Kids, don't piss off your mum (and other life lessons)

Story time, kids.

It's way past your bedtime. Your mother just snapped at me for bringing one of you into the room while she was nursing another one of you back to sleep.

“Check your damn phone” she hissed, her eyes flashing red amidst the pitch black room.

She had sent a message moments ago saying she needed 10 more minutes. I didn't see it because an overgrown (and overstimulated) baby had insisted on being carried upstairs. Naturally, I was triggered and annoyed. My monkey mind immediately started conjuring follow up accusations from her out of thin air.

“Why is your phone always on silent? What if there's an emergency”

“You're always on your phone, why couldn't you check this time?”

I had to plan my counter attack.

Then I remembered something I had written down some time ago in my list of personal values: Always assume the best of others, especially loved ones, and always choose kindness.

I remembered how difficult it was when I had to put you guys back to sleep while running on fumes. You guys may have been possessed by demons and I may have snapped more than once.

Having moral values takes much more than memorising a pendidikan moral textbook only to regurgitate it in an exam, which is what it took to get an A back in my time. And I didn't get an A because I wasn't very good at memorising.

However, getting an A has absolutely no correlation to actual moral character. Morality is caught, not taught. "Catching" values / virtues in your character is crucial in building a strong sense of self, which is something I hope you both develop early in life.

Being clear on your values, code, creed, or whatever you want to call it, can be a framework to simplify decision making. It can remove ambiguity from tricky situations if you have the courage to make the right decisions.

Your values and what they mean to you will evolve throughout your life, and it's best to start early. So if you guys could take away a few things from all this, they are:

• Learn mindfulness, which is a way of creating mental space between yourself and your thoughts / emotions. This space can help you spot opportunities to apply your values instead of reacting impulsively / emotionally (see the story above).
• Develop a habit of reflection. This can be helpful in understanding yourself (and others) better and uncovering blind spots. Take time to unpack your thoughts / feelings / behaviours / motivations and write them down in a journal. Review them and see how your thoughts evolve. Writing is an act of discovering what you think and what you believe. Someone once said "the person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks."

• Leading indicators > lagging indicators. Leading indicators are habits and behaviours you can control, while lagging indicators are the outcomes. Focus on building habits that align with your values, like consistency in showing up, rather than just chasing results. Your sense of self should come from these values (internal), not the benefits or validation that come from the outcomes (external). Don’t go to the gym to get ripped, go because you’re the type of person who never misses a workout.
• Be kind to yourself. Pendidikan moral didn't tell me that it was OK to not live up to my values sometimes, that we all fall short and that's what makes us human. It didn't tell me that I didn't have to believe my internal monologue whenever I fell short, that I could replace “I'll never get there, there’s no point in trying” with “I'm not there yet, but I can get there, and I am the kind of person who will keep trying”.

And lastly: Don’t piss off your mum.