When you are at home with a baby, or a toddler and a baby your whole world can feel boring and relentless. There are countless demands on your time, energy and body and it can be so overwhelming to show up every day in motherhood when you just want a hot minute alone!
You aren’t alone. I have been there (hello three kids under four!). And I get how exhausting and draining motherhood can be. Like how are people even making dinner!?! And what is life like without Paw Patrol??
As my kids have gotten older I have been seeing things from a new point of view. I can see my new mom self with more objectivity. I can see that there were some mindset shifts that really helped me between 1-3 kids and mindsets that have really helped me over the years of parenting.
Your mindset can have a big impact on your motherhood experience and this isn’t something to brush off.
I say that as someone who did brush ‘mindsets’ off as woo woo and weak. But now that I am aware that my thoughts dictate my emotions, and I ACT from how I feel has changed my mind.
I can see the connections with mindsets to my experience, my reality, everywhere. Especially in motherhood because momlife is an emotional struggle.
There is overwhelm, resentment, frustration and exhaustion! And when I tell myself the worst-case scenario about me as a mom, and my kids, and my support system them I am showing up from all those feelings.
I have some mindsets that I learned the long way in motherhood, and some I am still learning. I hope they empower you to mother on purpose, with more peace and presence!
PART 2 of2
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EMPOWERING MINDSETS WE DISCUSS IN THIS EPISODE:
- It’s ok to be tired
- It’s ok to lose myself in motherhood
- It’s ok to NOT be awesome today
- It takes a village
- What matters most is how I show up
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FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
He friends it’s Shawna, your Nerdy Girlfriend and Life Coach from simpleonpurpose.ca. I am the author of the Life on Purpose Workbook. You can find that on Amazon,
The coach behind the Life on PurposeAcademy, the monthly group coaching program for moms and a mom of three cool kids.
So this is part two of two podcasts on the mindsets that will really help you in new motherhood this month in the life on purpose Academy, our monthly topic is mom on purpose. So this has been on my brain.
There’s so many things I want to say about being a mom on purpose. And that’s not because I’m an expert in it, but because it’s something that I’m constantly trying to do and what I really want you to pay attention here in being a mom on purpose.
It isn’t about getting your kids to listen and controlling their behaviors. It’s about the mom you are, what’s in your control, – you – you’re in your control.
So I really want to focus on mindsets our mindsets matter because when we feel better, we can do better. We’re motivated by how we feel. We take action from how we feel. So if we want to be taking positive action, empowered action, loving action that has to come from emotions that are positive, empowered, and loving.
If we are going about our day, feeling frustrated and helpless and resentful, the actions we take are fueled by that. That sounds exhausting, right? That sounds like our actions are probably just going to be a little bit weak, maybe a little bit desperate, maybe a little bit impulsive and shortsighted. So I’m offering you mindsets that I know would have helped me in early motherhood. And some of them, I learned through the course of my three babies, some of them I’m still learning. So in part one, we talked about honoring the feelings that you have and paying attention to meeting your needs. So you’re not in a stress state mourning your old life and your old identity, rather than holding it up, kind of on a pedestal of what you could be doing and what you should be doing honoring that it is hard, but we don’t have to make it harder remembering that you can trust yourself.
You are the parent to your kids. You were, the mom meant for your kids. And finally, a practical tip of encouragement that having a plan is so helpful. Having some intention on the routine and culture you want to put into place in your family. Well, remembering that with every season the needs and the stuff and the skills of our house and our family, they do shift.
So I want to open up with a mindset that it took me the third baby around to even acknowledge that it could be true, that it could exist. And that is it’s okay to be tired. I talked about this in mindsets for the tired mom in episode 22, because what was happening was especially when I was pregnant with the third baby. And I had one kid up, one kid growing out of their nap and all of the pregnancy fatigue, just washing over me all day long.
So nap time, I felt so entitled to sleep and I would try to get them down. I would try to get my oldest quiet and he was just like two and a half or three then. And nobody was following the rules. Nobody was quiet. I wasn’t really sleeping or I’d sleep for a little bit and get woken up. And I developed quite a reputation for myself as being a bear, do not wake up mum. I was snapping at them and I was still tired and maybe I was even more tired. I don’t know. So by the third baby around, I remember just being like so tired. One day I had been up with him during the night and I thought, I’m just not going to fight it anymore. Like I’m not going to try and have a nap and it won’t work. And it makes this whole big fight.
I’m guess I’m just going to be tired today. I’m just going to be tired. Maybe I’ll have some coffee. I’m just going to be tired. And that mindset just gave me so much more acceptance into going through that process rather than trying to fight it and trying to find ways to fix it. Almost the next point I want to talk about the next mindset is it’s okay to lose ourselves in motherhood because we find someone new on the other side. Do you ever look at motherhood and think of what it’s cost you like your identity and your time and your money and all of the things that you want to do and all of the things you could do. And maybe you think, I wonder what my life would be like if we didn’t have kids or maybe you’re looking at people without kids. And you’re like, wow, you can do so much.
What’s that? Like, I wonder what it would be like in my life. If I didn’t have kids and side note, I just want to say, isn’t it funny how I instantly want to defend myself, but I actually love my kids. I would never want my life without them. I’m not going to do that because our mind does go there sometimes. And we can think about that and still love our kids. We can do both. I went through some really hard years in early motherhood. I told you a little bit about it in the last episode. And I think of the hardest lessons I’ve ever learned have been through motherhood that though this journey has been hard and it’s cost a lot. It has given me so much awareness and acceptance and growth in who I want to be. I’m so grateful for it. It’s weird to appreciate the suffering, but motherhood has really been a crash course into letting myself fall apart, letting me shed the layers of who I thought I should be for the past 30 years, letting myself let go of control of all the things that I thought I had control over, letting myself listen deeper to God motherhood and the brokenness in it of myself brought me to God.
It brought me to him because I knew that he had the pieces still when they were falling apart. When it was discharged. In my hand, I knew that he had something better planned for me, and slowly, slowly, slowly, the pieces get put back together in different ways. And in my opinion, better ways I could have really stayed in that place where I was clinging tightly into who I was and how I wanted life to be and what I wanted out of my life. But when all of that is challenged by motherhood and all of that doesn’t work anymore. And you need to find a new way letting go is empowering, letting go of my need to be right or my need to control things, letting go of these things, letting go of how I wanted to spend my time and learning that there’s new ways to spend my time now letting go of my need to be in charge of all of this and really forcing my version of life onto the life that God had given me and realizing that’s going to be a journey that I walk along him with.
So motherhood, you lose yourself in it. You fall apart in it, but if you let it, it can build you up into something different. And in my opinion, something more freeing, more empowering, more true to who you actually are deeper in your heart. Let’s talk about the mindset of being awesome. When I became a new mom, about nine years ago, there was a lot of mompreneurs on the scene, like women who were building businesses while being home with kids, there was a lot of motivational quotes going around on Pinterest. That’s kind of where I was hanging out. A lot of things like be awesome today or make everyday awesome. And that felt like so much pressure. It felt like so much pressure that I had to be awesome today. Like we’ve just been eating waffles for every meal and I might get them out of the house.
And I definitely don’t know if I put deodorant on today. Like I must be doing something wrong if I can’t be awesome today. And that’s what I think happens is the comparison of other moms, what other moms are doing. Here’s what happens. It actually oversimplifies what they’re doing. It’s like, Oh, they’re awesome. It must have been so easy. And all they had to do was show up, but it actually oversimplifies their journey. It makes us just look at one thing, the outcome, instead of the choices that they made, the priorities they set to get there. And the other thing is it under rates, our own experience, our unique experience, it under rates, what we’re doing in our home and in our heart and in our lives today. The first step here is to let go of the judgment of yourself. You are doing a lot.
You are being awesome. You fed people today. You got people dressed. Maybe they’re wearing elephant costumes and different colored socks. You are doing awesome today, already being awesome. Feels like we have to do all the things. And that’s a myth. We don’t have to do all the things. We just have to do. The important things. One mindset I would offer almost any new mom that I know is to find some mom, friends. And I have not been the best person at making friends over the years. And I’m sure this could be a whole podcast episode in itself, but I want you to remember a couple of things. One is a village isn’t mom besties. You don’t have to be best friends with everyone, your neighbors or your village, your in laws or your village. Like there is a village around. You just have people who are there for advice there for support there to appreciate and love on your kids.
The village is there, but it’s only there when you’re open to it. When you’re open to letting people be part of it, when you’re opening to letting yourself be part of it. If someone is offering you help take them at face value that they actually want to help accept the help, accept, help when you need it. Because that even if you feel like I don’t really need help, but this person wants to help. That still makes them part of your village. That’s still starts to establish a relationship. You know how many moms I’ve babysat for that are not my best friend, but I’m just going to offer that because I’m part of their village and they’re part of mine. And the other big point that I want to make is if you want a village, you need to be a village. You need to be a safer place for people.
So often in motherhood, we have a little bit of insecurity about what we’re doing, about how we’re showing up, or maybe we have the opposite of insecurity. We have pride in it and we take a lot of pride in the decisions we’ve make. What generally happens is now we look at other moms and we judge them according to what we’re doing or what we think is the right way. We’re judging how their sleep, training, how they talk to their kids, what they feed their kids, how they’re disciplining. We have a lot of judgment and that will always prevent a village from being a safe place that will prevent connection from you and other people. So the thing that you can drop into there is compassion, compassion that every mom’s on their own journey, every mom’s trying to figure out the right way. And if you do feel like this is a better way for her, she’s not going to get there through your judgment.
She’s gonna get there through your compassion. I know all of you introverts are just dying at this advice, but just keep in mind. You don’t have to be best friends with everyone. You just need to be open and ready to show up and show your face once in a while and say, Hey, I’m ready. Let’s make this village thing happen because it matters. It matters so much, guys. It matters when you can let your kid walk through the neighborhood and know that there’s neighbors watching out their window for them, that they have people. They can go knock on the door. If they need help. It matters when you are stuck somewhere and you need someone to pick up your kids. It matters when you just feel overwhelmed or you have to take a kid to an emergency room and, and the life is not predictable and it’s not easy.
And having a village lightens the load, we are here to lighten the load for each other. And remember, like we talked about in part one, this is hard, but it’s harder to live without a village to support you in your motherhood. So do the hard thing now. So it’s not harder later. The last point I want to make the last mindset that I always bring it back to that I think is so important. It’s going to show up everywhere. Not just in motherhood, is that no matter what you’re doing, no matter what life circumstances you are facing, what matters the most, what you are in control of is how you show up. And I get it. We don’t want to be responsible for this because if we’re frustrated, if we’re exhausted, we just want someone to fix it. No shame in that, like life is tough.
Parenting is tough, but I want to give you some power back. I want to give you permission to still enjoy your kids. And when it feels tough. So I, I hope you’re using all of these mindsets ahead of time to help you unclench your fists of control, to make peace for the parenting journey before you to stop making hard things harder to own. What’s important to you and do it out of love rather than resentment. And to know that it’s okay, if you’re angry or resentful or exhausted, it’s okay to feel those things. We can honor those hard parts of this journey. We can honor all of that. The sacrifice of motherhood is, and then drop back down into the places that we actually have power deciding who we are and how we want to show up. Coming back to that part of us deep inside that says, I want to be a mom who is creative, a mom who enjoys her kids, a mom who goes on adventures.
I want to be that kind of mom. I am going to show up as that kind of mom. And if you feel a little bit out of touch with the mom, you want to be like, who is she? What’s important to her. If you have the life on purpose workbook, you can do the personal values exercise at the beginning of the workbook, or you can download the free live your values worksheets, and that will help you pay attention to the values that you want to show up with in your life that are true to you. They’re not like anyone else’s. They are personal to you. So whether or not, you know, your values showing up in line with them is what’s going to give you a deeper satisfaction in motherhood. If this is something you want help with, I am a trained life. Coach I life coach on this all the time.
Motherhood is an issue. I walk alongside you. I coach moms on how to show up for their lives, with peace, purpose, and presence so that they, they can enjoy the life they have. They can enjoy the kids they have. This is what is really important to me. And I can empower you to do that. So if life coaching is something you’re interested in, stop by the show notes, you can book yourself a mini session, half an hour. We can work on any issue you want, or you can sign up for a coaching consult and I’ll let you know how the life coaching program works. We work through the vision for all nine areas of your life and get started in one area to take effective action and moving forward in who you want to be and what you want out of your life. All right, this wraps up mindsets for new moms.
I hope it has empowered you. I hope it has given you grace. And I hope it has given you purpose in moving forward with love. You are doing a great job, mama. You are, even if you haven’t seen your mop in months and you just realized you are wearing your underwear inside out and all you fed your kids today was fishy crackers. Mama, you got this, you are doing a good job, loving your kids and trying to show up the best you can. I see you. I love to hear from you, message me anytime on instagram @simpleonpurpose.ca have a great week.