Welcome to The Wholehearted Mom Podcast! I am so honoured to have you here. You’ll be glad you joined.
In this episode:
- I’m going to start by sharing a little story.
- We discuss why it’s important to reflect and own your values as a working mom
- We will do some mindset work by reflecting on how you want to define your motherhood or who you are as a working mom?
- I share some strategies for how you can start to realign your life with those values in 5 steps.
- I invite you to take action and offer a creative solution for getting your family involved.
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I appreciate you so much for showing up and joining this amazing working mom community we are starting. Thanks for listening and for your support.
#inthistogether
Sarah Reckman
Episode #2 - How To Realign Your Working Mom Life With Your Values
I’m going to start by sharing a little story. I was getting ready to return to my full-time job as a social worker after having my first daughter, and people started to make comments such as, “No one would judge you if you chose to stay home instead”, “are you sure you want to go back, aren’t you going to miss her”, “aren’t you worried you’ll miss her big milestones”, “don’t you wish you could just give up work and stay home?
Now don’t get me wrong I LOVE being a mom. It is my favourite part of who I am and I am so blessed to raise my two little girls. And at the same time I love my work. I would probably go stir crazy being a stay-at-home-mom full-time. My personality and drive give me a passion for a meaningful career. I want to be a working mom.
So, when I say I help career-focused working moms I mean moms that want to work – moms that strive for a meaningful career, whether as a professional, corporate mama, boss, or entrepreneur.
I have a special passion for career-focused moms because there are just so many expectations and pressures around what it means to be a career-focused women and what it means to be a mom. And I have seen these expectations overwhelm and drown amazing, strong women. I envision a mom culture where working moms have the space to prioritize their well-being and their family while also having a meaningful career.
If you are on the other end thinking heck ya. I am a career-focused mama, then you are in the right place. First, I want you to know that you are amazing. That you are a good mom – the best mom for your child. You deserve to experience abundance in both your motherhood and your career without having to sacrifice either. Sure there are moments when as working moms we need to make sacrifices just as we also do when we become wives or partners. But sacrifice doesn’t need to be what defines our story or who we are.
How do you want to define your motherhood or who you are as a working mom?
I believe that the day our first child is born is also the day that a mother is born. That you become a mom. On that day we also become the CEO (hopefully co-CEO) of a team (our family) and our homes. We are thrown into the role of leader, director of human resources, director of people and culture, and frontline worker. And with no training! There is no training on how to run a household or your family.
This is exactly why I have a passion for helping career-focused moms make life simpler, learn how to wear those many hats well, to create balance, to lead with intention and wisdom, and to bring more joy and calm back into their motherhood.
So you might be thinking… “Yes, I want to feel balanced and at ease in my motherhood but I have no idea where to start”.
Let's Get Down To Business
When I am coaching moms I use the business framework of mindset + strategy + action = results/ desired change. So, today I am going to use that framework to walk you through that first step.
When someone decides they want to create a business, one of the first things they need to do is to create a brand which includes their values and a vision statement. Why are these things so important? Well they help us to stay focused and aligned. Knowing where our centre line is is so important when it comes to things such as mom guilt or setting boundaries or family conflict as it gives us an anchor to ground us and keep us centred and make decisions based on our values and intentions.
Understanding Alignment
I want to paint a picture for you to better understand alignment. I want you to imagine you are in a dark room with a single candle in the middle of the floor. That candle is your centre.
That candle represents your values and who you want to be. When you are closest to the candle you are able to experience peace, joy, abundance, clarity, and calm. This is what I mean by being grounded and centered. However when you make choices or have thoughts that are not in alignment with your values you start to take steps away from that candle in the centre. If your choices and thoughts make you take too many steps away from that centre you may find yourself in the dark corner where we experience shame, burnout, scarcity, fear, and hopelessness.
So as I continue to talk over and over about being in alignment I want you to remember this image of the candle in the middle of the room and reflect on where you are in reference to your candle.
Creating A Manifesto
Brene Brown encourages us to create a family manifesto. I am going to walk you through an exercise where together we are going to create a manifesto or value/vision statement for our families. According to the Webster dictionary, a manifesto is a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its creator. And a vision statement is defined as an organization’s declaration of its long-term goals, stating who they want to become.
I invite you to grab a journal, piece of paper, or to print off the handout linked in the show notes below.
We are going to start with some mindset work…
I invite you to reflect on what your personal values are. What do you value most in life? Your values may include how you envision your legacy, how you want to parent and raise the next generation, or how you as a family want to impact the environment, your community and the world around you. For me some of my top values are time with family, personal growth, being socially and environmentally responsible, and living from a place of abundance instead of scarcity. What do you want your family to value most? After you make a big long list, I encourage you to circle the top 5.
In my work with mom’s i’ve learned that much of the stress, overwhelm, and conflict that we experience comes from us making decisions or behaving in a way that is not in alignment with our values. Or allowing others to make decisions for us or to treat us in a way that is not in alignment with our values.
Now that you have your list of values, I encourage you to take some time to reflect on that list and compare it to who you currently are as a career-focused mom and how you spend your time and money as a family. Do they align? Are you living in alignment with your values?
Ok let’s talk strategy - how to really align your working mom life to your values.
Step #1 – write them down (wow look at you, you are already done step one if you took the time to make a list)
Step #2 – define your values. Most organizations have their values defined on their website. For example if you say time with family as a value what does that actually mean? Or if you say intentional what do you mean by intentional? According to the dictionary, intentional means something done on purpose. I don’t think that’s truly what you mean if you value being intentional. What if you instead defined intentional as…. Leading with my heart and mind in perfect harmony and showing up in fierce alignment with my purpose and values.
Step #3 – list ways that these values show up in your life. The easiest way to do this is to write out what each of these values looks, sounds, and feels like. For example: if one of my family values is respect it might look like people respecting each other’s boundaries, it might sound like people using kind words, and it might feel like a safety and belonging.
Sept #4 – identify when your values are out of alignment. Brene Brown calls these your slippery behaviours. Do you ever notice how it’s easier for our body to remember when we aren’t in alignment? Our gut just knows. What are things that lead you to live outside of your values?
Step #5 – create an action plan for how you are going to inject more of these values into your life. If you value family time and want to inject more family time into your life how are you going to make that happen? If you want to inject more joy into your life perhaps you begin to create space for play and creativity. How are you going to live these values out more fully?
Lastly let’s take action – Now you are going to take your key values and create a family manifesto. I have attached a link to Brene Brown’s manifesto and a couple other templates for younger children in the show notes below.
Let's Take Action
ok go to your calendar and schedule a 60 min family meeting so you can sit down and create your family manifesto together. I do actually mean right now. Because we all know once you move on to something else that thought is gone. #mombrain
The family meeting can include you and your partner and your children if they are old enough to participate. The family meeting should be fun and the goal is for everyone to be heard. Grab some crayons or markers and a piece of paper and let’s begin to design the motherhood you’re longing for through creating a healthy family culture.
Looking forward...
I am so excited for next week’s episode where we will take our vision one step further. If you are someone who is eager to start making changes and learning strategies such as time blocking, creating balance, routines, systems, organization and more than bare with me, we will get there I promise. (those are my favourite parts too, I love systems) however I’ve learned from many years of trial and error that we need to start with a solid foundation. Remember in science class as a kid building a tower with marshmallows and toothpicks. And how fast that tower would topple over if we didn’t build a solid foundation? We don’t want all the progress we make in our motherhood journey to topple over when marshmallows get heavy because we didn’t create a strong foundation. So join me next week as we continue to build a strong foundation for motherhood, one that is in alignment with our values and vision for who we want to be and how we want to show up in the world as career-focused moms.