How to Adult

Tuesday night, after a long day of all the things, I got into the shower to wash my greasy hair, and there was no hot water. I felt myself getting heated on the inside from extreme rage at the thoughts running through my head:

-       This is awful.

-       Why is this happening to me?

-       I work so hard and want a hot shower.

-       This is all their faults- they all had to have long baths.

-       This never happens to J Lo.

-       All I do is cart kids around and pack lunches and have meetings and pay bills.

-       No one appreciates me.

As a reaction to these thoughts, I yelled. It wasn’t a curse word (despite those being amongst my favorite terms in my vocab) but a roar. My roar was an attempt to feel heard.

After the fastest shower of my life, I exited my bathroom, squeaky clean and as cold as a witch’s tit. My youngest child saw me, her eyes wide in concern, and said “Mommy, why did you yell?” and the kid in me wanted to say “because of all of you, I took a cold shower and am very disappointed in my life” or something else dramatic of that nature. However, because she looked genuinely worried, the adult in me recognized the truth and explained it: “Because Mommy sometimes forgets she is responsible for her feelings and gets mad and yells.”

In other words, I had an adult tantrum. Have you tried? They are very disappointing! 0/5 stars. Unsubscribe.

Adult tantrums are real. They can strike at any time, and they usually leave the individual throwing the tantrum and the surrounding audience feeling out of control.

How do you know if you are throwing an adult tantrum (besides the obvious actions of yelling, kicking, pouting, throwing, pointing, flicking off, etc.)? It’s when the kid in you takes over your beautiful adult brain and believes the following:

-       I feel this way because of what he/she/they said.

-       If they did this, I would have no issues.

-       He/she/they are the problem.

-       If I do this, maybe they will do that thing I want them to do.

When you were a kid, you didn’t have the capacity to take responsibility for how you were feeling, so you wanted the outside world to solve discomfort or uncertainty for you.  

-       You wanted praise to know you were loved.

-       You wanted to be invited to the party to feel accepted.

-       You wanted to hear you were pretty to believe it.

-       You yelled at your mom when you wanted to stay at the party.

-       You hit your brother when he called you dumb.

While these examples are normal pattern as children, a lot of us are walking around as old-ass kids because we failed to grow-up emotionally. It’s not our faults. We were taught how to square-dance at school instead of how to manage our thoughts.  

As a result, you never learned to accept ownership of your feelings and your thoughts to create your experience. So, you rely on the outside to change (or a way to manipulate the outside) in order for you to feel in control/confident/competent.

-       You want the title to feel like a leader.

-       You need your boss to show you a career path.

-       You want the membership to the club to feel belonging.

-       You said what he wanted to hear to get what you wanted.

-       You blame your parents for being the way you are.

You give your power away to the outside when you hold the keys all along. Don’t blame yourself. You are a human who was taught how to play scooter basketball in school, or you went to a school where you got “credits” for kickboxing classes. Now you get to learn about adulting. You’re welcome.

When you are adulting, you take responsibility for your experience, and recognize that your interpretation of a situation creates your feelings. So instead of looking to the outside to change or to validate you, you trust in your value being inherent because you exist. Because of this you are unconditionally loving and confident towards yourself. You work on believing:

-       I feel this way because of what I think.

-       I choose my thoughts like I choose my friends because I spend a lot of time with them.

-       I can choose anything I want to believe about myself.

-       Just because (fill in the blank is happening), doesn’t mean anything about me, except what I choose it to mean.

As a result of these beliefs, you become aware of what you are thinking in situations. You are intentional about what you believe. And you create the feelings you want to feel. And when you want something to change, you start to build that change from within yourself. You start with changing your mind. This requires connection to all of you: your true desires, your true values, your true soul.

In my story, the kid in me was taking the cold shower. But if the adult in me were taking the cold shower, my inner dialog may have gone like…

-       This is a cold shower, and I wanted a hot one.

-       It is common, when I run a dishwasher and 3 other people in my home take long baths and showers before me, that the water will be cold.

-       I am annoyed and that is okay.

-       Some people only take cold showers because it is supposed to increase their metabolic rates.

-       Maybe I am actually getting toned in this shower.

-       I am going to emerge from this shower looking like J Lo.

-       This cold shower can end now, or I can bring it with me the rest of the evening.

Remember, regardless of the situation you are in, creating awareness as to which version of you is showing up (the kid in you, or the adult in you) means the difference between choosing blame, or choosing personal power.

The next time a situation leaves you feeling cold, let the adult in you call the shots. It’s way hotter.

Speaking of hot, you are super cute when you own your feelings.

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