Feeling Stretched Thin As A Mom — Even When You Love Your Life

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy, mom, dog, mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my beautiful friends. Welcome to the podcast. Happy to be here with you today. Before we dive in, I have a quick favor. Can you write me a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify? It would be hugely helpful because podcast reviews are one of the main ways that a show can grow. Podcasts, unlike a lot of other platforms, only grow organically, which means that your reviews make a really huge impact on whether other women will see this show as a suggestion.

So even if you’ve already written one, you can write one. I know it takes a little bit of your time and effort. I greatly appreciate it. I read all of the reviews and it would mean a lot to me. So thank you so much in advance With that, let’s dive in to today’s episode. I want to talk with you about when you feel stretched thin, even when you love your life. I think we need to normalize that motherhood can still feel heavy, it can still feel overwhelming, it can still feel like it’s too much, and that doesn’t mean that you are doing it wrong, but it does mean that there are tools and frameworks that you’re probably not utilizing to manage your mind, that would optimize your experience of life. So what I mean very practically is when you use the tools that I teach, your life can look the same on the outside, but you feel so different on the inside.

Instead of feeling frantic or rushed or overwhelmed or blah or hurried, you feel excited and energized and inspired and empowered every day like most days. Now, of course, when a tragedy happens, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about in your everyday life. If you pick your top three emotions, like what are those emotions? For most people who first find my work, their top emotions include some version of frustration, overwhelm, self pity, like that poor me, or you know, a sense of hurry. And some of the work that I do here and of course in the Mom On Purpose Membership is to bring awareness to that and then change it in a really real and permanent way so that you will sometimes and you know, infrequently feel overwhelmed or feel rushed or feel self pity. But it’s like one out of 10 times instead of nine out of 10 times.

And if you are anything like most of the women in this community, I know that you’ve intentionally created so much. Maybe that means you are married or you have kids or you have a home that you care about or a career, whether that’s inside the home or outside the home or some combination of all of these things. Whatever your version is on the outside, you have checked the boxes and from the outside that is pretty amazing. But on the inside it’s not that it’s terrible, like it’s fine, it’s just not as great as you imagined it would be. For example, maybe you go to bed with your mind racing, thinking about what didn’t get done, what’s on deck for tomorrow and how you’ll get everything done in the future without dropping the ball. You feel maybe stressed, overwhelmed, any of those emotions that I mentioned, that self pity, like this is too much for me.

And you find yourself thinking thoughts like I have so much to do, I should have more help. Even if you have an amazing spouse who is a real partner, it still feels like you have so much on your shoulders. You feel this sense of pressure to do it all and that you want to do well and not let anyone down. But these thoughts create feelings of stress, worry, pressure, overwhelm, a constant sense of urgency. You’ll also find yourself fantasizing about your next escape, whether that is a vacation, a girls trip, a retreat, something just for yourself. You will be thinking about needing to get away and then before you know it, that fantasy is over. You wake up and you do it all over again. And so there’s this sense of feeling spread too thin, feeling stretched, too thin. It seems like the problem is your life, although maybe you can’t quite pinpoint what that is, but it’s really not your circumstances, it isn’t your life.

It’s that you haven’t learned how to override the survival part of your brain that is always in overdrive. It’s always in go, go, go. It’s always scanning for what’s wrong. You’ll frequently hear me say that your brain is wired for survival. It’s not wired for happiness. And then on top of this, you’ve been taught by society that it’s your job to do everything for everyone, always. And this is where coaching comes in. There are frameworks you can use to rewire your brain so you feel just as good on the inside as your life looks on the outside, so that you can still have a full life just like I know you want to, but without the racing mind, the constant pressure, the feeling like you’re being pulled in a hundred directions all while trying to parent well, maintaining your marriage, caring for parents who are aging, growing in your career, showing up in your friendships, and dare I say it, actually enjoying your life.

That’s what today’s episode is all about. I am sharing tools and frameworks that will help you do just that. And because this topic encompasses so much, I decided to answer five specific questions from women in this community that are under this umbrella of really feeling stretched so thin as a mom, even when you enjoy your life. So with that, let’s dive in to question number one. “I love my husband, but lately I feel like we are just coexisting. We talk about logistics, we get through the day, but we don’t feel connected. I don’t want to live like roommates. How can we go back to feeling close again?” Alright, thank you so much to the person who wrote this question in because it is so common and it’s one of those things that I think so many women feel. But don’t always say out loud, you are not alone.

If you love your husband, you are doing life together, but you also kind of feel like you are just passing each other in the hallway talking about who’s picking up groceries or what time soccer practice is. You are managing everything, but it feels like the spark is gone. This is roommate syndrome and what I mean by that is you are functioning well together. There’s not necessarily a huge conflict or major blowups, but there’s also not a deep sense of connection either. So you’re living side by side or running the home, raising kids getting through each day. But the emotional intimacy, that connection, the spark, the feeling of truly seeing each other, that part feels kind of like it’s faded. It’s not that anything is wrong in an obvious way, it’s just that everything has become so logistical, so functional, and that can feel really lonely and really transactional.

Here’s the thing, this is incredibly normal in a long-term relationship, especially in full seasons of life. When you are raising kids, building careers, and maybe even caring for aging parents, that can take up so much of your head space that the connection with your spouse, the intimacy, the respect, the slowness, the spark can begin to diminish not from a conscious choice, but just by way of the logistics, pushing that to the side like, oh yeah, we’ll have time for that later is running in the background. And then before you know it, you wake up and you’re like, oh my goodness, it definitely feels like we’re roommates. How did this happen? But also is this even a problem? You know, depending on the age of your kids, you might say it’s just this season of life once the kids are gone or once, fill in the blank, right?

We all have our oh on the other side of this, this will be easier. And it’s not that that’s not true, it’s just that you trade in your problems for a different set of problems on the other side of a season. So instead of waiting for a season to change, for you to change how you feel, I highly suggest working on your thoughts and feelings where you’re at right now because coaching helps you empower yourself to create the experience you want and that can have a real long lasting impact on your marriage no matter what is going on. This does not mean that I can help you control your spouse or get him to change and you know that, but I can help you have the experience that you want. So my coaching tools for marriage are all rooted in empowering you as the wife.

So when it comes to feeling like roommates, you want to take a look at what your thoughts are, you’ll probably have some thoughts like we don’t connect anymore. It feels like we’re roommates, he should try harder. We don’t have time to “date each other.” Whatever you are thinking, maybe you have worse thoughts, like he doesn’t pull his weight, I do everything. You know, those types of thoughts would lead to resentment. Your thoughts create how you feel. And this is so important to remember with respect to marriage, it’s really tempting to delegate your emotions to your spouse, meaning you think you feel resentment because of what your spouse is doing or not doing. You think you feel disconnected in your marriage because your spouse kind of doesn’t look you in the eye, doesn’t greet you and kind of walks by and again you, you feel like your roommates based on what your spouse is doing or not doing.

You feel how you feel because of the thoughts that you have in your mind. Thoughts create your feelings and your brain will have default automatic thoughts. Now remember, what kind of thoughts does your brain have on default? Negative fear-based thoughts. It is scanning for danger, it is looking for what’s wrong and while useful to keep you alive, not helpful at all in your home when it’s looking at what’s wrong with your spouse. So you have to train your brain to have more intentional, more connected, more purposeful thoughts that create the experience that you want in your marriage. So how do you want to feel in your marriage? You could feel however you want if you want to feel content, if you want to feel flirty, if you want to feel connected, if you want to feel confident, if you want to feel fun, if you want to feel, what do you want to feel, right?

It’s such a beautiful, helpful question. What do you want to feel when you think about your spouse? Do you want to feel disconnected? Do you want to feel resentment? Now it doesn’t mean that there’s not work that you can do to explore why you’re thinking those thoughts and that’s usually a pathway into some deeper coaching to clean up your mindset in a more empowered way. And it doesn’t mean that you want to go to a place of happiness and connection, it depends on your circumstances. And again, I say that to emphasize that there are times, especially in a marriage where you might not want to feel connected. So for example, if there’s infidelity or something happens that your spouse does maybe a lie or something like that, you might not want to feel intimate and close and connected with your spouse. The key is not to always feel happy and joyful.

The key is to choose your feelings intentionally. And so for purposes of this question, which is really just about feeling like roommates and coexisting and focusing on the logistics where it’s not clear that there’s any reason that you wouldn’t want to feel connected, why not choose connection? And the best news ever is that you can do this work unilaterally. My approach to marriage coaching and the marriage frameworks that I teach are unique and so different than what you will hear in marriage therapy and what you will see from a lot of other marriage tools and marriage resources out there. And that is because I focus on helping empower you the wife. Oftentimes my clients come to me for marriage support when they have tried a lot of those other ways and it’s just not working. So I’m all for you making requests of your spouse, but it’s best done after you clean up your own thoughts and feelings so that you take full responsibility for how you’re thinking and feeling.

This doesn’t mean you take responsibility for someone else’s actions, but you always take responsibility for how you are thinking and how you are feeling. And in this example with the person who wrote in about feeling like roommates, where it’s kind of clear that this is just about the season of life and the default thoughts that this person is having, you can very quickly, like I’m talking within 30 days, change the way you feel with respect to your spouse. You can feel more connected, you can feel lighter, you can feel more grounded. I like to choose like flirty and fun and respectful as emotions that I like to feel in my marriage. So you want to be thinking about, okay, how do I want to feel? And then you reverse engineer it, what do I need to think about my spouse in order to feel this way?

And it will blow your mind. You will within a very short time change the way that you show up and then you change the dance that you’re in. So inside the Mom On Purpose Membership, I have a Marriage and Relationship Toolkit where I teach the dance you’re in. And if you think about dancing with your spouse to salsa music, if you turn off the salsa music and you turn on jazz, it’s going to be very different and unusual if your husband keeps dancing salsa, right? The music has changed, you’ve changed the music, you’re now turning on jazz and that’s a different rhythm. And I use that to illustrate how it’s not uncommon. In fact, I would say eight times out of 10 that the spouse changes in response to how you change. Now I hesitate to say that because the point of doing this work is for your sake because that’s what you can control always.

Whether and to what extent your spouse changes the way that he’s dancing in response to you changing the music and how you are showing up. That’s about him. So we’re not going to do this to try to change him, but just keep that analogy in mind that the way that you are interacting with your spouse now is reinforcing this dance that you’re in. And you can change that when you learn how to change your thoughts and your feelings because all thoughts and feelings drive all of your actions. So in a very real way, if your spouse comes down in the morning very hurried, doesn’t really acknowledge you, gives hugs and kisses to the kids, is talking about work that day, kind of talking at you and just going through the motions and the logistics and before you know it, you’re both out the door, he’s at the door, whatever it is.

If you change how you are showing up and you have thoughts like we are on the same team, I am fun, flirty and connected, I love my spouse. And you show up and you grab his attention and you say, good morning honey, I hope you have a wonderful day. I love you. Or whatever it is that feels not fake but authentic to you and who you want to be in this marriage that’s going to be new and different and it’s going to mix up that music and how he responds to that is about him. But again, you evaluate how you are doing on the connection side of the street, on what you are bringing to the table based on how you are showing up. Because if he’s showing up offering you we’re just running through the motions like roommates and then you mirror that back to him, that’s where you get into this cycle.

So you can change the music and show up as the person who you want to be. And if this is something that you want to work on, I 10 outta 10 to recommend joining the Mom On Purpose Membership right now because next month in July I am teaching a Marriage Reset class. I’m going to be specifically teaching on this topic of stop living like roommates on how to stop fighting with your spouse on how to rekindle the romance and how to start feeling heard, understood, and supported. So join us over at momonpurpose.com/coaching to get this class. It will be out on July 1st and of course you get all of the coaching and support inside the membership as well. Alright, let’s move on to question number two. “Do you have any tips for handling tantrums with my two daughters who are under five years old? I try to stay calm but I often end up getting triggered myself. ” Yes my friend, I do have some tips and some suggestions for navigating toddler tantrums. I just want to say if you are asking this question, you are doing something right. You are paying attention to how you want to show up during really hard moments. And this is really the foundation of everything I teach. So tantrums are completely developmentally normal. They’re not a sign that anything’s gone wrong. Your child’s brain is still developing, they can’t regulate big emotions yet. So when something doesn’t go their way and they feel overwhelmed, their nervous system takes over. It’s intense and it can be really triggering as a parent. And I think that if you don’t do this work and you don’t have like a natural disposition to just be totally fine with toddlers losing their minds, I don’t know how you can stay calm and there’s nothing wrong with you at all.

It’s just your brain and your body get really activated and overwhelmed. And even that fight flight response can be going off like alarm bells when it happens. And speaking from experience here, I have learned tools to completely change how I show up around my kids when they’re dysregulated. I am the calm parent, it’s not my natural disposition and it’s only because I have practiced these tools. So here is a breakdown of kind of the five steps that I recommend. Now, I do also suggest that you grab my Tantrum Guide. It’s a free download if you go to momonpurpose.com/tantrumguide. You’ll get all five of these steps and you can read through the steps and the examples. It goes into much more detail than I give you here, but it will be very, very helpful I think if you are going through a season of tantrums and what it could look like for you to be calm.

So the five steps that I teach in that guide that I want to go over with you here are, number one, keep your child safe. Number two, stay calm. Number three, respect and connect with your child. Number four, help your child get regulated. And number five, what to do after the tantrum. So number one, you know, first and foremost it’s your job to keep your child safe. And this means physically safe, so you might need to move them if they are about to run in the street, for example, like it’s your job, you want to keep them safe above all else. Number two, I think is the part that most of my clients want help with. It’s like, okay, my child is safe and I end up feeling so frustrated or I end up yelling. And this is the part that addresses that the you stay calm part.

This is a skill. So I don’t want you to think about you being someone who just loses her patience easily or someone who yells. Instead, I want you to think about yourself and the identity of being someone who expands her capacity to stay calm every day. You can learn tools for in the moment, and I teach them, right? You want to learn how to name your frustration, process it and be with it without responding. But that’s like 20% of the work, 80% of the work is done out of the moment with you journaling about how you want to think and feel in that exact scenario. You have to plan on your kids having meltdowns and tantrums and then you staying calm. You have to visualize that. I’ve talked about this on the podcast before about how transformational it is when I work with a mom on staying calm and not getting frustrated inside the mom on purpose membership through coaching.

Because within like a week she’s feeling so much more calm. I just had this happen with a client and it was so awesome to see and she was just laughing like, what was I saying again? I was so frustrated. Like it, it’s hard for me to even see that now because I immediately did what you said. I journaled in the morning out of the moment and now it’s so much easier for me to stay calm. Like that is powerful work my friend. Okay, number three is to respect and connect with your child. This is where the mantra of the saying comes in, all feelings are welcome, all actions are not. So for example, it’s totally fine for my son to feel upset, to feel frustrated, to feel angry, to feel disappointed, to feel mad. It is not okay for my son to hit or to throw something at his brother.

All feelings are welcome, all actions are not. You can embody this, you can model it, you can respect and connect with your child by validating their feelings, allowing them space to feel how they want to feel. And by holding the boundary, it’s about strength. You are not just going to let them do whatever they want. All actions are not allowed, but you’re not going to say it in a way that’s rude or condescending or mean, or punishment, fear, shame invoking parenting. You know better. You shouldn’t be doing this. You are in trouble. That is shame-based parenting. It’s pinning you against them. It’s using fear tactics. And I think this just comes not from, you know, being a bad mom or a bad parent, it’s just not knowing how to do it differently. So instead of you know better, you shouldn’t be doing this, you are in trouble.

I’ll say something like, I won’t let you hit. I’m taking the car away to keep you and your brothers safe. I love you and you can be upset and mad. I get it. It’s a completely different way of approaching the meltdown and the tantrum. I view my kids respectfully and on the same team as me, and I’m keeping everyone safe and I’m holding boundaries and I’m allowing them to feel how they want to feel. I love this way of parenting. It just makes, you know, tantrums, and all of it so much easier. Number four is to help your child get regulated. I don’t mean talking them out of the emotions, but you might move them, you might rock them, you might offer them a hug. You really have to know your child and it is an art and it changes. So, you know, take this and practice it.

Come into the Membership so I can coach you on it because with my kids it’s evolved for each child. It evolves based on the age of the child and what they need. So I’m just kind of looking to see, okay, do they need to just cry it out now? Do they need a hug? Would it be helpful for us to get some fresh air, not to distract, but to move things along? Because sometimes when we validate feelings, we can mistakenly make it bigger. Like you’re not just going to sit there and stare at them and say, okay, feel your feelings and like make it this big dramatic deal. But at the same time you’re, you don’t want to say, okay, I’m going to, you know, offer you candy or, or distract them from the feeling to send the message that they shouldn’t be feeling sad. So there’s this balance and this nuance in the art of being present with your child, allowing them to feel their feelings and then moving things along so you normalize the experience of negative emotions.

And then number five is what you do after the tantrum. You’re going to talk with them if you do yell, repair with them. And there’s a few other things that I list out in the guide. So again, get that guide momonpurpose.com/tantrumguide. That’s all one word, you can download it for free. Question number three. “Hi Natalie. I’m a physician working part-time. I have three kids in school and I’m also helping care for my aging parents. I feel like I’m being pulled in every direction and I don’t want to live like this. I want to enjoy my life, but I can’t figure out how. Do you have any tips or advice? Thank you so much for all the work that you do.” This question hits so many of the moms I work with. You’ve built this beautiful life and yet you are overwhelmed by the volume of roles you are playing in and the world tells you you should be able to handle all of it.

So you just push through, keep going and wonder why it feels so heavy. The truth though, and you’re not going to be surprised to hear me say this, but I can’t say it enough, is that it’s not your circumstances causing you to feel spread so thin or overwhelm or however you would identify that feeling of buzzing in that go, go, go energy, not feeling comfortable, resting, relaxing, and having that great big capacity to experience joy. It’s not your circumstances, it’s your thoughts running through your mind all day. Thoughts like, I have to do everything for everyone always. If I don’t do it, it won’t get done. I can’t let anyone down. These thoughts are rooted in over-functioning perfectionism and martyrdom, and most of us were conditioned to believe that they’re just normal or worse to believe that they are facts. So what we do in coaching and what I help you do inside the Mom On Purpose Membership is interrupt that pattern.

Instead of believing the lie that I have to do everything for everyone, always start by questioning that. Is that even true? What do you want to believe intentionally? Instead, you can be an amazing doctor, a present mom, a supportive daughter, and say no, what does that look like for you? Have you imagined this version of yourself? She’s delighted. She feels mostly energized and inspired and connected to her life. She feels like her average days are in alignment with the person who she wants to be. And her time spent aligns with her purpose and priorities. At nighttime, she goes to bed without the buzzing thoughts and the rumination. What does that look like? Have you imagined this version of yourself? That’s the real work to grow and evolve into the version of you whose life feels as good on the inside as you’ve worked to create on the outside.

Ask yourself, what does this version of you think about all day? She has the exact same life, but she thinks different thoughts. And how do those thoughts make her feel? I often give the example of wearing sunglasses. So when you put on different colored sunglasses, what you look at changes color, you’re still looking at a tree, you’re still looking at a park bench. But if you have rose colored sunglasses compared to if you have dark gray colored sunglasses on, they appear different. That is what it’s like to change your thoughts. So if this resonates with you and you would like to just lighten up and experience more joy just enjoying your life in every day, I highly recommend taking my new training. It’s called Lighten Up Motherhood. You can get it over at momonpurpose.com/lightenup. It’s all one word, L-I-G-H-T-E-N-U-P. This has been hands down my most popular training I’ve ever created.

It is brand new. We have had so many people, thousands of moms now take this training and so many of them join the Mom On Purpose Membership from this training because as one person wrote into me and said, it’s so simple and actionable, yet at the same time, really profound. And I think what she meant by that is she’s seeing a real change in the heaviness, in the pressure, in the feeling spread so thin and now she feels lighter. And it wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t hard. And I say that because I’ve done this work and when I created that training I had in mind the busy mom, the busy professional, high achieving woman who’s got kids who really just wants to lighten up her life. And I thought about how when I did that transformation, there were some key changes I really made and I included those in the training.

And you also get that training with a free podcast so you can choose how you want to consume it. Do you want to consume the free podcast or do you want to consume it via video? It’s totally up to you. But this is really how you stop feeling stretched so thin, keeping the exact same circumstances. So you’re going to learn how to take off those dark colored sunglasses and put on those rose colored sunglasses, changing your thoughts and doing a bunch of other actions that I suggest inside that training. Question number four, “I struggle treating my 21-year-old daughter like an adult. It’s my third year being an empty nester. One example is I remind her about what she needs to do. Like I’ll say, you haven’t been to the dentist in a long time, or when was the last time you showered? Can you help me treat her more like the adult that she is? “

Yes, my friend, I can absolutely help you. What a lot of people don’t know who are outside of the Mom On Purpose Membership is that inside the Membership, we have moms and even grandmas of all ages, it is not specific to having young kids. A lot of my marketing includes examples from having young kids because that’s the season of life that I’m in. But the tools, the frameworks, the teachings that I’ve created, and also the ones that I’m professionally trained in as a certified coach apply to the woman. So it doesn’t matter what age your kids are. So we have lots of moms with teenagers and adult kids, and I think that that’s not a coincidence. I think the tools work really well when your kids get older because there’s this transition happening. There’s this transition where you’re becoming an empty nester where maybe you’re redefining your goals and your purpose and or learning how to parent as this mom was talking about to an adult child and it still feels like you know, you’re parenting her and she’s she’s 10.

And how do you shift that? So here’s what I want to offer. There is a big difference between parenting and controlling. Parenting at its best is about guiding, modeling, teaching, coaching and connecting. Controlling is about trying to decide how someone else should use their agency. It’s thinking that you know what your child should do or shouldn’t do. And this comes up so much in my coaching parents and I can understand it, but it’s sneaky. So I want you to ask yourself, if you do this, do you try to control your kids? But you sugarcoat it as being really thoughtful and caring. It would sound like I just really care about my kids and I want to make sure they do what’s best for them. Doesn’t that sound like such a loving thought? It might be a loving thought, but if you are doing it in a way that is creating disconnection with your kids and they are older and they’re feeling frustrated and they don’t like when you give them suggestions like when they should shower or you know how they’re grocery shopping or whatever else it is, then you want to notice how that’s impacting your relationship with them and how you’ve really gone to the other side. You’re not parenting even though it seems like it. You’re trying to control them. So parenting is about you showing up as the mom you want to be controlling is when you try to control someone’s agency control how they think, how they feel, and how they act. I mean, even with my toddlers, I’m reminding myself, I want them to feel however they want to feel. I’m here for it. They are the leaders of their life. I’m watching the movie.

They’re going to have challenges that I don’t even know exist and they’re supposed to. Now it doesn’t mean we don’t have rules and guidelines and boundaries for sure, but as they get older, those decrease because eventually as this mom is seeing, they leave the home and at that point, the rules and the boundaries in the traditional sense of parenting, they all go away. Right now you have the relationship that’s what’s left. So you have a child who’s over the age of 18, who has left the home, and what does that look like? How do you want to parent? How do you want to think about your relationship? So when you say things like, when was the last time you showered or you haven’t gone to the dentist in a while, you may mean well, but what you’re really implying is you don’t trust your child to take care of yourself. You are sending her the message that she can’t handle this on her own. You are also subtly telling her that you think you know better than she does. So it’s seemingly coming from love, of course, but it sends the message that you are not really showing her respect that she deserves at this age. And this is really where coaching comes in, because it’s not that you are doing something wrong.

It’s like this subtle tweak in the way that you think that’s going to trickle down to the way that you talk with her. For example, instead of you know something like, when’s the last time you showered or you haven’t gone to the dentist in a while, there’s like some judgment there. When you change the way you’re thinking about your daughter and you feel more empowered and connected to her and you, you maybe genuinely have concerns about her health or her hygiene, you ask her open-ended questions, that foster connection where you express maybe your concerns, but from a place of, Hey, I know I’m your mom and I believe in you to take care of this, but I’m just wondering, you know what you’re going to do about this or what you think is best. What’s your plan to take care of that? I trust you’ll handle it in the way that feels best for you.

Or even just holding space and saying nothing. This doesn’t mean that you are, you know, abandoning her. It means you are respecting her. And honestly, that shift alone deepens the relationship more than any reminder or suggestion ever. Could I coach a lot of women in this exact season of life? Because there’s such a shift in the way that you want to relate to your kids, but you recognize how hard it is, yet you’re not really sure how to make that shift. And it all comes back to the way that you are thinking about your kids and how you can love them and support them and respect them while still expressing your concerns, while still caring for them, while still having a great relationship with them. So you’re on the right track. Question your thoughts, change your thoughts. If you want help with this, I can definitely coach you on that.

It’s something I love to do, particularly because I find it to be so impactful for the women who do this work. It changes the way they relate to their kids and their kids are exactly the same. It’s like really beautiful to see. Okay, question number five. The last question. “I love your time management systems and tools. I’ve taken your Time Management course and learned so much. I’m really interested in continuing this work on time management. From time to time, I feel very rushed. What’s something I can do to work on this feeling? Can you help?” Yes, my friend, I can absolutely help. First of all, celebrate the fact that you have done so much already and taken the class. Utilize the tools, notice the wins that you have because that is an accomplishment. So many of the moms I coach are in the exact same space.

They’ve implemented tools, they’ve created structure, and things are objectively working better, but they still feel rushed. And that can feel confusing, right? Like, okay, I’ve done the right thing, so why doesn’t it feel the way I thought it would? The reason is that feeling rushed is a feeling. It’s not caused by your calendar, it’s not caused by your to-do list. It’s caused by a thought. So you are thinking a thought and it’s creating the feeling. You might have a thought like, there’s not enough time, or I’m behind, or I have to hurry to get this done. Whatever you are thinking is creating that feeling of rushed.

Even when all of the systems are working, all of your actions are what you want them to be. If you haven’t changed your thoughts with respect to how you want to feel, if you haven’t, you’re given yourself permission to rest, to slow down, to do nothing, then you will continue to have that script running in the background that you should be doing more and that what you’re doing is not enough and those thoughts are creating, feeling rushed. So start noticing when you feel rushed, pause and ask yourself, what am I thinking that’s creating this feeling of rushed, come and get coached by me. I will help you turn that around to a next believable thought that you feel empowered to think this is exactly what we do inside the Mom On Purpose Membership. I can coach you 24/7 in the Ask a Coach platform as well as on any of the group coaching calls.

Alright, my friends, this episode turned out to be much longer than I anticipated, but I wanted to get those questions answered for you. If you have a question you would like me to answer, of course you can send me a DM or write an email. I also want to encourage you to leave me a message on the podcast hotline. All you have to do is call 833- 3AskNat. That’s 833-327-5628 and leave me a voicemail with what you would like me to talk about on the podcast. And I will do my best to answer those here so that you can get the benefit of hearing how I would apply my frameworks and tools to what’s going on specifically in your life. All right, my friends, keep doing the work. It is work worth doing. Take care.

Thank you for being here and listening. Now, head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more about the Mom On Purpose Membership, where we take all of this work to the next level.