It may seem simple for some, and I bet you’re wondering why it’s not simple for you…but you are NOT alone, or RARE! Most work from home moms is struggling to keep it together and show up for all the things, all the time. But the good news is, there is hope. In fact, the life you are searching for and dreaming about doesn’t have to be left to hope. That life is just a few simple changes away and I’m giving all of them to you right here! If you are ready to make a change, look no further.
Listen below for the entire episode on The Systemize Your Life Podcast
We’ve all been there at times, feeling like a failure because we can’t keep up, struggling with mom guilt because we’re killing it in our business but not doing great in motherhood, only to overcompensate and start doing the complete opposite and you and your husband are somewhere on that pendulum all at the same time. The house is a mess, you can’t keep a schedule, and you’re just done and you know you need to make a change, but you have no idea where to start. You’re sick of it all and ready to move forward and truly make a change.
Consider this post your survival guide!
First, you need to understand fully and completely that this is never going to look perfect. Motherhood is something else! There’s inconsistency, unpredictability, and plenty of things outside of your control and the entire point of all of this is for you to understand that there are certain things that you can control and should be intentionally taking the bull by the horns (the life that you have being the bull), and you should be giving yourselves the tools, strength, and stamina to steer that thing every single day. With all of its unpredictability and inconsistency—with everything that it is—you should be preparing yourself to run that ship. There’s no way to take any of that out. Kids get sick, our marriages need attention, family need us, and the house gets dirty if we go out of town or don’t have the energy to clean it one week. Life happens to all of us.
The real crux of all of this is that I’ve chosen to put my time and intentions into what I want my life to look like, and it’s time for you to do the same thing. There is something uniquely designed inside of me, just like in all of us for various things, that allowed me to see through the fog and see what’s on the other side and the definitive path needed to get there. Has it been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, yes! Hands down.
It is hard working from home, creating income, and showing up for other people outside of my husband, children, and home. It is insanely hard, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. You’re probably in the same boat, right? Maybe you’ve just been trying to figure out how to make it work all along.
I’ve been messaged by so many women saying, “I’m done. I’m ready to give up. I can’t do this anymore. Something’s gotta give.” It’s the conversation that we have with ourselves that we end up turning bright red with steam coming out of our ears, meeting our husband at our breaking point, and saying those very things. We just stand in the middle of our home looking at the dirty dishes, no food in the fridge, laundry’s overflowing, toys are all over the place, the kids are behind on their homework and can’t find anything, you haven’t had enough consistent sleep…it’s just a never-ending story and you need a life raft.
I will say that this post is going to be really straightforward because it really is that simple to me. I’ve been doing this long enough now to know exactly where you need to start to get you exactly what you’re here to find. This really can be the start of everything that you see in your mind about what you want your life to look like. It really does start right here, right now.
I’m gonna give you five things to stop doing right now, and I’m gonna give you five things to start doing instead. Here’s the kicker, these are not easy, and that’s what this all comes down to—how badly do you want this? How badly do you want to live with intention and to show up for yourself? Because you know that you and your children are capable and worth it to live in a house that’s clean, fresh, and refuels and restores all of you.
You know that you want to be the woman to lead in all of that, to be able to support your husband, kids, yourself, and your business. You’re doing from home and you want all of those things, but how badly do you want them? Bad enough to make changes and show up even when it hurts, even when it’s hard, even when everything in your mind tells you you’re probably going to screw up and fail?
I hear it in my mind. All the time. And I tell her to be quiet and I get up and I do it anyway!
If you want it bad enough, you’ll do these five things that are completely free, and you’ll stop doing the other five things.
“You need to understand fully and completely that this is never going to look perfect. Motherhood is something else! There’s inconsistency, unpredictability, and plenty of things outside of your control and the entire point of all of this is for you to understand that there are certain things that you can control and should be intentionally taking the bull by the horns.”
STOP DOING THESE RIGHT NOW!
1. Stop being on social media 7 days a week.
Limit yourself to 5 days a week max of social media. Stop it. How do you do that? Delete the apps. Just completely delete them on the weekend! Don’t ask any questions, just trust me and do what I’m telling you to do. You can reinstall them on Monday, that’s it. I promise you it’s gonna be ok, you’re not gonna lose money. In fact you’re actually going to make more money. I’m living proof of that.
2. Stop trying to do everything at once. Stop multitasking.
If you come to a place and you find yourself with three different tasks in front of you. Like, you’re trying to do work while you’re trying to do the dishes, while you’re trying to put kids’ shoes on; just stop everything and focus on one thing at a time. I want you to stop trying to do everything at once. If this is what you do on a regular basis, you’re going to have to stop producing your life that way. So, in what I’m going to tell you to start doing, it will be clear on how you’re going to stop multitasking if you have no idea how to start doing that now.
3. Stop scheduling your life hour by hour.
Stop putting time stamps on everything. You don’t need a schedule. I know, it’s funny, I put in the title of this episode, “Can’t keep a schedule?” why? Because nearly everyone who comes into the Facebook group says, “I can’t keep a schedule!”
That’s because you don’t need a schedule! Yes, I have a framework and time blocks. There are SOME of what I like to call “guideposts”, and yes they’re associated with times, but these are not time stamps, but you can call them that if you want. (I don’t like the connotations of the word “timestamp” because it triggers certain thought processes.)
So these guideposts are trigger moments at certain times throughout the day that you transition into a set of routines. (We’ll talk more about that later.) But, that’s what you need to stop doing, trying to figure out how to create this ideal schedule and you write it out all pretty, “At 9 o’clock I do this and at 9:30 I do this…” Stop doing that! It’s killing your ability to produce! Stop writing out schedules for your family.
4. Stop putting yourself last
No more putting yourself last. You come first from now on. What does that look like and how is that possible because everyone needs you every minute of the day? Am I nuts? Nope. I’m just adamant and 100% convinced and convicted that when you put yourself first, you’re ability to be the mom and wife that you were designed to be is going to shine! You are absolutely going to be more capable of doing all the things well if you start putting yourself first.
Now, remember, I did say that some of these things were not going to be easy. It’s a journey for me too. All of these things take a lot of practice and encouraging self-talk to make this work in my life. But it’s totally worth it and working!
5. Stop being so busy
Your kids don’t have to be in every single activity that every other person’s kids are in every single season of the year. It’s ok for you and your kids to be bored. It’s ok to sit down in the middle of the day and read a book. You don’t constantly have to be doing something. And if you are, I want you to ask yourself why?
One of the reasons why you’re having such a hard time right now is because you are too busy and you need to stop. You’ve got to at least take one of those things off of your plate. What is one thing that you can stop doing?
START DOING THESE INSTEAD!
This is your homework! If you really want to know how to get out of the place that you’re in right now and you truly want to see a change, this is where it starts. It’s not going to happen in a weekend. You could get it all done in a month, for sure. If you want to get it done quickly and to a T with support, with 100% certainty that if you show up you’re going to succeed no matter what and get all your questions answered and have every single part of this tailored to you, you can hop inside the Academy right now!
You’re going to notice results in a week, but in a month, you’re gonna see a major overhaul and feel a super huge breath of fresh air and it’s just going to be on you whether this happens or not.
1. Download the Fundamental Needs Workbook and start doing your fundamental needs.
Every single week, your fundamental needs need to be in your paper planner and in your Google calendar. Start prioritizing yourself first, and setting up your fundamental needs, the core things that you need to be doing every week in order to completely fuel yourself so you can do your very best in motherhood, with your home, in your marriage, and in your business. What are those things? You should know them like the back of your hand.
I have eight of them: date night once a week, a weekly cleaning block, personal time to work on my business, gym time 3-4 times a week, meal prepping and planning, getting to do’s done around the house every week, weekly family fun, and my Sunday sit-down. Those are mine and Blaine and I know them like the backs of our hands. They’re in our calendars and in my paper planner every single week and I want you to do the same thing.
Commit to that and dive into it wholeheartedly and you’ll be rocking and rolling on that within a week!
2. Start Time Blocking with my five-block system.
There’s no other time blocking method out there like this one. This is my own specific creation for work from home moms and it literally works for everyone—my husband, moms that work 9-5, and stay at home moms that don’t have a job. It’s 100% adaptable to what your life looks like, but it is blissful! It’s the answer to all of your multitasking and scheduling your life hour-by-hour problems.
3. Have a workflow for your business
If you are operating a business, then you need to have a workflow. This is what tells you what to do, I talk about it a lot and there are a couple of other previous podcasts that will help you and also a Business Systems Series inside of the Facebook group that you can go through that will help you determine what you need to do in order to get a workflow in place for your business.
4. Get some systems in your home!
These two that I’m about to tell you are the two that you need to start with. First is a meal planning system that you can learn more about in this podcast episode. My meal planning system is genius and literally consists of a board and index cards, nothing fancy about it and that’s why it works. If you don’t do anything else, do this, it is amazing.
The second system that I want you to put into place is a zone cleaning system so that you’re cleaning your house zone by zone, on rotation week after week, and every single month each zone is getting cleaned at least one time. You can learn more about zone cleaning in this podcast episode that will explain all about it.
5. Delete apps on the weekend
Every single weekend you need to delete apps on your phone. On Monday, you download them again. (For Instagram, make sure that you don’t have any draft reels or they will NOT be there when you delete and reinstall the app!) No one’s gonna miss you, nothing will go anywhere, it’s just not worth it you guys!
Remember, slow is the pace that greatness grows. I say that in the Academy all the time. The turtle is the one that wins the race, right?! Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Blaine says that all the time and it’s SO true. When you’re running around 7 days a week, getting distracted by all these stupid comparisonitis issues and you literally are losing all of your self-esteem and becoming insecure because you’re constantly getting sucked into the vortex… Trust me, you’re not actually making good use of your time being on social 7 days a week, it really doesn’t matter.
Whoever is in your upline, whoever your business coach is, just trust me for a minute, for a weekend, and delete your apps. I’m passionate about this because it’s changed my life and the lives of so many others. I could give you so many reasons why you should trust me. I have friends who are running $500,000 businesses that do not have social media most of the time, or on the weekends. I’m telling you, it is completely possible for this to happen.
So, if you are committed to this, you can leave a comment below or just come into the Facebook group and let us know that you’re committed to doing all five of these over the next six weeks or whatever time frame you choose. I’d love to hear from you!
Frequently Asked Questions
Any suggestions for when I start to feel overwhelemed?
Have you ever tried brain dumping? This tool has helped me through many overwhelming days. Check out my past blogpost on how to use a brain dump and what’s needed to make one! I have also found the importance of community – come join our Systemize Your Life Facebook group!
