Welcome to the Simplicity Diary with me Kim-John Payne, the author of Simplicity Parenting. We're going to be focusing a little bit on the art of family change in this and other subsequent postings over the next month or two. And one of the things that I wanted to start right off on is a question of expectations of what we can expect when we're wanting change.
Because a lot of whether we feel change is being successful or not has to do on what we expect in the first place. And I know that sounds like a really obvious comment, but bear with me while I unpack it, excuse me, just a little bit. One of the things that I've noticed creeping into society in general is what I think of as harmony addiction, where every day has to be a crystal rainbow or a balancing experience for us and for our kids.
Otherwise something is wrong, right? So if there's discomfort, if something's not going well, something must be wrong. And if there's joy and happiness and laughter, then that's good. So discomfort, bad.
Joy, good. And that as a motif for living our lives leads us to raise our expectations so unrealistically high that when the fall comes and it comes regularly it's hard and then it causes a rebound of us feeling let down or maybe frustrated or even bitter. So one of the keys to going into this in the first place when you want to make changes in a family, when you want to bring other people along with you, is to understand that it's not going to be easy and it's really not meant to be easy.
You know, that otherwise it just becomes too hard and we back away from trying to make changes or ultimately we just leave the relationship behind. Now sometimes that's just a reality and that needs to happen, but why have it happened when sometimes it does not? And I've come across this a lot in my family counseling, is that sometimes wishing to make a change with a partner in particular can become very, very frustrating if the expectations are in a sense set too high too quick. Now I would add the too quick in there because it's okay to have high aims.
After all, it's our kids, you know, it's their lives and they're in our hands. It's perfectly fine to have these expectations, but how fast we can bring a partner or extended family along with us or friends, it often needs time. In fact, it almost always needs time and it almost always needs small doable steps in order to get to that goal.
Because if we're aiming too fast, what can happen is that we end up going into what I think of as a convincing current, where we start off trying to convince people, trying to cajole and convince them that this change is actually needed. We may plead, we may want to bargain and meanwhile the positions that our partner or others hold seems to become more and more entrenched. I'm suggesting that we move from like a convincing current and we do it consciously because otherwise the convincing current becomes a forcing current, where we then move into just forcing people to try and change.
And that is just not within our influence. We cannot force another person to change. And a lot of this stems all the way back to this thing that we've almost been set up in that it's not just harmony addiction only, it's that as a society more and more we've become conflict aversive, where that kind of discomfort even if it's mild conflict, even if there's a lid on it and it feels uncomfortable, we will either try and go around it on one hand or smash through it on another.
And I'm suggesting that sitting with the discomfort, allowing ourselves to really look at the discomfort, to walk around it, to taste it, smell it, feel it, whatever metaphor works, but to really in a sense be interested in the discomfort. And I know that that might sound overly philosophical and I don't mean it to in any way, but when something is hurting, it's trying to tell us something. It's trying to tell us that change is needed.
If you have an injury to an arm, a leg, in the way you're moving, if you're a tennis player or a runner or whatever, it's telling you to move a different way, that changes are needed. But often the change that's needed, for example, if you have a sore knee from running or whatever it is, often the change needed, physical therapists tell us, can be very, it's like a 2% change. I remember a physical therapist telling me this once, that all I needed to do was make a 2% correction to my posture and the knee would take care of itself.
And here I was thinking, oh I might need a partial knee replacement or reconstruction or whatever. I was a football player and it was common amongst the other people, the kids I was playing with. But no, she just said you just need a 2% change.
Now when it comes to our family life, it's the same. If something is causing us pain, we're watching maybe our kids get over-scheduled, over-homeworked, we're watching maybe a partner who doesn't seem to get it that our kids need downtime, an extended family that just don't seem to get it that we're trying to go low screen in our homes and be much more conscious about screen, TV and computer use and the likes. I think that actually causes not only a metaphoric pain, I think it's almost real.
You know, you just experience it viscerally. Okay, so that's telling us something. That's totally telling us something.
And we can't ignore it. I'm not suggesting that we ignore pain. I'm suggesting we become interested in it and because for a knee injury or the likes, to become very interested, I had to for a number of months become very interested in the way I was moving.
And it wasn't just on the sports field. It was the way I was standing, the way I was, you know, you were standing at the counter making lunch. I realized my knee was locked out.
The way you drive a car, the way one would just go about normal daily tasks. The interest this physical therapist asked me to take in my posture and the consciousness that I needed to attend to, sure enough, within, it was slow, but within about six months, the knee was fine. I developed ways, alternative and much more healthy ways to move.
Now, again, the metaphor here is looking with interest at the discomfort, walking around it, embracing it, I guess you could say, and saying now what small 2% change do I need to make in order to have this not be quite so painful. The pain won't go away today or tomorrow. It's going to take time, but what can I do today to make this kind of shift? In doing that, we don't fall victim to harmony addiction.
In fact, quite the opposite. What we do is that we become mindful and conscious of the discomfort and have the discomfort be a signpost to a deeper need and then have that deeper need be attended to with a small doable change. That, for me, is a major message in the art of family change.
Being interested in discomfort, being willing to take the time it needs, and realizing that that small change can have a big effect over time. That last idea is something we'll be unpacking in greater depth in subsequent Simplicity Diaries. Big theme, but little task.
Thank you for tuning in to this segment of the Simplicity Diaries. I hope this has been helpful. Bye-bye now.
