DIL Manual Transcript
Hey y’all ~ welcome to DIL Manual
What I’m going to teach you in the next few minutes, is going to change the way you interact with your DIL. When I understood this concept, it made loving my daughters-in-law so much easier.
So there are things we purchase that come with manuals. For example, here’s the basketball hoop manual that we have. Here’s a manual for my desk, and a pressure washing manual. Now some of these I read, some I file away, some I chuck and just figure out how to use without a manual. Some of them are in languages I have no idea how to read or to understand. And others, I just hope my husband will read and tell me about it.
Manuals can be useful for things, but they’re not useful for DILs.
I have two amazing daughters-in-law, and Kristen is technically my second DIL, but she was the one that I met first. I met her many years ago in 2016. She was 16 at the time. And this was my manual for her:
She’s way too young to like my son.
High school kids should not be in serious relationships.
She’s wearing things that she shouldn’t.
*Thankfully I’ve learned years ago, how misguided this thinking is. And I haven’t had judgment for what anyone wears for many, many years. But once this was a manual I had for all the girls who were dating my boys.
Now then I have Sarah, who married my oldest son. I met Sarah in 2018. By this point, my girl manual had lightened up significantly, but I was very concerned that Sarah hadn’t had a job. I was thinking everyone should have a regular job in high school or college and Sarah didn’t. So this was a little “something” for my manual.
Now, when we have a manual for our DIL, we use it for how we would like them to behave so that we can feel good and happy. Normally, we don’t tell our DIL what’s in our manual. And we don’t even realize we have it, or the pain that it is causing us. We think DIL should just know how to do something, and how to treat us. Having expectations of our daughter-in-law may seem justified, but when our emotional happiness is directly tied to her acting a certain way, it can be very damaging.
Sometimes we blame, hate, and give our emotional power to our DIL, because of the manual we have on what she should have done, or she should be doing. She may not be feeling any of this because she doesn’t even know about it, and we’re only punishing ourselves.
We think our lives would be happier if our DIL would change. Again, we’re giving DIL the power of how we feel, and there is no upside to this. Our DIL’s behavior has no impact on us emotionally, until we think about it, interpret it, and choose to make it mean something. It doesn’t matter what she does, how she acts, or what she says. Our DIL doesn’t get to determine how we feel.
Have you noticed that DIL manuals tend to have lots of thoughts with the word “should”.
For example:
She should come to all the family gatherings.
She should let me see my grandkids more often.
She should help more, be nicer, do this, not do that, and the list goes on and on.
As adults, we can behave however we want, ourself and our DIL. We don’t have to do anything, and no one else has to do anything for us. We are responsible for meeting our own needs.
Sometimes in a relationship with our DIL, we think we’re responsible for filling her needs and she is responsible for filling our needs. So there’s a constant effort to control and manipulate, and nobody wins. Remember, we can’t control our DIL. If our emotional life is tied to our DIL’s behavior, we’re setting ourself up for disaster.
However, if both MIL and DIL are responsible for their own feelings and happiness, they can meet in the middle and have fun together. And this makes for a wonderful relationship.
So, how do we get rid of DIL manual, or at least shrink it significantly? We remember there are no such thing as DIL manuals, or manuals for ourselves. And we focus on loving us. We take care of ourselves. We don’t try to control or manage DIL, regardless of how she behaves. We get curious about why we want her to do things differently. We know that our DIL’s behavior doesn’t ever control our feelings. It’s only our thinking that affects how we feel.
I love to ask myself the question, “What would loving me do here?” I get to decide what to do with my time, how to respond to any situation, and what changes I want to make in my own life. Now it’s perfectly reasonable to make a request of our DIL, but always remember that whether she decides to honor this request or not, has nothing to do with you, it has everything to do with her.
You can choose to just love her and enjoy her just as she is. We can choose to simply love our DIL. To get rid of the manual we have for her. And this is so freeing. I have made a choice to love my daughters-in-law no matter what. No matter what they do, no matter what they say, I am choosing unconditional love for them. My sons love them, and I love them.
Remember, to start with loving you. This is why Lovin Me Program is a beautiful addition to this course. And why I give you a month free when you purchase this course. We sometimes don’t even recognize that we’re not loving ourselves. We don’t see that this lack of love for us, is showing up in the love we feel for our DIL.
In Lovin Me, we practice loving ourselves through countless tools and skills that I teach. And coaching that I do in a variety of situations, and on any topic. As you let go of the rules and expectations you have for your DIL, and for yourself, I guarantee you’ll increase the connection you have with both.
Now, the How Do I…. How do I shrink or eliminate my DIL manual and my own manual?
Here are the three steps:
First: What is my current DIL manual?
Write it down. What do I think she should be doing? She shouldn’t be doing? Everything about whatever is in my manual for my DIL, notice what it is.
Then, Number Two: What is my current manual for myself?
Write down everything you have about the manual for yourself.
And Number Three: Go back through each item on both manuals and ask yourself this one question: If I loved me, and then I loved my DIL, would I keep or tweak this part of my manual?
That’s it. That’s how you shrink or eliminate the manual you have for yourself and for your DIL. Now, you may need to do this multiple times and that’s okay. You have this video, this worksheet, you have this for your lifetime. So come back to it any time you want to review. But I encourage you to continually ask yourself this question: If I loved me, and then I loved my DIL, would I keep or tweak this?
Alright, now there is a worksheet available with this video and transcript, sharing the three steps to shrink or eliminate your DIL Manual. Use this worksheet, or a journal, or anything to record and observe this new awareness you are developing.
You are creating a new Lovin My DIL groove. And the more you practice, the stronger, deeper, and more natural the connection to yourself and to your DIL will be.
Remember to bring any questions, concerns, or situations to our Tuesday Calls. This is a beautiful opportunity for me to coach you on anything. I get coached multiple times a week, and that is where the magic happens, in taking our situations and exploring them. We all have them, this is why we’re here. We’re here to create a better relationship with our DIL, and that happens as we create that relationship and strengthen the one we have with ourselves.
Alright, have a good one y’all ~ and here’s to Lovin Me and my DIL