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Self-care is an important part of staying sane as working moms and yet for many women it is extremely hard to do. We just simply aren’t the priority. In this episode I will share the secret to unlocking how to prioritize yourself. There is just one thing that separates women who are able to prioritize themselves and women who are not.

Topics in this episode:

• The truth about what it takes to prioritize yourself

• Why not just knowing you should prioritize yourself is enough

• Why what you believe about yourself is important to self care

• What some women believe that unlocks their ability to prioritize themselves

• 5 powerful beliefs that lead to you saying no, taking time for yourself and other forms of self-care

Show Notes:

• Episode 5 – Human Value vs Accomplished Value

• Join the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom Collective – This is a group coaching program for working moms looking to create the building blocks to work-life balance. The program teaches you a 5 step process, includes weekly group coaching and a private community of working moms all determined to create a balanced life. Find out more information here: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/collective

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Transcription

Intro

No one would argue that self-care is an important part of staying sane as working moms and yet for many women it is extremely hard to do. We just simply aren’t the priority. But it’s not like we don’t know what we need to do in order to prioritize ourselves, it’s that we aren’t doing it. In this episode, I want to share with you the secret to unlocking how to prioritize yourself. From the hundreds of women I have worked with I have found this to be what separates women who are able to prioritize themselves and women who are not. You ready? Let’s get to it.

Welcome to the ambitious and balanced working mom podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you’re looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home then this is the place for you. I’m your host Rebecca Olson, let’s get to it!

This is not an episode about scheduling in me-time, though for sure that is something you should do.

This is not an episode where I tell you to take more baths, get your nails done or spend time with your girlfriends now and again, though you should do that too.

This is not an episode about finding a hobby, something to occupy your time so you are not always focused on taking care of the kids or working.

This is an episode about your relationship with you and the way you treat yourself. The words you use to describe yourself. The thoughts you have about yourself. The way you care for yourself. It’s about what you believe about yourself.

Because what you believe about yourself has everything to do with your ability to prioritize yourself.

That’s what we are focusing on here in this podcast, not what you need to be doing but what you need to be believing. Because most people know what prioritizing yourself looks like, they know what they should be doing. They should be…

Scheduling in time for just you
Leaving work at the time you said you want to leave work
Not taking on responsibilities/projects you don’t really want to do
Settling for inequitable household duties – essentially always being the one that cleans and manages the household
Spending money on yourself
Taking vacation time
Unplugging over the weekends
Doing something just because it’s fun

I can go on and on, but these are the things I do and I see a lot of women do when they are prioritizing themselves.

Now when I talk to my clients about prioritizing themselves. Most of them say something like, “I just need to be better at…scheduling in time for me, saying no, not logging back on, scheduling my vacation, letting people be disappointed” or “I know I should just… go for a walk and let my husband watch the kids, or hire a housecleaner, or ask my boss if I can work from home 2 days a week, or go get a massage”. They know what they need to do, that isn’t the issue.

Are motivation and willpower the missing link?

It reminds me a lot of when we try to lose weight. What you need to be doing to lose weight is not all that complicated. You need to exercise and you need to eat healthily. I'm generalizing of course but generally speaking, losing weight is some combination of these two things, that's it. So it's not as if we don't know what we need to be doing to lose weight, it's just that we are not doing it. And most would just say they need to feel more motivated or they need to muster up more willpower.

As if motivation and willpower is the missing link. They know they should be doing this but because they can’t seem to do it, even though they know they should, motivation & willpower must be the thing they're lacking.

But most people don’t know how to conjure up motivation & will power on demand. So they feel stuck.

This is the cycle that many working moms describe to me.

But, I want to talk about what is actually happening.

You have all these ‘prioritizing me things’ you know you should be doing: saying no, leaving work on time, leaving the house a mess sometimes, guilt-free time to yourself…all these things I mentioned earlier. These are the things you are NOT doing.

Instead, you are likely doing the opposite, you are doing things that prioritize others instead: saying yes, working late, working on the weekend, always cooking, feeling guilty when you steal some time away for yourself…

Feeling not good enough stops us from prioritizing ourselves.

All these actions flow out of just a few emotions with the top one being INADEQUACY. Simply not feeling good enough.

You are not prioritizing yourself because you don’t feel good enough…so you do more, say yes to more people, you don’t want to let anyone down, you don’t want your kids to feel bad, you don’t want anyone to feel disappointed in you because it would prove you are not good enough.

For ambitious women, feeling inadequate always leads to doing more and feeling the need to prove yourself.

If you look at this from the other side, from a different angle, you can say that someone that feels adequate and good enough always seems to be able to prioritize themselves. Many of us would describe them as confident.

Take a moment even now and bring to mind someone that you admire for being able to hold their boundaries, unplugs after work, takes vacations, has hobbies, schedules time for themselves and their needs, bring them to mind…now, do you think they do these things because they feel adequate and good about themselves? Or because they feel inadequate and not good about themselves?

Of course, it’s the first. It doesn’t even make sense to think that women that prioritize themselves do so from a place of inadequacy, right?

No, women that prioritize themselves feel adequate. They feel good about who they are, what they do, the kind of mom they are, the impact they're making in this world. Their beliefs about themselves are extremely high.

That's why this is a podcast not about what you need to do to prioritize yourself, it's about what you need to believe.

What you need to believe about yourself to prioritize YOU.

I want to offer to you five of the most powerful thoughts I believe about myself and all of my clients that have unlocked the ability to put myself first.

I am going to read them to you but then talk about each one:

I am valuable
I have something to offer
I am necessary
I am always in control
My best is always good enough

Let's talk about the first, I am valuable. I've talked about this on the podcast before and I will link it up in the show notes, it was episode 5 where I talked about your human vs your accomplished value. Here's the thing, we are born with value. You don't have to do anything to prove it, you don't have to earn it, you are innately valuable. And here's what I believe, I just have to show up and I bring value, my very presence is valuable. I know this because when I walk into a room people are impacted by my presence. I actually have my clients go through an exercise of asking a few close friends and family the impact they have when they walk into a room because I really want their brains to see that they don't have to do anything in order to know that they're impacting lives. When I walk into a room or when somebody is in my presence they feel a sense of depth from me. I have a natural way of inviting people in and making people feel like they belong with me even if I don't know them. It's the way I smile, it's the way I carry myself, it's my energy. I am valuable. It is not egocentric to believe this about yourself because everyone is valuable.

Every single day I wake up believing that I have something to give to the world.

The second one, I have something to offer. This is the belief that inherently I am meant to do something in this world that impacts the world for good. Because I believe this about myself, I always feel needed. Life always feels purposeful. It's not about getting my career right as if there's a very narrow way that I meant to offer myself in this world, no, instead I believe I have something to offer every single day I wake up. Sometimes my clients get what I have to offer, sometimes my kids get what I have to offer or my husband or my neighbor or the random person that happened to read my Facebook post. But every single day I wake up believing that I have something to give and that I give it.

The third is I am necessary. Essentially I am needed. The world is more valuable because I exist in it. I hold this belief about everyone. Everyone in this world is necessary. What makes being human so amazing is that everyone has a role to play. And it's not just about your job or the career that you have, it’s just simply about the person that you are and the person you're designed to be, the way you just show up in this world and exist. It's necessary.

The 4th is that I am always in control. This is an important belief I have about myself because it puts me in the driver's seat of my life. I don't want to do things out of obligation or because of this belief that I have to. Life is not just happening to me, I'm creating it, both the good and the bad. I actually want to take ownership over the bad over the things that are not going in my favor because that means that I can actually change it. To believe I am not in control is to feel powerless and at the whim of other people. Now if you know me on a more personal level you do know that I am also a Christian, I'm a Jesus follower. So this belief about myself can feel a little bit tricky because I do in fact believe that there are other forces at work, namely God that has influence over my life as well. But, because I am in control of my spiritual beliefs, I am still able to believe this.

The last is: my best is always good enough. I think there's a really big emphasis on the good enough. Whatever I accomplished today, whatever human I impacted today, however messy I showed up as a mom today, whatever I cleaned in my house today, however much I accomplished on my to-do list, it is always good enough. This belief is how I counter all of those sneaky thoughts that like to tell us as working moms that we're not doing enough and keep us in exhausting action mode. In the grand scheme of things whatever I accomplished today, whatever effort I put in it's good enough.

I am valuable

I have something to offer

I am necessary

I am always in control

My best is always good enough

These powerful five thoughts are true about you too.

And I guarantee you the women that are able to hold to their boundaries, scheduled time for themselves, unplug at the end of their workdays, exude a lot of confidence, these women believe these as well. They are the five beliefs that lead you to prioritize yourself because they make you feel adequate.

Like I said before these are the beliefs that I believe about me, but I also believe them about my clients as well. I believe them before they even believe them. I hold space for my clients to increase these beliefs because I know that when they allow these thoughts about themselves to sink deep into their body and their soul out of them will flow an amazingly powerful, ambitious, fruitful, energizing life.

I encourage you to take one of these and practice it for yourself this week. Just one. Take the one that leapt out to you when I talked about it, write it down every single day this week and with it write how you know it to be true.

You can teach your brain to believe these by simply practicing them. I actually walk all of my clients through a process of learning how to practice beliefs, how to change their thinking about themselves, so if you're looking for a guide through the process, there are six lessons where I walk you through it step by step when you join the ambitious and balanced working moms collective. I will add a link in the show notes on how to join.