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Alice Walker summed it up perfectly when she said, “Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.” This is what you’ll need to do for the majority of the toddler years with your twins. If you can manage it—most of the time—you’ll survive quite nicely. Choosing to maintain very low expectations might appear a negative approach at first. If so, try thinking of it this way: this approach is not pessimistic, it’s realistic. When you don’t have a master plan in mind for the way things will go, you significantly reduce the potential for being disappointed when they don’t go quite that way. An experience that might otherwise have been viewed as horrendous could instead be seen as “fascinating.” A trip to the grocery store during which the kids were not in the most wonderful moods might be considered a success simply because you were able to keep some semblance of peace and order until everything on your list was purchased.
Heed the advice of Emmet Fox:
Bless a thing and it will bless you.
Curse it and it will curse you . . .
If you bless a situation, it has no power to hurt you,
and even if it is troublesome for a time,
it will gradually fade out . . .
If you bless your circumstances, no matter how dire they might appear in the moment, you’ll be blessed by a new lesson learned or something to laugh about on a Friday night. If you are troubled by each and every one of the not entirely pleasant occurrences, you’ll spend far too much time in the Land of the Bitter. And that’s just not a pleasant place to live.
I certainly won’t fib by insinuating that on every occasion I was able to turn my perspective into a positive one. That’s simply not possible, and I don’t believe that anyone who proclaims it is genuinely believes what is coming out of his mouth. But if you try to take the high road on challenging situations as often as possible, you’ll be able to get through those really tough days and situations. You’ll be able to ride the wave of insanity instead of being churned around in it.
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