I was recently watching a video from Not the Worst Cleaner, a wonderful Canadian lady who cleans the homes of those desperately in need, but whose situation is such that they can’t get help. She was talking about resetting your relationship with cleaning. She said that our subconscious learns by repetition, and that while we are cleaning, if we say to ourselves, out loud, that we are doing (insert current task) because we deserve (insert result of task), it will rewire our brain’s response to cleaning to be more positive.
For example, even though you’re exhausted by the end of the day, and all you want to do is crawl into bed, you do a quick tidy of the kitchen, while saying aloud “I’m clearing the kitchen bench because I deserve to wake up to a tidy kitchen in the morning and have my morning coffee in a relaxing space”. Brogan (which is her actual name) states that if we continue to do this over and over, cleaning will cease to be an onerous chore we begrudge doing, and instead will become an act of self-care. She has a background in psychology and its applications in cleaning, and shares many valuable insights during her cleaning videos, which I’ve found to be very useful. This is why I keep mentioning her here. However, the point I’m making is that this positive self-talk isn’t just applicable to cleaning; it can be highly beneficial throughout our entire lives, especially for our children.
My daughter, who is now close to eleven, has been playing Minecraft since she was about four, and has accumulated around two thousand hours of game time. Incredible, right?! She still eagerly plays each day, too. We homeschool her, and when we say, for example, it’s time for math, she is not eager to begin work. She says she hates math; she hates how long it takes, that sort of thing. She has certainly spent less time doing math than she has playing Minecraft, and yet she still enjoys Minecraft. Now, I know that one of these is a game, and one is a lesson, but what if the self-talk about these two activities were different? If she was as negative about Minecraft as she is about math, she could ruin her fun pretty quickly, right? You know that saying ‘don’t yuck someone’s yum’? It’d be like that, but self-directed/inflicted. Now, what if instead of saying she hates math, she said ‘I’m doing my math so that I feel capable and proud of my effort’. Do you think she would continue to feel as negative about math? I certainly don’t.
I brought this up with my daughter and she was pretty dismissive of this idea, which was disappointing, but it got me thinking, have I been modelling negative self-talk? I realised I have, though not about math, but other things for sure I have… The number of times I’ve said ‘I hate (grocery shopping, washing my hair, doing the dishes, cooking, etc, etc, etc)’… Yikes. I can be quite critical of many things.
So, my takeaway from this is that it would really benefit my daughter for her whole life if I modelled being positive about things, even if they’re not my favourite things. If I instead of saying ‘I hate washing my hair’, I said ‘I don’t love washing my hair, but I do love how fresh and clean I feel after having washed my hair’, or instead of ‘I hate cooking’ I said ‘It’s hard to start food prep, but I love having home-cooked meals’ maybe she wouldn’t be saying ‘I hate math’ and instead would be saying ‘I love when I’m finished with math because I feel like I did something good for me, and now I get to play Minecraft’. I grew up with a very negative mother, and I don’t want to pass that on to my daughter. I want her to have a positive inner voice. I want a positive inner voice, too, because our lives will be better for a mindset make-over!
