Thriving In Motherhood Podcast | Productivity, Planning, Family Systems, Time Management, Survival Mode, Mental Health, Vision

I've been decluttering my house for years, working through all the layers of things we have. A few weeks ago, I opened a bin of extra bags, backpacks, and soft luggage and figured I could let these things go since it's been a while since I've used them. But then I remembered all the times we DID use them, how useful they were, and all the times in the future that they could come in handy. I put the lid back on the box and decided to deal with it later. As I was mulling over the content of the box a few days later, I had an epiphany about the real reason I wasn't ready to let these things go. We hold onto extra stuff when we don't have a system for how we will do things. Because I don't have a clear system for all the aspects of how we travel as a family, I hold onto more bags and travel items, "just in case" or "grab and go," without giving it lots of thought. Is this okay? Yep! But it's also a challenge for me that I'm excited to keep plugging away at. Developing more systems not only for traveling but for lots of areas of our home and life. Once we know how we'll do something - like the toiletries bags we will use when we make stops in hotels on our road trips - and what and where everything goes in it - then I can confidently get rid of the excess. There are lots of possible systems you can develop in your family and home to make things run more smoothly, but I want to encourage you that you don't need too many in place for you to be able to move forward and spend time on the things you love. Here are five systems that I recommend starting with: Laundry Dishes Meals Wake-up Bedtime If you decide the who, what, where, and when in each of these areas, you are already on your way to having your days go a lot smoother. Once these are good enough - not perfect - it's time to move on to exploring! You can learn more about that on the 5-Step Path From Surviving to Thriving and where you are on it with my free checklist. And if you need help building family systems that are unique to you and your needs, check out my program, Made to Soar: Next 90 Days.

Have you ever heard of a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset? It's often come up in conversations I've had about parenting and helping our kids understand that "if at first, you don't succeed, try, try again." In this week's episode with Kate House of the Live By Design Podcast, she shares how this principle applies to our mindsets in motherhood. Two Fixed Mindsets That You Might Experience As A Mom I'm not worthy I'm not a priority Discovering the root of lack of worthiness comes by asking yourself "why" enough times until you discover the underlying thought for yourself personally. But once you discover the reason, you can replace it with an intentional thought like, "I'm worthy enough to feel joy." It's also common in our culture for moms to share the idea that "I'm not a priority because I'm so busy taking care of everyone else." But the reality is YOU are the only one that can actually take care of you, and if this is something you find yourself saying, you can change one baby step at a time. If you are in a fixed mindset, it's the idea that you are born with the abilities that you have, and you can't grow and change. You might be thinking things like, "I could never," "I can't do this," I won't change." In a growth mindset, you believe that you can learn, grow and change. You might be thinking things like: "I can grow and continue to learn," "I can ask for help," "I can find support", or "I can get creative." It's a continuum. We are always going to fall somewhere in between, which is incredibly liberating for any recovering perfectionist, so you never have to try to be 100% growth set all of the time.

Do you have a hard time creating a vision of what you want for your motherhood to look like? Or do you feel united in goals with your spouse? A few weeks ago, Andrew and I brainstormed a list of things we could take a risk on. We defined risk as anything that puts us out of our comfort zone - which conveniently puts us in our learning zone as well. It was a fascinating experience and uncovered a lot of things for us. What you might uncover when you write a risk list: Things that are stressing you out that you are avoiding or procrastinating on Things that you feel like you should be doing but are not Things you want to do but haven't taken action on Personal goals or dreams family goals or dreams My husband and I were really informal in our risk list discussion. We just started each sentence by saying, "We could take a risk and…". At first, we shared things that were top of mind and stressing us out. We progressed on to things we want to try with our family, personal goals we have, habits we want to develop, and things we've been talking about doing but haven't taken any action on. Then it progressed into dreams and ideas that would be a few years in the making. Once we called out these ideas as a risk, it made it seem less scary and impossible. It also gave us a chance to evaluate if we actually want to do these things or if they are just sneaky "shoulds" that we can let go of. For me labeling things like creating a bathroom cleaning schedule as a risk adds an element of fun to the situation. It becomes a challenge, something I can approach with curiosity and experiment to find out what works. If it's a risk, it's okay to try and fail. It also gets me unstuck in waiting for everything to be perfect and helps me take baby steps forward. Watch this week's episode to find out more about what we discovered from this process and what you can learn by doing it for yourself. If you feel like you don't have the time or energy to even think about doing something new or different, check out my free workshop, 3 Secrets to Do More of What You Love Without Hiring a Babysitter.

Our family recently had a week of me being out of commission for some medical things that we knew were coming. Andrew and I have been in this situation for good chunks or our marriage, so it felt like a familiar glove we slipped on for a few days. In this survival season, we departed from some of our usual standards of ideals - we watched movies every day, ate food that we don't normally eat, and let go of a lot of the routines or things the kids are supposed to do in the morning. But you know what didn't change? My mental health. I was in good spirits. I was the person I wanted to be with my husband and children. In the past, I sacrificed that all in the name of ideals. But when we can determine what our priorities are in a difficult season, we can embrace the difference and novelty of it all and focus on what matters most. Here are five things I did to prepare for survival mode: Plan for freezer meals. We like to get family-sized Stouffers or Voila to make things easy, but you could also prepare your own. Plan something to be excited about. This could be painting, reading books together, or watching a fun movie. Clean up the house. If possible, keep it picked up with short energy windows, or trust that you can reset it when you go through re-entry. Talk back to the mom guilts when you aren't doing what you normally do. Everyone's fine. Be present. Talk with your spouse. Communicate your needs and priorities and simplify. In a season of survival, it's so important to evaluate when you can't do everything, what you are choosing to do. In the past, I've chosen the projects because it's fun, and the piece of having something to look forward to was crucial to my mental health. But this time, the priority wasn't fun - and maybe that had a lot to do with it being short-term and a bit to do with us having a large family and needing to keep things a bit more stable. The true priority was just keeping things going smoothly - keeping food on the table, resetting our spaces, putting clothes in drawers, and reading lots of books with my kids. When I had small bursts of energy, these are the things I focused on and I was amazed at how well our home kept functioning. This has taken me YEARS to figure out, so I hope that a peak into how we prepare can help smooth our your next - or current- season of survival mode.

Over the last few weeks, I've shared principles about creating a summer that is positive for the whole family and how to teach kids about habits. This week, I'm sharing what our priorities are for the summer. Here are our priorities for this summer: Improve writing with a daily journal habit Review math with Research Parent's Minimalist Math curriculum Practice instruments every day and have a family concert every two weeks Go to the library and read lots of books Keep our home tidy with our daily zone cleaning Wok on family house projects Give kids lots of time to play outside and work on their own interests When we clarify and narrow down our priorities, it becomes easier to allocate our time and energy effectively. This clear sense of focus also allows us to say no to activities that don't align with our chosen priorities. Tell me in the comments, what are your priorities for the summer?

Recently, we talked about ten principles for creating a productive summer. Spoiler alert - a central part of a good summer rests on GOOD HABITS! So this week, I'm sharing how I teach my kids about habits. We have these conversations in five-minute increments after we read scriptures at breakfast over the course of the week. It's meant to be fun and silly while still teaching them important principles that we apply to their lives. These concepts have changed my life as an adult, and if my kids can understand how their brains work and learn to work with them to create habits, then they are set up for success. Here are five things I teach my kids about habits: There are a lot of things we need to do to take care of our bodies, minds, hearts, and spaces. It's each of our responsibilities to take care of these things for ourselves. Our brains are amazing! We can learn to do things automatically so we don't think so much about it. That's called a habit. To make habits easy to do, you need to set things up to make it easy to do and decide when you are going to do it. This is called a trigger. Just focus on creating one habit at a time. We use this shared understanding in our family conversations to help us collaborate and solve problems together and figure out how to do the things we want to do more easily. In the video version of this week's episode, you can see how I draw everything out on the whiteboard, or you can check out the workbook I created so you can easily walk through this with your kids.

One of our priorities since having kids has NOT been the car. My strategy has been to ignore it for six months and then pull out the shopvac and excavate. With our 70 hour road trip approaching this summer, I've been watching a bunch of sprinter van conversion videos (turning a van into a motor home), dreaming about the life of ease we would lead with a kitchen and beds in a vehicle as we drove across America. On one build for a family of five, the mom mentioned that they gave a lot of attention to storage because what doesn't have a home ends up on the floor. This was a major lightbulb moment for me!Of course our car is a mess - there are literally zero places for things to go in there. So I went on a quest, and in just a few days we transformed our van from messy to clean and organized with things I found on Amazon and the dollar store. 8 Simple Things For Car Organization on a Budget Car Garbage Can Headrest Hook Expandable Cup Holders Mini Vacuum Cleaning Putty Baskets Dromedary Cookie Sheet First, we needed to decide where everything could go in the van in order to have a chance at having it be clean. When I looked at my van, there pretty quickly became clear categories of things covering the floor. Coats, shoes, clothes Trash Diapers and wipes Water bottles As an antidote, I got a garbage can for the trash, hooks to go on the back of the headrests for coats, hats, etc; a cup holder extender for large water bottles so they aren't flying around; baskets that slide under the seats for diapers and some empty ones to block garbage from going under the seats; a cookie sheet so our dromedary water bladder can slide in and out of the car easily (we use this for washing kids off before they get in the car, rinsing dishes, or a quick drink); and a mini vacuum and cleaning putty to make tidying up hassle-free. With these tools, it's become pretty effortless to keep the van picked up and tidy most of the time. Tune into this week's episode to hear more about how I transformed our car to a very functional around-town space!

I recently got an email asking about how to create summer rhythms with kids - especially for moms that don't homeschool their kids, so their kids aren't used to having rhythms I brought this up in our Soaring Mothers Society meeting that we just had because all of these women have gone through the Made to Soar Program and understand the 3 Pillars of Thriving, are very intentional, and have all sorts of different situations with working out of the home, in the home, homeschool, and have their kids in public school. After a good discussion and sharing of ideas, plus taking my own experience of homeschooling our four kids and having kids at home with me for nearly 10 years now, I picked 10 principles for creating a fun and productive summer schedule with kids that you can use to figure out a rhythm that works for you and your family. If you've been wondering how you are going to have time to do the things that are important to you this summer with all of the kids at home, I'd love to invite you to a FREE workshop I'm hosting Wednesday, May 17 at 2 P.M. EST. You'll learn to do more of what you love without hiring a babysitter. Save your free seat in the link in the bio (and yep, there's a replay!) https://thrivinginmotherhoodpodcast.com/workshop/

Get our family scripture songs: https://cart.thrivinginmotherhoodpodcast.com/bible-scripture-songs/ As a mom, I knew if I could only get one thing into my children's minds and hearts, it would be scripture. When my oldest was two years old, I decided we would start making up songs to add to our favorite verses because the scriptures I still had memorized from childhood were put to tunes. But, after a few years, we had created a lot of songs and didn't have any sense or organization to review them. That is when I came across Simply Charlotte Mason's scripture memory box idea. It only takes a few minutes each morning at breakfast for us to review our four songs, and by the end of the month, we've sung every song that we've memorized so far. Some days, all of us are singing in unison with gusto and other times, I'm still plugging along myself when I can't get all of my kids to focus at the same time. But either way, this is part of our daily rhythms that everyone has come to expect and look forward to. I love that all day long, I hear scripture as my kids are singing our songs as they are playing, doing their jobs, or just hanging out. This was an unintended outcome of our scripture memory habit, but it brings us all so much joy. My kids also love when they recognize scriptures each week at church from the speakers. If this is something you want to incorporate into your family, start small. We started small when my oldest was two - just a new scripture every few months. Almost eight years later, my kids now bring scriptures they love from their own reading for us to memorize as a family. I love that this practice has become collaborative over time. Check out this week's video to see how we've set up the system to work for us so that we stay on top of reviewing our scriptures.

Welcome to the 5-Step Path from Surviving to Thriving for moms! I have been in survival mode so many times over the last ten years of motherhood and began to see a pattern emerge from fighting my way to thriving again and again. This is a framework that I created to help us all see clearly where we are in a hard season and know where to put out time and energy so we can navigate our days confidently. The 5-Step Path From Surviving to Thriving: Survival - circumstances are bigger than you Re-entry - catching up on all the things that you let go of in survival mode Normalizing - putting some basic systems in place Exploring - discover what brings meaning and joy into your life Thriving - establish the 3 Pillars of Thriving in your life so you can Soar! If you're wondering where you are on the path, check out this week's episode for more details.