Life is unpredictable, so is putting my baby to sleep
The other day I was asked to share something I learned recently. I said that, with maternity, we cannot control anything. We make plans just so we do something different. We plan to leave at 1 pm for lunch with some friends, but by the time we should be leaving, my daughter is sleeping and we don’t want to wake her up. Thus we will be late. Every parent has gone through this.
Yesterday night I realized that, actually, I learned how to deal with the unpredictable. If you have a baby, you probably have tried to put them to sleep at 2 am. You haven’t been sleeping for too long, so when you wake up you are completely lost. This is when the unpredictable starts, at least this happens with my baby. Sometimes she wants me to hold her and walk around the room, others she wants me to sit down. Sometimes she wants to be in her crib with me paddling on her back, others she wants to be by herself (super super rare). Sometimes she wants to be on the right arm, others the left arm is her chosen one.
It is not just the position, but also the songs. Sometimes she wants me to sing to her, others she just wants me to be quiet. Sometimes she wants to be fed, others she is full and she doesn’t want food anymore.
If you put together all the situations described above, there is an infinite of possibilities. We usually start with the strategy that works the best, but many times we have to adapt and try all the other possibilities. However, there are days that none of the above work and we have to call for help and ask for the other parent to step in. The entire process starts again, trying all the above possibilities. Does this guarantee success? NO! There is also the “Hail Mary” try: bring her to our bed and pray this will be it. Does this guarantee success? NO again!
Putting a baby to sleep is one of the most unpredictable situations I have ever faced. We often get frustrated, but at the same time, we have to get over it. In the end, all we want is for our baby to fall asleep as fast as possible, so she can rest and so can we. As we can see, getting frustrated doesn’t add anything to the situation.
I can imagine that if you have ever tried to put your baby to sleep at 2 am you have faced these situations and you are probably laughing by now. However, how can we transpose this to our daily life?
Life is also unpredictable. Even though we want to have it all under control, we can’t. Dealing with clients, for example, we often have to try different approaches. We do have some strategies that work 80% of the time, but the other 20% make us more creative because we have to try different lines of action. We even face a percentage of situations in which we have to ask for help and learn from others how they do it and try to add this new way to our portfolio. We also get frustrated sometimes because things don’t go as planned, but we have to get over it and think about our end goal: keep our clients satisfied.
Looking back at my professional career, I have faced different challenges with customers. Even though we don’t expect to have a 100% success rate when selling a product to a customer, their reaction can be unpredictable. There will always be those whom we expect to ask for more information, but eventually, some of them start to trust your word and purchase what you sell without asking for more details. In the end, selling a product to a customer was just like putting my baby to sleep at 2 am: an unpredictable situation that we try to make the most predictable as possible, but it doesn’t always work.
Next time I’m asked to share something I learned recently, my reply won’t be that we cannot control anything. My reply will be: life is unpredictable, so we have to be resilient and adapt our strategy without feeling frustrated.
(I thought about this yesterday at 2:30 am when I had asked my husband to step in after I had tried for 45 minutes to put my baby down. I was on the baby monitor watching him on the baby monitor, but soon he came to our bed to try our Hail Mary attempt. She woke up at 1:30 am, but only fell asleep at 3h30, in our bed.)
