For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying something new – turning off my mind and tuning in to the present. Regularly. And this simple practice has truly changed my life.

I stumbled upon Eckhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now, completely by accident. A friend had recommended another one of his books, A New Earth. But when the library didn’t have it on the shelf, I grabbed The Power of Now on a whim. Later, I did pick up the other book, and I’m not sure which one I enjoyed more. They both did more for my life in a couple of short weeks than any single book I’ve ever read.

Before I had children, I probably spent most of my time “in my head.” I just didn’t realize it. I mean, it didn’t affect my life all that much. When you’re alone in your car or at your desk or on a run, the voice in your head is kind of nice company. Quite frankly, I think that I spent a lot of time talking to myself. And it wasn’t really an issue.

But once I added two small children to my days and nights, that voice in my head became problematic. Most new moms experience increased worry and anxiety. Well, those emotions become an unhealthy habit if you’re constantly yelling, “FIRE!!!” and running for the exit door — which doesn’t exist, so you just continue running around in circles in your mind with the panic button still  on.

I was feeding myself all kinds of horror stories all day long … what might harm my child, or me, or their father, what I needed to do next, what I hadn’t done yet, etc. It wasn’t all negative thinking. But Echkart Tolle’s book just made me realize how much time I was spending THINKING instead of BEING.

And what he said, which had never actually occurred to me before, is that I have control over these thoughts! I can make that internal voice stop by focusing for a few moments on my breath and my surroundings. And then, voila! I’m present in the moment.

What’s really great is that I don’t have to DO anything different, like meditate for 20 minutes every day or do yoga. I’m sure those things would help, but it’s as simple as recognizing “the voice” for what it is — the imagination on overdrive — and just turning it off.

It’s amazing how much peace I’ve found in my life now that I’m not always interrupting myself with unnecessary thinking.

I would like to put in a petition for a 30-hour day. I truly believe that six extra hours per day would enable me to get everything done that I need to accomplish … and I might even have time to sit and read a book, or do something else relaxing. Yes, six more hours would be just great.

I know that there are some people out there who have managed to find these additional few hours without having to actually slow down the earth’s rotation. These amazing individuals can get 4-5 hours of sleep each night and still be safe behind a wheel.

Alas, I am not one of these people. I would definitely be considered a public hazard, if I were to regularly skimp on half of my daily sleep requirement.

I feel like I’m already cutting every corner to manufacture extra minutes in the day. Here are some of my time-creating tactics that might work for you, too (although you’re probably already doing half of them):

Eat and drink on the run.

Morning coffee is rarely sipped from a mug, but more often slugged from a silver thermos. And just today, I found myself eating a leftover bagel in the front seat of the car after my 3-year-old daughter reached out from her car-seat and said, “here, Mommy.”

Shower every other day.

I figure that saves me some time, too. It’s summer – I’m just going to get dirty again, anyway. And a friend of mine has a really clean pond. It’s the perfect natural bath.

Stop folding and putting away laundry.

This activity is just far too time consuming. My kids have now started fishing their clothes out of the laundry basket. They’re much easier to get to than if they were in a drawer, anyway.

Lose the brush.

I honestly don’t know where ours is. It has been missing for months. No, really, I’m serious. I cut my hair recently under the guise of fashion. But it was really because I don’t have time to brush.

Stop making the bed.

This one doesn’t even require an explanation. It makes perfect sense.

And finally, let the clutter collect.

I find that it’s much easier to locate what I’m looking for if it all stays out in the open. You tuck something neatly away in a drawer or cabinet, and you’ll never find it (on purpose) again.

There you go. Follow these suggestions, and you’ll create at least 2-3 NEW hours for yourself every day.

I often feel sorry for my daughter when it comes to our reading repertoire at home. Her older brother seems to call the shots – and we spend much of our time subject to his personal “reading list.” First, Thomas the Tank Engine, then Diego, and now the entire Star Wars series.

So tonight, I pulled Cinderella off the shelf in pure “girlie” rebellion. As I revisited the story of beautiful Cinderella and her wicked stepsisters for the first time in years, I could see why so many mothers of my generation cringe at the mention of these old-school princess fairy tales.

Poor pitiful girl in dire straits meets dashing young boy, is rescued, falls magically in love, and lives happily ever after. 

So it is a little passe. But whatever. I can let that whole thing go. A lot of girls seem to get a kick out of the whole starry-eyed dream of falling madly in love with their “prince” and galloping off into the sunset. I remember being that girl.

So it’s not the male/female relationship in the story that got my attention this time around. It was the fact that none of these poor women have any good girlfriends! In fact, most of the other gals in the story are out to get them. 

Having just come off a rather fantastic weekend away with my girlfriends as we celebrated a 40th birthday with champagne, dinner out, and lots of great stories and laughter …. I was struck by the fact that poor Cinderella – and so many of her counterparts (Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Rapunzel) – are pretty much alone in the world.

They seem to have plenty of animal friends to keep them company, I guess. But where’s their “right-hand gang?” 

Who cares if they’re pining away after some cute guy on a horse. Most of us dream of falling in love. But what’s so sad about these stories has nothing to do with the boy — and everything to do with the girlfriends who aren’t around.

Closing the ultra-pink fairy-tale book and kissing my 3-year-old daughter on the forehead before sending her off to dreamland, I silently vowed to myself to tell her all of the other fairy tales that were never told. 

The ones about finding your long-lost best girlfriends, your “go-to” ladies who will be there for you when Prince Charming loses his pizzazz or is simply working late at the office — again.

The ones who’ll notice your new haircut, listen to you “talk through your problems” for hours, and gladly share a slice of better-than- sex chocolate cake with you after a perfectly filling dinner. 

Sure, I hope that my daughter finds her Prince Charming – if she’s looking for him. But I want to send her out into the world searching for something else at the same time — a friend, or a pack of friends, who will share with her the hills and valleys of life as only girlfriends can.

The ones who’ll understand how much it hurts when that guy doesn’t ever call back and who’ll know how hard it is to take off that extra baby weight and find a bra that actually fits after nursing. 

I’ve been lucky enough to find my “soul-sisters” during the various stages of my life. A few have stayed the course, and a lot of them have changed through the years. But they’ve always been there — to call on when times were really great and when they weren’t. 

And I can only hope the same for my little girl.

Besides, what good is a dance with Prince Charming at the ball if she doesn’t have her best buds to celebrate with afterwards?

I’ve been eating a lot of cereal lately (and I don’t mean for breakfast).  And I know that’s not good. But there’s just not enough time to go around, it seems. When I’ve got a few minutes, the last thing that I want to do is actually spend time preparing myself something to eat.

Now, I know that this isn’t something that I should keep up, because the habit leaves me with two things: an unsettled stomach and a frazzled day.

I mean, the day’s hectic no matter how you slice it — between school & preschool drop-offs, meetings for work, projects to complete, and school & preschool pick-ups. Not to mention those necessary evils, like grocery store runs and bank deposits.

But eating a mug (not even a bowl, mind you) of cereal at my desk only causes the events of the day to come colliding together all the more dramatically. 

I know what I need to do. I need to take the time to stand at the kitchen counter long enough to slice a tomato, wash a handful of lettuce, and smear some hummus or something on some bread … and then take a seat at the table to quietly enjoy and DIGEST my lunch. 

In the end, I really won’t get that much less done. And I not only will have given my mind – and my body – a much-needed break, but also the gift of the moment. 

I require my kids to sit in one place when they dine in our home. I say things like, “Your body won’t be able to use all that good food to grow if you don’t SIT DOWN!” I’ve even taken away numerous meals when my children have stood up and walked around the room one too many times.

So why don’t I hold myself to the same standards of proper dining behavior? Well, I should. And I will. As soon as I finish this mug of frosted mini-wheats ….

Almost six years after diving-in to this whole parenting thing, I’m just now realizing that I don’t have to witness my child’s every breath to be a good parent. What a relief. I can finally feel good about going to the bathroom alone.

I swear that it was only days after finding out I was expecting my first child that complete strangers began stopping me in the grocery store to say, “It goes by so fast! Don’t blink!”

“Don’t blink.” That’s still one of my favorites. I get it at least three or four times a week. 

The ever diligent person that I am, I’ve always taken these comments to heart — meaning that I’ve spent a lot of hours in my children’s faces. I’ve worked really hard at being present and available to them. They have been the center of my life.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, so someone said. 

I think that all of those hours attending to my kids’ every whim, determined not to BLINK and miss one precious moment of their lives …. has resulted in two very attention-needy children. They’re really great, fun-loving kids. But they demand a lot of one-on-one time from us.

Naturally – since I’ve been so desperately trying to make the most of this fleeting moment in time, I’ve resisted sending either of my kids to preschool. 

Until recently. 

With a work schedule that demanded it, I had to give in. My daughter began preschool last week.

And guess what? Not only did she have a great time, but I was delighted to see that she really didn’t grow all that much in the five hours that we were apart. 

She enjoyed making some new friends, I got some work done, and we had a delightful afternoon and evening together after that.

Perspective is a good thing. I’m sure that looking back, the years when our kids are little do seem to go by in a flash. 

But the thing is, we can’t hoard time — no matter how hard we might try. So it’s best to just let go and enjoy each step of the journey, instead of fretting about when it’s going to end.

As for me, I’m finally getting up the nerve to blink from time to time. And it feels good.

Most moms I know struggle with guilt. When we’re working, we feel guilty that we’re not playing with our kids. When we’re playing with our kids, we feel guilty that we’re not working.

Those of us who are arts-and-crafty blame ourselves for not spending more time hiking and biking with our children, while we outdoorsy-types feel guilty that we don’t expose our wee-ones to more arts-and-crafts projects.

It’s a lose-lose situation – and really kind of funny, if you think about it. What’s interesting is that “guilt” seems to be epidemic with our generation of mothers. But like so many aspects of 21st-century parenting, I don’t think that our foremothers could relate.

I’ve spent a lot of time with women whose days of child-rearing ended before the second World War began … and they just didn’t experience “guilt” as young mothers. Why is that? 

First of all, I think they were just too busy. Yes, we’re busy. But we’re busy in a totally different way.

While mommies of today run companies, drive carpools, and  dash around town picking up and dropping off this and that, the mothers of yesterday were starching and ironing sheets, canning vegetables, baking pies from scratch, sewing dresses, and folding diapers.

They were physically occupied every minute of every day. They didn’t have the luxury of time or the burden of modern psychology to fuel the fire of self-doubt and second-guessing.

I think that the expectations of parenting were different then, too. Children were not the center of the household. Their opinions, wants, and (sometimes) needs came second to those of the adults in the home. For better or for worse. 

A mother’s life was not about pacifying her children. It was about keeping them clothed, fed, and bathed.

Nowadays, we crave a relationship with our kids that is much more complicated. We talk a lot about quality time and connectedness. My grandmother looked at me cross-eyed when I once asked her if she ever played games with her five daughters.

I’m not sure how to keep us all free and clear of the mommy guilt-trap, but I do know that it’s all relative. At the end of the day, if we plan well and allocate our time wisely, we are gifted with more time with our kids than possibly any generation of mothers that has preceded us.

Instead of over-thinking it, we should embrace these precious moments for what they are, feel grateful that we aren’t darning socks, and then guiltlessly move on.

“You can be bigger socially than you have ever been in your life. That’s sure. (But) you can’t grow socially unless you help others grow also.”

Wiliam H. Danforth, 1931

During those first few years of motherhood, my social circle grew immensely. I suddenly found myself reaching out and connecting with women like never before.

My formerly introverted self was now carrying around a pen and paper for chance phone number exchanges and then actually calling to set up “play dates” (for our then 3-month-olds.)

Those friendships that developed during the early days of motherhood are still incredibly precious and sustaining to me. But I recently realized – as my energies began zeroing in on my own rekindled career objectives – that my “rolodex,” so to speak, was comprised completely of women between the ages of 32 and 42 with two to three kids each and a husband.

It had never occurred to me that this was a problem. In fact, I would have gone merrily along my way had I not been forced by my business objectives to break out of my mold and meet new people. And wow! — I was shocked at how great it felt!

As I move throughout my days now, getting together with people from so many different walks of life, ages, and backgrounds … I feel a tremendous energy that I haven’t felt in years. It’s a kind of social energy, I guess. And I had no idea that it was missing in my life – until now.

I’ve joined a local networking group, as well as another association related to my line of work, and I’m getting ready to add one more women-in-business organization to my list.

Someone made a comment at one of these meetings recently that none of us would be there (at the meeting) unless we were solely motivated by the need or desire to grow our business. Well, I have news for that person.

I may be out to lunch on this one, but I like to think that we’re also there to help each other grow. I know that I am.

Nothing feels better than to help someone else achieve their goals, whether they’re professional or personal pursuits. It doesn’t matter. In the end, it’s really all personal, anyway. We’re all people – with hopes and passions and dreams.

What a great moment it is when we break out of our narrow mindset long enough to fully appreciate those heartfelt aspirations in another person. To me, that is the “social energy” that makes all things in life and business possible.

And when that can happen, the experience of being part of a business group or a social network or whatever you want to call it is so much more fulfilling than being holed up in your office or kitchen, for that matter, alone with your thoughts and ideas.

Today was Gracie’s son’s birthday. He turned 63. She often refers to him as “the little one,” in comparison to his 70-year-old brother. I don’t know why it should surprise me that a 95-year-old woman should still be so utterly in love with her babies. A mother’s love has no end. In fact, it seems to just keep on growing.

In case her son decided to come by for a visit on his special day, Gracie had taken out five special gifts that he had given her over the years and had placed them on her kitchen counter. One item was a silver bracelet that her youngest had made at Boy Scout Camp over 50 years ago. She said, “This is special to me because it means that my little boy was thinking of me when he was away at camp.” As she told me this, her face lit up like a young girl in love. And that’s the thing — she was still that besotted girl. I’m sure when her eldest’s birthday comes around, her cheeks will blush in just the same way.

As I sat listening to Gracie reminisce about being in the hospital awaiting her second son’s arrival, it was as if I were talking with one of my girlfriends who just gave birth a year or two ago. The memories are as clear for her as they are for any one of the new moms I know. She remembers the other two women in the hospital who had babies on that day. And she recalls exactly how her eldest son reacted when he heard the news. 

Last week, Gracie and I stopped by to visit her 96-year-old neighbor. I’ve met her before. She can’t speak very clearly, so you just have to smile and nod when she talks to you. But there is one story that she tells with perfect clarity. This sweet, quite alone-in-the-world woman looks down at my three-year-old daughter, and she tells me that she had a daughter too, but she died of cancer. As she recounts this difficult story, her eyes are filled with as much grief and sadness as Gracie’s are brimming with love and celebration. 

In the end … the love that we have for our children may be the single greatest love of our lives.

In our youth-centered world, we often only recognize two different mothers – the young mom in the trenches who can barely come up for air and the grandmother with the grown children and their budding families. But what happens when those grandchildren grow up and move out and begin having kids of their own? Then we have something else altogether. I’ve never given much thought to the perspective of a great-grandmother. Watching your kids become grandparents …. while all the while, in your heart, they are still your precious babies, running around your ankles while you’re trying to put dinner on the table.

I was humbled today when I realized how many elderly women I have known, and yet, I have never fully appreciated the mothers that they continue to be … even though so many new titles and roles have been layered upon them. 

This afternoon, Gracie poured white grape juice in wine flutes to celebrate her baby’s birthday. When I left, I could tell that she was still holding out hope that he might stop by to share a birthday toast with her. I sure hope he did.

After giving birth, I became a group person. The more the merrier. The person who had never organized a social gathering in her life (aside from a birthday party or two) was suddenly coordinating a local play-group. And I always showed up. Early.

I used to think that you either came into the world a “group” person, or you didn’t. You were either the sorority-type, or you weren’t. But then after I had my first child, I realized that my days of preferring to ride solo were over. And I don’t just mean that I now had a kid hitched to my hip 24/7. I mean that the “one-on-one- relationship me” had suddenly walked out the door with my 26-inch waist … never  to return.

I have friends who tell a similar story. They simply didn’t enjoy being around large groups of women – until they had a baby. Judging by the proliferation of play-groups in every neighborhood and town and the gazillion online forums out there … I think that it’s rare to find a woman who has a child and then retreats from other mothers. At least I haven’t met one.

Perhaps what makes motherhood so enriching has almost more to do with how we change in relation to the world than how the world changes in relation to us.

Our environment is different. Absolutely. We now have a baby. BIG change. But up until that baby came into our lives, I think it’s safe to say that most of us (even if we were “group” people) felt that we were somehow charging ahead in our own little personal life-experience. And maybe we were.

The day we became mothers, however, that world opened up. We now took comfort in the feeling that we were definitely not alone in our “life pods.” We were truly part of a greater community of women … some moms, some not yet, some maybe never. That commonality doesn’t seem to matter. It’s more about the shared experience of being a woman — and whatever that brings for each of us.

Mary Cassatt - Woman with Baby

I remember attending a play group after my son was born. All of us were toting infants — a roomful of brand-new spanking moms. Although we didn’t know each other then as well as we would in the months to come, someone bravely ended the talk of nap schedules and bottle-feeding when she said, “I’ve been consumed with my mortality lately.”

You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief. “So I’m not the only crazy one!” It seems that we had all begun seeing the world a little differently since the birth of our babes. And not in the way we might have expected. Every woman hears when she’s expecting that “having kids changes you.” Well, no one provided any of the critical details.

Some of the initial morbidity that many of us experienced as new mothers could be attributed to the postpartum hormonal highjacking of our brains. But I know that in my case, anyway, the lenses through which I saw the world became increasingly clouded with fear even as those early days of motherhood faded into the background. What if something horrible happens to my beautiful child? And better yet, what if something happens to me that prevents me from being able to enjoy this magnificent time of life? 

Of course, the media doesn’t help. As a baby shower gift, a friend of mine – with all of the best intentions – gave me a subscription to one of the popular parenting magazines. After a few months, I stopped reading them. They made me a certifiable nervous wreck. One terrifying statistic and horror story after another left me completely paralyzed by fear. 

I’ve given a lot of thought and read a number of books trying to understand what happens to our minds after we have children. It makes sense from a “survival of the fittest” standpoint. As mothers, we must protect our offspring – which means that we also must keep ourselves out of harm’s way. After all, we’re the only ones who are truly capable of safeguarding our little treasures. 

But I think that in addition to our biological makeup is the human mind’s tendency to think, “If something really great is happening right now, then it’s probably about to end. I better get ready.” At least this was the case for me. I was always waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Getting control of my mind has been the singular greatest challenge I’ve faced since giving birth. It far surpasses midnight feedings or grocery-store tantrums. My method for attack in any life crisis has always been research, research, and more research. So I’ve done a lot of reading – from books by psychologists and physicians to spiritual teachers and even mediums. I’ve read them all. 

For my birthday a couple of years ago, a friend of mine gave me the book, Inner Peace for Busy People by Joan Borysenko. In it, Borysenko explains the connection between the mind and body and provides some great anecdotes and practical steps to achieving peace of mind. I would say that her books have been the most helpful in my quest to gain control over my negative thinking — by practicing gratitude, trying not to “catastroph-ize” (or imagine the worst possible outcome to a situation), and by exploring my faith … just to name a few.

Actually, my quest to find mental “balance” is what led me down the road to this blog. Because it’s not just a mind thing — it’s a whole-self thing. I know that I’m not alone in my need to create a stronger “core” self, where every media-induced panic-alarm doesn’t send me into near cardiac-arrest.

But within the global play-group of mothers with a million tasks on their plates, we are often left without a forum for raising our hands and saying, “Hey – am I crazy or …?”