Change Your Underwear to Change Your Mind!

Changing your mindset, one pair at a time.

Daylight savings time is a time when people are feeling entirely off their games and acting like zombies. My clients are texting, asking for tips and tricks. People are completely forgetful and cannot get their bearings and let me tell ya, the Ingebrand family did not escape the apocalypse unscathed either.

Viddy forgot she wasn’t wearing snow pants yesterday, and she sat right down in the middle of a snowbank before school. For the love!  Matthew didn’t notice until he went around and opened the car door for them to gracefully, ha, get out and zombie-walk into school. He spotted a ton of snow sitting in the backseat, but since we have four kiddos, he didn’t think anything of it. During dinner last night, he asked Viddy and Asha if they were playing in the snow or if they grabbed an armful with them before they got into the car.  Viddy looked up from her dinner, her eyes tearing up, and exclaimed, “It was me. I forgot that I wasn’t wearing snow pants yesterday and sat right down in the middle of a snowbank.”

I looked at her while she was trying not to sob, and she said that she had to sit the entire day in her wet pants and couldn’t do anything about it.

I looked at Matthew as I almost started to cry and said, “Punks (nickname for her)

SIDEBAR: I have nicknames for all my kiddos, and rarely do I use their real names and often forget what they are!

“Punks! That is something we can easily fix. I am probably going to call you a dumba$#  for forgetting you weren’t wearing snow pants, but I do not want you to have to sit and suffer all day in school in wet clothes when we can easily run down there and drop some new ones off.”

Yes, I do swear with my kids and sometimes at them, case and point, but it is all in good fun!

She just stared at me with her lip quivering and said, “Okay, Mom. I will call you next time.”

“Girl, there best not be a next time. But if there IS, please call!”

After dinner, we cleaned up and took showers, and settled in for the night. She came down the hallway and looked like she was about to burst into tears again. It was that kind of day. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she just couldn’t get a grasp on her emotions.  

I told her it was completely normal. There is a ton going on right now, and the only thing we can do is go with the flow. I just held her in my arms, and she cried and let it all out.

I whispered in her ear, “You know Punks, when we can’t get a handle on our emotions, you know what the next best thing is when we’ve tried everything?”

“What?” She asked between sobs.

“Change your underwear!”

She looked up from our embrace with a severely confused and puzzled look!

“What Mom?!?!”

“Yep, that’s right! When in doubt, change your underwear! I swear to God it works!”

So I am bestowing this little nugget of glory on all of you. When nothing is working and I mean nothing… mantras, baths, showers, washing your hands, even music, the next best thing is to change your underwear! It will seriously give you a fresh (ha) perspective on life! Think about it; it gives you control when you may be feeling out of control. It gives you something tangible to do. It gives the control back to you!

I have used this practice many times in the past, and I kid-you-not, it works. It will seriously help you change your mindset. I have told my clients this as well, and their reaction is the same as Vidya’s! It is a wide-eyed state of surprise.

I’m serious; when in doubt, change your underwear!