How to plan your journey on becoming a parent

 

Part 1- Planning your personal success- finding your motivation

You just found out you are pregnant. You ask yourself how you are going to prepare for this life-changing experience. You focus on how to take care of yourself and what will your baby need. The last thing that may occur to you, is preparing yourself both mentally and emotionally for this new journey. In order to do this, you need to take the time to learn about yourself, understand why you do the things you do, and how you can change for the better by becoming your own life coach.

In the next weeks, I will be focusing on a distinctive approach that I have developed called “Your Pyramid of Success”. This method combines self-help and self-coaching skills that will help you with planning, problem-solving, and goal setting. Incorporating these skills in your daily life will help you be more confidant, more resilient, a happier person, and a better parent. 

 You will discover things about yourself, review what behaviors or patterns work for you, feel empowered, and make a choice for action. I will show you how to stick with what works for you and to change what doesn’t.

The foundation of “Your Pyramid of Success” is planning your success. To construct your plan, you first need to understand what factors and circumstances motivate you. In other words what makes you tick. There are three main categories of motivation. They are described as,

1. What you feel is not right in your life: You have the impulse to change behaviors or situations that are telling you to “do something”
2. Your desire to continue with and get more of what is right in your life: This can be money, love, personal accomplishments, artistic endeavors, etc.
3. Your personal desire to grow and stretch beyond your comfort level: This motivates you to want to increase your effectiveness in your profession, personal relationships, finances, and health.

As we go through different phases in our lives, our motivation factors also change as our needs and want change as well.  Whether this is your first pregnancy or one that is adding a new addition to your family, your motivation will be influenced by your current situation and what needs to be changed to accommodate your baby and the many years to come.

Now is a good time to look at each category and ask yourself where your motivation comes from. Examine how becoming a parent may change how these motivating factors cause you to make decisions and maybe change your goals. You may also decide to not do something as you are content with your current situation.  Once you have done this exercise, you are now at the beginning of developing your own self- coaching program.

In my next article, I will show you how low self-esteem and negative behavior patterns can obstruct your personal growth. Say you are in a bad behavioral pattern of being lazy, you may decide you change that habit, and become more productive, so it goes both ways.  I will also teach you how to make positive changes to those patterns and eventually remove them from your behavior. The more you learn about yourself, the more you will learn to value your special talents, express your ideas and gain confidence in areas of growth and opportunity.

Disclaimer: Portions of this article contains copyrighted content from my book “New Parents Are People Too: 8 Secrets to Surviving Parenthood as Individuals and as a Couple” No part of this article/blog may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author, except as provided by the U.S.A. copyright law.