You’re listening to the Love Tidbits Podcast, where you’ll discover a small, tasty, delightful, bite-sized tidbit of love. I’m your host, LeAnn Austin.
Hey y’all, welcome to Love Tidbits, episode number five: Squirrels in my Bird Feeder
So a few years ago, I heard of this term called emotional adulthood. Basically it means that you take full responsibility for how you’re feeling no matter what someone else does, their says. And you also take control of your thinking and you don’t blame other people. Well, you guessed it, the opposite of this is emotional childhood, where we blame everything and everyone else for how we feel and for our results, and we don’t take responsibility for much of anything.
So soon after that, my husband put a bird feeder in our backyard and we were so excited to watch the birds and see the bird feeder and he put it up. There were squirrels that started coming to our bird feeder. So he put a baffle on the bottom to keep the squirrels out and then the squirrels kept coming. So he moved a rock out of the way. Still a couple more squirrels.
We were out there trying to figure out how these squirrels were getting into the bird feeder and noticed a branch was sticking out and we were talking and he’s like okay, we’ll get this branch cut, hopefully that will eliminate our squirrel in the bird feeder problem.
Well, I ran in and started working, and in my office I can see the backyard. I can see the bird feeder and I’m working and, all of a sudden, I see another squirrel and I can feel myself getting hotter and madder because there is a squirrel in the bird feeder eating the bird food, wasting money. And he said he was going to take care of this and get rid of the branch. And so we wouldn’t have any more squirrels and I’m like, wait, should I text him and tell him, Hey, look, there’s a squirrel out there again. Why is this not being taken care of? I’m getting all in my head, getting angry about this. I’m like LeAnn, let’s just finish working. It’s going to be okay. If the squirrel gets one more meal, not a big deal.
So thankfully I calmed down for a little bit, finished working, and go downstairs trying to decide if I was going to say something or just go cut the branch down myself. Well, as I was walking down the stairs, Jeff said, Hey, you’re finished working. Okay. I just didn’t want to disturb you with the saw. So I’ll go ahead and cut that cut down the branch so we don’t have that squirrel anymore.
I was so glad that I hadn’t said anything, that I hadn’t let my emotional childhood and blame, and why hasn’t he gotten this taken care of, all the stuff going on in my head. I was so glad I didn’t say anything. And, isn’t that interesting when we have little things come up like this, how our brains quickly go to this emotional childhood, this blame, this it’s someone else’s problem, rather than taking a breath and being like, wait. How can I be responsible for this? How could I be in emotional adulthood?
So my question to think about this week is, Am I being an emotional child or adult? And how could I think more like an emotional adult? Hmmm, something to think about.
Have a good one y’all ~ and here’s to love!
If you would like to become an expert at loving yourself, check out my Lovin Me Program at leannaustin.com
