A Motto to Live By

Many years ago, Kevin established our family motto - “Everything always works out!” - to remind us not to sweat the little things. This little saying has helped all of us overcome little fears that get in the way of living life to the full. During some of our most frustrating and scary moments, you will often hear one of us remind everyone that “everything always works out!” Here are some of the ways we put this philosophy into practice.

We Remind Each Other to Think Positive

Positive thinking doesn’t mean that you’re not aware of life’s challenges. Instead, it means that you approach difficulty and frustration in a more productive way. If you allow too many of your thoughts to be negative, you will be more likely to have an overly pessimistic view on life. Reframing your thoughts to imagine the best outcome, instead of the worst, will help to alleviate the stress you’re feeling. The Mayo Clinic defines four types of negative thinking:

1. Personalizing – When something bad occurs, you automatically blame yourself. For example: Your family arrives late for an event, and you start thinking that you, alone, are responsible for the misadventure.

2. Filtering – You magnify the negative parts of a situation and overlook all the positive ones. For example: You focus on the one question you got wrong on a test vs all the rest that you got correct.

3. Catastrophizing – You anticipate the worst-case-scenario when faced with an obstacle. (These are often extremely unlikely outcomes.) For example: You think “If my partner leaves me, I’ll never find someone else and I’ll be unhappy and lonely for the rest of my life.”

4. Polarizing – You see things only as good or bad with no middle ground. For example: You may feel that you’re a failure if you don’t get all A’s.

We Practice Positive Self Talk

Sometimes pessimistic thoughts are the result of how you talk to yourself – those unspoken words that are the soundtrack inside your brain. This is a tough one for me. I am my own worst critic. Sometimes I assume I can’t do something because I don’t have enough information or because my expectations are not realistic. My husband is super at helping me reframe my perspective. I’ve learned that if I slow down and focus on just one thing at a time, my confidence builds, and I can get back into a successful rhythm.

Start by following one simple rule: Don't say anything to yourself that you wouldn't say to someone else. For instance, be kind and encouraging to yourself, practice some self-affirming statements like “I can do difficult things,”  and think about things you're thankful for in your life.

As a teenager, I kept some inspirational quotes and poems tacked to my wall to help remind me who I wanted to be and how to overcome challenges. My favorite one was by Edgar Guest and was called “Keep Going”. The last section, in particular, still gives me encouragement when faced with adversity and I think it’s really appropriate here:

“Success is failure turned inside out, the silver tint of the clouds of doubt. And you never can tell how close you are. It may be near when it seems afar. So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit. It’s when things seem worst that you musn’t quit.”

We Try to Find the Humor

Try to maintain your sense of humor. Chances are, you’re going to look back on this and laugh. Why not find a way to do it now?

Our youngest can get very frustrated when things don’t go her way or she feels like she’s suffered some sort of injustice. At one point, she started growling whenever she was angry. Kevin told her that we weren’t going to tolerate her angry growls anymore but to feel free to meow instead.

We would reinforce it by meowing when we heard her growl and soon, she was meowing to express her frustration. By changing her angry growl to a super cute kitten meow, she couldn’t stay angry. Eventually, she stopped doing both. When she falls into the cycle again, we just start meowing and she gets the point.

We Train Ourselves to Try New Things

Training yourself to try new things only comes through practicing. Kevin and I have completely different tolerances for risk. He is a natural risk taker, and I am always advocating for the safer route. We balance each other out. He pushes me to try things I wouldn’t on my own and I act as the voice of reason when I think the risk is not worth taking. Fear has a way of stopping us in our tracks. Avoiding experiences that make us anxious just serves to multiply fear.

Kevin likes to tell all his girls to reframe their thinking. Sometimes this means changing their vocabulary. When someone says, “I’m too scared to go on that ride,” he will tell them to instead say “I’m so excited to go on that ride.”

Often, we mistake those butterflies in our stomach as a warning of danger when it’s just a reaction to the prospect of facing something new. We don’t want them to get themselves into dangerous situations by neglecting to listen to that inner voice, but we also don’t want them to walk through life scared of trying new things. We’ll sometimes ask them, “what’s the worst thing that can happen?” If their answer is that they don’t think they can handle it or will be embarrassed if things don’t work out, that’s not a good enough reason to avoid something.

But What if Things Don’t Go as Planned?

Ah, this is where we get to the meat of the most important reason our motto is “Everything always works out!” Here’s the deal, things often don’t work out exactly as planned. If you spend all of your time worrying about the many ways something could go wrong, you’ll find yourself paralyzed with fear. By maintaining the attitude that it will all work out, you enable yourself to move ahead, one step at a time, toward your goal.

As I’ve said many times before, Kevin and I have completely different personalities and risk tolerances. Let’s say our goal is to climb a mountain. Kevin will look at the top, and then set his sights on the first step, often not knowing what the subsequent steps will be. He just steps out in faith that he will figure it out along the way. Occasionally, this “one step at a time” approach requires some backtracking or redirecting which may lead us to a different path altogether. It can be frustrating but as long as we keep moving vs standing still, we’re making progress.

Conversely, I have a tendency to be fearful of that first step unless I have plotted a full plan for getting to the top. This means that I will often procrastinate on that first step until I feel like I have enough information or until I’m forced to move forward. Once I get going though, I’m 100% on board. However, I don’t want to deviate from the plan and I just want to keep moving. I sometimes need to be reminded that even the best plans often require a change due to unforeseen circumstances.

Kevin believes in a process called “fear setting.” This is where we sit down and think about the worst-case-scenarios and determine a plan if one, or more, of those becomes an issue. In this case, we might think of the possibility of an avalanche or an equipment malfunction and then plan what to do if either of those things happen. We’d arrange to have an avalanche kit, extra equipment, and the ability to monitor the conditions so we can prepare for bad weather. With contingencies in place, we both have better confidence that it will all work out and we can start our climb. Along the way, we both remind each other that we’re on the right path and to be patient and follow the plan.

Here’s the thing; even if we never reach the top of the mountain, we had the experience of the climb, the beautiful views along the way, and the time together to bond doing something new and exciting.

Back in 2019, we had a plan to sell our home, buy an RV, and travel the USA full time while homeschooling our daughters. We had our timing set to take off as soon as the school year was over. The same month that our house was set to go up for sale, Covid hit. While we were stuck at home trying to help “flatten the curve,” we saw our plans completely fall apart.

As the months went by, everyone seemed to be buying RVs and the campgrounds and national parks were packed! We were disappointed but knew that this wasn’t the time for that particular plan. Instead, we went ahead and sold our house in 2021, downsized to a rental, and began a new plan. We pulled our girls from public school, started homeschooling, and left the country for 3 months in France. Out of that trip, Uncommon Family Adventures was born and we set our sights on traveling the world!

The point is that your plans will change, things will happen to get in the way, you may even have to abandon a plan altogether. That doesn’t make the experience you’ve gained any less important or impactful. As long as you’re learning, growing, and experiencing then… Everything Always Works Out!!