I had three kids in three years and I’m not overwhelmed. Here’s why.

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 where I am so excited to share with you today’s episode on how I do not experience overwhelm. And I’m bringing to you this topic in April because inside the Mom On Purpose Membership, I created a brand new course called Freedom from Overwhelm. And in that course I deliver very specific steps along with case studies that teach you exactly how to stop feeling overwhelmed like permanently, forever. And after I created this course, I was thinking to myself about how overwhelm is just not a part of my life.

Like not at all. And I was trying to think about like what the differences between me and so many of my students or clients who come to me at first who are feeling overwhelmed because it’s definitely not that I’m doing less and just sitting at home, meditating, right? Like by myself. I had three kids, three boys in three years. I have two dogs. I run a coaching practice and have hundreds of clients at the current moment. And I’m a wife and I care about my marriage and I have relationships and I care about my health. And you know, this first quarter of 2025, I lost 50 pounds. Like how am I able to do all of these things and not feel overwhelmed is basically the question that I was asking myself. Because a lot of the times it’s easy to just continue to be who you’ve always been.

But I love just taking my experiences and where I’ve had success and using it as an example to show you what’s possible if it’s something that you desire. And I think my life is an example of how you can have a full, very intentional life where you are highly productive and create the life of your dreams, the life that you want without overwhelm. At least that’s my intention with this podcast. I’m not a unicorn. It is not because, you know, I just am someone who has like a ton of help or something like that. I truly do manage my brain and apply the tools that I teach in this course inside the Membership. And that is why. So in this episode specifically, I’m just going to talk about me and my life and how I specifically am not overwhelmed and why if you are in the Membership, this podcast is kind of like supplemental. In the in the course, I teach you how to do it. We go through case studies, you can apply that to your life.

But I thought this podcast would be an amazing addition to just be my own case study for you to hear what it’s like for me. If you’re not in the Membership, you should come in the Membership. You’ve heard me say it time and time again, but I know so many of you reach out to me, you tell me that you’re struggling with overwhelm and there’s just no reason for it. So I truly believe that even just coming for one month, getting these tools, going through the course, getting some coaching on it, some accountability from me will change your entire life because it’s a skill that you can learn, a tool that you can have in your tool belt forever. So that’s my kind of sell to you that I really think you will benefit from the course in the Membership as well as what I’m going to share here.

Alright, so with that, I want to just talk with you about how I think and how I approach my life and how I approach doing more versus not doing more and all the things. And I do that without getting overwhelmed. So having three kids in three years, you know, being my house manager, being the chief culture officer, the chief family officer, that’s what one of my clients called it, of my home, being a wife, having a home, running my business, all of these things sound overwhelming when I just say all of the facts. And that is likely because of the story that you would presumably have like, oh my gosh, how does she get so much done without being overwhelmed? I would be so overwhelmed if I did all that. But the, thoughts that lead to overwhelm are just thoughts. And I really want you to sit with that.

Overwhelm is a feeling and it’s created by your thoughts. Overwhelm is not the same thing as overstimulation. Overwhelm is not the same thing as frustration. Overwhelm is not the same thing as any other emotion. So first and foremost, you gotta get clear on what overwhelm is, and it’s really a way for you to feel sorry for yourself and get into self-pity and kind of have the victim mentality when you look at all of your to-dos. And it can create, you know, procrastination and a lot of unhelpful results, behaviors from that emotion that lead to results. And for me, I just do not let myself indulge in overwhelm. I don’t think that the emotion is helpful. There are tons of emotions that are helpful, sadness. For example, if something happens to one of my dogs, that’s the example I often use. I want to feel sad when I look at my calendar, when I look at my to-dos, when I look at my life, I do not want to feel overwhelmed, right?

It’s not useful. So I take my job as mom and coach and leader, like leader of my life, really leader of my family, but with my husband, but leader of my life, I take it so seriously. I think it’s really important that I show up with a good attitude. I think it’s really important that I am feeling happy and joyful most of the time, right? I want to be on that like higher vibration state where I’m enjoying my life. So I take it upon myself to hold myself to high standards. I think we hold our kids to such high standards, to our own detriment. Like we want them to do the emotional work of being regulated and listening and all of those things so that we don’t have to do it. But I’m telling you, it’s so much more rewarding and effective when you do the work.

So I do the work, so I’m happy, I’m feeling great, I’m feeling connected most of the time, even when my kids are, you know, doing what kids do when they’re really little, having meltdowns, not sharing, fighting all the things. And I don’t get overwhelmed by it. I, I really like pause in my own life and I just ask myself like, what’s really going on? If I even have a sense that overwhelm could be creeping in, I just pause and I ask myself, okay, overwhelm is too vague. I decidedly don’t identify as someone who has overwhelm. Like, it’s just not a part of my identity. I refuse to indulge in it. I refuse to make it a part of my life. I refuse to say I am an overwhelmed mom. Like I just, I just will not let it in my life. So if there’s like this sense where my default brain is starting to get a little bit like jittery, like, oh my gosh, there’s a lot to do, I just slow it down and I ask myself, okay, what’s really going on here?

And I get really specific, and I have to tell you, like probably the last seven outta 10 times that I’ve asked myself that question, it’s, oh, I’m tired. Now when I tell myself, oh, I’m tired. That feels so much more certain. It feels so much more doable. It feels so clear. Like for me, at least when I experience overwhelm or if I think the thought, oh my gosh, I have so much to do, I’m so overwhelmed, it feels very big and vague and out of my control. But if I say, Hey, what’s really going on here? And it’s, oh, nothing has gone wrong, I’m just actually tired, it’s like, oh, okay, well that’s fine. I’ll sleep again. Not a big deal. And I cannot tell you how helpful this is because then I go from tired to, like tired and overwhelmed, let’s say, or tired and confused or tired and worried or tired and self pity immediately to tired and at peace, tired and content, tired and connected.

I’ve done so much mindset work on tired, and this, you know, isn’t an episode about being tired. But I do think that what really helps me is getting really specific. When I coach myself and I coach myself very generally, and vaguely, I get a general or vague solution. And so I just avoid overwhelm as a diagnosis for myself altogether. Like I just refuse to have it be a part of my life. I also have some skills that I think help so that it doesn’t even come up. First and foremost, I plan. And just a little side note, my friends, I have never received so much unsolicited feedback about a course in my entire life than I did from the course last month on time management. It’s called Better Time Management. I don’t care if you have adult children, if you have little ones, if you are planning your family, if you are single consistently, dozens and dozens of members out of the hundreds in there have reached out to me, whether through sharing a win, which we can do in the Membership or through, you know, coaching when I’m coaching them live or comments or dms or emails and told me this course has changed their life.

This course provided so much clarity and peace and the freedom that came with it was just something that they did not expect. So I think because I do that really well, I set my circumstances up for success. Now that doesn’t mean that my circumstances are perfect. I am a human being, of course, there’s a lot going on. Things unexpectedly happen. My kids get sick, things get canceled, all the things, right? But most of the time, you know, a majority of the time I’m following my plan. So that’s really, really helpful.

I also don’t allow myself to get into overwhelm when things don’t go to plan. So, you know, if kids get sick, something happens unexpectedly, I manage my mind immediately. I say, okay, how do I want to solve this problem? How do I want to problem solve here? What decisions do I need to make? That’s a brilliant question I love to ask myself because then I can create a new plan. It’s like, okay, one of the kids is sick. I gotta cancel this and change this and rearrange things. Okay, let’s come up with a solution. Let’s come up with a plan. I think that overwhelm is laced oftentimes with self pity. And there’s this sense of I have so much to do and I have to do it. And I, again, refuse to have thoughts like that because that’s the victim mentality. That’s thinking that your life is happening to you, that you are required to do certain things.

And when you think that way, you will never feel totally free and in control of your life, even though you are totally free and can always choose how you want to think, feel, and act. Now, you can’t always choose your circumstances. You can’t choose when your kids get sick or if your husband gets laid off or, or there’s a diagnosis. Of course, we all have circumstances that happen, but you can always decide to empower yourself in those circumstances. And I think because I’ve been doing this work for, you know, almost 10 years now, it’s like I, I have my reps in and that’s why I was like, I don’t know how people do not have a Membership like Mom On Purpose that they’re a part of. I, like, I could not live like that. And I think overwhelm is such a modern day problem because our brains were not designed to make all of these little seemingly innocent decisions throughout the day.

And so when you recognize that you can utilize the tools of brain management to help yourself so that you don’t feel overwhelmed about anything, like, I always like to think to myself, okay, well this is a new problem. Well, let’s do this new problem. And while I do kind of pride myself and generally try to have a good attitude, it’s not always the case. I was thinking about transitioning from one to two kids and then transitioning from two to three kids. And I was trying to think of the feelings that I felt. And there were definitely periods of negative emotion. I had some frustration. I had just kind of the high emotions, I might, you might say like some sadness, some happiness, lots of tears. Like we all go through that when we’re postpartum. But I never labeled it as overwhelm. If I labeled it as overwhelm to me it just feels unsolvable in like a negative way, in like a way like, this shouldn’t be happening.

So instead it’s okay, what’s really going on here? Oh, I’m, I’m having some, you know, big feelings right now. I feel really sad. Let’s do some sadness, or I’m feeling really emotional. I’m just going to allow myself to be a mess. Okay, let’s do that. Most of the time when my clients come to me, they don’t know how to actually feel their feelings. So they’re in their mind and that’s indulgent thinking where you’re just thought looping about the overwhelm versus just feeling the overwhelm because you can just feel the overwhelm. It feels like what in your body? Where do you feel it, what does it, kind of feel like to you? What characteristics would you give it? And for sure that’s what I would go to if I felt overwhelmed.

But again, I just don’t, it’s just not a part of my life. And I think because I refuse to allow it to be a part of my life, I refuse to be disempowered by my life. I refuse to indulge in like the victim mentality. It is gone before it’s even present. Now, if you’ve been around for a while, you know, I used to be the queen of self-pity. I like talk about that. And I think that if I wasn’t doing this work consistently, I for sure would be overwhelmed. In fact, if I wrote down right now all of the things I’m responsible for and all of the things that I’m doing in my life and the goals that I have, and then I read it, I would probably feel overwhelmed. So I don’t do that. You just don’t have to think about that stuff.

Like I, it’s not like I’m abandoning my responsibilities. I have them all planned out on my calendar, but I’m not going to sit there and think about every so little thing I have to do. That’s a terrible use of my brain power. I want to think about things that make me happy and little delights and like these moments I’m having with my kids or, you know, every time a client has a breakthrough, like I really take it as my responsibility to show up and feel good. And I think it’s a beautiful gift we can give to ourselves and to everyone in our lives. I also constrain, oh my goodness, my friends, I constrain like nobody’s business. I’ve been doing this for a really long time and so I’m really used to it and people get really surprised by it. But I’m telling you, game changer because overwhelm is a feeling that you experience when your brain is scanning all of the options and it thinks, oh my gosh, this is just like too much.

And so one of the tools that you can use to avoid that feeling and avoid that thinking that’s causing the feeling is to minimize the decisions. So we looked at a handful of houses, we bought this house after, you know, FaceTiming and seeing it, I decided on the college I went to out of like a handful, I, recently am enrolling my son. One of my sons in preschool. They have like, what do they have? They have like, what are they, they called fairs, preschool fairs, like all the time in my community. I live in the suburbs of Chicago. It’s a really big place for, I don’t know,, education, like education’s really big here and people get really stressed about it so easily. And I just refuse, I refuse to indulge in it. I refuse to get overwhelmed. I ask my husband, which preschool do you want to send our son to?

And he told me, and they are, fully booked for next fall already. And I was like, okay, husband, do you have another option that you want? Like, I am not going to go down the road of looking at like, there were like 30 at the library when they had the fair. And I was like, absolutely not. That is way too many options. This is preschool my friends. So, I think that most people look at all of the options because they, they think that there’s a right option and if they decide the wrong option, then they’re going to beat themselves up for that and think they like ruined their kids. Well, I’ve done so much work on myself and on my kids and on how I want to show up in the decisions that I want to make, that I constrain my options very deliberately. I typically always constrain fewer than five.

Like we recently bought a new car and I got my husband to constrain to, I think at most we were deciding between three. And then I got him actually to just go look in one and get that car. So I try my hardest to reduce the options. I never have fomo and I then like get the information that I need. So it’s not like we bought the car like without looking at the numbers or like we’re careless with it. So there’s some research that goes into it, but it’s not from a fear-based place of like, I need to make the right decision or else like bad things happen. I think that’s where most people operate from and instead I’m operating from, okay, it’s amazing that we just get to go out into the world and buy a car and have transportation. Like that is just amazing.

We live in such an organized, brilliant society. This is so fun and so awesome. Let’s make sure it makes financial sense. Let’s look at the numbers. Let’s look at like our family’s needs and consider, you know, three different cars. You know, I got ’em to knock it down to two. And then I thought, okay, I really like this one because it’s basically what we had before, just the newer one and let’s just start there and see if we can get them down in price to what we want. And if so, we’ll go with that. And if not, we can always walk away. And I mean, we had a car that weekend, we got them to get as low as we wanted. And so what’s my point here with overwhelm? My point is that I have a very abundant decision making process and because of that, I’m not fueled by fear.

And because of that I don’t have the false belief that I need to consider all of the options. I just don’t want to use my brain power for that. I want to use my brain power for creating, for over-delivering to my clients for spending time with my family for other things that I really care about. So constraint is a big one. Making quick decisions is a big one. Focus is a big one for me and I think it really changes everything because as I mentioned, if I really wrote down everything that I’m doing or want to do or have planned to do, and I just looked at that list, I really do think I would get into overwhelm. And I think this is what most people do. They are not managing their brain. So their primitive brain is just looking at all of the things haphazardly and feeling overwhelmed.

And I just don’t do that. Like if my brain starts to go to like, well what about this and what about this and how are you going to do this? And what about I’m just like, no brain, we’re not doing that. What do I need to focus on right now to move forward? Whether it’s a goal or whether it’s with the day. And this does take like brain management, I think is what I want to say. It, it, it takes talking back to my brain, I have conversations with my brain. I tell my brain, no brain, we’re not going down that path. It’s irrelevant. I’ve planned it all out, it’s totally fine. And then if there’s a problem and it’s not fine, it’s like, okay, now there’s a new problem, let’s solve this new problem. I don’t ever go back and say, see brain, if you would’ve thought this out and dwelled on it for three days straight and then you would’ve figured this out and then this wouldn’t have happened.

I never do that. I tell myself, we’re going to spend however much time figuring this out that we want to spend on it, and then whatever happens, happens. So I think that that leads into the fact that I trust myself to handle anything. It truly is self-confidence. It’s not confidence in like an ability to do something. It’s self-confidence, which means self-trust. It’s, I believe in myself to handle anything. So, my son right now is learning how to ride a bike. He doesn’t have a ton of confidence riding a bike that’s like a two-wheeler. He has, he does have a ton of confidence riding a balanced bike. So that’s what I mean by confidence in the thing. Now I on the other hand, have a ton of confidence riding a two-wheeler, right? I don’t have to, you know, learn new skills for it. I can just get on a bike and go.

And when we need confidence in the thing in order to make decisions, I think it leads to overwhelm because then there’s this sense like, if I get it wrong, if I don’t get it right, then I’m bad or I’m wrong. And instead I just think, okay, if I get it wrong, you know, or I make a mistake, I still love me, I still got me. Maybe we’ll do some embarrassment, maybe we’ll do some, I don’t know, humiliation. I can do those feelings, it’s totally fine, but I’m going to have my back. I’m going to love myself. I’m going to trust myself. And this doesn’t mean that I don’t make mistakes or that things don’t work out. You’ve all heard me talk about how we put a very large lump sum of money down on a house in South Carolina that was non-refundable because it was with a builder and we were going to buy a house down there and we did not.

My husband had a change of heart and I decided with him that we should honor that. And I told him he gets one change of heart. We each get one, that’s it. And we forfeited that money. Now, I could have easily beaten myself up for that. The money literally went to the builder. We got nothing for it. And I could tell myself I lost that money and I need to be more careful and I make bad decisions with money and all of those things. And it could have really derailed me and I just didn’t because I think it’s just part of playing the game of life. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Now it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be thoughtful, and it doesn’t mean that I’m going to be careless. I’m going to be thoughtful and intentional. And I was in South Carolina and circumstances change, my husband changes mind and I want to still be married to my husband.

So I wanted to agree with him and move up here to Chicago. So I just want to tie this back to overwhelm in the sense that I manage my brain. I have thoughts that focus on the now and the present and having my own back and making decisions and constraint and planning and allowing myself to feel other negative emotions that I find to be helpful. But really focusing my brain on what is important. I do not care if my house gets dirty. Not really. We have cleaners that come, but they only come once a month. And I have two dogs and three little kids. And our home is, remodeled, like it was flipped before we bought it. But um, it’s in an area with a lot of flipped homes, a lot of tear downs and new builds. And you know, prior to it being flipped, our home was a hundred years old.

So it kind of has that feel of the neighborhood where there are really big trees and you know, the sidewalks could, could be redone for sure. Like it’s not a new area where there’s like no mud and no dirt, you know what I mean? There’s like a lot of dirt around. So I say that because Benji boy, our dog is probably responsible for like 75% of the dirt in our home. And we, you know, wipe it up when he trecks mud in and, everything’s washable. Even our couch covers. But I’m not obsessing about it. If I thought about everything that “needs to be cleaned” or I have to clean, I would make myself a victim of my life. And I’m not a victim of my life. I could hire cleaners more, I could clean more. I don’t want to do those things. I just want to allow it to get a little messy or dirty.

It’s totally fine. Cleaners will be back within a month and in the meantime I wipe down some counters, I wipe the floors a little bit and that’s it. And so I really just don’t make things a big deal. And I really think that overwhelm is something I want to stay away from. And so how can I think in a way and focus my attention in a way that doesn’t lead to overwhelm? And I, I do that deliberately. It is not because of my circumstances. I really focus on my desires. I think that when we focus on what we have to do and we think we are required to do something, we should on ourselves. We disempower ourselves, we make ourselves a victim of our own lives. There is nothing you have to do, nothing. You have free will, you have free agency. It’s like, oh, just the most beautiful thing.

We get to do whatever we want. So whatever you are doing, it’s because you want to be doing it. This will change your life forever, my friends. Because then you realize, oh yeah, I actually want to be cleaning as much as I’m cleaning because I’m the one in the family who values a spotless home. If I want to keep a spotless home, then I need to clean this much. Is cleaning this much worth sacrificing my inner peace? And for me, the answer’s no. I can adjust my thoughts about dirt, it’s fine. Probably boost their immunity. Right? Like, it’s totally fine. I just often think about like the end of my life. Like what am I going to want to look back on and, and just, you know, relish in the joy of it that I was present with my kids, that I built my business, that I prioritize to my family and my work.

And I’m just really purpose driven. And I think because of that, there’s no place for overwhelm. And in a really small way, I think back to the time that we lived in South Carolina, and like I would go outside and it would be, you know, 72 and sunny and they’re palm trees. And I would just be walking. I just had one kid at the time and I’d be walking Robert and like, I would just like soak in the beauty of the aesthetics of Charleston. Like it was just so beautiful. And now being in Chicago, it’s not that I focus on the weather and the aesthetics and how they are less beautiful, it’s that I look back on my time in Charleston and I am so grateful to my past self for indulging in the beauty that was that period. And I hope that at the end of my life, when I look back on the different periods of my life, whether it was my twenties, my thirties, my forties or whatever, that I made the most of it.

That it wasn’t about the hand that I was dealt, it was about how I played my cards. And sometimes we’re in really challenging situations we wouldn’t wish on anyone. But when you go through them and you do it loving yourself and taking care of yourself and it’s, it’s hard. It’s really hard. But you are so much stronger on the other side of that. And then for the other periods that are great, right? I don’t want to look back and think, oh my gosh, during that great period of total, you know, chaos little ones and dogs and just all the things career. I was so overwhelmed the whole time. I couldn’t see the beauty of it. I don’t want that for myself. And so that means that sometimes the house is a mess or dirty. That means that, you know, I missed preschool registration. It’s totally fine.

My kids are going to be educated, they’re going to go to preschool. I’m not worried about it at all. I refuse to let preschool registration for the one that is already full lead me to overwhelm. I’m just unwilling to let circumstances impact my inner peace on default. And that is through brain management. So I hope that hearing just a little bit more about how I approach my life and my circumstances, and most importantly, the thoughts that I have about my life, my mindset, I hope that it inspires you to apply it to your life and to really give up overwhelm. I don’t think that it’s an emotion that serves you. I don’t think that it’s necessary at all. I I do think that it’s the default because our brains were not designed to deal with all of these decisions. And so through brain management, through utilizing these tools of constraint, of decision making, of focus, of kind of having clear purpose and priorities and self-confidence, I do think that we can get to a place where we’re living in a world with all of these decisions and so many things to do.

And we are not overwhelmed. But it does require new tools in your tool belt. It is not what the brain will do on default. The brain on default is going to make a to-do list and feel immediately overwhelmed and take on all of the things that you don’t need to take on and kind of make you feel almost like you are a victim of your own life. And that’s the default. And so instead of living on default, what I’m offering to you is to live on purpose, live by design, live intentionally. And anyone can do this. I like to think of a tool belt and it’s just putting new tools in that tool belt. You also need to practice using the tools. So it’s not enough for me to give you a hammer. You have to practice using the hammer so you get skilled at using the hammer.

So practice, come get coached. I want to help you through this. I really do think that when you empower yourself and you give up overwhelm entirely, you change your life forever. Because there’s no circumstance that you will be in that you will allow yourself to be overwhelmed in and you will start making decisions differently. So you’ll start to think about, okay, if I plan that family trip and then right when we get back there are, you know, 10 things on the calendar, I don’t want to do that because I know that it’ll be too hard to manage the overwhelm. Like you will plan in advance knowing that you need to take care of yourself so that overwhelm doesn’t come into the picture. And I just, I’m obsessed with this work because I don’t want to be overwhelmed at the end of my life. I want to just be so proud of myself and delighted with the decisions that I made and for the circumstances I couldn’t control that happened that I wouldn’t wish on anyone knowing that I did my best with the hand I was dealt and I played my cards.

And I feel really good about that. That’s my hope. So live with intention, on purpose, and by design, not on default. So that you are empowered in your own life knowing that you’re doing exactly what you want to be doing. Not anything that you ever have to be doing. And by utilizing these tools, overwhelm will be a thing of the past. That is my hope for you, my friend. Do these tools, it is work worth doing. I will talk with you next week. 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.