Maybe lately you haven’t been as good a parent as you would like to be. You’ve been on your phone too much. You let your short temper get the best of you. You prioritized work over family. You got too wrapped up in your expectations, you were too harsh, you refused to see things their way.
Well? That’s all in the past. It happened. It shouldn’t have, but it did. And there’s nothing you can do now to undo it. The question is, how do you move forward? We have the power, at any moment, to get back on track. We can choose, always, to return to the standard we want to live up to as parents.
It’s like going to the gym. Sometimes you miss a day, then you miss another, and the next thing you know, it’s been weeks since you’ve gone. Okay. It happened. But tomorrow hasn’t yet. You have a choice. Will you do better? Will you do what you know is right? Will you follow the plan you set out for yourself before you fell behind? Will you, as Marcus Aurelius says, get back to the rhythm?
No parent has time to indulge in pity parties. Nor can any parent justify a continued slide. We screw up. We fall short. We’re not what we want to be—what we promised ourselves we’d be, what we owe to our kids. And? We can choose right now to get back on track. We can choose right now to do better.
This email comes from “Just Pick Yourself Back Up,“ the June 24th entry of The Daily Dad book.
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