Tag: motherhood journey

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Become a Resiliency Ninja: 3 Powerful Mental Shifts To Reset Yourself for Success

Here’s the executive summary for the years 2020 and 2021: Most of us have been handling an endless number of decisions while navigating ever-changing scenarios with lots of conflicting data and very little guidance.  In fact, How To Thrive In a Pandemic is not on Amazon yet, unfortunately.

Whether the last two years have been a blessing in disguise or a mixed bag of sorts, the need to be making decisions has remained constant. And even more so if we’re wearing the ‘mom’ and ‘business owner’ hats almost simultaneously.

Our daily lives have fallen within a spectrum of trying to answer these two questions and making decisions accordingly: “What’s going to happen next?” and “What’s for dinner?”

In between the mile-long of to-do’s, the endless chores at home, what might be happening in your business, issues with your spouse or kids and handling finances, our daily quota of “best decision-making” pixie dust quickly runs out.

It has also meant having to make thousands of new choices on the spot and wondering whether those decisions are right or not.

This uncertainty about the long-term impact of our decisions might lead us to think we’re winging it, or worse, feeling like frauds. Therefore, as mothers and businesswomen, it can be easy to experience Imposter Syndrome and feel the insecurity and self-doubt creep in.

This triple whammy of pandemic fatigue, decision fatigue, and Imposter Syndrome is hopefully subsiding this year and a glimmer of hope seems to loom ahead.

Therefore, this is a great opportunity to do a quick mental reset to bring about the success, personal growth and happiness we actually want while knowing how to effectively call the shots regardless of what is happening outside our door.

Here are some powerful mindset tactics that we can use to our advantage to achieve our goals faster while keeping our emotional and mental wellbeing in check.

Powerful Mindset Tactic One

Let’s start with tackling pandemic fatigue. It seems like it’s the hardest one out of the three.We’ve been handling an endless number of decisions while navigating ever-changing scenarios with lots of conflicting data and very little guidance.  How To Thrive In a Pandemic is not on Amazon yet, unfortunately.

It’s only natural that the questionat the back of everyone’s mind is When will this end?

Feeling like we have no control of what’s happening triggers feelings of overwhelm and anxiety in many of us. Especially if our thoughts fall into the realm of the 3 P’s: thinking that it’s Pervasive (there’s no escaping it); thinking that it’s Personal (I’m the only one going through this); and thinking that it is Permanent (it will never end).

So, here are three things that can help keep pandemic fatigue at bay.

Change the Narrative

Fatigue, exhaustion, overwhelm- they are all stories of resistance. We feel triggered while imagining a future where everything goes wrong. Trying to calm down these negative emotions is challenging and only adds more fuel to the fire.

That’s because the shift from anxiety to calmness requires many steps along the emotional ladder. Excitement, by contrast, involves an almost identical physiological state with a slightly different story — a story that welcomes and looks forward to the future instead of dreading it. That’s why excitement is so much easier to pull off than staying calm. We’re no longer trying to change our basic physiology. We’re just changing our story about it.

Another tactic involves accepting the negative feeling in the moment instead of feeling ashamed or frustrated by it. This will actually help you feel less anxious. Acknowledging the feeling instead of fighting it frees you up to learn how to manage it. Accepting it doesn’t mean giving up, either. It means you stop spending energy berating yourself for being anxious and in a negative state and instead allows you to lean into holding space for yourself in that moment.

Pencil It In.

Postpone the overwhelm and anxiety – and make a date instead. Set aside 10 minutes each day during which you can feel all these feelings and anything you want! Give yourself permission to not be okay. You’ll find that you won’t perceive the situation which triggered the initial overwhelm to be as bothersome or worrisome when you come back to it later. Our thoughts actually decay very quickly if we don’t feed them with energy or attention.

Use the Most Powerful Words

Finding reasons to say thank you truly goes a long way. Gratitude is really the most powerful antidote against fear, anxiety, overwhelm, and stress. The truth is, we cannot be in a place of gratitude while being worried or anxious at the same time.

It also shifts the focus from what’s not working or how we think we’re not measuring up because at the neurochemical level, being thankful helps modulate the prefrontal cortex, which manages negative emotions.

Whether we do it through journaling or verbal expressions, when we are grateful, we are more empathetic and positive minded by nature and we’re able to dissolve negative feelings almost instantly.

Powerful Mindset Tactic Two

According to studies[1] the average adult makes approximately 35,000 decisions per day. But as entrepreneurial moms, that number easily quadruples. In between the mile-long list of to-do’s, the endless chores at home, what might be happening in your business, issues with your spouse or kids and handling finances, our daily quota of best “decision-making pixie dust” quickly runs out.

Decision fatigue was first coined by social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, who identified it as “the emotional and mental strain resulting from a burden of choices.” 

When your mental energy is depleted, you either start making bad decisions or stop making decisions altogether. Work, home front and family are the three biggest areas where it gets depleted. Since in the past two years we have all been running on a smaller mental and emotional bandwidth, prioritizing what’s essential and non-negotiable from what isn’t is key.

A good strategy is to define what decisions have a high, long-term impact while also making as few decisions as possible throughout the day- especially those that we know are a given, like the dreaded “What’s for dinner” at 5pm every day. Here’s what that looks like for these three areas:

Business

For the most part, decisions related to our business rank high in priority and have high stakes attached to them. The best approach is to make a plan that allows you to make business-related decisions either on a a) need-to basis or b) preferably when your mental bandwidth is at it’s best_ i.e. at times when you’re rested and refreshed. This helps avoid making uninformed and costly decisions.

Write down your top business decisions and priorities for the day and tackle them at the beginning of the day when your pixie dust basket is filled up. This might require a bit of detective work, but in the end, you will be able to pinpoint what nonessential decision-making we can cut down on and live without.

With young kids at home this might be a challenge, so having plans in motion for how you make decisions regarding your home and family will help sustain your mental bandwidth for when you need to focus on the business.

Home Front

House-related decisions can rank lower in priority, meaning those decisions have lower stakes. Yes, we all want a clean house and a full fridge but deciding on whether we do laundry in the morning or evening won’t have a high impact or cost when it comes to your children’s wellbeing or your health, for example.

Automation and routines can help. Besides meal prepping, what other things can you already establish beforehand, so you don’t have to spend time thinking about them? Setting up automatic bill payment frees up a lot of time and energy. Having a meal calendar in place avoids brainstorming on the spot on what to cook that day. Even going as far as having a uniform for the week for ourselves eliminates the “what to wear?” conundrum. 

In a nutshell, set up your day so that you have to make the fewest decisions possible around the house so you can truly focus on what matters.

Family

As parents, we are still making the thousands of decisions we were already making pre-pandemic PLUS thousands of new ones we are given daily to think about. No wonder we’re mentally exhausted!

Examining your rules is key. Especially the ones regarding your children. What do rules and decision fatigue have to do with one another? Well, living with kids means that sometimes rules are meant to be broken. Or at least tested (daily by the kids) to determine how robust they are.

When we wonder “Are my children testing me?” the answer is yes. Probably not consciously, but they do want to have confidence that someone is piloting the plane so to speak.

The caveat is that rules mean enforcement. And coming up with ways to enforce rules is tiring! The more rules we have, the more enforcing we need, so more decisions need to be made. And in no time, your pixie dust is gone.

Allowing yourself some grace about where to draw the line is also crucial. This is where taking a stand about mom guilt comes in.

We are all doing the best we can with what we have and what we know.

Let. It. Go.

If no screen time on weekdays is your non-negotiable rule, and you have to go into a full-on enforcement mode about it, then do it. And let it go.

Because many times, we do it, and then we’re secretly wondering whether we should have been more flexible or if we are being too harsh. Then we go down a rabbit hole chasing a rabbit that we will never catch.

Go over your rules, trim out the ones that you can live without, and take a stand with your non-negotiable ones. Drop the guilt when you enforce.

Rinse and repeat.

Powerful Mindset Tactic Three

Does it sometimes feel like everyone seems to have it together, and you’re the only one scotch-taping your way through life? Or using double-sided tape, for that matter?

According to studies, 70% of women feel this way. That means seven of your ten best gal pals are also using glue guns to keep their life afloat.

Of course, that doesn’t make the fear and worry of Imposter Syndrome completely go away.

So why do we feel like phonies?

It tends to boil down to a deep-rooted inability to believe we’re good at what we do or that we have value. One tell-tale sign is that it’s hard to accept praise from others believing there is a hidden agenda behind other people’s compliments. It is difficult to fully believe praise towards us.

Another giveaway is we tend to go into a perfectionist streak, believing doing things perfectly will keep others from finding out we are not as good as they seem to think. But this puts us in an emotional hamster wheel waiting for the other shoe to drop and being found out. Therefore, anxiety increases along the way.

As women running our business we might even have praise deficit. Especially in those early stages of growing a business when we’re working solo or from home. We might not hear enough praise from others to give us a sense of whether we are doing a great job or not.

Listening to your self-talk holds clues as to how you handle praise as well as how often are you able to praise yourself. Do you deflect praise from others and play it down? When someone gives you a compliment do you automatically give one back? Perhaps you subconsciously think that if you stand out from the rest (even in a positive way), people will no longer like you or accept you.

Social acceptance is a survival mechanism dating back to our ancestors. We had to be part of the tribe to survive back in the cave days. The need to belong is deeply ingrained in all of us. However, modern life has made things even more difficult in this front.

One thing I’ve seen play out countless of times as a Licensed RTT Practitioner is how we’ve been conditioned to accept a narrative that puts us at odds within ourselves intensifying feelings of Imposter Syndrome and undermining our confidence as mothers and entrepreneurs.

It’s hard to feel like we are good enough when society places paradoxical demands on us: 

  • We are expected to be nice and play nice, yet “nice girls” don’t get ahead.
  • As women we are held to higher standards for work and professionalism yet we’re criticized if we are too good for others.
  • We are expected to put a strong front professionally yet lose business due to not being relatable.
  • We are expected to work like we don’t have kids and mother like we don’t work. 

Trying to actually live up to these expectations already set us up for failure. The way we can counteract this is two-fold:

Nurture Your Inner Cheerleader

The first thing we must do is be intentional about praising ourselves. Constantly.

Tell yourself the words you’ve been waiting to hear. This is where it pays off to be self-sufficient and give to ourselves the praise we want. We will never know a hundred percent what someone else’s intentions are when they praise us. But our mind won’t ever question our own praise.

Grab a pen and post-it notes and write “I am enough”, “I have fantastic coping skills”, “I’m a great mom to my kids”. Place them in your work area, bathroom mirror, fridge, near the laundry basket, as your screensaver_ wherever you are sure to constantly see them. These are great subliminal messages to feed your mind about your worth and value!

You do You

Another mental shift is to stop the comparison game. Stop comparing your apple crumble to another woman’s tiramisu. This is how you keep tabs on your mental and emotional state. Or as I like to tell my clients: You do You. The more we keep to our own lane, the less leeway we allow to Imposter Syndrome to creep in.

Sometimes, the feeling of not enoughness is so deep-rooted that seeking professional help is the best course of action. Just like anxiety and overwhelm, the silver lining is that Imposter Syndrome is highly treatable and the earlier you seek help, the better the outcome.

This is due to our internal beliefs creating a blueprint that conditions our mind into recreating overwhelm, anxiety and not feeling enough as familiar emotional scenarios. The good news is that we can transform and upgrade old limiting beliefs and rewire our mind with a powerful new blueprint.

Once you realise you can change your life through your beliefs, you will discover that you can remove toxic thoughts that previously prevented you from reaching your goals. Resetting our thoughts and actions and breaking patterns of negative thinking despite what might be happening outside our door is the fastest way we can bring about the results that we want in our business and in our lives.

When we are able to do this successfully, every single area of our life changes for the better. After all, we’re not only building successful businesses, but we also want to have a successful business that works around our dream life.

Hey mama!

I help business leaders and entrepreneurs achieve higher levels of success, confidence and freedom.By tapping into the subconscious and transforming limiting beliefs she facilitates powerful business transformations. Let’s hop on a Inspired Action Call with me today and let’s start shifting your limiting beliefs around.

Book your Inspired Action Call!

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stretching-theory/201809/how-many-decisions-do-we-make-each-day

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Watch Your Step! The Interesting Way Your Mind is Hindering You As a Mom

Let’s start this conversation with a cliché: They say the day a baby is born so is a mother.

And here’s another one: Nothing quite really prepares us for motherhood (this one is quite an understatement).

From the onset of pregnancy, right down to the birthing experience, our child’s unique personality and even the circumstances surrounding our motherhood journey at any given moment, it’s hard to predict what will come up as we walk around with our mom’s hat on.

It might even be a case of we don’t know what we don’t know. Our unique motherhood journey unveils itself gradually with each milestone, stage and phase that we arrive to. You could even say that being a mother is such a dynamic role because we constantly have to be adapting and piecing together all the layers and variables that come our way in real time. It’s impossible for anyone to fully prepare ahead of time as all the possible combinations are too many to predict.

Simply put, there’s a myriad of cognitive and emotional demands placed on us given all the learning that takes place while we parent.

Yet, one thing I’ve seen play out countless of times as a Certified RTT Practitioner is how at some point during our motherhood journey, The Pebble in The Shoe Theory begins to unfold. And how it starts to undermine our confidence as mothers.

For the most part, we think our life journey is a linear one: going from being infants, to children to teenagers and then to full-grown adults. And that our role as mothers also follows a linear path (baby arrives and we begin to acquire practice and knowledge about what to do next). It seems that our past experiences have given us a better vantage point from which to effectively parent.

But it is not usually the case.

And the most tell-tale sign of this is when we enter what I call the triggering zone.

We enter the triggering zone whenever it seems that our kids have found the exact buttons to push that get us into reactive mode. It’s almost like we don’t recognize ourselves. Only after we’ve had time to mull it over, and mom guilt finally creeps in, we realize with embarrassment that we probably took things out of proportion and there was no need to react like Mommy Volcano.

But in the heat of the moment, it appears we’re simply going on auto-pilot, reacting the same way again and again, even when we have tried to change our reaction or even negotiating with ourselves that no matter what, we won’t go off like last time. (Only to repeat the cycle the next day).

Why is it that our kids push our buttons like no one else?

And why does it feel we’re constantly in this loop: feeling overwhelmed and frustrated to the point of snapping and over-reacting, then feeling guilty about it afterwards and trying to change our ways but falling into the same pattern repeatedly?

Cue in The Pebble in The Shoe Theory.

The triggering happens because we’re re-enacting a relationship that shaped who we are now as adults.

Yes, that’s right. We’ve been in a parenting relationship before, except that previously, we were the child. What’s more, most of our internal beliefs came from this dynamic.

The blueprints we internalized as children while we were being parented by our parents are pretty much still in place when we reach adulthood. If we haven’t actively been doing the inner work on ourselves prior to becoming mothers and ‘peeling away the layers’ as they call it, we will tend to carry with us all these old beliefs and blueprints around like an old suitcase, and which are at play when we parent.

It is part of our human experience to form beliefs about ourselves and the world around us to make sense of things. Through our childhood and even still to this day, we continue to have millions of beliefs, some ranging from the inconsequential (“X brand is the best brand for paper towels”) all the way to what we subconsciously believe about ourselves or our abilities (“I’m not really good at math”) and everything in between.

Internal beliefs underpin every single action we take or not take, without exception. There is never a situation where a belief isn’t at play. And this is mostly highlighted in our role as mothers. Sadly, many of those beliefs tend to be outdated and limiting. But because they operate subconsciously, we’re not usually aware.

What The Pebble in The Shoe Theory is about is that our children tend to be our biggest triggers because when we interact with them we re-enter a relationship we’ve been in before and so we’re playing out (now as mothers) a part that we were subconsciously witness to: that of our own parents’ behaviors and attitudes when they parented us.

The caveat is that we’ve only played this interaction from the child side in the past and now we’re mirroring this dynamic from an outdated blueprint.

Our children’s behavior in fact has nothing to do with our triggers. They are going through their own developmental stages and acting age appropriate as they go through their own growing curve (barring any medically diagnosed conditions).

What our children do is act as a mirror that projects back at us our own beliefs and conditionings that formed during childhood. But because it’s a mirror image, everything is reversed. And we are unable to see how the distortion is playing out in real time. Or in this case, how we’re approaching our parenting through a lens that is outdated, limiting and in most instances, no longer valid.

To show The Pebble in The Shoe Theory at work, let’s look at this flipped image of singer Adele below.

Twitter/TurnYourPhone

The image is a seemingly mirrored version of the original, used as the cover art for her album “25.” However, if you look at the image right side up (or by turning over your phone) you’ll see something much more disturbing.

While Adele’s face has been turned upside down, her eyes and mouth have actually been left the right way up. As a result, when we turn the picture right side up, the singer’s face looks outright nightmarish.

This is known as the Thatcher Illusion, and it illustrates how our brain can’t properly process a face (or a photo of a face) that is upside down. The interesting part is that the brain thinks it can, so you get a confident feeling that everything is alright, until you turn it over.  

So how does this link to The Pebble in The Shoe Theory?

In a nutshell, it illustrates how what we think might be triggering us is actually an upside-down version of old beliefs we have internalized that are distorted (but from where we stand they seem quite ‘normal’) or we simply don’t notice it (they are blind spots).

We think we parent from a cause-effect logical standpoint: Our child acts and we react to it. Or more specifically, our child acts and that behavior triggers us. Just like how we think Adele’s upside-down face image looks okay.

But when we flip it the other way around, we realize the features are not what they should. Likewise, when we start to recognize our triggers as blind spots that signal old limiting beliefs at play, and how we might be re-enacting those early-year relationships we had with our caregivers and parents, we then start to see how outdated and limiting they truly are. 

Becoming aware of this is the first step towards changing how we parent to avoid falling victims to these triggers and perpetuating the cycle with our kids. Therefore, we can start healing ourselves from limiting and self-sabotaging beliefs that are holding us back.

When we’re feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, and triggered we think we need to address the feeling directly.

But the overwhelm and frustration are only the symptoms. They’re not the issue.

It may seem you feel overwhelmed and triggered because your child just had tantrum number thirty of the day, or she is not cooperating the way she should, or the constant whining is driving you crazy.

In fact, it may also seem that all of the million to-do’s, the endless chores at home, what might be happening in your business (or at work), issues with your spouse or partner, your finances, or just simply trying to juggle all the balls in the air are the reason why you’re feeling triggered.

But this is not why you react with overwhelm and frustration.

All of the above- including your children- are external things. They are happening OUTSIDE of you.

The root cause of your overwhelm and frustration lies in your thoughts.

What you actually think about the circumstances in your life. These are your internal beliefs: the ones that were wired in when you entered this parenting relationship the first time around. Back then you were the child in the relationship. And you internalized things from a child’s point of view.

These beliefs created a blueprint that conditioned your mind into using it as reference moving forward. Now, as you find yourself on the other (parent) side of this parenting relationship some decades later, your mind is looking at the relationship the same way you look at Adele’s upside-down picture. It seems familiar and for the most part, normal. But we know it could very well be distorted. And our triggers point to where those old limiting beliefs are hidden because they are causing overwhelm and frustration.

Depending on your own personal set of circumstances and upbringing, the blueprints that you formed in your mind early on, can either be working for you or against you.

The constant triggers point towards a misaligned blueprint. 

We think we’re able to tackle motherhood from a clean slate and armed with all the knowledge we accumulate from books, workshops, classes or even from others that have gone before us as we first become moms. But we have certainly experienced the parenting relationship before.

The so-called pebble in the shoe refers to all those limiting beliefs we’re carrying around unaware of their existence and how they might be impacting the way we’re showing up as mothers.

The reality is that everyone’s beliefs-which are almost always invisible and unconscious- shape every single thought and action we take in every area of our lives.

Beliefs are like the Thatcher Illusion. It’s only when you turn them on their head that you can begin to see the truth even though what you “see” looks “normal” yet, in reality, it is often highly dysfunctional and contradictory.

Our inner beliefs, like our mind, arise out of our biology, but are influenced by so much more than cells and signals: Our emotions, memories, relationships, also play a part albeit unconsciously in how these beliefs are shaped.

To break this cycle of triggers and negative thoughts, you need to be aware of the limiting beliefs that make you feel overwhelmed, stressed, angry, frustrated…and start to choose to act on a different blueprint altogether.

If you understand the importance of upgrading old limiting beliefs and rewiring your mind (with a powerful new blueprint) I invite you to take the first step into having a Rapid Transformational Experienceso you can leave overwhelm and frustration behind, and instead install powerful new beliefs that will make you feel inspired, calm and confident as a mom. Frazzled mom is so last year! Step into your motherhood shoes empowered and with ease knowing there’s no painful pebbles keeping you triggered.

Schedule your free Connection Session with me. We’ll talk about all the things that are limiting you.

As a Certified RTT® Practitioner, I’ll share what you can do right now to start taking Inspired Action and feel calmer, confident and guilt-free. Even if we don’t work together, you’ll leave the session knowing the exact steps to break the cycle of limiting beliefs so you can move forward with confidence and ease.

Book your session here:

https://calendly.com/themomergymovement/30min

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Making Motherhood Work aka The Momergy Manifesto

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. —MARTHA GRAHAM

We’re mothers and mompreneurs.

In fact, our lives have sometimes become one long-running cliché: that of a busy, always-on-the-go, have-a-million-things-to-do, don’t-have-time, where-are-my-keys – type of mom. We are wearing many hats, leading busy, stressful lives and looking after everyone but ourselves. Phrases like “I’m pulp”, “I’m so freaking tired,”, “I can’t even…” pepper our everyday conversations and thoughts throughout the day (and waaay into the night!)

“I’m exhausted” has become our de facto motto, an almost universal anthem that all women with a pulse and children in tow who are constantly pulling at her legs, asking for a toy they just lost (or another snack) know the lyrics to by heart. This anthem is chanted, ironically, with more force and vitality than when we were in our early twenties singing Livin’ on a Prayer at a party at 2am. 

Boy, how that song can pretty much apply to our current life right now!

Now those late nights have morphed into all-nighters of other sorts: sick children needing care, infants demanding nightly feedings, or work-related assignments with a nine am due date the next morning. And society’s bulky baggage of “shoulds” feels heavy and demoralizing: from the way we should look, the way we should feel, the way we should parent our kids, the way our relationships should look like…ad infinitum. All these shoulds steadily accumulate into our bodies, our minds and our spirits and rob us from our vitality while leaving behind a trail of anxiety and stress in its place.

Wait, was there some eye-rolling at the back there because of the word ‘mompreneur’?

Don’t let that word bother you or deprive you of the little sleep you’re most likely getting like the rest of us.

Here in The Momergy Movement, the term mompreneur applies to ALL women that have decided to define the way they work and on what terms (hint: it’s their OWN TERMS).

Be it staying at home (this is full-time work too!), or in a corporate office, or pursuing your own projects and establishing your own business, we are defining our working terms. In fact, we’re past the stage of ‘asking for permission’ and have now decided to set our own rules of the game.

And so, within our multiple roles in life, we have a unique mom energy (aka momergy) and it refers to the mental, physical and emotional energies within us as mothers.

When we take energy out of places we didn’t know existed to be able to accomplish what we need to do, we’re tapping into this momergy field.

Momergy is the natural buoyancy that defines our very nature of motherhood.

It’s the non-verbal commitment that shows up in the middle of any chaos, frustration or overwhelm to regain our natural state no matter what. Momergy is about experiencing the whole spectrum of emotions in our lives and thriving within all these emotions and NOT in spite of them.

Because there is a distinction here. And this distinction is the one that causes the biggest friction in our lives:

It is not that things are happening to us, but rather, that we are actively co-creating our own world. And so, we have the power to choose everything about it over, and over again. With zero guilt, pressure, or expectation (to do so).

Momergy is going past the hype of shoulds: how we should work, how we should feel, how we should be experiencing motherhood, how we should connect with ourselves and others…and instead, reinvent it all_ AND enjoy it all_ unapologetically.

Momergy is choosing to do something or to NOT do something with each new situation. It’s about showing up intentionally as our own self, giving more of ourselves and not less.

Momergy is our natural state of being. And it’s also about trusting this natural state to come into the foreground in any given situation in the most organic, fluid way. We don’t need to make it happen. Just let it happen. It WILL happen. Effortlessly. Naturally. 

We are moms and mompreneurs.

And we’re done with the era of “finding balance” and desperately juggling all the balls in the air like  circus performers.

Sometimes we’re firing on all cylinders while precariously carrying around a truckload full of plates, platters and Tupperware containers with mismatching lids.

And sometimes we order pizza, leave the dirty dishes in the sink overnight, and walk around with a greasy bun after not having washed our hair for two days (or more)  because we can’t be bothered.

And we do so because we know that life is not always 50-50. Wanting to be in balance means that we constantly need to be juggling all the balls up in the air no matter what. And this balancing act is quite stressful, so screw that!

Instead, flowing with what is, means that our momergy can naturally choose and nurture which balls need our presence and attention and which ones can wait without getting guilt-tripped over it.

Momergy is what gives us the freedom to decide when, how, and where we want to keep these balls; which ones we want to carry (while placing the rest of the balls on the floor at times when our focus needs to be elsewhere without fear that they will break, or that we will irreparably damage them) and how we want to carry them around (up in the air, inside the diaper bag, in your backpocket) …. And none of this really matters as long as it feels right to us!

Momergy is that inner force that sets the stage for creativity, flow and enjoyment because we’re living in harmony with ourselves.

It is that pure potential within us that allows us to simply know and simply do without giving explanations or needing permission slips from anyone.

Momergy is bringing ourselves to life. Each and every day.

As moms and mompreneurs, we need to undergo an unlearning.

An unlearning of the formulas we learned, the beliefs we picked up or arrived at, the habits we hold on to, in order to set ourselves free.

Momergy is taking the exciting, beautiful, painful and difficult experiences and situations happening at any given moment in time AND still showing up.

It’s going through every emotion of the rainbow and going back and forth several times during the day or in the space of an hour or a minute, and creating space for it, embracing it and transcending it.

Momergy is the sadness, the anger, the hurt, the loss, AND the healing, and knowing we can do better, show up better and actually wanting to do so.

It’s knowing that we are forever stepping into an exquisite chaos of wild love and ferocious worry and there’s no other way but to go through it and enjoy it as much as we can.

Momergy is the daily choice of doing the right thing even when you’re not sure what the right thing is.

Momergy is about embracing both our crazy and special sides and taking energy out of places we didn’t know existed to be able to accomplish everything we need to do.

Momergy is about choosing authenticity and nourishing our relationship with our fellow soul sisters with honest accounts of our motherhood journey (and NOT the social media ones!).

It is about a sisterhood, where we collectively uplift, empower and support one another, whether our momergy comes from having biological children or not, because anyone can choose to tap into their own momergy source if they feel inspired to and so desire.

Our momergy is much greater than the emotions, needs and behaviors we’re struggling with.

And we deliberately harness our Momergy in a way that empowers us and uplifts us.

When we do this, we are able to free ourselves from having this overwhelming sense of fear that we’re failing at every turn, at every decision, at every “no” and every “yes” we say, at what we allow or not allow in our lives, with regards to our children, spouses or how we work or engage our time.

Let’s join our momergies collectively and let’s unite in redefining our present, co-create our future and help the next generations lead the way more consciously, more fully, and more unapologetically.

“The purpose of life is to recreate yourself anew in the next golden moment of now. In the grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about who you are”

-NDW

And I would add: While having heaps of fun along the way.

Yours in the MOMERGY journey,

-Iva

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Ditching the Mental Load in 2021 and Making Motherhood Fun Again

Warning: this is a long post. If you’re pressed for time, scroll to the bottom and join our FB community to access Ditching The Mental Load Playbook to start enjoying motherhood without all the drama, mental fatigue and mom guilt.

I have a bold claim about motherhood as the central message of my blog site, and I display it clearly on my home page. It’s go big or go home for me. The vision and purpose for what I do and how I intend to help moms and mompreneurs everywhere is this:

“Reinventing what it means to do it all, have it all, and enjoy it all_ while having fun along the way.”

Can we reinvent motherhood through play?

My answer is an energetic YES.

“Well, what does that look like?” you ask.

Let me answer with a question: 

How fantastic it would be if you were able to transform the complex, focused work (of motherhood) into something that felt like play?[1]

First, let’s take a step back and define play to avoid confusion. Most people think of play as doing what you want, without any expectations or duty attached. Play seems like a thoughtless activity that is superficial and done for the mere sake of entertainment and maybe passing the time.

But as Ian Bogost challenges in his book Play Anything, fun doesn’t have to feel good. ‘Fun,’ he writes, ‘turns out to be fun even if it doesn’t involve much (or any) enjoyment.’ Huh?[2]

Well, according to Bogost, ‘Play is a way of operating a constrained system in a gratifying way.’ 

And doesn’t motherhood sometimes feel like a constrained system? Wishing we could do whatever we wanted as mothers but constantly working within constraints and limitations at all times?

Starting with those early motherhood days, we find ourselves operating from a much more limited context because our children are now in the picture. If our child is nursing, there’s not much else that we can do. I remember checking my infant’s temperature every hour of the day or night when she had a fever. Not exactly how I would have liked to be spending my time.

Was that fun?

Well, if we use the definition of fun as the experience of pleasure, then no.

But if we take it as the outcome of tinkering with a small part of the world in a surprising way, then yes, it was. I was learning how to be a mom.

Let’s be honest. When it comes to motherhood, we tend to worry that it might not be all it’s cracked up to be. That either we won’t be able to meet the expectations the world has of us as moms or that motherhood will fail to meet our expectations. And then we worry about worrying about it.

What if we treated motherhood for what it is instead of what we wish it were or for what we fear it is not?

This is what Bogost is referring to when he says that the idea of play means taking something, in this case, motherhood, “on its own terms, to treat it as if its existence were reasonable. The power of games lies not in their capacity to deliver rewards or enjoyment, but in the structured constraint of their design, which opens abundant possible spaces for play”.[1]

So with regards to our motherhood journey, we can make it fun. It can be fun because fun isn’t pleasure, it turns out. Fun is the feeling of finding something new in a familiar situation.

By refusing to ask what could be different about motherhood and instead allowing what is present to guide us, we create a new space. In this arena, we get to truly play. The fun part comes from the attention and care you bring to the motherhood journey, which has built-in boundaries and limitations.[2]

So carrying out our motherhood gig in a playful way isn’t about us, it turns out. It’s about everything else and what we manage to do with it.

Think about it. Do we even know what we mean when we say we want our lives to be more fun? We use the term so often, but we don’t have much clarity about its real meaning. If we say we want to go and watch a ‘fun’ film it seems the only expectation we have is that the film is entertaining enough to help us pass the time. 

So what are we after?

If we genuinely want to make motherhood FUN with capital letters, it’s time we get intentional and deliberate about it. When we fiddle with motherhood and its limitations and stop having expectations about it while exploring it with curiosity and intention, we open up the space to truly make it so.

THE MOTHERLOAD

There’s a crucial distinction between motherhood and the motherload. We can be intentionally playful in our motherhood journey, but the reason why we can’t fully access this place of enjoyment and fun while being mothers comes down to the invisible emotional and mental load.

The motherload is the emotional and mental load that fills up our motherhood plates to the brim.

It is undoubtedly NOT fun to constantly deal with this. Sometimes for years on end.

The Motherload fatigue IS real.

It’s all those little, irrelevant things that no one else has to deal with, being almost a full-time job in and of themselves, as well as being unquantifiable.

This mental load is all of those unnecessary yet pressing things that keep us so busy that we look around by the end of the day and can’t say exactly what we did or where the time went, but we feel soooooo effing exhausted!  

What’s worse is that when we try to explain this to our husbands, they simply don’t get it.

It seems like the cultural expectations regarding women, children, and housework and how they overlap fall straight and solely into our laps.

We also cannot approach our roles as mothers in a more playful way because of the sense of disconnection. Being fully present each day is not always possible because of adulting: we’re mothers and friends, daughters, and sisters. PLUS, we also have other responsibilities to tend to regardless of whether we work outside the house or not.

We promised a whole afternoon to our kids, and then boom! we get an urgent message from our boss requesting our help with something ASAP, or an email from a client who needs immediate assistance, or the handyman can’t come to fix the leakage at the scheduled time. Suddenly, we can’t keep that promise to spend the time as we would have wanted to.

We want to avoid making our loved ones, especially our children, the residual beneficiaries of our time and energy. Not giving them priority as often as we would like creates this sense of disconnection and emptiness, which prevents us from being present, playful and having fun.

But the mental load (aka the motherload) is an entirely different animal, and it needs to be tamed differently. It is not about seeking perfect equality in our marriage because life is not 50-50. Trying to be ‘cut-in-half equal partners by splitting the workload exactly down the middle only ends up being more stressful and builds resentment.

Despite this, something has got to give if we analyze the disheartening statistics. Darcy Lockman, a psychologist in NYC, wrote in the Washington Post: ‘Employed women partnered with employed men carry 65 percent of the family’s child-care responsibilities, a figure that has held steady since the turn of the century.’[1]

But like many men Lockman interviewed in her research, most men are oblivious to all the tasks we tend to handle ON TOP of the responsibilities we have as mothers.

Locke cites a woman (referring to her husband): ‘He’s on his phone or computer while I’m running around like a crazy person getting the kid’s stuff, doing the laundry. He has his coffee in the morning, reading his phone while I’m packing lunches, getting our daughter’s clothes out, helping our son with his homework. He just sits there. He doesn’t do it on purpose. He has no awareness of what’s happening around him. I ask him about it, and he gets defensive.’[1]

Sound familiar?

Here’s a very spot-on illustration of what the motherload looks like by Emma Clit and her amazing cartoon titled “You should have asked.”

Imagine the following scenario:

Your husband comes home on a Friday afternoon, and spur-of-the-moment declares: “Hey honey, let’s spend the day at the park tomorrow! Let’s pack up the kids and have a picnic there and spend the afternoon in nature.’

Then your hubby proceeds to get some mosquito repellent and a couple of frisbees, or a ball, packs them in a backpack, and considers it done.

Park. Tomorrow. Done.

What is happening on your end?

Let me take a guess: You spend the rest of that Friday, which, by the way, you expected to be a relaxing evening, and find yourself instead prepping snacks, packing and sorting a change of clothes for the kids, looking for the sunscreen, and some extra band-aids because one of your children has a nasty cut. And, where is that old piece of stale bread to bring along so you can feed the ducks? Because last time you didn’t come prepared and had to endure a 45-minute meltdown from the kids watching other children feed the ducks while they had nothing.

At this point, you’re already frazzled and snappy because the to-do list just got longer, and you just want the day to be done. But here you are, still preparing everything.

Meanwhile, your husband gets upset that you’re still running around like a headless chicken, saying that it’s JUST a day in the park, and asks you to sit down and relax. “Come and watch something.”

He’s gotta be kidding.

“With little ones around, it’s never ‘just going somewhere’. Why aren’t you helping?” you say in a spicy tone.

“Sure,” he says, his eyes still fixed to the screen, “tell me what to do.”

Well, that’s the problem.

How come he doesn’t realize that kids get hungry and need snacks? That they get thirsty and need water? That one child is not yet fully potty trained, and you need to plan if there’s no toilet around. And if the Littlest One needs a nap, where is that cushiony blanket to lay him on when the time comes? If it’s too hot, maybe the small, battery-operated fan can keep him cool, but it’s packed away somewhere in the basement/attic/garage along with the Christmas lights.

Oh yes, that reminds you that several of those lights don’t work, so maybe it’s time to buy new ones when December comes around.

How come no one sees how much work goes into this??

Why is trying to have fun as a mom everything but? Can motherhood even be fun? You knew it would require sacrifices, but you hoped there would be at least some moments of comic relief.

Maybe, the husband is right. Perhaps this one time, you should wing it. There’s always a convenience store nearby to buy some nasty, artificially flavored or sugar-laden snacks for the kids, so they should survive if it’s a one-off. Never mind that one of the children is Celiac or lactose intolerant.

It would be great to split things up and have hubby handle packing the clothes and the toys plus any strollers or bicycles while you just focus on snacks and drinks.

But dear hubby must likely needs a list handed over to him, and all those details are IN YOUR HEAD, so the time it takes to write it all up, you might as well have packed it yourself.

So not only do we have to think of all this and remember. It’s also us who suffer the consequences when things are forgotten or not adequately planned for.

It’s not only packing for the occasion but planning for what might go wrong because you want to save yourself problems later. (Murphy’s Law is a law for a reason) Everything is literally hanging on your shoulders.

You clearly remember, for example, the 45-minute tantrum from not having bread to feed the ducks last time you forgot something. While also having to carry a 24-lbs child for a whole kilometer around the park because she didn’t want to walk anymore, and you already had that back pain which made it all so much worse. Afterward, you even had to stop exercising altogether and instead had to pay a chiropractor to help you put it back in place. That was expensive.

Can we all collectively conclude that this is no walk in the park at all?

Our husbands fail to see all of this because things always seem to run so smoothly.

But things seem easy, breezy, lemon, squeezy because you are the one who’s been doing all of this heavy lifting and carrying the mother-effing-load!

TIME FOR A SERIOUS CONVERSATION

This is not about threats or going on strike, or trying to evenly split responsibilities and chores down the straightest line. The aim, however, should be to achieve some harmony. (It’s the reason my co-host and I decided to name our podcast that, by the way). Harmony sets the stage for creativity, flow, and enjoyment, which is what we want out of motherhood, as well as in our marriages.

If you’re constantly keeping score, you already lost.

This is not advisable.

First, starting a conversation with ‘These are aaaall the things I do, and you’re doing nothing’ will not open the gates for the honest, open dialogue that this topic needs.

Second, you want to avoid feeding the resentment monster. Keeping tabs on all the wrongdoings (or perceived wrongdoings) of our partners and stacking them up in your head will only lead to a major blowout later on that won’t help anyone.

When you do sit down for a talk, go by the suggestion of Indra Nooyi in giving people the benefit of the doubt. “Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different.”

Also, keep in mind that men are incredibly straightforward. Then let us also be straightforward, defining in no uncertain terms what we need from them. If we do this in a genuine and caring fashion and have a partner who cares and is willing to cooperate, they will be willing to follow your road map.

THE ROADMAP

When tackling the mental load issue, having a game plan works best.

Yes, this also ends up on you, but the aim is to do it once and automate it.

>Make a list; check it twice. 

Start with a list of housework and parenting activities or tasks that need to be done regularly, for example, daily or weekly: cooking, laundry, bath time, grocery shopping, and the like.

Considering your schedules, likes, dislikes, and even the time of year, pick three to four activities that you are happy to pass over or have your spouse take their pick.

Hint to my type-A sisters out there: please start small. It’s better to get your partner committed to one task than having him take on six or seven, missing the whole point of the exercise and getting yourself more frazzled and frustrated than ever before.

>Make sure your partner understands the concept of OWNERSHIP

This is where an open and cooperating attitude is vital between you and your partner. The aim is that whoever gets the task or activity gets to OWN it all the way through until completion.

This is crucial. This is the detail that needs to be one hundred percent understood and agreed upon by all parties. Here is where the mental load finally gets lighter, and the mental exhaustion subsides.

Any task or chore has three parts: pre-planning, implementation, and closing the loop. It might have been that in the past, you were doing the pre-planning and closing the loop behind the scenes, and hubby only thought that implementing it was what it took.

Pre-planning and closing the loop tend to add more to the motherload than the implementation part.

So now, with the new approach, the aim is for him to OWN it all! If our partners don’t help us by owning the whole enchilada, then the motherload still stands. This is what we’re trying to lighten up for us. Closing the loop is key – I can’t stress this enough.

>A real-life example- The Green Crocodile

In my home, hubby takes care of bath time. But he didn’t OWN bath time. And this was a constant source of squabbling between us.

This is what my husband considered a completed and achieved bath time task:

  1. Take kids to the bathroom.
  2. Take off their clothes.
  3. Put kids in a bathtub. Lather and rinse.
  4. Dry them up.
  5. Put pajamas on.

Until we sat down and discussed it in-depth, he had no inkling that he was missing nine(!) steps in between and not helping with my motherload.

This is what I consider a completed and achieved bath time task:

0.1 Get towels ready and in the bathroom.

0.2 Lay out pajamas, socks, and diapers on the bed.

0.3 Get diaper cream out and on the bed.

  1. Take kids to the bathroom.
  2. Lay out green crocodile on the bathtub to avoid slips and falls.
  3. Take off their clothes.
  4. Put clothes inside the clothes hamper.
  5. Put kids in the bathtub. Lather and rinse.
  6. Dry them up.
  7. Put pajamas on.
  8. Hang green crocodile to avoid mold and mildew.
  9. Put away towels.
  10. Put away diaper cream.
  11. Bonus: take clothes to the laundry area to get them ready to be washed.

This is what closing the loop looks like to me.

Even if my husband was technically helping with bath time, I was still taking care of wet towels, dirty clothes lying on the floor (and a mere two steps away from the clothes hamper, mind you), putting away the green crocodile and diaper cream, and it ended up feeling like more work for me, not less.

Drafting the above list and understanding what are all the necessary and required steps to OWN the task completely is critical.

>Pro-tips

In the ‘going to the park’ scenario above, you will need some starter lists to start offloading the mental load to your partner. Make a list of what you planned and prepped for that specific activity (along with all possible worst-case scenarios).

Yes, it’s double work that one time, but it’s invaluable if you want to have the conversation on how hubby needs to OWN the ‘going to the park’ activity moving forward. Keeping this list handy allows him to understand what it entails when he decides to take the family to the park.

If your partner is unwilling to pre-plan, implement and close the loop on a task he has agreed to OWN, then the activity gets cancelled or re-scheduled. It’s only fair.

HAVING FUN

If you’ve been shouldering the mental load for several years, it’s a good idea to manage expectations. Let’s give our partners the benefit of the doubt and assume they have been blissfully unaware of how the sausage factory works. How they’ve missed all the boring details and planning that go into making things work without a hitch. (And not only for the special occasions or the Holidays).

But it’s never too late to start the transition. And if the children are older, you can also apply this concept with them and their assigned chores. Hence, they begin to dimension what it truly means when a task or activity falls on their plates.

For example, ’ helping with the dishes’ is too vague. Is it bringing them to the kitchen counter and leaving them there? Is it putting the dishes in the dishwasher? Is it washing, drying, AND putting the dishes away?

It’s time to reinvent what motherhood looks like, feels like, and tastes like TO YOU.

It IS possible to lighten the motherload. It IS possible to be playful as moms and have fun in our motherhood journey.

Continue to be vulnerable and open-minded with your partner. Having uncomfortable conversations about how we feel might not sound like fun. Yet, we can be pleasantly surprised by our spouses, and it might help us realize that although misguided, their support is real and that we can count on it. Our husbands and partners are not mind readers. They sometimes (most of the time) need us to Spell. It. Out.

These open conversations are what create intimacy outside of the bedroom. We not only make love behind closed doors. We make love to our partners every day in all the shared activities that sprinkle our daily lives.

As a final thought, let’s also put the Mental load into perspective. Our children and the bulk of caregiving, will evolve and change with time and will slowly diminish as our offspring become young adults. Our partners, on the other hand, are hopefully going to be with us for the rest of our lives. Let’s aim to nurture and take care of this relationship so that it evolves and grows with time.

Therefore, let’s be intentional and assertive on how we want to share the load so that it’s no longer the motherload but the love load instead.

You’ve got this, mama.

Keep your Momergy up! -Iva

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[1] Darcy Lokman, ‘Analysis|Where do Kids Learn to Undervalue Women? From their Parents’, Washington Post, 10 Nov. 2017

[1] Darcy Lokman, ‘Analysis|Where do Kids Learn to Undervalue Women? From their Parents’, Washington Post, 10 Nov. 2017

[1] Ian Bogost, Play Anything, New York, Basic Books, 2016, p. Preface

[2] Ian Bogost, Play Anything, New York, Basic Books, 2016, p. Preface

[1] Nir Eyal, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, London, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020, p. 46

[2] Nir Eyal, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, London, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020, p. 45