Here’s the executive summary for the years 2020 and 2021: Most of us have been handling an endless number of decisions while navigating ever-changing scenarios with lots of conflicting data and very little guidance. In fact, How To Thrive In a Pandemic is not on Amazon yet, unfortunately.
Whether the last two years have been a blessing in disguise or a mixed bag of sorts, the need to be making decisions has remained constant. And even more so if we’re wearing the ‘mom’ and ‘business owner’ hats almost simultaneously.
Our daily lives have fallen within a spectrum of trying to answer these two questions and making decisions accordingly: “What’s going to happen next?” and “What’s for dinner?”
In between the mile-long of to-do’s, the endless chores at home, what might be happening in your business, issues with your spouse or kids and handling finances, our daily quota of “best decision-making” pixie dust quickly runs out.
It has also meant having to make thousands of new choices on the spot and wondering whether those decisions are right or not.
This uncertainty about the long-term impact of our decisions might lead us to think we’re winging it, or worse, feeling like frauds. Therefore, as mothers and businesswomen, it can be easy to experience Imposter Syndrome and feel the insecurity and self-doubt creep in.
This triple whammy of pandemic fatigue, decision fatigue, and Imposter Syndrome is hopefully subsiding this year and a glimmer of hope seems to loom ahead.
Therefore, this is a great opportunity to do a quick mental reset to bring about the success, personal growth and happiness we actually want while knowing how to effectively call the shots regardless of what is happening outside our door.
Here are some powerful mindset tactics that we can use to our advantage to achieve our goals faster while keeping our emotional and mental wellbeing in check.
Powerful Mindset Tactic One
Let’s start with tackling pandemic fatigue. It seems like it’s the hardest one out of the three.We’ve been handling an endless number of decisions while navigating ever-changing scenarios with lots of conflicting data and very little guidance. How To Thrive In a Pandemic is not on Amazon yet, unfortunately.
It’s only natural that the questionat the back of everyone’s mind is When will this end?
Feeling like we have no control of what’s happening triggers feelings of overwhelm and anxiety in many of us. Especially if our thoughts fall into the realm of the 3 P’s: thinking that it’s Pervasive (there’s no escaping it); thinking that it’s Personal (I’m the only one going through this); and thinking that it is Permanent (it will never end).
So, here are three things that can help keep pandemic fatigue at bay.
Change the Narrative
Fatigue, exhaustion, overwhelm- they are all stories of resistance. We feel triggered while imagining a future where everything goes wrong. Trying to calm down these negative emotions is challenging and only adds more fuel to the fire.
That’s because the shift from anxiety to calmness requires many steps along the emotional ladder. Excitement, by contrast, involves an almost identical physiological state with a slightly different story — a story that welcomes and looks forward to the future instead of dreading it. That’s why excitement is so much easier to pull off than staying calm. We’re no longer trying to change our basic physiology. We’re just changing our story about it.
Another tactic involves accepting the negative feeling in the moment instead of feeling ashamed or frustrated by it. This will actually help you feel less anxious. Acknowledging the feeling instead of fighting it frees you up to learn how to manage it. Accepting it doesn’t mean giving up, either. It means you stop spending energy berating yourself for being anxious and in a negative state and instead allows you to lean into holding space for yourself in that moment.
Pencil It In.
Postpone the overwhelm and anxiety – and make a date instead. Set aside 10 minutes each day during which you can feel all these feelings and anything you want! Give yourself permission to not be okay. You’ll find that you won’t perceive the situation which triggered the initial overwhelm to be as bothersome or worrisome when you come back to it later. Our thoughts actually decay very quickly if we don’t feed them with energy or attention.
Use the Most Powerful Words
Finding reasons to say thank you truly goes a long way. Gratitude is really the most powerful antidote against fear, anxiety, overwhelm, and stress. The truth is, we cannot be in a place of gratitude while being worried or anxious at the same time.
It also shifts the focus from what’s not working or how we think we’re not measuring up because at the neurochemical level, being thankful helps modulate the prefrontal cortex, which manages negative emotions.
Whether we do it through journaling or verbal expressions, when we are grateful, we are more empathetic and positive minded by nature and we’re able to dissolve negative feelings almost instantly.
Powerful Mindset Tactic Two
According to studies[1] the average adult makes approximately 35,000 decisions per day. But as entrepreneurial moms, that number easily quadruples. In between the mile-long list of to-do’s, the endless chores at home, what might be happening in your business, issues with your spouse or kids and handling finances, our daily quota of best “decision-making pixie dust” quickly runs out.
Decision fatigue was first coined by social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, who identified it as “the emotional and mental strain resulting from a burden of choices.”
When your mental energy is depleted, you either start making bad decisions or stop making decisions altogether. Work, home front and family are the three biggest areas where it gets depleted. Since in the past two years we have all been running on a smaller mental and emotional bandwidth, prioritizing what’s essential and non-negotiable from what isn’t is key.
A good strategy is to define what decisions have a high, long-term impact while also making as few decisions as possible throughout the day- especially those that we know are a given, like the dreaded “What’s for dinner” at 5pm every day. Here’s what that looks like for these three areas:
Business
For the most part, decisions related to our business rank high in priority and have high stakes attached to them. The best approach is to make a plan that allows you to make business-related decisions either on a a) need-to basis or b) preferably when your mental bandwidth is at it’s best_ i.e. at times when you’re rested and refreshed. This helps avoid making uninformed and costly decisions.
Write down your top business decisions and priorities for the day and tackle them at the beginning of the day when your pixie dust basket is filled up. This might require a bit of detective work, but in the end, you will be able to pinpoint what nonessential decision-making we can cut down on and live without.
With young kids at home this might be a challenge, so having plans in motion for how you make decisions regarding your home and family will help sustain your mental bandwidth for when you need to focus on the business.
Home Front
House-related decisions can rank lower in priority, meaning those decisions have lower stakes. Yes, we all want a clean house and a full fridge but deciding on whether we do laundry in the morning or evening won’t have a high impact or cost when it comes to your children’s wellbeing or your health, for example.
Automation and routines can help. Besides meal prepping, what other things can you already establish beforehand, so you don’t have to spend time thinking about them? Setting up automatic bill payment frees up a lot of time and energy. Having a meal calendar in place avoids brainstorming on the spot on what to cook that day. Even going as far as having a uniform for the week for ourselves eliminates the “what to wear?” conundrum.
In a nutshell, set up your day so that you have to make the fewest decisions possible around the house so you can truly focus on what matters.
Family
As parents, we are still making the thousands of decisions we were already making pre-pandemic PLUS thousands of new ones we are given daily to think about. No wonder we’re mentally exhausted!
Examining your rules is key. Especially the ones regarding your children. What do rules and decision fatigue have to do with one another? Well, living with kids means that sometimes rules are meant to be broken. Or at least tested (daily by the kids) to determine how robust they are.
When we wonder “Are my children testing me?” the answer is yes. Probably not consciously, but they do want to have confidence that someone is piloting the plane so to speak.
The caveat is that rules mean enforcement. And coming up with ways to enforce rules is tiring! The more rules we have, the more enforcing we need, so more decisions need to be made. And in no time, your pixie dust is gone.
Allowing yourself some grace about where to draw the line is also crucial. This is where taking a stand about mom guilt comes in.
We are all doing the best we can with what we have and what we know.
Let. It. Go.
If no screen time on weekdays is your non-negotiable rule, and you have to go into a full-on enforcement mode about it, then do it. And let it go.
Because many times, we do it, and then we’re secretly wondering whether we should have been more flexible or if we are being too harsh. Then we go down a rabbit hole chasing a rabbit that we will never catch.
Go over your rules, trim out the ones that you can live without, and take a stand with your non-negotiable ones. Drop the guilt when you enforce.
Rinse and repeat.
Powerful Mindset Tactic Three
Does it sometimes feel like everyone seems to have it together, and you’re the only one scotch-taping your way through life? Or using double-sided tape, for that matter?
According to studies, 70% of women feel this way. That means seven of your ten best gal pals are also using glue guns to keep their life afloat.
Of course, that doesn’t make the fear and worry of Imposter Syndrome completely go away.
So why do we feel like phonies?
It tends to boil down to a deep-rooted inability to believe we’re good at what we do or that we have value. One tell-tale sign is that it’s hard to accept praise from others believing there is a hidden agenda behind other people’s compliments. It is difficult to fully believe praise towards us.
Another giveaway is we tend to go into a perfectionist streak, believing doing things perfectly will keep others from finding out we are not as good as they seem to think. But this puts us in an emotional hamster wheel waiting for the other shoe to drop and being found out. Therefore, anxiety increases along the way.
As women running our business we might even have praise deficit. Especially in those early stages of growing a business when we’re working solo or from home. We might not hear enough praise from others to give us a sense of whether we are doing a great job or not.
Listening to your self-talk holds clues as to how you handle praise as well as how often are you able to praise yourself. Do you deflect praise from others and play it down? When someone gives you a compliment do you automatically give one back? Perhaps you subconsciously think that if you stand out from the rest (even in a positive way), people will no longer like you or accept you.
Social acceptance is a survival mechanism dating back to our ancestors. We had to be part of the tribe to survive back in the cave days. The need to belong is deeply ingrained in all of us. However, modern life has made things even more difficult in this front.
One thing I’ve seen play out countless of times as a Licensed RTT Practitioner is how we’ve been conditioned to accept a narrative that puts us at odds within ourselves intensifying feelings of Imposter Syndrome and undermining our confidence as mothers and entrepreneurs.
It’s hard to feel like we are good enough when society places paradoxical demands on us:
- We are expected to be nice and play nice, yet “nice girls” don’t get ahead.
- As women we are held to higher standards for work and professionalism yet we’re criticized if we are too good for others.
- We are expected to put a strong front professionally yet lose business due to not being relatable.
- We are expected to work like we don’t have kids and mother like we don’t work.
Trying to actually live up to these expectations already set us up for failure. The way we can counteract this is two-fold:
Nurture Your Inner Cheerleader
The first thing we must do is be intentional about praising ourselves. Constantly.
Tell yourself the words you’ve been waiting to hear. This is where it pays off to be self-sufficient and give to ourselves the praise we want. We will never know a hundred percent what someone else’s intentions are when they praise us. But our mind won’t ever question our own praise.
Grab a pen and post-it notes and write “I am enough”, “I have fantastic coping skills”, “I’m a great mom to my kids”. Place them in your work area, bathroom mirror, fridge, near the laundry basket, as your screensaver_ wherever you are sure to constantly see them. These are great subliminal messages to feed your mind about your worth and value!
You do You
Another mental shift is to stop the comparison game. Stop comparing your apple crumble to another woman’s tiramisu. This is how you keep tabs on your mental and emotional state. Or as I like to tell my clients: You do You. The more we keep to our own lane, the less leeway we allow to Imposter Syndrome to creep in.
Sometimes, the feeling of not enoughness is so deep-rooted that seeking professional help is the best course of action. Just like anxiety and overwhelm, the silver lining is that Imposter Syndrome is highly treatable and the earlier you seek help, the better the outcome.
This is due to our internal beliefs creating a blueprint that conditions our mind into recreating overwhelm, anxiety and not feeling enough as familiar emotional scenarios. The good news is that we can transform and upgrade old limiting beliefs and rewire our mind with a powerful new blueprint.
Once you realise you can change your life through your beliefs, you will discover that you can remove toxic thoughts that previously prevented you from reaching your goals. Resetting our thoughts and actions and breaking patterns of negative thinking despite what might be happening outside our door is the fastest way we can bring about the results that we want in our business and in our lives.
When we are able to do this successfully, every single area of our life changes for the better. After all, we’re not only building successful businesses, but we also want to have a successful business that works around our dream life.
Hey mama!
I help business leaders and entrepreneurs achieve higher levels of success, confidence and freedom.By tapping into the subconscious and transforming limiting beliefs she facilitates powerful business transformations. Let’s hop on a Inspired Action Call with me today and let’s start shifting your limiting beliefs around.
Book your Inspired Action Call!
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stretching-theory/201809/how-many-decisions-do-we-make-each-day
