Reclaiming Motherhood: The Myth of Supermom

#278 - Are you tired of feeling like you have to be the perfect "supermom"? It's time to shed those unrealistic expectations and embrace a more fulfilling approach to motherhood and entrepreneurship. Join me, Teresa Hildebrand, on this episode of Organized Chaos as we explore the myth of the "supermom," its origins, and its impact on balancing work and family life. Learn how to prioritize core values like family, health, and business to align your actions with what truly matters. This episode is your guide to relieving the pressure to be flawless and finding a harmonious blend of motherhood and professional life.

Discover practical strategies for setting clear goals and identifying your top priorities tailored to your current season of life. We'll dive into effective time management techniques such as the 80-20 rule, the Eisenhower matrix, time blocking, and task batching. We also highlight the importance of delegation, learning to say no, and the critical necessity of self-care. Taking care of yourself first enhances your overall well-being and caregiving effectiveness. If you're feeling overwhelmed, this episode is packed with actionable tips to help you step away from the "supermom" ideal and achieve a more balanced, fulfilling life. Listen now and start your journey towards reclaiming motherhood on your own terms.

Connect with Teresa on: Instagram or Podcast Website

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:08

Hey, my name is Teresa Hildebrand and this is Organized Chaos. We take a deep dive into living with intentionality, focusing on what's important in our lives so we can truly feel our best. It may feel chaotic at times, but with a little organization, the right mindset and a ton of self-love, we can still thrive. Join me as we talk to other busy moms and experts who will share tips and strategies to help you reach your goals. Hope you enjoy this episode of Organized Chaos. Now on to the show. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Organized Chaos. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Organized Chaos and if you're new here, welcome. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

Speaker 1 0:58

So before we get started, I do want to say that for the past couple of years, or maybe two and a half years, I have been doing this podcast and I've had minimal help. So it's been a lot of the things that I've been doing for this podcast have been just me, and we have this amazing person named Kurt who actually does our video editing and he's our producer for the Modern Leadership YouTube channel. So my husband and I have a YouTube channel and he does amazing with that, and now he's going to be helping me with the podcast. So if you hear some changes, if you've been a listener for a while, you'll probably hear a little bit of a difference in quality, because, of course, he's amazing and I have just been doing it just from the knowledge that I have of podcasting and just what I've learned. So I just wanted to say a little bit of that and also a super special thank you to Kurt for doing this and yeah, so let's get started. So today we're going to be talking about the myth of supermom, so I'm going to help you prioritize what's truly important in your life right this moment.

Speaker 1 2:17

This term supermom, I think, has floated around and I think it was a term that signified something positive, where people would see moms that were doing it all and they're like, wow, that's amazing, it's like you're superhuman. But I think this has kind of a negative connotation because we are not superhuman and we don't have to do it all, and I think it has really made moms and mom entrepreneurs really struggle with unrealistic expectations. So I wanted to kind of talk about this because, first off, I want to make sure that you know that you don't have to do it all, that there are ways to prioritize and to really focus on what truly matters to you, without the guilt that comes along with making those changes. So I hope this episode really resonates with you and I hope you walk away with, first off, like a new attitude about it, a new mindset about what it means to be a mom and a mom entrepreneur, but also leaving with hope that you know, if you're feeling overwhelmed right now and you're feeling like you just can't keep up with everything, that this episode really kind of helps you with that, with some really tangible, really tangible things that you can walk away with.

Speaker 1 3:55

So where does the term supermom come from? I don't really know where it originated from, but I think that the term probably came just from society as a whole and maybe from the media. I think it's because, like I said, people saw moms just be working, moms then coming home and having to take care of the kids and doing housework and just like doing everything. That kind of became the norm and people saw it as something very positive. But there really was a negative impact and I think that this term just puts so much pressure on us to do all the things. So much pressure on us to do all the things. I remember when I was working full time, I felt like I needed to be perfect in every aspect of motherhood, and not just that, also, because I was a working mom, also be perfect in that. So there was so much pressure to not just do it all but also do it all perfectly. And that is a recipe for disaster, because you start to feel that burden and you start to, you know, feel bad about yourself, you start to feel guilty and because we can't do it all and there is no such thing as perfection, so these unrealistic expectations that came along with this term, you know, became a problem.

Speaker 1 5:38

Tips on what you can do to start to step away from the term super mom and really, kind of figuratively, take off that cape and realize there's only so much you can do. And even if, like you really set your priorities and focus on what truly matters, you are still a great mom, no matter what. So first I want to start off with kind of identifying what's truly important. So number one is you need to kind of figure out your core values and what's important to you. So identifying your core values and aligning your priorities with them. So if your priorities or what's really important to you is, let's say, your family, your health and if you're a mom, entrepreneur, your business, then you kind of set your priorities around those. So the things that you do are aligned with those priorities. So when I'm thinking about the things that you do are aligned with those priorities. So when I'm thinking about the things that I need to do, they need to align with those three things. And your core values may be different, but I'm just saying the things that you do and the things that you say yes to, they should align with your priorities and that is what kind of keeps things in harmony. And of course it's not going to be perfect it's never perfect but as long as you do that and you kind of stay within your core values, then things just start to get easier. Things get easier to say no to and yes to. You start to really be intentional about things and you don't feel like you're being tugged in many different directions.

Speaker 1 7:33

The other thing, and number two, is setting clear goals. So how you set clear goals. I've actually done many different podcast episodes about that, so I won't go too deep into how to set goals and I will link in the show notes like what specific episodes you can listen to so you can actually really set clear goals for yourself. But this is really about knowing what it is that you want and understanding. It's really about knowing what your destination is, but then also knowing where you truly are in this moment. So to get from point A to point B, you need to point A right, so you set your destination of where you want to go, what realistic goals you have that truly reflect what matters to you, and then knowing where you currently are and not feeling bad about it, just knowing that this is where you are.

Speaker 1 8:32

And then the third thing is is I want you to take these and you can pause the episode if you want, or you can set this aside for later but I want you to write down your top three to five priorities and don't make it more than five, because if you have more than five priorities, you don't have any priorities at all. But I think it's really important for this to be. The first step is to identify what those priorities are in this season of your life, because our priorities do change from time to time depending on what season of life we're in. So, for you, what is the top three to five priorities? Okay, so the next thing is I'm going to talk about some practical strategies for prioritizing, some practical strategies for prioritizing. So some of these things I've talked about before, but I think it's you know great to mention them again, because these are really simple ways to prioritize but they're not always the easiest.

Speaker 1 9:43

I know that with many of the clients that I have, this is kind of like the part that gets really sticky, because when you start to tell people, okay, you do have to prioritize, oh, and then you have to start actually implementing that which is time management, delegating and outsourcing and learning to say no, that's when it gets kind of there's resistance there, and I can understand, because I actually went through that as well. So number one is really focusing on what it is that you're spending your time on, because whatever is on your schedule or whatever lands on your schedule is what you are making important in that moment. So I want to kind of just you know, let you know, there's a lot of different time management techniques. You just choose the one that you feel is best for you. I really like the 80-20 rule because really it's pinpointing what's truly important, so that I don't spend so much time on things so I have time for everything else. So the 80-20 rule basically says that the 20% of your activities create 80% of your results.

Speaker 1 10:59

So when I go through this with some of my clients, I really have them do a time audit, so really just writing down everything it is that they do on a typical day and it could change because, like, let's say, right now we're in summer, summer break, so you know our days look a little different, but we kind of use kind of like a typical day, you know, listing all the things that you do, including sleep. So anything related to you know your personal needs, anything that has to do with your kids, you know your responsibilities at work or in your business, everything. So you can start to kind of look at big picture of what it is that you're doing, to really be real with yourself and understand that you cannot do everything right. So we start to kind of chip away at that. Other time management techniques are like the Eisenhower matrix, and that's where there's the four quadrants of importance and urgency. There's time blocking, which I usually do after I do a specific time audit, and then there's batching tasks where you know, instead of you know spreading out a bunch of different tasks, you kind of do them all together. So, for example, like my podcast, or when I'm doing podcasts with my husband, yesterday we did four episodes of our podcast we're kind of changing it up with the Modern Leadership Podcast and we did four episodes in a row. It took us an hour and now we have a month's worth of podcast episodes. So things like that, where you don't just start with that and that's I think this is a really important point to mention is that you don't start with these kind of detailed techniques until you've set your priorities and until you've actually listed out the things that you do and you start to chip away at it and going into.

Speaker 1 13:02

The next point here is delegating and outsourcing. So you want to make sure that after your time audit, you identify things that you can delegate to other people or you outsource. Like you know, for example, this episode, like I'm outsourcing the editing and the making it sound nice and everything to Kurt. So that is something that I really want to emphasize is that don't start off with like the fancy techniques First start off with your priorities and then you go in this order for a reason. So, like I said, delegating and outsourcing is a really important way to kind of prioritize and you do it wherever possible. Right, it might not be possible for you to have a podcast producer. If you have a podcast, however, there are different things that you can outsource or automate that'll help you as far as your time. So you don't spend so much time on a specific task, especially if it's not leading to anything productive or if it's not leading to, you know, an increase in income, if that's important to you. So really, kind of sit down and look at the list of things that you're doing and see if they're actually things that you should be doing or if you could just be giving it to somebody else.

Speaker 1 14:27

And then the third point of the strategy for prioritizing is saying no. So I think that this is really another sticky topic for us moms, because we're, most of the time, people pleasers and we feel like, if we're saying no, that we're being bad people, we're being not team players. But, like I said, we only can do so much. So I want to say that once you get started on saying no, it gets so much easier to say no next time. You don't want to overcommit yourself, especially if those things that you're committing to are not aligned with your priorities and your goals. You know saying yes to a birthday party every single weekend when your family is a priority and you do want to spend time with them and that's the only time you can do it. You may want to reduce that or get rid of it altogether. So that's just some of the strategies that I would say are the best for prioritizing.

Speaker 1 15:34

Now I do want to talk a little bit about kind of like the whole mindset around this, because there are some feelings that are going to come up when we start to make these changes, and a lot of it has to do with guilt and feeling like it's not going to go perfect of the guilt, and I know it's easier said than done and it's really a process. But once you start to let go of the guilt, of that feeling and it's a very common feeling, so you're not alone in this I still feel guilt every now and then, so it's a very common feeling. But starting to let go really helps in understanding that we just can't do everything and if we're trying to do everything we're really watering ourselves down. We feel guilty when we start to prioritize and do kind of these things for our own self-care sometimes, but in reality, we're actually doing more harm if we're trying to do everything, saying yes to everything and just creating a version of ourselves. That is not the best. So I say letting go of guilt is one really big step that you can take.

Speaker 1 16:54

Another thing is just really embracing imperfection. Once you start to let go of the idea of perfectionism, then things start to get a lot easier. So embracing imperfection and really recognizing that it's okay to not do everything perfectly. So I want to kind of recap a little bit on this. So we talked about where this term came from. Right, and it's society and sometimes the media or just people around us that have termed super mom as like a positive term. In reality, it's created unrealistic expectations of us and we need to kind of let go of that and get rid of that term for us.

Speaker 1 17:38

And then the other thing we talked about was identifying what truly matters, so focusing on our core values and our priorities and making sure that we understand those for ourselves, setting clear goals and really kind of taking the time to identify those. And then I also shared some practical strategies on how you can prioritize. So some time management techniques, you know, understanding that you need to delegate and outsource in order to be able to do this, and also getting into the habit of saying no and also letting go of those feelings of guilt and feeling like you need to be perfect to just embracing imperfection. All right, well, I hope that was helpful.

Speaker 1 18:19

I hope that this topic really resonated with you and if you ever need any help with this, like this is something that I really truly try to hone in on when I work with my one-on-one clients. You know, if you ever need a deeper level of help with this, you can reach out to me. There's many different ways you can reach out and I will put those in the show notes, but I really hope that helps you at least understand and kind of let go of that term, super mom and making sure that you take care of yourself and that when you take care of yourself, you can take care of everybody else so much better. All right, I hope you really liked this episode and I would appreciate it if you, you know, give me a review if you want, if you enjoyed it, and I hope you have an amazing day and I will see you next week.