Motherhood is a journey and there are stepping stones along the way of things we learn. I want to share a few of my stepping stones with you. They are around parenting from our own strengths, rather than focussing on what we are doing wrong. I want to share a few ways you can find confidence within yourself rather than from comparison and external validation.
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In this episode I talk about:
- the Perfect Mom Checklist
- Making your own list for motherhood
- Where to start when you want to do motherhood, on purpose
- Parenting from checklists and comparison and how can create pride or shame
- Where we try to find shortcuts to confidence
- Where we can truly find confidence
- Finding connection and fun in motherhood
Related links and episodes mentioned:
162. Think the best of me, or not. Allowing the hard and awesome in ourselves and in our lives.
How this one list can empower you to be the mom you are
The ‘not-enough’ mindset (how to spot a scarcity mindset and shift it to an abundance mindset)
76. Why it matters what you think (limiting mindsets in motherhood)
163. Have fun with your kids, on purpose + reasons we don’t have fun
The Mom, on Purpose podcast playlist
Full transcript (unedited)
0:00
This is a place where we just stop for a minute we slow down and we talk about the ways that we can simplify our lives, remove the distractions, remove the clutter, and start living on purpose with intention shutting off that autopilot. Today I want to talk about doing this in motherhood being a mom on purpose, something that’s helped me is to think about motherhood as a journey. So I have three kids, they are 11. One’s going to be 10 Soon, and one’s going to be eight soon. And so I like to think about the journey I’ve been on over the past 11 years. For me, it really has been a journey where I started off clueless, I mean, my son, my firstborn son, was the first newborn I ever held. I also started off worried, which was my nature, but that I think that’s something you bring into motherhood, you’re worried about everything you don’t know up against everything you’re dealing with. And along the way, you learn. You listen, you try, you adjust, you wait, you learn, you learn what the different color poops mean, you learn how to set schedules and rules. You learn how to find peace, when everything is making you anxious. And you learn how to sit through the hard parts. Rather, rather than just scrambling to fix everything all the time you learn your way you learn the journey. And it really is a journey nobody can take for you. I think we’re all looking to other people for the solution for the path. And I think there’s a lot of mentorship available, we can support one another. But it really is your own personal journey. If I look back on things that I had wrote, during my earliest years of motherhood, and on the journals that I kept, at that time, I can see the path that I was on, I can see the things that I was learning, I can see little insights, little nuggets, little, not even little, but sometimes they were huge things that I learned that got me from here to there. And then again, from here to there again, and from here to there, again, just like stepping from one step to the next. So today, I want to share one of those things that felt very impactful at moving me along this journey. This is something that has brought me so much peace and empowerment in motherhood. And I want to share it because I think we don’t hear it enough. And I think we’re looking for it. What we’re looking for is confidence in motherhood and confidence in being the mom we are in parenting from the strength of who we are meant to be, rather than focusing on what we’re doing wrong. This was a message I heard early on in motherhood, and it was really impactful for me. And so as I coach other moms, and they share this message with them, and I hear them take it in and start to think maybe that could be true for me and watch the change that they feel. I think to myself, I just need to share this on the podcast. This is something everyone needs to hear. This is a great reminder. So for some of you who don’t know, I entered into blogging about 10 years ago, way back then I had a Blogspot blog. That’s kind of one of the blogs you could have. It was a WordPress or Blogspot. I have a blog called dovetail blog. It’s not around anymore, everything got moved to simple on purpose. But at that time, because I’m your nerdy girlfriend, I was also really into podcasts before they were even a thing. And there was a really great one called inspired to action with Kat Lee, and her introduction into that podcast, it would make me cry on most days. Because she would say I’m just going to take a couple of quotes of the things she would say One of them was out of all the women in the world, God chose you to be the mother of your children. Thank you for serving your family and loving your children fearlessly and fighting to be a great mom. And it wouldn’t make me cry, it would make me cry because it hit this really tender spot of exhaustion and frustration and overwhelm. And it would just wash over me with warmth and assurance, warmth and assurance I desperately needed warmth and assurance. So I decided to take this idea in that I was the mum paired up to my kids for a reason. And I don’t think you need to believe in God or have a Christian faith to believe this concept that you you’re put with your kids for a reason. There are many philosophies out there that believe that parents and children are paired up together for a reason. So I would sit with that
4:33
I would find comfort in it to know we’re meant to be together. I would also be confused by it because sometimes it was just so hard to be their mom. And I would argue with it because sometimes it doesn’t feel true or fair to all of the kids and parents and all over the world. But in terms of how I was going to consider this, I don’t need to cement my beliefs in order to try them on so I decided to try this one on I I chose to believe I am the right mom for my kids. And I choose to believe that still because it empowers me, it doesn’t make me feel like I have to fit some checklist of service for them. Like I have to meet this checklist of who I need to be for my kids. It makes me feel like who I am is the checklist. It allows me to just be me in parenting. In Episode 162, I think the best of me, I share how we struggle with wanting to be viewed all good all the time. And this was specifically in the context of marriage. But this is a huge hurdle in motherhood too. Because we we all even if we don’t want to admit it, even if we try to rebel against it, we do have a deeply ingrained belief that there is such thing as a perfect mother. And everything we do is taking us away from that ideal. But if we let go of that idea that there’s a perfect mother, we can let people be flawed. We can let people make mistakes, we can start to just be who we are, which is a human, who makes mistakes, but it’s also good, it’s the same person. And side note, we can probably start to accept that our parents are flawed and good, both things. And that everything they led us through in our childhood made us who we are today. Some years ago, I shared about a list I made and I know this doesn’t narrow it down because your nerdy girlfriend’s always making lists for a lot of things all the time. But this list was titled, what my kids will remember about having me as a mom sounds like it’s going dark, but it’s not. Because I was just wanting to think about the memories that I have my of my own parents, like the funny things, the weird things, the hard things, and, and just getting that whole picture of everything they offered me as a kid. And I wanted to make my own list. What what are my kids going to remember about me things like covering them in the warm blankets that come out of the dryer, or pop quizzing them on plant identification when we’re out for a walk, making them all agree on a Friday night movie, or having kitchen dance parties or asking them about their feelings all the time. So I made that list originally about seven years ago, because that was a time where I was really trying to figure out how to live life on purpose, how to do motherhood on purpose. And that list helped me understand that if I believe that I am made a certain way, on purpose that God made me a certain way that he gave me these kids, then there’s already purpose in that. So I wanted to get to know who I was made on purpose, the mom I am on purpose, before I try and force some checklist onto motherhood that doesn’t need to be there. Because that checklist, that perfect mom checklist, it brings a lot of insecurity into our motherhood and then we lose our confidence, right? When we look around, and we think someone else does it better, they make sure their kids are in all the activities or they’re so calm, or that mom makes homemade bento boxes of healthy foods, we make them the hero and our self, the villain. We’re looking to others to keep populating that perfect mom checklist. And the more boxes that are left unchecked, the more shame we feel them that we think that the shame is going to change us.
8:11
We think that if we focus on what we’re doing wrong and start doing it right that the change will just happen. But in reality, just like not just parenting from that place of not enough and doing it wrong, we perpetuate the not enoughness the doing it wrong because what we believe we become inside note, if you have a perfect mom checklist, you probably also have a perfect child checklist. And side side note, I have a lot of tangents I could go on today. This is gonna be a two part episode. I can tell you that already. When we have this checklist, maybe this checklist in comparison creates a parenting culture where we have to have this dichotomy in order to find competence. We need heroes and villains we need right and wrong. And maybe we look at everything that’s not on our checklist that should be and we start to villainize ourselves and try to change from there. But maybe we also swing the other way. Maybe we get righteous about what we’re doing right. We can counteract our insecurities of what we’re doing wrong with pride, about what other moms are doing wrong. And we’re doing right you know, they aren’t feeding their kids vegetables. They’re letting their kids just have tantrums and get their own way. They’re never putting their kids to bed at a reasonable hour. Sometimes we can set up that dichotomy and righteousness can be a shortcut for self confidence. But parenting with confidence, like living with confidence, Where should our confidence come from? Our confidence to come from us knowing who we are, what we value and liking our reasons for what we choose to do because then our confidence does not rely on other people. There are no heroes there are no villains, there are no validations there are no shame traps to fall into, you know, this is where we compare Aren’t with confidence. It’s hard though, because it has a lot of layers, like we need to know our strengths, what we feel are our strengths, not what the world tells us. Our strengths need to be, we need to see where our ego is fighting for control. We need to know what fears come up for us how they’re making us act, really, they’re pulling us out of intention, we need to know what matters to us what our values are, we need to know how to stand up for what matters to us in a very compassionate way for all the parties involved. We need to look at our decisions and look at the different angles for what we’re choosing and ask ourselves, do I like my reasons for doing what I do? To me, this gives you confidence to be the mom you are, it doesn’t rely on anyone else’s validation of you, or anyone else’s lack of checks on the checklist. That’s why it’s a journey, right? Because we just don’t know these things. We aren’t aware of these things. We’re all on autopilot. We live in this whirlwind of moving from one thing to the next. We’re rarely mindful of our own inner experience, where it comes from what we desire in life, we’re just too busy or too afraid to do something about it. Okay, back to this message. That helped me with my kids. Knowing that I am the mom meant for my kids, you are made for reason. No matter what faith background you have, I hope you can believe that is true. Because nobody else in all the world has your unique passions, interests, quirks, experiences, strengths, ideas, time of life that they’re living in, no one else can be you. And there has to be intention in that, logically, there has to be intention in that. So here’s another lesson in my own journey, realizing that, yes, I was made unique. I can’t contort myself to be a version of anyone else. But also, along with that I wasn’t made to be perfect. I didn’t need to be a perfect person. I was just made to be the person that I am. You bring something into motherhood that nobody else can and your kids get to have that. They get you in, you’re nerdy, you’re stressed, you’re silly, you’re loving ways that you are. So this making a list about being the mom you are I’m going to link that post in the show notes. I hope you’ll make that list. Because when you make that list, I bet you’re going to find yourself laughing to yourself at least once. Because on that list, you’re going to see some things on there that you know your kids enjoy and appreciate about you. Things that you probably appreciate about you. When you make this list, you’re going to see that connection. And fun is available to you in motherhood. There are things in you that you love about being a mom that you love to bring to motherhood. And there’s things your kids love about having you as a mom, those are the things we can pour into. And we can give a great gift to ourselves ourselves because motherhood experience counts, but also to our kids, when we allow that connection and fun to be a top priority.
13:07
I’m going to follow this up with another episode on also the things that are hard, where our ego is showing up the things that we struggle with within ourselves within our kids, and how that can still lead us to being a mom on purpose. So go check that out next. I’ll see you there
Transcribed by https://otter.ai