Hey mama, welcome to the inside out mama's podcast. I'm Brittany Turley, mom of six, and I know what it's like to feel stuck and overwhelmed trying to be the perfect mom. But everything changed for me when I learned that small changes on the inside can bring big results on the outside. Each week, I will share simple yet powerful inside shifts or outside tips that can transform your approach to mothering, helping you thrive from the inside out. Ready to ditch the mom guilt and enjoy this season of life? You're in the right place. It's good to be back. Sorry I missed last week. You can kind of still hear I have sickness in my voice, but we have been wading through the sickness at our house, and it hit me hard last week. I finally went down. I'm actually going to share a little bit of our sickness drama to help illustrate some things this week. So, pretty much since school was Back in session from Christmas break, so what is that, like the 7th of January? We have had someone at our home sick almost constantly. I can think of like two days where all my kids made it to school. Except for last week, they did make it to school, but I was sick those days, so I'm not counting those. We've had More days with fevers in January than not. Now we haven't had any off the charts needing to go to the hospital sickness. We've just had constant sickness. And, I was really starting to feel overwhelmed and frustrated and down about this because, you know, one daughter would get sick and then two days later another, and then the first daughter would get better and then three days later she's homesick again with another fever or another symptom and it was just this round robin. You can imagine with having eight people in a house how sickness spreads quickly, and Everybody's just bringing home a lot of germs because we're all going different directions. With all of this sickness, I was just starting to feel worn down and overwhelmed and just kept thinking, we are the only ones getting sick and just feeling kind of bad for myself, like, why can't I keep my kids healthy? I must be the only mom that can keep her kids healthy and we must be filthy disgusting because we can't stay healthy. just on and on and on, feeling bad, and sorry for myself. I knew a lot of this wasn't necessarily true, but you know, when you're feeling sorry for yourself, you gotta really dramatize it, so I was dramatizing it as if we were the only ones getting sick. Then one day I was talking to another mother and her girls had been sick too and she was telling me that her girls classroom has 30 students in it and several days last week there were only 10 students in the classroom because 20 of them were sick. In fact, it was so bad that the school had someone come in and fog the classroom to, kill all the germs in there. And she also told me that there were two schools in a nearby town that shut down for a couple days because so many kids in their school were out sick. With this new information, I was able to think a little differently about my own situation and all of a sudden I wasn't feeling quite so bad for myself because I was realizing, okay, I guess the whole community is feeling sick this month. It's just going to be a rough month for all of us. Isn't that interesting, that even though nothing in my situation changed, my thoughts about it changed once I added some facts. Once I added some facts, I was able to change my thoughts, and that helped me to feel better, and to better handle my situation. So, I'm going to talk a little bit of facts versus thoughts. Facts are things that can be proven true with evidence. Think of something that can be proven in the court of law. Something that can be proven as true by multiple people. Thoughts, though, are our interpretations of the facts, or our interpretation of the circumstances. So my thoughts were, we're the only ones getting sick, and I'm a terrible mom because I can't keep my kids healthy, and we must be disgusting because we always have germs. Where the facts were that my kids each got sick once last month, and two of them got sick more than two times. And then my friend was able to bring in more new facts, that there were only ten healthy kids in a class of thirty at my kids school. When I was just focusing on my thoughts, I was feeling really bad. But when I added some facts to my thought, All of a sudden my thought changed and I wasn't feeling as bad anymore. I realized we weren't suffering alone, which is I think what my main thought was, is we're the only ones getting sick and we're the only ones suffering over here. One reason to pay attention to facts versus thoughts is because of how they affect you. My thought We were the only ones getting sick. Made me feel overwhelmed, defeated, and like a poor mom. But with those facts that I then got, those feelings weren't there anymore. So facts can help us see more clearly. Kind of like coming into a dark room and turning the light on helps us see things as they really are more and to have new thoughts that could be more enlightening and helpful. Here are some thoughts moms might have that could use some facts. I'm the only mom with kids that have accidents in their pants past the age of five. My kids are the only kids that throw tantrums even though they are not toddlers anymore. no other moms lose their temper and yell at their kids. Here's a hint for you when you're looking at your thoughts and trying to Decide if they're a thought or a fact is any time you hear yourself saying Only as in I'm the only one the only mom the only kids no other Then you probably need to find some facts because There's so many people in our world that Chances of you being the only one in that specific situation are actually kind of small. If I were to take those three statements and make them factual without even getting any outside data, I could say something like this, I have an eight year old and a six year old that each had three accidents this week. My ten year old and my eight year old throw themselves on the floor kicking and yelling when I talk to them sometimes. I yelled at my kids when they didn't obey me for the third time. As you're listening to each of those factual ones, I don't know about for you, but for me, They have so much less drama in them that I don't have the same feelings with them. When I think I'm the only mom with kids that have accidents in their parents past the age of five, I feel defeated. I feel alone. I feel like I'm a bad mom. I feel like there's no way to solve this problem. But when I make it factual and say, I have an eight year old and this Six year old that each had three accidents this week. It loses its punch. It doesn't seem quite as dramatic. Even though it's the same amount of mess, it's the same amount of struggle. It just seems so much less dramatic because we've made it very factual. See how even a little bit of facts can just take so much emotion out of the statements and just makes them easier for our brains to handle? Now, because I believe small changes on the inside bring big results on the outside, each week on my podcast I'm going to give you a small change challenge. Something small you could do throughout the week if you choose that could end up bringing big results to your life. So the small change challenge for this week is find the facts for the thing that is bothering you. We all have at least one thing that is just something that's bothering us or we're struggling with or our mind keeps going back to. Find that thing, that thought, and shed some fact light on it. Find some facts around it. Either do some research and realize that you're not the only mom with this situation, or take all of the drama out of it. Take all of the onlys and the no others out of it, and just state things that could be proven in a court of law. Then say your statement. And see how it helps you change your thought and feel differently. See how it lightens your emotions around that situation. See how it lightens your load and your feeling of discouragement or despair around that situation. Bringing a little bit of fact light. Usually also brings a little bit of hope, because we can see that there might be things that we can do to resolve, instead of just spinning in, we're the only, there's no other, defeat. So go shed some fact light on your thoughts, and see what a difference a little bit of light can bring. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Inside Out Mamas. My hope is that our time together inspires more feelings of peace, confidence, and joy in your mama journey. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss a show. And if you're ready to take these insights even deeper, head over to brittanyturleycoaching. com to check out my digital workshop designed to help you reduce daily mom overwhelm without adding to your to do list. Thanks for listening, and remember, Small changes on the inside bring big results on the outside.