In this episode, discover essential strategies for mums to boost resilience and find more balance in the challenges of motherhood. Explore self-care, mindset shifts, support networks, time management, mindfulness and more. Your well-being matters, and this episode offers practical tips to empower you on your journey.
Explore more on www.cindygrahamschmidt.com.
Transcript:
“Welcome to the Calm Resilient Mama Podcast. I’m Cindy Graham-Schmidt. I’m a Life Coach and mama of two. On this podcast I share with you coaching tools and tips to help you deal with challenges that life and motherhood throw at you. I will help you to enjoy your life more TODAY, because tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone.
Hey mama,
How are you?
Today I want to talk about resilience and how you can develop and strengthen it as a mum.
Resilience in motherhood is crucial and it empowers you to navigate challenges with strength and confidence. It's about adapting, being flexible, and finding inner resources to maintain your wellbeing even in challenging and demanding times.
There are quite a few things you can do to build and strengthen your resiliency and I’ll talk about them now.
There is self-care, which has become a real buzzword really, but for a reason. Paying attention to and prioritising your own health and wellbeing matters just as much as paying attention to and prioritising the health and wellbeing of your little ones. It doesn’t just set a positive example for your kids when you look after yourself, it also helps you to have the capacity to deal with the normal demands of parenting, and life’s challenges and setbacks. It’s a lot easier to deal with challenges when you feel well and energised than when you feel drained and exhausted. So take good care of yourself and pay attention to what your body tries to tell you.
The second tool is that you can shift your mindset and, for example, embrace a growth mindset that reframes setbacks as learning opportunities and that sees challenges as stepping stones to grow and to make meaningful and important changes in your life.
Another important thing is having a support network. Making sure to develop and nurture genuine connections in your life; whether that’s with your extended family, fellow mums, old and new friends, or even support groups. Those kinds of connections are important, so that you can have open & honest conversations, and share your experiences, and challenges and goals.
Another, possibly less obvious thing that helps to build resilience, is time management. This includes balancing tasks by setting realistic expectations and leaving white space in your calendar, as well as learning to say no when necessary and delegating or even dropping things from your to-do-list in order to ease the load. All those things help you strengthen your resilience.
What goes along with time management is flexibility. That includes being able to adapt to changes and one of my favourites, embracing imperfection. Motherhood is unpredictable and being flexible and not trying to be perfect and do everything perfectly reduces stress.
Another helpful tool to build resilience is having a creative outlet. For example, this podcast is one of my creative outlets. That doesn’t mean that you need to start a podcast too, but you can explore other things, such as drawing, writing, singing or dancing. Actually, I recorded a podcast episode about this a while ago, that you can listen to, if you don’t feel particularly creative, but want to explore creativity anyway. It’s episode number 25 and is all about creativity. Engaging in creative activities that you enjoy can be a really good way to relieve stress and boost your mood. So I recommend you give it a try; whether you consider yourself creative or not.
The next very important tool is open and honest communication; meaning discuss your feelings with your partner (if you have one), or with family or friends, or a coach, like myself. Doing this helps you to get things out of your head and can therefore make them feel less overwhelming and, also, vulnerability fosters understanding and support. So giving the people in your life a chance to support you and listen to you, will do great things for your wellbeing.
The second last thing I want to mention is mindfulness. Practising mindfulness helps you to stay present and to manage stress. You could make things like deep breathing and meditation a part of your routine. For example, you can go to episode number 27, which is a guided meditation that I recorded for you, and you can listen to that regularly or check out other ones, for example on the Insight Timer app. There are also other short mindfulness practices that you can incorporate into your day and, I reckon, it’s worth doing some research and experimenting to figure out what works best for you.
The last (but not least) tool that I want to mention to help you build resilience is setting boundaries. Clearly defining, communicating and upholding your boundaries is important in order to preserve your energy and to prevent burnout. Again, there’s an episode that I recorded to help you do exactly that. Geez, it’s almost as if this whole podcast is designed to help you build resilience, isn’t it? Anyway, if you want to learn more about setting boundaries listen to episode 23 “Setting and Communicating Boundaries”.
Now this was a rather long list with a lot of recommendations, I know, but that’s a good thing, because that means there are lots of things you can do and try to build and strengthen your resilience; and you don’t have to tackle everything all at once or at all. It’s completely up to you what you choose and it’s also ok if building resilience takes time. In fact, it won’t happen overnight. You can always come back to this episode and listen to it again and choose the next step or tool. What matters is that you start somewhere, that you celebrate small wins (and big ones) and that you’re being patient and compassionate with yourself.
When you do all that you show your kids how to use all those important life skills, and you create a more joyful and more balanced life for yourself; and that matters, because you matter! Please don’t ever forget that. Your wellbeing matters, mama!
If you want support and accountability to help you build and strengthen resilience and if you want to tackle the things I just talked about one by one, then the Calm Resilient Mama Project is a great option for you, because in there I’ll share with you tips and tools to help you manage it all in a simple but powerful way, and you get 1-on-1 coaching with me to support you when life happens and things come up that you didn’t anticipate, and when your mind tries to make everything harder than it has to be. I’ll be there for you. We use Voxer, which is a free voice messaging app, and that means you can ask for support when you actually need it without any scheduling conflicts and I’ll be there to help you.
So head to my website www.cindygrahamschmidt.com and check out the Calm Resilient Mama Project, because it’ll help you to reduce your stress levels and enjoy life more even in between all the daily demands of motherhood.
That’s it from me for today. Take care and I’ll talk to you next time.”