I read an article the other day that talked about relationships and the old “80/20″ rule. For those of you who do not know this rule what it says is that in life there is always this ratio of 80% one aspect and 20% another. At the job about 20% of the people do about 80% of the productive work. You will be glad to know that I do not want to talk about work tonight but about relationships, life and how this rule affects Single Parent Families.
I looked back into my past and spoke with other Single Parents about their past. What I found is that the majority of us after a while use our power of choice, for some weird reason, to focus more on the 20% in our lives that are not working. For example, in a relationship that has passed the honeymoon phase and you have been together a while - 80% of the things are “good” and 20% of the things are “bad” in your eyes.
At the start of the relationship you where attracted to and focused on the 80% but as the relationship progresses you begin to focus on the 20%. So we begin to focus on the 20% which are “negatives” like he snores when he sleeps, she is always moving my things around, he double dips, she is always reminding me not to, and on and on. The problem is that what you focus on expands and becomes larger and larger.
So if you focus on the 20% that is what you keep in the front of your mind and that is what you look for to validate the “negatives” in the relationship. That is why when you speak to couples who break up after counseling and ask what the focus was they usually say fixing what was wrong in the relationship - the 20% “bad” and not focusing on the 80% that was “good” and making that expand.
What about life? What do we as Single Parents do when we start stressing out or having problems? We begin to focus more and more on the problem! What does that do? It creates a larger and larger problem because what we focus on … expands. So what do you think would happen if we decided to focus on the good things in our lives? After all, it does depend on how we look at things! Carol Burnett said, “I have always grown from my problems and challenges, from the things that don’t work out, that’s when I’ve really learned.”
When things don’t go the way we want, then we have a choice - we can play the victim and let life direct us like a puppet or we can choose to direct our own life by controlling how we feel, how we respond and the life lesson we get out of it. You notice I did not say “react” because reacting requires no thinking and therefore by nature is not choice.
One positive we can look at are our blessings! We are healthy, we have great supportive friends, we have a roof over our head and food in our mouths, we have great children who love us, we have fantastic family who are there for us and on and on. I hope you are getting the picture. Take some time and write a list of what and who you are grateful for and look at it at least two times a day - when you get up and when you go to bed. In this way you remind yourself of the many blessings you do have in your life at the beginning of your day and at the close of your day.
You now know you have a choice. You can choose to look at the 20% of what is “wrong” in your life and miss out on the other 80% that is “good” OR you can choose to focus on the 80% of “good” things in your life and miss out on the 20% that you decide is “bad”. It is all up to you and how you decide to think and what you decide to focus on.
Until next time - remember that you are the best parent you can possibly be in this moment of time!
Please write your comments below and I look forward to reading them.
Single Parent Power, Inc. - "Helping Single Parent Families Reconnect"
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"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity" - Albert Einstein
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