Putting Mental Health In Motherhood Over Hustle

November 14, 2019 Andrea Cronin

Have you ever had a day that went like this?

Yeah, me too. Here’s me fully transformed from Mary to Cruella last Thursday evening after my child cut another molar (LORD JESUS, HOW MANY MORE?!)…

Oh, also… you’re welcome for putting this on the internet. Over here in motherhood land… we just can’t always take ourselves seriously.

Sometimes you have to draw on eye brows with cheap eye liner and pretend your furry vest is a fur coat. Also, you’ll be pleased to know that Russell walked in long after I had put this make up on and was hardly phased. hahahaha my shenanigans are normal at this point.

If you’ve had a day like this, friend, you are NOT alone. It almost feels normal, doesn’t it? There are so many memes and so much going around in “mom culture” that tell us we should be a frazzled mess at the end of the day.

I’m here to tell you that I don’t think it has to be our normal. Will we have hard days when we end up as Cruella Deville by 5:00? heck yes. But I think there are so many things we can do to end the day in a healthy mental state so that we are more like Mary Poppins’ slightly less energetic and imaginative third cousin.

I think it all starts with focusing on our end goal. I had a huge revelation about what mine was when Bowen and I had THE BEST DAY EVER. So, let me tell you about it…

THE BEST DAY EVER

Russell walked in and Bowen and I had the music full blast, I was singing into a microphone/shoe and dancing around the living room with my best Mr. Bean moves. It was pure joy. My husband had walked in to a scene that hadn’t happened for a long time in our house but that I had been working towards for so long.

That day Bowen and I had played in the dirt, squinted in the sunshine and crunched all the crisp fall leaves with our feet in the back yard. I had done laundry and tidying and a few other side projects that I had made a priority that day. And in the moment that Russell walked in after work I was dancing and celebrating that I had finished everything I had planned to do that day. I didn’t feel overworked or tired. I didn’t feel guilty or frazzled and unorganized. I felt joyful and energetic and confident.

It was that day that changed the way I viewed time management forever. It wasn’t about check marks or getting THE MOST done. It was about practicing it daily so that you eventually come to a place where you can schedule the perfect amount of work and play into one day. Where you can look at your priorities and understand how much time you truly need to follow through and get them done. I had thrown busyness out the door and invited productivity and joy in for a nice cup of tea.

Being busy gives us a false sense of accomplishment. It tells us that multi tasking and doing the most is how we feel successful at the end of the day. Busyness is full of sweet lies, my friend. Multi tasking has been proven to be ineffective and actually impossible. Self proclaimed multi taskers have been scientifically studied to have a false sense of confidence and success in their ability to get things done. Doing more isn’t always best.

So I know… you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, Andrea, being joyful and energetic at 5:00 pm sounds like a dream but how in the heck do you actually achieve that?”

Well, keep reading, sweet friend. I’ve listed all the concepts and actionable steps to help get you there below:

Throw out the standard

It’s normal in mom culture for our life to look like this at the end of the day

I don’t want that to be our normal anymore. Of course there will be days when we want to hand our children off and run for our secret stash of chocolate and eat it alone in the bathroom (PURELY hypothetical example… of course…).

Life happens, we are human and that’s OKAY. But, I don’t think that being exhausted, grumpy and “done” at the end of a day needs to be your normal. Keep reading to find some ways you can make being joyful and confident a regular occurrence.

Evaluate your end goal

What is your goal at the end of the day?
When you plan our your day / schedule … is your goal to get a ton of things done off of your list? If it is… you’re not alone!
We’ve been taught that checking the most boxes you can equals success. We tend to measure a day “good” or “bad” based off of how much we can accomplish.
What if, instead, our end goal was to be mentally stable, joyful and confident instead of doing more?

What if we scheduled things that helped keep us productive but didn’t drown us?
What if we were consistently able to accomplish EVERYTHING on our list ( don’t assume the list is huge!) and feel confident and energetic going in to the next day?
I think it’s possible if we change our perspective and place the importance of our mental state over the importance of our checked off to do list.

Over-scheduling

Over Scheduling ourselves can cause:

Guilt
Low-Self Confidence
Burn Out
Exhaustion
Us to go into “victim” mode because we feel out of control

Take saying “Yes” to things VERY seriously because every yes is a no towards something else.

We are always trading our time and it is our most valuable currency. In a world that tells you to HUSTLE HARDER and DO MORE to feel successful… I want you to challenge that.

know your priorities

Organizing your priorities (with my priority grid) can help organize your thoughts and “to-do”s so that you can put them in the most efficient order and get them done. Your brain doesn’t have to juggle that list and organize it on the fly because you’ve already written it out for your month / week and day.

If you haven’t downloaded my priority grid you can get it sent straight to your inbox for immediate download here:

See this content in the original post

Narrow your focus

if you’ve done the priority grid, you’ve taken the first steps to narrowing your focus. This already categorizes your list and helps your brain to forget about things that aren’t a huge priority for the week or day.

Now that you’ve narrowed your focus to what MUST get done this week or day you can take it one step further if you’re really having trouble with motivation + productivity. Narrow your focus to the morning and write down an hour by hour schedule of what needs to get done (I encourage you to include rewards)

Example:

9:00 - start load of laundry + dishes
Reward: Chocolate
9:30 - Fold Laundry
Reward: Watch show while doing
10:30 - Call Dr.’s office
Reward: Dance Party
11:00 - Snack Time

Repeat this for your afternoon and GET. IT. DONE. I believe in you!

Your Goal / Objective needs Big Picture planning

Have you ever made a goal + decided an end date and then just sort of wung (is that a word?) it in between?

Me too.

I was feeling overwhelmed with writing these blog posts + emails during the holidays etc. And I realized that I was just winging it week to week instead of looking at the bigger picture (8 weeks at a time).

Once I looked at the 8 weeks + found time within each week to write a post + send an email I felt SO much better! I knew I had the time. I had given myself boundaries (no writing on Mondays or Tuesdays) and my brain felt so much less overwhelmed. I new it was possible to get it all done because I could SEE IT.

I give you a peek at my real life 8 week calendar in my Facebook Live.

You can view that here:

Allow yourself to practice time management

This isn’t something we often give ourselves permission to do. We tend to think that we should just naturally be good at it. But truly I tell you it takes so much trial and error to figure out what works for YOU and what a “productive” day can look like for YOU.

The more you practice puzzling together your priorities within your free blocks of time the more your gut and intuition become practiced and in-tune with what you CAN accomplish. You begin to be better at discerning how many tasks or what types of projects you can fit into your morning, afternoon and evening.

Practice leads to discernment and discernment leads to confidence. You begin to trust yourself because you CAN get it all done.

You CAN have joy at the end of the day. You ARE successful.

Find the sweet spot of time management:

When you allow yourself to practice time management you train yourself to know what IS possible in the day so that you can avoid over-scheduling. Eventually days where you can accomplish EVERYTHING (no one said your list was huge!), feel joyful, not fully depleted at the end of the day and confident will be your new normal.

Will you still have hard days? yes. Will you still have seasons when you need to push yourself and schedule more? yes. But following these concepts and steps can help you break the stereo-type of exhausted mom and bring more joy + less overwhelm back to your days.

The Lovely Adventure