There's no contest: Everyone wins in this "mompetition"

This brief but sweet video (from Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC) has been circulating on Facebook for a little while, but it's stayed in my mind and heart so I feel compelled to process it a bit further.   If you haven't seen it, check it out first:

While I probably would have loved this project at any point in my life, it holds a unique power for me right now, mid-way through my first pregnancy.  I've also been a historically anxious person with a historically active inner critic.  Yet I feel confident in being able to say "historically" instead of "currently" because of the tools instilled in me by the Nurtured Heart Approach and related elements of positive psychology and neurobiology (for example, the information in Dr. Rick Hanson's new masterpiece, Hardwiring Happiness ).  If "pre-Nurtured-Heart me" had been asked to respond to the prompt that these mothers were given, I guarantee that I would have brought out my figurative list (or if I'm honest, I would have unfurled one of those crazy-long old-timey parchment scrolls), cleared my throat, and unleashed a torrent of long-studied and nuanced faults, gathered in the name of "self-awareness" and "improvement" but really amounting to a one-woman self-bullying committee.

It was only through learning Nurtured Heart that I was able to clearly see and experientially *know*, down to my bones, how much accidental damage we do to ourselves by keeping inventories of things we'd like to improve upon without, at the *very* least, balancing it with a chorus of great qualities we're already demonstrating each moment.  We embody incredible parental successes both by what we choose to do and what we refrain from doing.
(For example, while you're reading this, you're likely not berating your child, harming yourself, yelling, hitting, texting while driving, spilling something on yourself, risking your life while evading arrest, kicking a puppy, you name it.  You're your own person so you could easily be choosing to do any of those, regardless of how likely that is.  And I want to congratulate you, truly, on your choice to just be mindfully reading in this moment.  You have just done your brain a favor by choosing not to multitask, not to mention what you're doing for your mind and your family).

The mothers in this video are not overtly negative people, it appears.  I'm sure we all know people who can do a pretty good inadvertent Eeyore impersonation (heck, maybe we're that person), but these moms seem incredibly well-intentioned in their efforts to describe their mothering "accurately."  However, as Dr. Hanson writes in his above-mentioned Hardwiring Happiness , we have evolved a negative bias in our brains that ultimately means that numerous positive actions and qualities often get left out of such parenting descriptions.  When that bias first appeared, it helped us avoid getting eaten by lions, but it persists despite the relative scarcity of prowling predators today.

It is probably much more accurate for these mothers (or any of us) to say something like, "I can describe myself, in part, as a parent who shows a lot of wisdom and forethought, based on how I plan meals for my family, battle traffic and tiredness to seek out quality ingredients for those meals, and choose to keep focusing on how I can nourish my child(ren)'s bodies and minds with this food instead of just going for cheap and easy most times."  But what would our broader society think of such a statement?  Would we label that person as someone wonderfully in touch with their greatness (like I would, now, thanks to my Nurtured Heart lens), or as a narcissist, a brag, full of oneself?  Society often reinforces and rewards modesty (genuine or false), but the cumulative effect of this persistent downplaying of our worth and our efforts has a physical, measurable impact (and cost) on our brains themselves (see again Dr. Hanson's work), not to mention our self-esteem and other elements of our self-concept.

If it takes, as Dr. Hanson states, approximately five positive experiences to equal the neurological and psychological impact of a negative experience, then I say we have quite a bit of catching up to do.  I think what happens in this video is a brilliant beginning in terms of shifting that (im)balance and reacquainting parents with how utterly valued and valuable they are.  I would go a step further and say that part of what makes Nurtured Heart so potent (and I know I'm risking sounding infomercial-y by continuing to bring things back to NHA again and again, but hear me out) is that it teaches and activates and entire language of greatness that only broadens with practice and fluency.  

I would *love* to get my hands on these children in the video and teach them to give even more vibrant voice to their love for their mothers, to ramp up their vocabulary far beyond "she's pretty and beautiful" (aren't we all more than that?) and equip them to be as specific and amplified as possible in pointing out what makes their mothers so precious to them.  Because I saw it in them; I know the feeling is there, but our current methods of social-emotional learning don't always teach children how to give voice to their hearts.  

I wish I'd had that vocabulary as a child, to communicate to my mom how much I loved how she mothered (and more importantly, how much I just loved her for being her).  The best I could do at the time was try to dress just like her.  She doesn't know exactly what was up with the wardrobe mimicry, unless she's just read the previous sentence (which she probably has -- Hi, mom!).  Conveniently, she and I are now both Nurtured Heart Advanced Trainers, so we can speak vividly and with attunement about the beauty in each other's choices moment to moment (and no moment is too small).  The "good job"s and "thank you"s and "you rock"s and other such phrases uttered in so many homes and schools today just don't quite lead to the kind of transformations that I've seen over and over in the world of Nurtured Heart.  

As a mother-in-waiting myself, I am committed to starting *now* with celebrating each loving choice and each great quality that I show in my pregnancy.  I am committed to seeing myself as my child sees me (or will see me; I don't think he or she can actually even see yet), because if I can't see that version of me, it is so much harder to live up to it.

So, moms (and dads) out there... now that you've seen this video and read this post, how would *you* describe yourself as a parent?  
(I'm really asking, too -- Feel free to comment below!)