I heard from a reputable source (okay, it was the Ellen DeGeneres Show) that children who have imaginary friends are more likely to succeed academically, have good socialisation skills and have fun.

This is brilliant news for my son. He has an entire imaginary family. A brother, a sister and his own baby. Baby has had several birthdays, yet is still one year old and baby is responsible for a lot of questionable behaviour in my house.

Kids know how to have fun. It’s innate to most of them. They actively seek fun scenarios.

But is motherhood killing your fun? As we become adults, and particularly when we become mothers, we tend to take life a little more seriously.

Many women find themselves trying to juggle the challenges of life and sometimes we need a little help with how we are coping.

With small adjustments, you can make enormous changes to your family life, career, happiness and self-esteem. The process is known as cognitive reframing or changing how you choose to think. That’s all. Nothing magical or unachievable.

As humans, it is natural for us to utilise unhelpful thinking styles occasionally. We all do.

Fun stoppers include:

• Overgeneralising: ”Nothing ever works how I planned”
• Jumping to conclusions: Presuming what others are thinking or predicting what will happen in the future
• All or nothing: “Either I do it perfectly or I won’t do it”
• Eliminating the positive: Focusing on the negative and deciding what you have achieved does not count
• Catastrophising (my fave word – I’m a bit of a geek): Blowing things out of proportion
• Minimisation: Making something seem more trivial than it is
• Emotional logic: “I feel nervous so I must be a fool”
• Shoulda’s: ”I should do …” , “I need to do …”
• Loose labelling: Labelling self or others negatively
• Blame: Blaming self for something that’s not entirely your fault or placing blame solely on others.

Don’t be worried if many of these resonate with you. We all use them at some point.

When you are finding yourself using them often and your thoughts, choices and activities are being affected adversely; it might be time to do some cognitive reframing.

It sounds like a lot of work and it does take effort, but the beauty of our thoughts are that that are CHANGEABLE and CONTROLLABLE. We have the ability to make significant changes to our lives, just by changes to our thoughts.

If all else fails, it might be time for an imaginary friend.

“Thinking mum” image from Shutterstock