The #1 Skill To Be The Most Present, Calm, And Happy Mom You Know

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. How are we doing today? Middle of the holiday season? I am on fire in my business, it feels like a snowball that is just growing and growing and compounding, and compounding, and that is so much fun for me, mostly because I’m so mission driven and I just think about getting these tools out to more moms. I was recently on a podcast, a big motherhood podcast, and the interviewer, doesn’t do thought work at all and doesn’t really know about these tools.

And she was so blown away with the content that she asked if we could schedule the podcast out for like a month and a half later than we had planned so it could drop during her highest downloaded time per year. And I said, of course, no problem. But it, what it reminded me of was like, how valuable these tools and this content is. Like, it really is the secret, it is the secret to life. And I know that seems like a vague generalization, but it really, really is so incredibly important. And it’s not entertainment, and it’s not like feel good motivation like a rah rah book or talk. It’s like a real skill that you can learn. And so when I think about motherhood and I think about marriage, and I just think about these containers being growth containers, right? You can become a lawyer and it’s a growth container pretty much any career could be a growth container, but marriage is also a growth container and motherhood is, and broader than that life is, right?

I think that’s one of the main purposes of life is to grow and when bad things happen, and by bad things I just mean like when something happens that you wish didn’t happen or you didn’t want to happen. It’s like what skills do you have to navigate that? Can you process and manage your overwhelm? Are you able to calm down or do you act out in a way that’s out of alignment with who you want to be? Do you feel tense most of the time? Do you find yourself yelling and snapping? Nothing wrong with you, but there are very specific tools and skills that you can learn and acquire and become the most present, calm and happy mom that, you know, I think from doing this recent podcast episode, it was just even like more clearly brought to my attention some of the ways that this work is confused with other practices.

So if you find yourself thinking, why can’t I just be calmer or I just need to practice more patience, how can I practice more pateience? Or maybe I need a better gratitude practice, right? Those things, again, it’s, it’s not bad or wrong to want those things and they’re great. It’s just not actually the root cause of the problem. So if you’re trying to solve a problem that you don’t understand, the root cause of you won’t be able to solve it. It’s just like so important to see this, right? So if you get frustrated with your kids and you are looking for parenting scripts and you’re practicing parenting scripts, it’s not going to work in the way that you think it will work. Okay? Now, might you get a little bit of success here and there dependent on your kids’ reactions? A hundred percent. But you’re still going to have that same frustration pop up because the root cause of the problem is not the script, it’s not the parenting script, it’s not your child’s behavior, it’s your thoughts, okay?

You think you need more patience or you need, to practice more gratitude? And that’s just not the case. Brain management is what you need. And the skill that fixes that is thought work. I feel so passionate about this because of how much it has changed my life and how much I continue to practice it. It’s not like, oh yeah, I, you know, lost weight, right? A while ago now. And, I’m keeping it off, but there’s no more weight loss like I’m done. You know, conversely with thought work and motherhood, it’s not something you accomplish. It’s something that you do continuously just like you shower, just like you brush your teeth. And I, I find that there’s like such a gap in information about what that actually is, and it was brought even more to my attention with this podcast and how we think that the problem is, you know, if I could just be more patient, everything would be better, or if I could just be more grateful or maybe I needed that new gratitude practice or that new, meditation practice, and then I would feel better.

And so we can think that the problem is, outside of us and we use sort of buzzwords like patience and gratitude. Then of course we do the high achieving mom thing and make it about us, and we make it mean that like we’re not doing enough and we should try harder and be better. But as you try these different methods, they’re not going to work. They don’t work in the way that thought work works because effort doesn’t fix it. You’ve already tried working harder, you know how to, how to get it done, my friend, but that’s not the root cause of how you’re feeling. That’s not the root cause of the overwhelm of the never ending to-do list of the go, go, go energy of the, you know, second guessing and questioning yourself and worrying in motherhood, like all of these kind of micro challenges that come up in motherhood.

The root cause is your brain. It is running on default wiring, right? You’ve heard me say it, I say it a million times, your brain is wired for survival, but what does that mean? It means it’s wired to look for the negative. So your default will be to find problems in your environment with your kids, with your spouse, and that will create tension in your body and disconnection. And then you will snap and then you will try to change your spouse or your kids or your home and you’ll try to solve it from something that is outside of your control. It will drive you low grade, crazy, my friends, right? And there’s a spectrum of this. Maybe it’s more like you feel like roommates, but it still isn’t a good time. And if you don’t manage it, if you don’t manage your brain, your default thoughts will run your day, which means you will never escape that tension, that overthinking, that worrisome brain.

And it feels like just like a normal part of motherhood, but it’s not okay. And you know this, right? Because either in your real life or even on social media, you see people who are enjoying motherhood and you might think that it’s fake, but it, well, first of all, I don’t know, it might be, but also there are actual moms out there who are enjoying motherhood and it’s not fake. And I think that if you are having a harder time with it, you don’t want to believe that’s possible because then you might make it mean that you are doing it wrong or bad or something like that. And that is just simply not true. It’s just that you haven’t identified the real problem. The root cause of the problem is your brain and the solution is brain management and thought work and that, my friend, is how you actually become the most present, calm and happy mom you know. Why? Why is this? Because again, try every parenting script you want. I’m all for a good suggestion. However, it doesn’t get to the root cause. Did you know that your kids can be frustrated? Your kids can be, you know, wild crazy boys like mine are like my house is very loud. And you can feel calm inside. That’s only going to happen from thought work. I think it’s the most important tool that you can ever use and the best skill that you can get good at because it’s only dependent on you.

And again, it’s nothing wrong with those other practices. Like I said, I mean, gratitude’s, great it just has nothing to do with why you’re feeling frustrated at bedtime or why you feel tense getting out the door. And if you think that’s the case, you will try to solve it with gratitude or becoming more patient or something like that. It just misses the mark on the real problem. And that’s what I really want to emphasize here, because when you understand what the real problem is, that your brain is just not being managed. And I don’t mean that, like generally I remember, I mean obviously I wasn’t born knowing this work, so I remember a time where I thought, okay, I read these personal development books, I listen to these personal development podcasts and it’s great, but I’m still the same. So like, are they great or is it just entertainment?

And I wanted to change and I just didn’t know how and like, thank God that I discovered these tools because it gave me the how. And so I really want to encourage you to join the Mom On Purpose Membership and get these specific tools. And it’s not like, oh yeah, I learned this tool, I took this one course. It’s, no, it’s listening to coaching every single week so that you rewire your brain so that you have different ways of thinking throughout the week based on hearing other women get coached. There is not a single week that goes by that people do not message me or comment or send me emails or anything like that from listening to the call replay saying, wow, that was so helpful. That’s going to help me with my mother-in-law. That was really awesome to listen to. Like, thank you for that person participation, right?

Because we can’t always attend every call and get coached, right? That’s the whole purpose of a group coaching program. But I think that until you are in a program where you’re listening to coaching weekly, you don’t understand necessarily the value of it. Like it’s everything. I pay a lot of money to a lot of memberships so that I can also listen and I’m coaching more than every single week, but a minimum of weekly, often it’s multiple times a week as well if you’re counting my private clients and it keeps my brain sharp. And so I say that because I want you to know that it’s not like it’s not listening to a podcast or listening to, a book or, like anything sort of feels inspiring, like that’s fun, but that is not actually learning the tool of thought work. And that’s not getting really skilled at brain management.

So I’ve been doing this for years and I still find myself turning things around in real time. And what do I mean by that? So, you know, you’ve all probably at this point heard me talk about self-pity. I’ll use that as an example. Since my brain loves to go to self-pity. Self-pity is just like poor me, right? Instead, I always want to be thinking of myself as the hero of my own life because that empowers me to overcome challenges, to seek solutions and to show up as the, the woman and mom and wife that I want to be. And so self pity is, is not helpful for that mission. And my brain loves some self-pity, right? It’s like helplessness. It’s this sense of like, why is this happening to me? And, you know, why can’t my kids just listen to me or behave better or sleep through the night or like whatever, right?

My brain at night is particularly like, like this, but guess what? I manage my brain. I talk back to it. I say to my brain, no brain, we are not doing this. I am not listening to you. Number one, I have a rule in my brain that I do not listen to my nighttime thoughts. It’s just like a hard rule. I tell myself, okay, if that’s a real thing, we’ll talk about it in the morning because my, prefrontal brain, this goes for you too. It’s slower and tired at night, and so your thinking will not be as high quality. So my brain goes to a lot more unhelpful thinking, a lot more negative thinking, a lot more worrisome thinking at night. So I just have a constraint, like absolutely not brain. We’re not doing that. Nope. It’s a no. And I feel my feelings then, right?

Because what, nine times outta 10, it’s just like, oh, I’m just tired. Okay, take some deep breaths and go to bed, right? But if you don’t understand that, I’m telling you it’s like the difference between like making a problem out of nothing and just like going to bed and seeing the amazingness that your life is, and that is only solved through brain management. You cannot yoga class your way out of that. It does not matter if you are not managing your brain. And it’s so different than therapy, right? I have no problems with therapy. I have nothing against it. I actually had a therapist many, many years ago who was extraordinarily helpful just like coaches and therapists and physicians and whatever your care team, you gotta shop around for what you like. But what I want to emphasize here is like the difference between therapy and coaching, because therapy oftentimes is past focus.

And so we’re looking at your past and your childhood and trauma and all the things, right? I always like to say it’s outside my pay grade. I don’t navigate that. My expertise is coaching. It is being able to identify where you are self-sabotaging, where you are not managing your brain, where you are shoulding yourself, where you are falling into cognitive distortions, where your thinking is unhelpful for what you want to create. So practically, when you’re having a challenge with your sister-in-law, when you’re parenting your kid and you’re feeling so overwhelmed when you’re tense and snappy, like the everyday challenges though that we sort of think are just, you know, part of the package deal with motherhood, it’s just not true. There is such a wide spectrum of your experience of your life based on your ability to manage your brain. So a lot of times when we are really struggling, we can think, oh, this is just normal.

Everyone’s really struggling. And what I see online is fake. It’s kind of like, have you ever been broke before? And you’re like, oh, well that person who looks rich like that can’t be real. They can’t be rich right? Because you are so broke that you just can’t even fathom someone else actually being able to spend lavishly and having like a huge savings and being able to afford it ’cause it’s so out of the realm of what you are experiencing. And I find that to be true with motherhood. It’s like, oh, you know, social media isn’t real. And like I get the sentiment behind that. And certainly there are elements of it that aren’t real. And also some of it is very real. And your motherhood experience and my motherhood experience, yes, there are going to be challenges and things that happen that we wish wouldn’t happen.

And who are you going to be through that? You can have a very joyful, wonderful experience of motherhood. You can become the calm, present, happy mom that you genuinely want to be, but the only way that you’re going to be able to do that is through brain management because on default you will have distorted thinking and there’s nothing wrong with you, right? This is just the primitive brain going to all or nothing thinking overgeneralizing, discounting the positive, right? That overemphasis on the negative because the survival brain is scanning for what’s wrong. And this just means your brain is really sharp, shoulds, right? Shoulds on you and shoulds on other people. They shouldn’t be this way. My kids should definitely be different. My husband should definitely be different. I should be different. All of that shoulding, if you don’t have the tools to take a look at that, it’s going to be very challenging to be calm and present and connected, right?

We all say we want that, but are you willing to do what it takes to get that and create that? And I think, I think it’s just like we don’t know what we don’t know. Like I realize that through being interviewed on this podcast, it’s like, wait, what thought work? It’s like you think you have a patience problem, but you don’t have a patience problem, you have a brain management problem, and that problem is solved through thought work. And I just remember a time where I would think a thought like, I hate my life. It’s hard for me to even remember like what period of my life this was. It was so long ago. I can’t remember if I was like, it either had to be like late teens or early twenties. And I thought that was just like a normal thought to have.

And first of all, I didn’t even know it was a thought. I was associating with my thoughts. And just to be clear, like I wasn’t depressed or suicidal or anything like that. I just remembered like, I had that thought as if that was just a way to think about your life. Like, like when something would go wrong, I would just think, you know, FML I hate my life. Like, oh my goodness, my friends, how in the world are you supposed to have like a calm, joyful, you know, present experience of motherhood and just enjoy your life if you have thoughts like that? And again, the solution is not gratitude and patience. And I hear it all of the time. The solution my friends is brain management, real tools of looking at your thoughts and then changing them. And it is a process, right? You have to get like a little more skilled at looking at thoughts and identifying them and then pulling them apart and questioning them.

I don’t want to get too much into like the nitty gritty of it, mostly because it can sound kind of boring. And it’s, it’s boring in the way that like doing pushups is boring. Like if I was talking to you right now about exercising and I was trying to, you know, talk with you about the benefits to your overall health with respect to doing pushups, and I started describing, you know, where your elbow should be in your hands. You would just be like, okay, cool. Like, you know, it’s, it’s not a very like, interesting in that regard. But if I was telling you about like the benefits of doing pushups regularly, continuously and how that would compound over time for the rest of your life, like that is the most interesting thing. But then you gotta actually do the pushup and you gotta actually put your hands in the right spot and you actually move up and down and you gotta be short of breath and your arms then hurt.

It’s the exact same thing with thoughts because it’s art and science. So the science is, yeah, you have to identify a thought and separate it out from facts. And the art is, deciding which thoughts to look at, look at your most problematic thoughts. But sometimes we’re so attached to our thoughts, we don’t want to give ’em up. And so sometimes starting with like that low hanging fruit, like how do you relate to your life? Or better yet, when someone asks you how are things going, how do you respond? That’s a choice. The way that you speak about yourself and your life and your motherhood, that is all a choice. And I am never going to tell you to just think positively about something. That’s why this is Mom On Purpose. I’m here to teach you how to think purposefully and live purposefully. So if you are going through a really hard time, I want to help you get out of self pity and blame and, you know, magnifying the negative or all or nothing thinking those cognitive distortions that are, you know, going to be most present when things are hard, when there’s a challenge.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll want to think this is the best thing ever, but it will feel better because you will feel empowered and confident and connected from managing your mind. So I was thinking about what to call this episode and I was thinking about like, as moms what we want, right? We want to be present, we want to be calm, we want to be happy, right? And the way to do that is to manage your mind. It is the number one skill. Why other? Because other things will contribute to it, right? If you go do your most favorite thing, you will likely feel happy after, but you can’t be dependent on something else for your own internal feelings because the things that you depend on that are external aren’t always reliable. So let’s say that a big part of what fills you up, emotionally is, you know, going to your favorite workout class and you just feel so energized, okay?

Awesome, I love that for you. But what happens during a pandemic when that’s shut down and now you’re at home? Okay? And that’s not to say that you still shouldn’t get positive feelings from, you know, the things that you are doing, okay? It’s never that. It’s always coming from your mind, but you associate it with that fine. But when you do thought work and you know that you are the one who creates your feelings, then it doesn’t matter what happens in the world or with your kids or your spouse or your house, you are so mentally strong and emotionally capable of feeling however you want to feel. Because as long as you have a healthy human brain, you can always depend on yourself to feel how you want to feel. Now again, I’m not trying to turn you into a robot. I think that, you know, we would all agree, we want to be present and calm and happy, and then when a tragedy happens or when there’s a diagnosis, we do want to feel appropriate emotions.

But that’s really not what I’m talking about here. That’s typically not what I see presents with like high achieving moms as the problem. We know that if there’s a tragedy, we want to feel some sadness and we want to feel some disappointment and we want to feel some grief. If there’s a diagnosis, same thing. What I’m talking about here is like the day-to-day experience of motherhood. Like what if you thought about yourself and the mom who you want to be and you want to be the most present, calm and happy mom, you know, like, what is she like? Get to know her. Think about her. And what level would you need to be managing your mind at for that to be possible? The things that sort of derail you emotionally right now, that would not be possible in that version of you. You would have to be much more mentally strong and emotionally sort of like resilient, resilient and adaptable.

Meaning specifically, you know, the kids throw something or they’re getting in a fight or they go and very directly and intentionally do something you ask them not to do. Can you still show up as the mom who you want to be? Can you still be calm? Right? That isn’t like a mystery, that’s not something that some people are born with and some aren’t. That’s not something you get from practicing gratitude, my friend. I promise you it is done 100% of the time through brain management. It’s the only way because your thoughts create your feelings. So if you want to feel calm and connected to your kids, the solution is brain management. The solution is thought work.

I do not think there is a more important skill for you to get really good at than thought work because it transcends everything. There is nothing that can happen outside of you with your kids, with your family, with your home, with your spouse in the world, right? The pandemic, nothing that will be able to derail you or bring you down when you have thought work. Now again, that doesn’t mean you want to be happy all of the time. When I say bring you down, I mean like, I don’t mean, sad or disappointed, the emotions you want to experience, I mean, bring you down in the sense of like you’re stuck. You are feeling emotions that you don’t want to be feeling. You’re constantly like yelling or just, just showing up in a way that is out of alignment with who you want to be. There is nothing that can happen externally that can make you show up as the mom who you don’t want to be.

When you have thought work, that means you stop snapping and you stop feeling so tense. You give yourself what you need. You don’t experience mom guilt again, it sounds like the promise is too big, but it’s not. I love when I get together with other coaches and they just like have no mom guilt. They’re thinking at like the next level and it’s just a reminder like, oh yeah, that’s because these tools work and I’m not, you know, suggesting you need to become a coach. I’m just reminding you here as your coach that the skill of thought work is something you consistently work on. It’s kind of like, oh yeah, I did some pushups. It’s not complete. It’s like, oh yeah, I’m going to do some pushups every single day. And for those of you who aren’t in the membership yet, I want to really be clear about what thought work is, because I’m talking about it here in terms of like brain management, yes, but it’s, it’s again, an art and a science.

You have to become aware of your thoughts regularly, become aware of them, and then question them, pulling them apart. This is the part that most people want to skip. They’re like, okay, I found my thought and now I want to change it. It’s like, okay, slow it down my friend. You’re not ready to change it. You have to pull it apart and question it, then choose a better next believable thought. It’s not about forcing positive thinking, it’s about thinking purposefully. Like when you really get this, you will never think a super negative thought about your spouse. Again, you might have one pop in your mind, but then you can turn it around really quickly. And again, that does not mean you want to think a happy thought about your spouse. You might want to feel a little bit of disappointment. Maybe they broke your trust. But the crazy thoughts that your brain will have on default, which I always say, I’m like, there’s no shame in whatever you want to get coached on because all of our brains are crazy.

And what I’m meaning there is normalizing that the default primitive brain, because it’s wired for survival and it’s wired to scan for negative, it will have random crazy thoughts. And I want to remove the judgment because if you judge yourself for having that thought and you want to hide it, you won’t be able to pull it apart and change it. So I’m saying that very intentionally, it’s about kind of detaching yourself from your thoughts and holding them out in your hands and looking at them with curiosity like, huh, that’s kind of interesting. My brain is crazy. Why would I ever choose to think that thought? Let me take an example. Your default brain says, oh my gosh, I’m so worried about my firstborn. He doesn’t have any friends. Doesn’t that seem like such a normal, honest, concerned, loving thought that you could have about your child?

Right? This is something I hear and coach on all of the time. It’s like friend challenges or schoolwork, challenges with kids. But here’s the thing that is just a thought. We think it’s a fact. My child doesn’t have any friends. That’s a fact. Natalie, I promise you they said it like I see it. They don’t do anything with friends, but what is a friend, right? You’re just like, you know, making up the story in your mind. Now your brain has good evidence for it, but the question is not is it true? The question is how does it feel when you think that? And that does not mean, again, we don’t go to like, oh my gosh, my, my son has the most friends, he has all the friends. That’s where I think the cognitive distortion work becomes so important because we’re not going to all or nothing thinking a much more empowering thought just in this example is, you know what I’m noticing that my first s born is navigating some friendship challenges, and I’m going to be here to support him through it.

And I know he’s going to figure this out. Like seeing your kids as the hero of their own lives, just like you see yourself as the hero of your life empowers them and you can still support them, but like it’s from a loving, confident energy and you’re giving them confidence when you are worried that they don’t have friends. Guess what? They know that, okay, now of course they’re not going to articulate it in that way, but they know it. They feel it. And so you have to clean up your thoughts my friends. Again, it’s not all or nothing thinking, it’s not he has friends or he doesn’t have friends. It’s noticing your thoughts and how unhelpful they are for you to be the mom who you want to be. So when you choose your thoughts deliberately, that’s when you create the emotions you want to create.

You can feel completely calm while your kids are dysregulated. You can feel connected to them. You can also feel warm. And if you want to feel firm, if you’re holding a boundary, you can feel present and happy. You could just feel happy just because you want to. I think with high achieving moms, it’s so interesting. Like we think that it’s sort of irresponsible to feel happy. We’re like, well, but we have so much to do Like, there’s no time for happiness. It’s just, you know, the human brain. It’s like why do we do this to ourselves, my friends? But I think that’s part of it, right? I think that’s what’s so interesting about motherhood. It is a daily personal development invitation every single day. I promise you there are at least 10 different instances where you could use one of these tools to help you.

A hundred percent. I believe that even if you sat at home all day, maybe especially if you sat at home all day, right? It doesn’t have anything to do with like what you are doing. It has everything to do with what’s happening in your brain. And I just want you to know that it changes everything when you do this work. And you gotta do it forever. But that’s okay. It’s kind of fun. It’s kind of like, again, I’m, I’m talking with you about working out and you don’t work out yet, and you’re like, yeah, but can I just go to the gym for a week? And I’m like, no, you gotta go forever. And you’re like, that’s a really long time like, I know, but you can learn to love it. And it’s freeing because it, it takes care of your body, your life. When you take care of your brain and you learn thought work, sky is the limit, my friend.

You clean up all of the low hanging fruit, the challenges and you will still have some challenges, but you’ll work your way through them so much faster. And then you can set and achieve really big goals. You make decisions more easily and more quickly. You clean up any layers of guilt. You let other people be them. It really is the secret to life. So if you take one thing from today, I want you to know you don’t need more patience. You don’t need to practice more gratitude, you need to manage your brain. It’s the number one skill that changes motherhood. And you do that through thought work. And once you master this skill, again, it’s kind of like mastering the pushup. It’s not that you’re done with it, you continue to do it as a practice. It’s not something you complete. That’s why in the Mom On Purpose Membership, we have a weekly call every single week.

There’s content you can listen to on the podcast in there as well. And when you are able to listen to coaching, learn the tools, apply them to your life, motherhood stops feeling like something that you have to get through that carries this heaviness to it that’s fueled with worry about your kids and never ending to-do lists. And it starts feeling like something you are leading on purpose. This is exactly what we do inside the membership. Real tools to help you manage your mind so you can finally feel the way that you want to in your life and with your kids. Wouldn’t it be fun to become the most present, calm and happy mom you know?sounds like an awesome goal if I had to say so myself, my friend. All right, I will see you inside the membership and talk with you next week. Take care.