Mental Health And The Mom Boss
TODAY IS A GREAT DAY TO TALK ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH, AND I ESPECIALLY WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE MENTAL HEALTH OF MOMPRENEURS.
We do ALOT! Like an absurd amount of things, and for some of us, our priorities fall out of order during the hustle.
For me, my biggest challenge is spending enough time with my family while working. I don't know how to turn the hustle off. As I type this, I am dying of a head cold, my 10 year old has the flu, my 3 year old is just getting over the flu and into the head cold and my husband is traveling for work. This week there has been a very delicate balance of work and motherhood (motherhood always wins out).
A big question I see popping up from new entrepreneurs is "How do I find the balance?" or "How do I know what my priorities are?". My answer to the latter is always "If money didn't matter, what would you be spending your time on?" If the answer is that you would want to spend every waking minute with your children, then put that first. If you would still want to be building an empire, and creating, or teaching, then do that. When we take the simple "I want to make money" out of the equation, we are met with what truly matters to us. AND ATTAINING THOSE SHOULD BE YOUR PRIORITY.
For me, I wanted to create and help businesses grow, but I wanted the reliable scheduling and time with my children, so I dropped my side hustle to less hours and took more structured contracts. This allowed me to choose only the clients I actually wanted to build relationships with, and the remainder of my time and money is free to be spent with my family. Finding this balance was NOT easy. I think we as business owners often get stuck feeling like failures if we so much as look at cutting our hours or lightening the workload, but as long as we are putting our priorities in the right order for ourselves and our families then we can find that glorious (and elusive) Work-Life Balance.
This image is what pops up when a lot of us google "Work from home mom" or "Mompreneur" and THE REALITY IS, working from home is not easy; it takes loads of dedication, drive and a bit of pure crazy (especially if you are working from home with kids!). Admitting that it's not easy and that we DO NOT have it all together is the first step to finding a proper balance -- maybe baby needs to go to part time daycare, or maybe you can hire an occasional babysitter OR (my personal favourite) find another mom boss to swap babysitting with!
There is ZERO shame in saying you need a hand, it literally takes a village (whether an in person one, or an online one) to help grow a business, and support the people behind it. It's not easy and the more you talk about the struggles, the more you realize how vast and caring your support network is. Unfortunately, many of us don't call in our reinforcements, sure we know they are there, but do we ever use them? WE SHOULD!
Your team is there because they care, and genuinely want to invest their time and support into you.
And lastly, TAKE TIME FOR YOU! We LOAD ourselves up with way more than we should and even though we are getting by, we need to take some time to put ourselves first. Do something you love, take a bath, go for a walk, have that glass of wine. It is so easy for us to get overwhelmed and stressed, and finding that network of other struggling, thriving, loving, crazy mompreneurs is always a great way to vent those struggles and get that boost up! Your brain is so important and so is your state of mind, if it feels like it's slipping or sad, ASK FOR HELP!
