” It was like some one stamped the words “EMPOWERED” on my forehead. She gave me the metaphorical push I needed to do something.
Note: sometimes you have to create opportunities for yourself. Let’s say you are really searching for something to do with your love of knitting. But when you looked on monster.com you didn’t find any positions for an “intermediate knitter”. You’re going to have to think outside of the box and explore ways/ideas to utilize your talent. But remember the most important part of this step: don’t put yourself down or make excuses for failure. Believe in yourself, and in the famous words of Muhammad AlShareef, give your excuses a black eye!
STEP EIGHT: Just do it
Hopefully you’ve been able to come up with an idea and you’re ready to get started. If you haven’t? Maybe this step will actually help. This step is about ‘just doing it’. You don’t have to wait till you come up with the most perfect idea. You don’t have to have all the pieces together before you start. Just get started.
Originally, I thought I would set up a blog that would give out some information about homeschooling kids at home. That’s it. Once I set up the blog I started thinking, ‘wouldn’t it be cool if this blog became a center of information for all those homeschooling moms?’ (Hence, I set up my ‘Homeschool links’ section). Then I thought, you know what? There’s so much other stuff out there I want to share. (I set up my ‘Giving props to other good links’ section). Then the comments started coming in and the facebook group blew up and I started getting e-mails in my inbox from moms who I’d never met before.
So I started thinking about where this blog could go… I started thinking about us…this group of women that no one has really tapped into – no one has really addressed. I started thinking about what all of us collectively could accomplish. I started thinking about what I, personally, could do to bring us together and address our needs. I started thinking E-books (I am currently working on two which I’ll be announcing soon)… I started thinking about making COMM a movement and going ‘beyond blogging’. I see publications in the future, I see events…(I even had a daydream in the car today about making a t-shirt for kids saying ‘My mommy is a COMMy mommy’, but then I realized the whole COMMy thing might not be so great for dawah…Anyhooooooo). My point is, the sky is the limit now. But this idea didn’t start that way. But the point is, I just started…and the idea started to roll with its own momentum.
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So that leads me to where I am now. I’m happy, Alhamdullillah. And I’ve found a passion. I’ve found that thing that excited me and keeps me awake at night. Sorry for babbling on, but it’s kind of like that line from “When Harry Met Sally”…. ‘when you figure out you wanna spend the rest of your life with some one you want the rest of your life to start right now’ … well, its kind of like that. When you figure out what you wanna do with yourself you wanna help everyone else figure it out too. Well, maybe it’s not exactly like that line..
Anyways, this is just what I did…I hope, through all the rubble, you can pick out something to help improve your life, even a little…
And, as always, I’d love to hear what other ‘steps’ you think are important in this quest…
Confessions of a Muslim MOMma-holic 