Thoughts of a Homemaker: Positive Attributions
There are as many types of homemakers as there are types of people, and while some people are better suited to spend the majority of their life caring for a home as their job than others, everyone who has a home does some number of homemaking tasks as a part of their life. Many homemaking jobs are the type that keep hands busy but allow minds to wander, so where do they wander to?
As a professional homemaker, let me give you my best suggestion on where to direct your thoughts if you find them wandering as you work. Try thinking about what you are thinking about. Ask yourself, “What kind of world do I want to live in?”
While there are many things you can’t change about the world, like gas prices and which movies are available in theaters, you can change your attitude, and it’s easier than you might think. Start with noticing the types of attributions you are making toward yourself and others.
When I was in college, a psychology professor described attributions, and I’ve never forgotten the way he talked about it. He said when he’s out driving in traffic, he makes the worst attributions. When someone cuts him off, they’re a jerk who doesn’t know how to drive and needs to get off the road before they hurt somebody. But, he said, when his mother-in-law gets cut off in traffic, she immediately smiles and says, “I bet they’re in a hurry because they’re on their way to the hospital to have a baby!”
The circumstances for my professor or his mother-in-law are the same, being cut off in traffic. The difference is in their attributions toward the other driver, or to say it another way, why they assume the other driver is acting that way.
We all experience a breadth of emotions as the events of life roll on, but we do have some influence over whether we spend our time mad about all the negative attributions we are making or being grateful and charitable and feeling much happier. On days when it seems like everyone is out to get you, when your family leaves dirty socks under the dining table again, when the repairman takes three times longer to fix the sink than you expected, ask yourself, “What kind of world to I want to live in?” Because that’s the beauty of it. You get to choose whether you live in a world where the other driver is lazy, stupid, and mean, or whether he’s stressed, sleep-deprived, and doing his best.
I was out at a restaurant with my family on a holiday weekend, and service was very slow. The server forgot our drinks, took nearly forty minutes to bring our breakfast order, and wasn’t as smiley as she could have been. Across the table from me, a couple of my family members complained that she was lazy and slow on purpose, because nobody wants to work anymore. My husband and I were looking at her thinking, wow, I’m glad I’m not trying to wait on all these people packed into this restaurant so early on a holiday morning. I was wondering if she had been up all night with a crying baby, or if she had closed last night and opened this morning. She certainly wasn’t cooking the food, and it wasn’t her fault that it took the kitchen longer than expected.
Well, as you might imagine, my husband and I had a much more enjoyable breakfast than the rest of our family, who had decided the server was out to get them personally. It seemed like such a small thing, making positive attributions toward the server, but it dramatically impacted the experience we each had of the time we spent in the restaurant. It also clearly illustrated that the attributions we make have a direct effect on our mood. My husband and I were enjoying our breakfast, but across the table from us, I saw long faces and grumpiness. Our entire party could have had a pleasant time, but we would have all had to have assumed the best, or at least, not the worst.
If you can’t train your brain to make positive attributions overnight, then consider switching for less-negative attributions. Instead of the driver being a jerk, maybe he’s inattentive. Maybe he sneezed at just the wrong moment. Maybe he’s worrying about how to pay his rent and he hasn’t had much sleep. You can choose to believe that people aren’t out to get you, and you will be a happier person for it. So, what kind of world do you want to live in?
For myself, I like to live in a world where everyone is doing their best. Even me.