Mindset In Motherhood: 10 Sneaky Thoughts That Make You Lose It

, my beautiful friends. How we doing? How’s back to school going? You know, I got you, right? If you ever need coaching or support, the Mom On Purpose Membership, I know that with the start of school and then the new rhythms and routines and meltdowns and challenges, it opens up a lot for ourselves and the relationships that we have with our kids as well as our own kind of, work to do, whether that is snapping or reactivity or overwhelm, you name it, you know?

That is what the Mom On Purpose Membership is designed for. So momonpurpose.com/coaching. If you are brand new here, and even if you’re not, if you’re interested, I do have a free training. It’s on a private podcast. It’s sort of a secret link where you can get seven bingeable podcast episodes. If you go on over to momonpurpose.com/overwhelm, you can sign up there. It’s just your name and email. And you will get a private secret link. I just re-listened to it. I always go back and listen to content to make sure that, you know, it’s still spot on and to just decide whether I want to recreate it. And I love when I just nail it, my friends, because that is one that is really, really helpful, especially if you want to get more leverage over your brain, over time, over overwhelm, and really get to the root cause of like tension and friction as a mom and that touches all of our lives.

And so momonpurpose.com/overwhelm, you can get that for free. Okay, today I want to talk with you about 10 sneaky thoughts that make you lose it. So this is a mindset and motherhood topic. It is something that is near and dear to my heart. The main modality that I am so passionate about that I use the most with my mom clients inside the membership is thought work. And I do that in a variety of different ways. Some ways I have created myself, other ways I have been professionally trained in. The reason I love it so much is because it really gets at the root cause. When you do thought work and you do it well, you can solve any problem. And that is so empowering. It’s just, you know, I think the secret to life really. I really do. So what I’ve been just thinking about more is how I can help you get better at this skill.

Because if you’re better at this skill, then you can reduce overwhelm, then you can show up more aligned with who you want to be. You can work through challenges in relationships, whether that’s with your spouse, your kids, or someone else. You can work through the challenges your kids are having. And because I want to help you with that skill, I have been paying attention to common mistakes. In fact, I think I’m going to do a separate episode to come on that, like common though work mistakes. And, also it made me think about the thoughts that come up so frequently that we think are facts and sometimes they are the most unhelpful thoughts. I am guilty of them as well, but they are the reason why we end up losing it, right? Losing your whatever that means to you, whether it’s snapping, whether it’s yelling, whether it’s just being cold.

Sometimes it’s not even that you acted in a way that’s out of alignment with who you are. Sometimes it is, right? You yell or you say something you regret. But other times it’s like you’re seething inside even though you are not, necessarily yelling or snapping. It’s really about your experience. So you internally lose it. And these thoughts are so common. They sometimes are true, but it doesn’t really matter. That’s not the next best question to ask once you’ve identified a thought because lots of thoughts are true. We could say it’s a beautiful day or we could say it’s a really hot and muggy day. Both might be true. It depends on what you’re looking for and how you’re interpreting the facts. And so what happens with true thoughts is we tend to think that they’re a fact, but they’re not. And this is really important because instead of thinking it’s a really hot and muggy day and feeling down about it, you could think, well, actually this is really beautiful day if both feel true for you.

Now, if it doesn’t feel true for you, then it might be a different though. My point here is that when we think thoughts that make us lose it, they’re always unhelpful, but they’re sneaky and that’s why I titled it this, right? 10 Sneaky Thoughts because we think that they’re facts, but they’re not. They’re often true thoughts. Sometimes they’re not even true, but we think they’re true. But either way, whether they’re true or not, doesn’t really matter because there are always other ways of thinking that are more helpful. So just because a though is true does not mean it’s a helpful and useful way to think about something. Let me give you another example that’s not the weather, but also not the 10 thoughts that we’re going to go through because I think this will resonate. Okay. Let’s say that your husband says he is going to get home from work at 5:00 PM and he gets home at 6:00 PM.

Your thought is he’s late. That thought is a true thought, right? It’s still a though, it’s not a fact because you are like summarizing what happened, right? So the actual facts I always like to think of presenting in a court of law. Husband texted me at 4:00 PM, his words said “I’ll be home at 5:00 PM.” Husband pulled in the driveway at 6:00. Okay? Those would be the facts. Our brain never thinks in facts. This is just really good to know because that means you have so much more leverage over your emotions than you ever realized. What we tend to do is think husband’s late. And not only is husband late, but he didn’t text me he was going to be late, he’s late again, he’s always late. We think those thoughts are true. The reason we think that they are true is because our brain is scanning for evidence of husband always being late. But what I like to do in coaching, and this is a little bit of, of coaching here, so if you’re brand new, this might not be the episode to start with, but for those of you who have been around for a while, I know that this will be extraordinarily helpful. I want you to see that just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s the only way to think about something. You could just as easily think, oh, I bet something came up at work. I love that I have a husband who comes home from work and sometimes he’s late. No big deal. I know he’s doing his best and sometimes that best isn’t even that great, just like mine. Sometimes my best isn’t even that great. I know he loves us. It’s not a big deal. There are so many other ways to think. Now, my job as a coach is not to tell you what to think, okay?

My job is to show you how you are thinking and offer you other more empowering ways to think. So when you’re thinking in a way that makes you lose it, and we’ll get to the 10 thoughts here, you are likely thinking in a way that’s unhelpful for you. And the alternative might not be like so positive and so great, but it’s very likely to be more grounded, more connected, more curious, more compassionate. It could be firm. There, are lots of emotions to play around with, but your thoughts always create your feelings. And losing it is an internal experience and then sometimes external, right? You’re losing it internally and then that sometimes manifests as yelling or snapping or whatever the case may be. So when you clean all of that up, it’s not necessarily that you’re going to feel happy and excited in the same circumstance, but you’re not going to be losing it.

And that’s what this is about. Okay. So now let’s dive in with the 10 sneaky thoughts that you may not even be aware of are thoughts. And once you see that they are thoughts and that they’re unhelpful and that they’re the cause of you losing it, I want to encourage you to change those thoughts, okay? This is the work that we do in the membership. Thought number one, he knows better. When you have a kid who knows what to do and they don’t do it and you think the thought, he knows better. This thought can make you lose it, okay? It’s so important that you see it’s not your kid who’s making you lose it. It’s not them not listening that’s making you lose it. You are losing it because of one sentence in your head and that sentence is he knows better. That sentence makes you think that you know how your son should behave, but you don’t, right?

How do we know? Because son’s not doing it. And when you really loosen it up, now I’m going to go through 10 though. So we’re not going to loosen up every thought in this list. I mean, really, it could be an entire episode for each though. But what I want to encourage you to see is that every thought you can slow down and play around with and loosen it up for your benefit because then, like what I do in this example, I’m like, “Oh, I thought he knew better, but apparently not. And really, what does that even mean? I know better than to do all sorts of things like scroll on my phone or eat ice cream at night and yet I, do that, right? Like he knows better is sort of irrelevant. We all know better, but we have a primitive brain. If we all did what we know we should do, then we would all be like perfect human beings.

We would all be as rich as we wanted to be, as fit and as thin and as healthy and, you know, we’d have everything that we would want and it would not just be human life. That’s just not humans, right? Because we have that survival brain, you know, we would all go to bed on time. We would all get up before our kids. We would all cook home, cook meals all of the time. Like there would be no gray and there would also, you know, just be a completely different life experience. And so he knows better brain, like that’s just not even relevant here. This is not even a real thought, okay? It, it’s not a useful thought. And so when I have that thought, I just talk back to my brain. I’m like, “Yeah, I, I know better for a lot of things too.” Because if you really dive into it, what you are thinking is that I should be able to control him and I know what he should be doing, but that’s just not true.

You gotta be willing to be wrong about your thoughts. That will set you free. Okay. I’m getting carried away. I need to just go on to thought number two here, but really I could just expand on each one of these thoughts. So just know that I’m condensing it here so you can catch any of these thoughts. I wanted to make sure it was an inclusive list of, of more than just a few so you can see which thought you are thinking that are unhelpful, but please know that I’m like shortening the explanation for each and there’s so much more work that, you could do on these thoughts. So if you are in the membership and you have a question about these thoughts or you want more explanation, write in to Ask a Coach and I will answer it on an upcoming call in a mindful message or just right there in the Ask A Coach forum.

Okay. Thought number two, she’s doing this on purpose. Now, it’s not just annoying behavior, whatever that is, it’s that it feels like she’s doing something to you. When your kid is doing something that you’ve asked them not to do, and they continue to do it, and you have the thought she’s doing this on purpose, do you see how that could be a, true thought, right? Like she’s intentionally doing something on purpose, but do you see how unhelpful that is because it immediately creates disconnection. It immediately puts you against your child. So now you’re opponents. Now there’s like a war. Now you gotta win. Now you gotta control and dominate. And it’s also the cognitive distortion of taking it personally. I would play around with this thought, right? Because you could just drop it and think something like, “Oh, okay, this is what she wants to do. I know it’s her job to push the boundary and it’s my job to hold the boundary.” Now, please don’t hear me say with any of these thoughts that you should be a permissive parent.

If your daughter, let’s say, is wearing, something to school you don’t want her to wear, let’s say it’s like, a skirt that’s too short or something, and she tries to get out of the house with that skirt on that’s too short and you have the thought she’s doing this on purpose. When I say that you can loosen up the though and expect her to push that boundary, what I’m not saying is that all of a sudden you’re thinking, “Oh, it’s totally fine. She wants to wear that skirt out of the house and go ahead, bye.” Right? But I’m also not saying that you should think this though and feel really disconnected. I like to think the though. It’s my kid’s job to push boundaries. They’re going to push boundaries. This is a healthy sign of autonomy and child development and like more importantly, I don’t need to be a psychologist to know that my kids are pushing boundaries.

And so I want to normalize that, but I also want to be in my embodied leadership as a mom where I’m holding boundaries. And for me, I love the duality of warm and firm because I can be on the same team as my kid. You can be on the same team as your daughter who’s trying to get out of the house in a shorter skirt than, you know, i- is allowed in your home. You can be on the same team as her and still hold the boundary and say, “Hey, I see you wearing that skirt. It’s above whatever part that you say can’t be above and I love you and I’m going to have to ask you to change. I need you to change before you go to school. I can’t let you wear that to school.” I love using I language. So that’s like the action line of how you would hold the boundary.

But the key here is that the reason you’re losing it is because you’re having a thought where you’re making it mean something about you, like she’s doing this to you, right? As if she’s just supposed to be some little robot that does whatever you say and then she’s good, right? We were all raised in this generation of good girl syndrome and it’s not our parents’ fault, it’s no one’s fault, it just is what it is. And so unraveling that and still being able to lead is just a new skill, okay? Thought number three, she lied to me. Now, again, this might be a true thought and very likely it is a true thought if, if you’re having this though, but it immediately turns a situation into like a character or integrity issue. What I like to do with situations that involve honesty is I like to get really curious and remember why does anyone lie ever?

It’s because they feel like the relationship might feel threatened if they tell the truth, right? It’s the only reason why your kid wouldn’t tell you the truth is because they care deeply about attachment and they don’t want to see what happens if they tell you the truth. And that sort of softens lying for me. Now, what I am not saying is, “Oh my gosh, it’s no problem that you lied. No big deal. We don’t have morals or values.” Of course not. But when you think the though, “She lied to me,” and you take it so personally and you make that mean something about her character and her integrity, instead of getting really curious about like, “What is this really about, like why did she lie to me and what actually happened?” And, you know, there might be a little bit of sadness that you’re feeling that she felt the need to lie or whatever the case may be.

Again, I’m just looking at the thoughts here. We don’t have all of these facts, but I want you to see that even when it’s a true thought, if it makes you lose it internally, there’s another way to think about it that can help you show up with curiosity, with love, with confidence, and like with firmness. So, you know, I don’t know, let’s say your daughter lied about like, you know, stealing a book or something like that. You know, that doesn’t mean you just make up and there’s, there’s no repair, right? Like absolutely there would be the consequence of, okay, now we need to go return the book. We need to go make this whole or whatever it is. And so it’s about you being able to lead through that without losing it, okay, without getting so frustrated, without getting so mad, without, without going into like this anger spiral or blame or snapping. It’s expecting your kids to be like messy, boundary pushing humans. Okay? I love that. I just came up with that. Kids are messy, boundary-pushing humans and we love them and they’re supposed to be that way. And let’s keep our cool so that we can lead them. Yes, there are going to be consequences. Yes, there are going to be boundaries. That’s not at them. That’s not against them. That’s for them because that’s the kind of mom who you want to be. Thought number four, he’s so disrespectful. I really try to avoid language that labels my kids in any way I would never choose for them. Now, there might be actions, I’m sure there are, I have three boys, so I know that’s true, that are disrespectful, but I never take the action and label it. I’m very like conscious of this because as soon as I think that about my kid, now I’ve had an identity for them that they’re going to live into, even if I don’t say it.

And so whenever my kid does something that is out of alignment with our values, breaks a rule, shows some sort of disrespect, that’s when I like go into my more positive labels mentally the most. This is a good kid. I have a good kid. He, you know, made a mistake or he’s struggling or he’s working through something. Even if it was deliberate, I don’t care what it is. I care so deeply in believing in the goodness of my kids, but that doesn’t mean that goodness is performative. It doesn’t mean that they’re not going to make mistakes. It doesn’t mean that I, you know, am God and know what their challenges are supposed to be. Okay lsometimes three boys, it’s, it’s a whole thing, right? It’s like sometimes one of my kids will be a little bit more of a bully to the other kids.

But, you know, my work combined with all of the books that I’ve read on just sibling dynamics has helped me get out of seeing one of my kids as a villain and one of them as a victim, even if one of them did hurt the other one and I hold boundaries and I separate them to keep everyone safe, and mentally I am focusing on this is a really good kid for both of them because I know as soon as I go into, you know, he’s so disrespectful or how could you do that to your brother and blaming them, I create shame for one of them and then I’m like rescuing the other. Now there’s a huge difference between I’m a mom who’s separating you and holding boundaries to keep everyone safe because I love all of you versus you’re bad, how could you do that to your brother or some version of that.

Totally different. Even though some of the actions might be the same of like separating, there’s no shame with my approach, right? At least I try not to, to use shame. And when you think he’s so disrespectful, you create that identity and like it’s, it’s hard to unsee that, right? If, if you’ve ever done any business work or psychology work or sales work, there’s this idea that people will rise to the labels that you give them. And so it’s super important that internally, you are creating and believing the labels that you want your kids to live into. All right. Thought number five, this is an emergency. Okay. Now this one, my friend, I have a feeling you might be thinking, all right, tell me because when I think this though, it is an actual emergency. Maybe, but I want to push you on this. Now, spilled milk, a missing shoe, being late, even for a super important meeting, siblings fighting, someone forgot their backpack, you know, a screaming toddler.

Your brain assigns all of those things as a level 10 out of 10 urgency as if, you know, a one-year-old just ran into a really busy street when it’s not ideal, but it’s more of like a three out of a 10, okay? Even if it’s spilled milk all over the homework project and now you’re going to be late and now you don’t know what to do about work and school and the kids’ homework or whatever it is, right? It, it’s still not as big of an emergency as your brain thinks. And so I like telling myself immediately, this is not an emergency. It calms my nervous system down. And I’ve coached some women in the membership on this and they’ve said, yeah, but what if it is an emergency? And I, I just push back on that for your sake. So you can keep thinking this is an emergency, but when you think that, how do you feel, right? Now, if my kid is running into a busy street, yes, I want my nervous system like firing off all of the alarms. I want to be yelling actually. I want to be running. Like I want my fight flight system. Like that is a true emergent situation. But when I’m in the walls of my home and we are safe and it is the safe chaos that I am experiencing, whether that’s spilled milk on homework, missing clothes, dogs barking, whatever it is, like screaming toddler, it can feel overstimulating. And there still might be some challenges or problems. We can’t find the shoe or the homework with the spilled whatever on it, but it’s not a 10 out of 10 kid running into the street. It’s, it’s like actually a three out of 10.

And it’s interesting because I’ve, I’ve coached a lot of women on this though. And I think because we are high achieving women, we care so much about so many things and it helps us perform at a really high level. And I have done a lot of work on this, my friend, and it has been to my benefit to care less about some of the things that are outside of my control, right? So, you know, like if, if other people are parenting my kids in different ways, like, you know, of course I would love everyone to parent the way I think that my kids should be parented and I want them to, you know, always feel securely attached and I don’t want them to have problems with friends or in school or anything, right? And it, that’s just not it. That’s not reality. And so making peace with my kids are supposed to have challenges, it’s, you know, not something I’m supposed to swoop in and solve.

This is not an emergency. Those thoughts can be extraordinarily helpful for you to allow your kids to have human experiences as they will. So you can keep your thought, this is an emergency, but how do you feel and how do you act when you think it, okay? It’s always a thought, right? Always a thought. Like if, if I went into a court of law and I said, I yelled because it was an emergency, right? The judge would say, “okay, like tell me about the emergency, like give me the facts,” right? It’s a true, it could be a true though. Like if I say, oh, my kid was running in the street, like that, that’s valid, right? Um, but the facts are my, you know, whatever, one and a half year old ran into the street at 10: AM on a Tuesday, whatever, right?

I’m making this up, but the, the sentence, this is an emergency is always a thought because it’s a summary, it’s an interpretation of what happened. And thoughts are always up for grabs. Do you see how that’s a sneaky one? So even when my kids are fighting, which means I want to step in and I want to separate them and I want to hold boundaries, and they are three boys who fight and wrestle and argue and sometimes they’re hurting each other. So I don’t want to think, oh, it’s totally fine. They’re just kids, they’ll work it out. But I also don’t want to think, this is an emergency because then I’m jumping in there, swooping in, fix it mom, like, you know, level 10 nervous system urgency. I don’t want to be in that energy all day, okay? And again, I’m with my kids most of the time, so it does not serve me nor them.

Instead, I tell myself, “This is not an emergency. I’m going to go step in and hold boundaries.” And that allows me to move with like a level three out of 10 urgency, which is better for me and my nervous system, and it’s better for them too. Again, it’s not like I’m just in the kitchen ignoring them, but I’m also not treating it like the house is on fire. Okay. Thought number six, I shouldn’t have to tell them again. Doesn’t this one feel so true? This one’s kind of easy, to do thought work on because it’s not true, right? The thought, I shouldn’t have to tell them again. It’s not a true thought. How do we know? Those of you in the membership know the answer to this when I say, how do we know? Because you do have to tell them again, right? That belief that because you already taught them, reminded them, explained it, that they should now reliably execute on it is a thought error, right?

This is just not true. So you could just turn it around and think, “Of course I have to tell them again. They’re, you know, fill in the blank with like their age and whatever, right? They’re eight and nine year old boys, of course I have to tell them again.” Or for me, like I don’t really like repeating myself, so I always just take a different approach. Okay, they don’t want to do bath time. Of course they don’t want to do bath time. They’re little kids, so I’m going to have to physically help them to go do bath time from a place of connection and love, but also firmness, like we’re doing bath times. I hear you. I know you don’t want to do it. I get it. Thought number six, they need to listen to me or they should be listening to me. Any version of you want them to listen in a way that they’re not listening, this thought is sneaky because it’s so common, it’s so normalized.

I think the way to do thought work around this is to just explore what you really mean by listen. Because if you’re using it in this way, you don’t really mean hear. Like the word listen means to hear, right? But what you mean when you say that is that they’re doing something. So I always like to give the example of like if you said that you had their most favorite dessert or their favorite toy or their favorite fill in the blank in the kitchen that they’ve been dying to get, like they would come running, right? Or, or their favorite game or, or video game or screen or something, they would come. If

I told my kids like, “Come in the kitchen, we’re having ice cream for breakfast,” like they would be running, right? And it, that shows that it’s not that they can’t hear me.

They are supposed to push boundaries and it’s your job and this is why I love kind of the leadership and motherhood because it requires of you leadership skills. It requires of you being on the same team with them and holding boundaries. And so I just don’t use that verbiage. I find that I parent better without it, without like the, the phrasing listen, without the thought they should listen better or they don’t listen to me. Instead, I just see them doing what they want to do and it’s my job to either course correct, change directions, hold the boundary, help them do what I want them to do, whatever it is. But I’m not thinking they should be doing what I want them to do because they’re kids, right? They, they don’t have a 40-year-old mom brain and think they should do what I want them to do. They’re not supposed to be, you know, a reflection of me. They’re not supposed to just do what I say, okay? How do we know that? Because they don’t. And again, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have boundaries, but I’m not thinking that though that’s going to make me lose it.

Thought number eight, this shouldn’t be this hard, this though. True? Not true? How does it feel? Right? Anytime you have a should or shouldn’t and a thought, it’s pretty easy to do though work on because you can just turn it around and be willing to be wrong about it. As long as you’re willing to be wrong about your thoughts, you can decrease any negative emotion that’s unwanted. If you are willing to be wrong about your thoughts, you can decrease overwhelm and stress and worry and frustration. Like, oh, I was just wrong about that. When you have the thought, this shouldn’t be this hard. Whether it’s tantrums or bedtimes, bedtime or sibling fights, getting out the door, getting your kids up in the morning, whatever it is, this shouldn’t be this hard. Oh, I was just wrong about that. How do we know? Because it is this hard.

I thought it was going to be easy to do bedtime. I thought that, you know, as my kids got older, it was going to get easier. I guess I was wrong about that. I love the thought, I guess I was wrong about that, because it allows me to get into acceptance. Whenever we are shooting on our lives and other people, we are rejecting reality. And that puts you in a very disempowered place. And the easiest way is to just turn that thought around with, oh, I was just wrong about that. This is this hard. All right. And then, ironically or not, you know, it actually gets easier because there’s less resistance to what is, like significantly easier. Thought number nine, I can’t handle one more thing. Any sort of I can’t handle is always a lie. How do we know? Because you are handling it, even if you’re not handling it well.

So anytime I think a though like, I can’t handle this, I always turn around with, well, I’m wrong about that. How do I know? Because I am handling it. Even if it’s not well. And I also like to add in for my own sake, like I can always change this, right? When I really remember that I always have the power to choose and redecide, then I know something can change and I can create that change versus feeling like my life is happening to me. I can’t handle one more thing, just not even a true though. Thought number 10, I need to get everything done. Nope, not true. Not even a true thought. How do we know? Because you don’t need to do anything. You want to, but you don’t need to. Even if it’s picking up your kids, getting something done for work, you know, um, turning in your taxes, people everywhere don’t do that. Like it’s crazy if you really think about it, right? Now, I’m not suggesting, and I think you know this, but this is a public podcast, so I want to say it.

And it’s, it’s important to remember too. What I’m not suggesting is that you don’t turn in your taxes, that you don’t pick up your kids, that you don’t do the things that you want to do. But the language around what you’re doing creates how you feel. When you think, I need to get everything done, you add in a layer of pressure to everything you’re already doing. So I really practice, this is what I wanted my whole life. I want to be doing this. Anything I don’t want on my plate right now, I can choose to do differently. This is the life I want. And is it a lot sometimes? Yes, but who better than me? This is not Pollyanna, my friends. This will get you out of feeling like you’re at the effect of your life to feeling really empowered in your life. And then seeing that you always do have a choice and you can change things, including your thinking and including your circumstances when you want to make that change.

But there’s no finish line. There’s no race. There’s always going to be more things for you to do. And so creating more margin, right? I go through the whole process for overwhelm, doing time freedom and brain management, all of my frameworks inside the Mom On Purpose membership and then there’s that weekly mom group coaching because it, it’s not a one-off instance. If you have thoughts like these running in your everyday life, there is going to be this low grade friction in motherhood that is constant regardless of the routine optimization, regardless of the self-care, regardless of the outsourcing because your brain is unmanaged. It’s why I love this work. It’s why I’m obsessed with it. For those of you in the membership, again, bring me your questions to Ask a Coach or a coaching call. And if you’re not in there, get in there, my friend. I would love to see you inside momonpurpose.com/coaching. Until next week, my friends, take care.