Mom guilt is the worst. Especially when you’re trying to be a successful artist in your mommy business!
In a business for a stay at home Mom, it’s hard not to feel guilty when you’re not taking care of something. As Mompreneurs, if you spend a lot of time with your kids, you feel like you’re ignoring your business. If you’re working on your business, you feel like you should be with your kids.
Don’t even get me started with self care.
I should’ve done this or I should be doing that are not easy thoughts to get rid of. It’s the guilt from not finding the balance you hoped for every day.
So, is it hard to be a successful artist? How can you win? You can’t be everything at once. Either you figure out how to balance both or risk losing your sanity.
“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone”.
Bill Cosby
It was only when I started putting things into perspective and implementing a few mindshift tools that I found some peace. And you can do it too. Mompreneurs these days wear a lot of different hats. And in order to do a good job at anything, you shouldn’t feel guilty about which hat you’re wearing because the other hats aren’t getting any love for a moment.
You need to fully embrace the one you’re wearing.
Not only did I find a way to feel good about that. I turned my perspective around by shifting my frame of reference. And used that to teach my children how to do the same.
Here’s how:
Look at the glass as half full.
I used to see all the things I should be doing and it stressed me out. That stress transferred to my kids and my business and I wasn’t having much fun at anything. I was focusing too much on the negative instead of the positive.
The state you’re in determines the thoughts and beliefs you have which determines the actions you take.
Check out the Huberman Lab podcast series for facinating information on the brain, nervous system and mindset. Dr. Alia Crum: Science of Mindsets for Health & Performance goes into making stress work FOR you and offers some great tools to help shift your mindset.
Being in a stressful state of mind didn’t allow me to focus on doing the best job that I could. Part of this shift happens because we’ve trained ourselves to think this way. And over the years, those neural pathways are so ingrained that we stress and think about what we’re NOT doing on autopilot.
How I fixed this was through a pattern interrupt.
In order to change your behavior, first you need to become an observer. Step one, become aware of your thoughts.
“I’ll never have enough time to get this done.”
“I could do this so much better if I had more time.”
“I’m such bad Mom”
“What if I fail?”
As soon as I started to pay attention to that, I caught myself thinking this way all the time.
When you do, bring yourself back to the present. Tell yourself “Come back now” or “Be here now”, take a deep breath and try to stay present for at least 30 seconds.
By interrupting the stressful and non-productive thoughts you’re putting yourself in a better, more relaxed and more creative state of mind. You’re also releasing stress that builds up in your nervous system over time and becomes so ingrained that it evenutally becomes difficult to stop.
So rather than trying to be Superwoman, I shifted the way I saw things. I did this by giving myself permission to do only what I could do. Not all the things I couldn’t do.
Pattern interrupt. It’s a simple way of releasing stress and undoing years of unconcious thought patterns. And you can start to look at the glass as half full rather than half empty.
Ambitious Moms like us tend to take on a lot. Let go of trying to be perfect and cramming in as much as you can into a day or a week. Give yourself permission to move forward each day a little at a time.
If you want to learn more about shifting your mindset into a healthier less stressful state, try these methods from Braintap. I use their meditation app almost every night before I fall asleep and its been a game changer!
Don’t choose between kids and work.
Do we have to choose between being a Mom, successful artist, wife, daughter or just taking care of ourselves in order to be good at any one of them? Do we have to let go of being great Moms in order to be Mompreneurs?
Do we really have to hustle to get it all done?
And if we don’t find time to care of ourselves, we have nothing left for anybody or anything else.
We take bite sized pieces each day. One inch at a time. We are all of it – one hat at a time. And we don’t have to run ourselves down to do it all.
Planning is the best way around this. Every week, delegate and plan your chores and your work week. Stick to it as best as you can.
Planning and prioritizing are skills and not necessarily as easy as they sound. This is a practice as much as pattern awareness and interupt is a practice. The more you do it the better you’ll get at it.
Plan on where you need to put your focus but give yourself permission to be flexible. Focus on one thing at a time but allow your role to change and flow as it needs to.
Break your tasks into small pieces and celebrate each one as you get them done. Focus on the practice and the journey.
Thought awareness and planning skills will go a long way to becoming a successful artist and a great Mom.
As a successful artist, you can be a role model.
The role of a parent is to teach your kids how to be independent, confident contributors to society. Kids do what you do, not what you say. So let them know what you’re doing in your business. Let them see it takes practice, patience, awareness and work.
Be a rold model. Let them watch you follow your dreams. It will set an example and allow them space to create their own dreams.
Ask them to participate by pitching in and helping Mom by learning how to take care of themselves and their family.
Get it out of your head that you have to be everything to them. By protecting your kids and doing everything for them, you’re taking away their ability to learn independence.
That was actually a difficult concept for me to wrap my head around. I thought I had to take care of everything be a “good Mom”.
It’s not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.
Ann Landers
It’s not always about them. If you find yourself jumping at every request and feeling bad when you can’t always be there for your kids, ask yourself why.
Animals in nature are parents for a very short time. They feed and protect their young only until they are old enough to do it for themselves. Then they kick them out. Now, there is a time when our kids need us to do things for them. But soon enough, they can learn a lot of skills to care for themselves.
If you do a lot more for your kids than they do for themselves as they get older, that’s because you need them.
Take stock of all the things you do for them over a day or a week and ask yourself how many things they could be doing themselves.
Being a successful artist in business is as challenging as it is rewarding. You can take on all of it in a healthy way if you make some shifts in your mindset.
We get stressed out when our reality doesn’t meet our expectations or our environment. Sometimes letting go of how you think it should go and allowing it to evolve is much healthier and often much better for everybody.
That doesn’t mean lower the bar or dream smaller.
Dream big.
Set your bar high.
But be flexible on how you get there. Then you can have it all.
If you want to learn more about how to start an art business, check out this blog post here.
Do you find it hard to juggle work and kids? Share some tricks, tips or insights below and tell me how you manage your life for yourself, your family and your business!
0 Comments