You’ve been there. You keep repeating the same time wasting tasks over and over again, but are at a loss on how to fix them. You are feeling stuck. Problem is, what systems do you use and how do you implement them? You just know that if you can implement that system you see other successful mothers using, then you will be set. You will have your life together at last. Right?
 
Not exactly. Sometimes it comes down to something a little deeper and today I am revealing the key to why you’re stuck. If you have been looking for the way out of your mess, exhaustion, and stress for a while now, then this is the episode for you!

Listen below for the entire episode on The Systemize Your Life Podcast

Three Mistakes Keeping You From Success in Motherhood & Marriage

I want you to walk away from this post today confident that you can stop feeling stuck in life. The information I have for you is tried and true, by me. These are the same mistakes I was making when I was trying to be successful. Like you, I wanted to be a good wife and mom. I wanted to live in a clean house that looked pretty, felt comfortable to me, and made my family feel comfortable. It was an important part of how I wanted to nurture and care for them. On top of that, I also really wanted to provide income for our family while staying home.

All of this led to me feeling stuck and overwhelmed. To deal with that, I over-indulged in food and shopping. I spent time on meaningless activities and wasted so much time with endless scrolling and group texting my friends for a distraction. I had no plans, I was worn out, and I was trying to please everyone with how I ran my business.

If you really are feeling stuck in your life, I would be willing to bet that you are also making at least one of these mistakes. Maybe you are making all three. Let’s dive deeper into each of these and I will give you an action plan for fixing each mistake.

1. No Plans in Place

So many women are running around believing there is no time to slow down to create an effective plan or strategy for their time. Is that you? That’s a problem. Stopping feels counterintuitive, I know. Taking the time to get your ducks in order is more daunting than hustling your life away because when you are hustling, you at least feel like you are accomplishing something.

I understand that stopping seems like a dumb idea, but it comes back to the saying, “slow down to speed up.” If you want the madness to stop, YOU have to stop it. It will not stop itself. Take the time to do it.

The goal is to get you through a week. I make my brain go a week at a time. Everyone who knows me knows that if you want to work with me, you have to wait. I plan my week on Sundays and I plan it around my family, business, and fundamental needs. THEN I plan everything else. That’s how I do it. That’s how I got out of feeling stuck in the chaos.

Don’t Create More Work for Yourself

You have enough on your plate, your goal with planning is not to add more to it. The goal is to make it more efficient. For example, going to the grocery store multiple times per week. That wastes so much time. Another example is when you have a kiddo with a specific activity and you get there to realize you don’t have the correct equipment or items for that activity so you have to make an extra trip to fix it.

So while you are making multiple trips and backtracking, you are cramming your work time in with your phone wherever you can, like when you are supposed to be cooking dinner or when you are on the toilet. Let’s fix that by taking the following five steps.

Create an Effective Plan

1. Set up Google Calendar (or whatever digital calendar you use) with all your scheduled appointments in it before Monday.
2. Make sure you have time set aside for food prep, cleaning, working, playing with the kids, and down time.
3. Make sure your house is tidy before Monday.
4. Know what hours you are working on your business that week. Decide before the week starts and stick to them.
5. Update all communication with your family. Your family needs to know the plan.

Remember: fail to plan, plan to fail. Run your ship.

2. Taking Care of Yourself Last

Women have been taught that caring for others first is inherently a really good thing and that focusing on your own needs is super selfish. When that happens, we feel less than. We feel like we are not good wives or mothers. In fact, we can feel like we are not good anythings. By putting yourself last, you are choosing to believe that and that is absolutely wrong.

Your job is to keep each pillar where you are called to serve at maximum capacity. You want to keep your kids and husband spiritually, emotionally, and physically fueled and cared for. Your house is not a holy mess, where you open cupboards and things fall out. If you run a business, you want that fully charged.

You Can’t Pour From an Empty Cup!

In order to pour into these areas, you have to be fully charged yourself. Think of the cup analogy. You have four cups that you are pouring into (kids, home, business, marriage) and if you are trying to pour with drops in your cup, you are rationing just to get by. You are depleted.

What happens when your cup is overflowing so much that they scoot closer so they can fill up on what is pouring out of you? What happens then? You stop yelling, stop living in chaos, stop operating in silos from your husband, stop drowning yourself in coffee. That’s when the madness stops. You stop feeling stuck in life.

“Self-care is not selfish, it’s important. So please start showing up for yourself so you can show up for everyone else the way that you are called to.”

Self-Care is Not a Bad Word

Self-care is a term that was created to bring awareness and validation to the dire need women have from constantly neglecting themselves. They wanted to be given permission to care for themselves. But I say, what if self-care wasn’t just a word?

What if self-care was a way of life? When you have a system for how to make your needs happen consistently, that becomes you having all those cups scooting closer to you. Those cups fill with no stress.

Four Things You Can Do to Start Prioritizing You Right Now

1. Inventory your current emotional buckets. What are your cups? For most, they are the same four: home, business, marriage, and kids. You may have a fifth.
2. What is working? What is not? Write it down. Talk with your husband. Really think through these two questions and be honest with yourself.
3. Create a list of non-negotiable tasks that maintain what is working and/or fix what is not working.
4. Prioritize those tasks as a non-negotiable part of planning your week.

There is no way you will be called to your highest work until the foundation of who you are is solid. Because you can’t do it. You can’t build on a cracked foundation. So if you want to build the life that you know you were called to build, you have to strengthen your foundation.

Self-care is not selfish, it’s important. So please start showing up for you so you can show up for everyone else the way that you are called to.

3. Trying to Run Your Business When It is Convenient for Others

When you sit down every single day to figure out how your day is going to go and you get panicky trying to please everyone else, that’s a good indicator that you are trying to please other people too much. Another indicator is running around with a list in your head of everything to get done, but not actually having a plan in place to get those things done.

You want a third indicator? Ask yourself this. Are you afraid to ask your husband to take care of the kids or to cook dinner so you can get work done? Or for a 4-5 hour chunk of child-free time on a Saturday?

To take your dreams from dreams to your actual life, you have to start treating them like they matter to you.

Three Steps to Start Diving into Managing Your Business Like it Matters

1. Know what tasks you need to get done and when you will set aside time to do them. Make a list of everything that needs to get done, batch them up into like tasks, and make a plan for when you are doing them.
2. Plan your fundamental needs and family schedule with your work block involved. You can’t plan out your entire week leaving no time to run your business and think you will run a successful business.
3. Systemize your communication with your family. Start creating systems so they understand what is happening. Let them know what you expect and start outsourcing some of your tasks to family. Who can do laundry? Who can do dishes?

Stop Feeling Stuck in Life – You Really Can Do It!

If you are ready to stop doing all of this and want a step-by-step plan laid out for you, get into the Academy. I have everything organized for you. In four weeks, we cover:

• Discovering your important tasks and prioritizing them
• Setting up your time management system
• Decluttering
• Zone cleaning
• Meal planning
• How to communicate it all with your family

You can go from feeling stuck in life to feeling confident in your marriage, motherhood, home management, and business.