Naming Obstacles

Fear - Worries of failure and underachievement.  Low confidence and lack of emotional and spiritual support

Distractions - Loud noises during my studies

Overload - When my children grow older, I can assign more responsibilities to them like cleaning, laundry, and dishes.  Currently, I feel fatigued and overworked from all the household chores, school, and raising my children.

Temptations - Movies, television shows, dating and friend’s celebration events.  Entertainment helps balance my life from all the stress.  Celebration events are good social events for both me and my children.  Dating; however, is a huge distraction for me.  I have considered finding a dead-end government job for a simple life raising my children and dating again, but I would be ashamed of myself.  I am my children and my brother’s role model.  I need to be strong and patient.  Setting low expectations for myself will cause my children to do the same for themselves.

In this exercise, I feel that giving name to my obstacles does empower me to be stronger.  When I realize my weaknesses, I can avoid them.  When I am on the verge of over-indulgence, I can acknowledge and re-evaluate my plans instead of mindlessly going about.

Great way to start my third decade in life.

Today was great. House was clean and my mom and I started off on a positive note.  At first, me and my brother were very quiet and worried that something would upset our mother, but everything was good.  She told stories, we listened to her moral lessons, and even laughed a little bit.  I still do not understand why she never responds to my letters; regardless, if I had great family days like this once a year, I can find strength to continue my goals. 

Yesterday and today, I was pretty stressed.  I had two papers due Monday and I did not even write one sentence yet.  Because I came home in a good mood, my mind was in the right place and I wrote an entire three page essay in just three hours.  It was not sloppy either, I really enjoyed and am proud of it.  Tomorrow, I just need to write one more essay and I am perfectly on track. 

Psychologically, removing stress gave me a lot of energy and confidence in my abilities.  Writing this blog no longer took an hour of judging and editing my writing.  I have always known my mother had positive intentions, but I always felt judged and unworthy.  Tonight was different.  Her words felt less invasive.  I finally noticed that small adjustments in my dialogue has a huge effect on our conversation.  Studying chapter seven's social work dialogue with the client, I was able to transform my usual resentful dialogue into a logical explanation of my feelings.