Mom guilt

A few things I do to combat "mom guilt". It's hard being a business owner and balancing, life, family and kids. Here are a couple things I have learned to do that help me beat the guilty feelings. 

Transcript

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Hey guys, it's Carrie Ann, your host of the Hub and a founding member of Thrive Hub. Our mission at ThriveHub is to empower new and inspiring entrepreneurs in our local community by connecting them with experienced business owners. Whether you need guidance on starting your venture, building your network, or tackling business challenges, we're here to help you get up and running. Hey guys, welcome back to the hub. And on today's episode, I'm going to touch on the feelings of guilt that many of us working moms experience and kind of share a little bit how I overcome them and what works for me and my business. It may not work for you guys, or maybe you will take some of those and use them in your everyday life too. Or maybe none of them are for you at all. But on the last episode, I did talk to my kids about how it is constantly a balancing act for me. And this weekend proved that it was. Seeing that mom at the grocery store dressed to the nines, and you're in sweatpants and a stained t-shirt. Like we compare ourselves to everybody. And I had to tell myself to stop. And I know it's easier said than done. I have to take social media breaks. I do use social media for my business, so I cannot get rid of it altogether, but I take social media breaks, guys. That's one of the things that really, really helps me out. But I also had to tell myself that I'm not like anybody else. You are you. There is only one you in the world. And what I do and what you do may be similar, but it is never going to be the same. We both have a house, we both have jobs, we both have kids, but our kids are different ages, our houses are different sizes, our jobs are different. Our lives are never going to be the same. So you are never going to have the same life as somebody else. And you need to stop comparing yourself to it. I had to tell myself that. I have to stop comparing myself to others in that way. I may like certain things that other people have. I asked that family that went on vacation, hey, you guys just got back from a vacation. I think I want to do that too with my family. Can you tell me a little bit more about it? It's okay to like and want to do similar things to somebody else. And that's where it stops. You cannot have the same life as somebody else. And I really had to train my brain to think that way. And one of the ways I do that is I embrace my professional ambitions because they're mine. My dream board is going to look different than your dream board. My goals are going to look different than your goals. We may have similar goals, but it may take me three years to get to my goal and only two years to get to your goal. It doesn't mean that I was unsuccessful. I did my goal my way, and you did your goal your way. And we both made our goals come true. We made our dreams come true. And there's nothing wrong with that. We just have to take that step back and realize that we are doing us and the other people out there are doing them. One of the other things that I really, really needed to do is set boundaries with my business and maintain a healthy work-life balance. And this can be very challenging, I know. The goal is to first start out with 20 minutes. You need to set 20 minutes for yourself. It doesn't have to be every day. Once a week, 20 minutes. There is a great Bluey episode out there. If you're a parent, you know who Bluey is. And Bandit comes home from work and Chili tells him she needs 20 minutes. And he immediately says, Okay, she goes off to do whatever for 20 minutes. And the kids just want to be with their mom. And Bandit spends that time keeping the kids away from her. He even takes them outside, and the neighbor asks, Hey, where's your mom? And Blueie says she needed 20 minutes, and instantly that friend knew. That friend helped Bandit keep those kids away for 20 minutes. And then she came back and she hung out with her kids again. That is the baby goal that I want you to do. Set 20 minutes for yourself each week. Today I took an hour and a half, and I didn't take my phone with me. And I know that is gonna freak some people out that I did not take my phone with me when I left the house for an hour and a half. I didn't go far, I stayed in town, I told my husband where I was going, but to not have that phone ping, or for me not to reach for that phone and scroll social media for 20 minutes, or that hour and a half that I was gone, it does wonders. So that is another example of something that I do that maybe you can try as well. Take 20 minutes, take an hour and a half to just be out or resting or doing something you want to do. One of the other things is that really, really changed my life. And I'm going to give more information about this in another episode, but positive self-talk changed my business and my life with my family. I replace anything negative or when I have a guilty feeling like this weekend, and I replace it with gratitude and confidence. I was so grateful that I was able to do both my balloon job this weekend and get to the baseball tournament. It was a win-win for me. But someone else or the old me would have thought like she was not there immediately. She did not bring her kid to the game, she let her husband do it by himself. Like, those are thoughts that I had a long time ago, and they really put me in a bad place. Negative thoughts can ruin your day. Positive thoughts can make your day great. For example, I spilled coffee on my shirt the other day, I didn't have my coffee, I ruined my shirt, and the rest of my day sucked. Or I spilled coffee on my shirt, I changed it, I looked even better in that new shirt. On my way to my event, I picked up an energy drink, it was a new flavor, it tasted great, and the event was successful. Like, but it it's all a mindset, and it takes a lot of work to train your brain to do this. It took me a lot of time, but just start, just start taking a negative thought and putting a positive spin on it. I do this with my children too. I'm even teaching them. My son sometimes has a bad throw in a game or doesn't beat out a play at first base, and sometimes he gets really into that negative thought that he didn't do something right, he made a mistake. And I am trying to train him to think about all the good things he did instead of the bad because most of the time there is a lot of good that we forget about because of that one negative thought. Like I said, guys, we're gonna have a whole nother episode on that, but start trying to change negative thoughts to positive ones and see how your day goes. Thank you for joining me on this episode today, guys. I know mom guilt can really get to us. I'm gonna have some other moms on and we're gonna dig more into this and chit-chat with each other about what each other does with um how they balance the work, life, mom, kids, everything, and we're gonna get more um examples and more um ways to help you guys kind of combat that mom guilt feeling because we're all in this together, guys, and we're all doing it, but we're all doing it, guys. That's what we need to remember. And I heard something um a couple days ago that we are not overwhelmed because we have too much stuff. We're overwhelmed because we're actually getting it done. We are actually doing everything we need to, and we're getting it done, guys. So thank you for joining me on the hub today. I'll see you next time. This podcast is intended solely for educational purposes. We do not guarantee that it will result in a successful business, nor is it designed to serve as a step by step guide. 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