As a working mother, do you ever feel like your day just flies by without you having even a minute to yourself? Believe me, that’s totally normal.
Because I so often see this issue with working mothers, I’ve created a Success Journal which helps women organize their days and prioritize self-care. I myself am aware of the challenges that working mothers face, and helping women become the best versions of themselves possible is my passion.
The purpose of this journal is to give you space to focus on your personal well-being. You already have to-do lists for work and your family, so why not implement a space dedicated to your mental and emotional health! My Success Journal will help working mothers to have success by giving them a way to organize and prioritize their self-care, which will in turn make them happier and healthier in their professional and personal lives.
If you are feeling stretched thin between work, your family, trying to maintain personal relationships and your mental sanity, there are certain steps you can take to bring some peace and order to your life.
Organize Your Day on Paper
You may have a list of a million things that you need to do in your head, but until you get them down on paper you won’t be able to keep track of your priorities. What often happens to working moms is that they get their primary work and family tasks accomplished, while personal goals and self-care practices fall to the wayside.
If you keep track of your priorities, goals and reflections on paper (for example in my free Success Journal – see link in bio) you will be able to pencil your personal needs and intentions into your daily schedule.
Take note of how you’re feeling, what you hope to accomplish, how you plan on taking care of yourself and what your reflections from the day are. By implementing this simple daily practice you will make self-care not only a priority, but also a habit.
Be Realistic About Your Goals
While we would all love to hit our benchmarks at work, make a gourmet meal for the kids, catch up with old friends, take a bubble bath, spend time with our SO and take an hour of time for ourselves every day, it is simply not feasible.
That’s why it is so important to be realistic about the goals and intentions that you set for yourself. I’m all about being ambitious, but if you start your day by dreaming up goals that are way out of your league, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
So rather than go from zero to one hundred overnight, start with reasonable goals that you can slowly amend. Want to start meditating? Start with 5 minutes a day and see if you can work yourself up to a half hour over time.
I’m not telling you to underestimate your Super Mama abilities, but rather be honest with yourself about what you can achieve with the finite number of hours you have in the day, then slowly work your way up to bigger, more ambitious goals.
Prioritize Self-Care
You wouldn’t tell your client that you can’t deliver their project by the deadline because you have too many other things going on. You wouldn’t tell your kids that you can’t pick them up from school because you’ve got too much on your plate. So why do we create excuses to avoid self-care?
If we want to implement self-care into our daily routines, we must treat it like a priority. By giving self-care the same importance that we give to any other work or family-related obligation, we find a way to pencil out a few minutes in our day to give ourselves the space and time that we need.
Self-care doesn’t have to mean attending an hour-long yoga class or spending all evening preparing your favorite nourishing meal. When you do have time to do so, by all means, go for it! But on the days that you only seem to have ten minutes or less to yourself, be intentional about your self-care.
Our time is all we have, and how we choose to spend it has an immense impact on our mental and emotional well-being. Rather than spending those ten minutes planning out the rest of your kids’ week or worrying about that looming assignment, use the time to take care of yourself.
You can take a quick walk, read a chapter of the book that has been sitting on your nightstand for months, write a few pages in your journal, stretch, have a cup of tea or do whatever else your body and soul is craving. The important thing is that you take the time to relax, disconnect and relish in your much deserved self-care.
