The Unruly Toddler in Your Head

Robin Sacks
3 min readMar 21, 2022
Image by KurtSebastian

Your mental space is sometimes like an unruly toddler.

It’s like the four-year-old in the back seat who is constantly asking, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

Anytime you set out to accomplish something or create a new habit, chances are your unruly toddler shows up in your head. You get excited and motivated for the first few days, but it quickly goes downhill from there as we begin to think, “This already feels like it’s going to take forever, when will I get there?”

Here is how to quiet that unruly toddler in your head, and make for a much smoother ride.

What is Important to Understand:

The way you respond to that toddler is everything.

Any parent (or child) can tell you the knee-jerk reaction is often to say something like, “We’ll get there when we get there!” or “You’re asking isn’t going to get us there any faster!”

Not only is that response never going to stop the voice from asking, “Are we there yet?,” but it’s probably going to make it even worse. The reason is because the question still remains out there, hanging, with no answer. It goes without saying if you don’t actually answer a question, the question is going to keep coming up…until it gets an answer.

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Robin Sacks

I speak, coach, and write about confidence, self-talk, and stress management. I also live for cozy mysteries and bad (read: good) puns.