Time is my #1 Asset as a Mother, Trust Your Inner Spirit: Choosing from Overwhelm to an Overflowing Cup

"I will relax after everything and everyone else is taken care of." This narrative and expectation is tired. If we miss moments, they are gone. The misunderstood idea that mother's can't enjoy their individual journey in each of their multiple roles, especially those that are running a business or serving others in their business roles with unending tasks, often creates a cycle of overwhelm. Waiting to experience joy and fulfillment is not accepting we can choose to integrate. Time is an asset that we can't control. This moment is always now.

In this episode we will start the conversation that there is another choice. Mothers don't have to give until they are depleted. We aren't all created with the same desires. Our lives reflect our choices. The negative ripple effect of expectation that there is only one way to experience what we desire in our daily lives goes beyond the mother's well-being, affecting their children, relationships, work and much more. 

If you have ever felt pressure to perform, while feeling unfulfilled, this episode is for you. Have you ever wondered if there is actually another option or noticed someone else being an example of what is possible, but you're not sure where to start?

I will share the beginning of my personal journey from a soul desire as a little girl to become a mother to struggles, questioning the industry standards as a hairstylist, infertility and choosing to reset with an overflowing cup.

In This Episode:

You can enjoy your individual desires and journey as a mother without depleting yourself

Negative ripple effect of the tired expectation of waiting to experience joy and fulfillment

Join me in this change from overwhelm to overflow by choosing to start with something small, even 5 minutes to reset.

✨️Start here by checking out my FREE checklist for "joy & fulfillment" now, just for Mamas like you that own a business/work in a service industry: https://www.theintegrativemotherexperience.com

-If you enjoyed this first episode of season #1, don't miss as we continue this journey together:

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-Leave a review or comment to help me reach more mama's like you.

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https://theintegrativemotherexperience.com

Transcript

Sarah Swift: 0:11

Welcome to the Integrative Mother Experience Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Swift, mother of three teenagers. I want to have conversations about why so many mamas wearing multiple hats, working, serving others, or owning a business, especially in the beauty industry, feel like they need to choose between their work and their family. We'll also uncover common causes of overwhelm, lack of wellbeing, and joy. I am here with over three decades of experience working in the beauty industry, owning several types of businesses, starting in my twenties, and sharing stories to help other mothers avoid the feeling of always missing out. Time is an asset we can't get back. I can't wait to dive into these deep conversations. I hope you will join me. I'm super excited to start season number one. I'm so glad that you're here. You're ready to have the deep conversations. These are the conversations I've been wanting to have for years where I could actually use my voice and speak my thoughts in a way that it was conversation My podcast is going to have a mix of interviews and solo episodes like today. So I hope that guests, when I bring them on, will give you different ideas, inspirations, and things that will bring clarity to the issues that you may be having. Trying to get your well-being, your joy, and balance back, not feeling like you have to choose anymore. So I wanna start simply by just saying that the summer of 2024 is when I had this deep knowing. It just came, I felt like out of nowhere, but I now realize it's just not out of nowhere. It never is. When there's this spirit-lead, soul calling is how I feel. I live a very faith-filled life andi t came to me that I should give back and that I had things that could help other moms, especially business owners or people working in the service industry or both would benefit from that. There's this huge amount of moms that feel like they have to choose their work over their family. Even when they don't want to, that they can't shut off their minds from their work or they have to ignore their own personal well-being just to keep doing, forcing and it has to stop. I am so tired of all the conversations that are, this is the norm. Well, that's just what people do in your industry or in another given industry. I've heard these comments. I see the breakdown and I'm just not here for it. I, I'm here for the conversations that people wanna have of what can we do to change this? We can talk about the ripple effects of all the negative sides of it that have caused so many physical, mental and beyond issues to marriages, families, well-being of the moms themselves, but we also have to talk about what can we do to change it? Because if we have a ripple effect of women that aren't here for it anymore and that understand where it's coming from, then we can actually do something about it. That's what I'm here to do. So if that sounds good to you, join me. I'm super excited to dive in a little bit about where it started for me many, many years ago as a little girl, and then you'll continue to hear throughout these next few episodes different ideas from other people as well. So it is not me telling anybody what to do, it's me guiding you and sharing my experience to help,. but I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm here for you to take what feels good for you and your situation because everybody's situation is just so unique and what's on your chosen heart may not be on mine or on the next mom's and that's okay. We all have our journeys, and our journeys hopefully will evolve, and that's what I'm here for. So I'm gonna just start with my beginning. As a very, very young girl, I just always remember wanting to be a mom. It was on my heart so young, and so I would play dress up. I would put my younger brother in a little doll buggy and I would play Barbies all the time. I would circle the moms and the dads in the JC Penny catalog, and then the children and the clothes and the furniture that they would have kind of creating my own little family. It just was always there. I just always knew that this is what I was desiring in life and the most important thing for me. I also had an interest in the beauty industry from very little on. I even gave myself my own haircut in this tiny little dark bathroom with a very small hand mirror to see the back, and our childhood stylist at the time, she couldn't believe how good of a job I actually did. I gave myself a bob, which to any of the hairstylists out there, they know it's, it's one of the hardest haircuts to perform on somebody else, much less on yourself when you have no idea what you're doing and you don't even have the proper shears, so that was kind of the beginning of it. I went on to start cutting my brother's hair again. Not, proper knowledge, just for some reason I was allowed to do it, and he never let me forget that I cut his ear one time. So the poor guy, he didn't want me to keep cutting his hair, but my parents allowed it. That's kinda how that went. And then I had a Christmas and my uncle from California was there to remind me. Years later somebody had given me this set. I think it had a blow dryer in it and like maybe plastic makeup. I think there was a lipstick. And I guess I was obsessed with it. I just wouldn't stop playing with it. And I did always like makeup, so. Most of the, the hair and the makeup part of the beauty industry were my passions. Really enjoyed doing bridal party makeup for many years in the early part of my career just was something that I enjoyed. So I was wondering and noticing how our childhood stylist would work different hours than her husband and it just seemed like there was this flexibility and I thought that's what I want. So not knowing all the ins and outs, it's just so interesting now because. I did get really good grades. I was almost talked out of doing this by my guidance counselor in high school just because it's such a low paying industry, and I had such potential in his mind that he just didn't see why I would wanna do this and tried to talk me out of it, but I went on to do it anyway. And what I will say now is that was the beginning of my journey, and it was many, many years later, over a decade later, before I even actually had my oldest daughter. So amongst that journey, we will share in the episodes to come. But I just wanted to give you a little bit of my background and to say that you don't have to choose one or the other. You can if you want to. And what I discovered about the industry that I went into is it ended up being so very different than what I thought. The freedom that I thought was there truly wasn't, and I worked in several different types of salons and gained something wonderful from each. I mean, I just think in life that's just how it is. You always gain something, even if it's no longer a match, but, I did realize that things weren't resonating with me, and some of them were salon situations and how the salons ran, and other things were beauty industry standards, and I imagine in the different careers that you all have, you can relate to some of that where it's just not. The flexibility that we truly desire as moms when we want to be physically and mentally present for our children and not exhausted and annoyed when they need us. I know for me, I went through a period where I didn't even know if I could have children, and so I look at being a mom now as the biggest blessing in the world and we get one shot at it, time is our biggest asset. It is no coincidence that the name of my course and the name of this podcast talks about integrating motherhood. It's just time is fleeting and you make the choices you make, and then it's gone. So let's have some deep conversations. Let's enjoy the time that we have every moment and try to be conscious of where we are, what we're doing, and putting our effort into our children, our husband, our own wellbeing, time to reset and also into our businesses. That's where I'm going. An overflowing cup fills, so many other people's lives, so we can't give from a cup that's not overflowing. It's just gonna lead to burnout over and over and over again. With that, I will leave you with this one last thought. If you could make one small change starting today, just to give yourself a moment to reset, what would it be? Would it be no music in your car driving home from work? Would it be getting up just a little earlier so you could have that cup of coffee, maybe journal a little bit before the kids wake up, or would it be maybe taking a walk, getting some fresh air? Let that be your inspiration. Start small. It doesn't have to be big. It could even be five minutes. Starting with one step at a time is where we all begin when we're making a change. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you found this episode helpful, please follow or subscribe to the Integrative Mother experience on Spotify, apple Podcast or wherever you listen, so you're notified about the new episodes coming up. Please also take the time to leave me a review. This really does help me. I would love to see your beautiful faces. If you want to take a screenshot of this episode, I would love it. Take me on Instagram or Facebook at time with Sarah Swift, periods between the word time on Instagram, so then I can reshare your post. You can also start today by grabbing my free checklist and check out some of my favorite things on my website, theintegrativeexperience.com Until next time, my beautiful mamas, thank you so much.