It All Begins as a Child

“Mommy, look! Come and see! Let me show you something! Guess what I did?” Those are the phrases that we hear from children all the time. They want to show us, they want us to look and see, and to celebrate their successes. They want to be recognized and they want to enjoy and share everything that they’re learning, everything that they’re doing, and everything that they’re accomplishing. 

Have you noticed that children can be so light, happy, energetic and motivated? They work on tasks that they think of while they are playing, and they just do them on their own. They work on them and persevere, and push through, and problem solve, and figure things out. For example, it’s natural for a child learning how to walk to stumble and fall. They trip over themselves, but they keep pushing on and pushing forward, because they want to do it, to be successful, and learn and grow. Children want to progress. 

Adults Want Success Too

As adults we want to learn and grow and progress, too. We come up with challenges, tasks, and things that we want to do that we think will help us to improve ourselves and improve our surroundings, get things done and help us feel accomplished. That’s when we create our to-do list. Perhaps the adult’s version of play, sometimes, is a to-do list. 

We create a list of things that we want to do, that we want to get done, things we want completed, and we write them on a list. Then, as we do them, we either check a box, or cross out the words, or highlight it as we complete these tasks.  At this point, what do we typically do with the list? Do we do what children do, sharing it, asking others to come and see? Do we celebrate our success, and talk about it, or do we just throw away the list and come up with a new list to work on? One list turns into another list turns into another list turns into another list. 

That sounds kind of heavy. It kind of takes the fun out of it a little bit, don’t you think? We spend so much time just writing these lists and accomplishing the list, and then we go and throw the list away. How demoralizing is that? 

Celebrate Success with a Ta-Da List!

How about, instead, we turn our to-do list into a ta-da list! Doesn’t that sound fun? It sounds motivating and fun, and like it could be just the tweak that we adults need on those to-do lists that we have. It sounds like if we could take a little bit of that childlike behavior of celebrating the success, sharing the success, and having someone else come and see what we’ve done, that maybe our to-do list won’t be so overwhelming or feel like drudgery. Maybe then the heaviness and the complications of adulthood can be subdued a little bit if we take the time to celebrate and turn that to-do list into a ta-da list.

How To Do a Ta-Da List

Now, here’s how you do it. Start with your to-do list. If you’re a list maker you know what this is. Maybe it’s a piece of paper, or it’s on your phone or your computer. However you do it, you write out all those things that you want to get done and accomplish. Have little check boxes, or a highlighter, or a pen on hand, and then you work through your list. Work on it, push through, make progress and get those things done. 

Complete the list like normal, but when you get to the bottom of the list, don’t throw it away. See, throwing it away is symbolic. What if a child learns how to build a sand castle, and then it gets destroyed before the child gets to take a picture of it, or share it with someone? They’re kind of upset, and rightly so! They worked hard on it. They built this castle and they wanted to celebrate, and they didn’t get the opportunity to celebrate their success. Well, that child’s going to be sad and disappointed, and we as adults think that we’ve grown out of feeling like that, but we haven’t. 

When we work hard on something and accomplish something it deserves a little bit of celebration and acknowledgement. But usually, after you work on this list, after you have prepared the list and you do all the deeds on the list, and cross them off, then you throw that away without sharing with anyone and without anyone having seen the accomplishment or acknowledged your hard work. It’s like knocking down that castle. 

You’ve Been Missing this Step

A little piece of you is going to be sad and a little disappointed, and the next time you go to create a list and work on it, you’re going to wonder why you’re not motivated. You’re going to wonder why you don’t finish the things on the list. You’re going to wonder why you just can’t get it done or why it seems so overwhelming. Well it’s because we’re missing a step. We’re missing the “Ta-Da!” We’re missing the “Look at this! Let’s celebrate. Let’s look at what we’ve done and be happy about it.” 

Add this to Your To-Do List

So take your to-do list when you’ve completed your project, whatever that list is, even if it’s a small one–even if it consists of things like “make bed,” “brush teeth,” “go to work today,” “come home from work,” and “don’t yell at anybody while driving through traffic,” maybe that’s your list–cross off those things. Find a partner, someone that you can celebrate your successes with, and share your successes. Share your to-do list, get that enthusiasm back, and the motivation will follow. Life will seem happier and more productive when you acknowledge everything that you do. You do a lot, you work a lot, and you try hard. So if you’re a to-do list maker, add to your to-do list, that at the end of the day or at the end of your tasks, you change your to-do’s into ta-da’s.   

I had a big fat bandage on my arm. It was cumbersome and I obviously couldn’t hide it because it was covering my whole forearm. Not only that, but I was in a lot of pain and my hand was throbbing. This injury of mine was a problem. To avoid the blood going to my hand I held my hand up in the air in front of me. So, really, I couldn’t hide my big, fat, bandaged hand that was positioned awkwardly in the air at all times. 

Everyone Noticed the Problem

I went to church like this, and I’m sure you can guess what the first thing was that everybody noticed. Not that my hair looked really good, considering I had done it with just one hand. And not that my outfit was nice, after I had spent 30 minutes scrambling, digging through my closet, trying to find something that I could put on by myself. They didn’t notice those accomplishments, but they certainly noticed the problem that I was holding out in front of myself. 

Problems are like that, aren’t they? They naturally, and instinctively, get our attention, which is for a good reason. When there’s a problem, that means we need to find a solution, and so our go-to behavior is for us to be wired to look for problems. We look for problems and then we try to find solutions, and then when we find the solution we move on to the next problem. 

That’s just how we’re wired. So, if you feel like there are a lot of problems, there’s a reason for that. There are indeed a lot of problems, and you’re wired to look for them. Something that you can work on, though, is appreciating the solutions that you’ve already found and celebrating successes that you’ve come across, and then taking the time to see that life isn’t only about problems. There is more to life than problems.

You Notice the Problem, Even When It’s Surrounded by Good

So there’s this good visual about problems that I’ve seen before, and I think about it often. Imagine a white board with no writing on it. It’s just a plain white board, except that it has a dot on it. Somebody has drawn a dot somewhere on the whiteboard. So now, when you go into the room, and you look at the whiteboard, what’s the first thing you see? The dot! You notice the dot, but you don’t notice that most of the board is white. Most of the board is clean, things are generally going well on the board, but you don’t notice that. 

No, you notice the dot because it’s out of place, and it’s a problem. We have our problem antenna active all the time, scanning, searching, looking for the problems. That’s how we’re wired and it’s okay, unless it’s not okay. Unless it gets overwhelming and unless it gets to be too much and too heavy, so that we’re only looking for problems and we’re only seeing problems. Then we’re kind of drowning in it. That’s not helpful, right? It’s not helpful.

Retrain Your Brain to Not be Overwhelmed by Your Problems

So how do you retrain your brain to not look only for the problems? That’s the question. How do you retrain yourself? This is so natural and easy, it just happens. You can pick up on those problems super easily and that can turn into criticism and it can turn into overwhelm. So how do you overcome this? How do you retrain your brain so that you do not become overwhelmed by your problems? I have three steps to retrain your brain so you’re not overcome and overwhelmed by your problems. Here are my three steps.

1. You acknowledge the problems you’ve already solved. In my story, in the beginning, I acknowledged that I did my hair with one hand. Yay, I did it! It was hard and I acknowledged that to myself. I found an outfit that I could put on by myself with one hand. Often other people aren’t going to acknowledge these successes so we need to acknowledge them ourselves.
2. Celebrate the successes of others. Look for the things that other people have overcome and acknowledge it, and congratulate them. As you see what they have overcome, you celebrate with them! They have overcome things and you can bring that up in conversation and talk to them about it so they can remember problems that they’ve already solved so they can feel good too. Once you’ve done those two steps, acknowledging your success, and acknowledging the success of others, then you can move on to step three.
3. Tackle the problem that’s in front of you. Because now you have success energy and you’re not feeling overwhelmed by your problems and defeated. You’re using that success energy that you’ve built up by acknowledging previous successes and then you tackle the problem.

The Flip Side: Things to Avoid

Then there’s the other side to this, which is what you should not do. We always have to remember what not to do, too, right? 

1. Don’t only talk about the problem. Do I need to explain why that is? It should be obvious, but maybe it’s not. People don’t want to only talk about problems with you. It just brings you and everyone around you down.
2. Don’t leave out your successes in conversations, or the successes of others. When you’re having a conversation, don’t leave out all the good stuff. Don’t leave out the positive things going on in your life or the solutions you have found. 
3. Don’t forget about all the life that is to be lived between the problems and solutions. There’s so much life in there, such as recreation, enjoyment, and play. Don’t forget about those things. When you include those in your life, you won’t feel so bogged down or overwhelmed by your problems, and you will find a nice balance. 

Overwhelmed by Your Problems No More

Next time you have a conversation with someone, what if you try to talk about your successes and their successes along with the problems you have? Be intentional. You have to be intentional to do that because the problems are obvious and easy to find. Just like my hand with the big fat bandage was obvious, and the dot on the white board was obvious (everybody’s looking at that dot–you can’t avoid it). But if you’re intentional, you don’t have to be swimming in the problems or feel like they’re too heavy. You can acknowledge your past successes and look with hope to the future for the solutions that you’re going to find.

Life is hard, and sometimes we just feel done. We feel like we’re done. We feel like we have nothing more within us. Nothing left to give. Nothing left to offer…and we’re done. We quit.

Well, after not freaking out when I saw that text (which is the first step), I had to come up with an idea, a plan, a solution, something to say, something to do. What do you do when you feel like you’re going to quit, or someone you love wants to give up? 

Quit the Right Way

Interestingly enough, I wrote about this topic in my journal a few days before this happened. I wrote “I have come up with the dignified, respectable, and very wise way to quit.” Do you want to know what it was? Here it is: I quit doing things…On My Own. We don’t have to do anything alone! We don’t. We have a Savior, who is Jesus Christ. And he has said “Cast your burdens upon me, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” 

Turn to the Savior

That’s a good way to quit! Quit doing it on your own. You don’t have to. You have a Savior who loves you and wants to help. And he can make your life easier if you turn to him. I have done this many times in my life and I have found great success. And my quitting, or my giving up, or being done, doesn’t last. I process the emotion. I reach out for help from my Savior and from my loved ones. I get validation. They agree it’s hard. I tell them what’s going on and they agree it’s hard. 

But I don’t have to do it alone, and you don’t either. So the next time you feel like quitting, or like you’re just done, I encourage you to quit…in the respectable, dignified and wise way. Quit doing it on your own. You don’t have to, and neither do I, and neither does my child.