• Save

Are you finding motherhood hard? I genuinely thought that being a mum would get easier once we got past that stage where you were constantly worried about the little poppets breathing. It turns out that you mainly spend your whole life worrying about your little poppets breathing and they never stop driving you to distraction. My ‘babies’ are now 20 and 16 and I think this is the hardest age (although my mum might say me being 49 and perimenopausal is the hardest age for her).

So how do you deal with it, day in, day out – every single day you are lucky enough to call yourself a mum? Apart from rocking in a corner when you’re finding motherhood hard and drinking vat loads of red wine (which I have pretty much perfected), one of the best things you can do for your mental wellbeing and sanity during your mum years (which is mainly all your years if you’ve chosen to be a mum) is to practise and adjust your mindset….with some added shouting and swearing at regular intervals. Because let’s be realistic; no-one, nothing and nobody can trip your switch better than a baby you have brewed and grown!

So if you’re finding motherhood hard, here I’ll address the hardest parts of being a mum, and how you can use your mindset to redress these.

Judgement and justification

The only behaviour you can control is your own. FACT. It really is that simple. We can’t control how someone else is going to think, feel or act in any situation but what we can do is choose our own behaviour – and make a choice for ourselves. If we have paused, processed and then pressed play, it’s a considered choice that you can stand by. It’s often when we react to a situation that we worry more.

But judgement and justification come down to worrying about what other people think of us – it’s up to us to make the choice whether we listen or not.

The best mindset tips to manage this are:

Acknowledge you worry about what people think – and instead of seeing it as a negative, acknowledge that this makes you human and that’s okay. Sometimes it’s when we try and push away the feelings that they grow and become bloody big wormholes in our head.

And then it’s about looking at what you know as fact – are you okay right now (in the present), is your small okay right now (in the present). If the answer is yes, crack on to the next moment. If the answer is no, ask yourself what you can do about it – and take back control.

Dealing with emotions

This one is simple. We’re supposed to be emotional, we’re human, we’re parents, we’re real. Being emotional, being upset, happy, sad, angry, makes us human – and emotions are good. Teaching our kids that there’s a range of emotions out there to feel is bloody brilliant – it’s how we come through and act that’s key.

So, 1. Acknowledge the emotion – I am pissed off. 2. Unpick it – why am I pissed off. (Because I’ve been up four times in the night and I’m totally knackered.) 3. Choose how you are going to act with it. You get to choose your mood – are you going to be angry all day (and that’s okay too) or are you going to get under the duvet for 20 minutes, turn on CBeebies with a bit of Harry Styles at bedtime and gift yourself a power nap?

Being good enough

Eek…definitely one of the biggest demons and a big reason for finding motherhood hard. This takes practice – and commitment to yourself. And building your self-belief system. So how the beejesus do you even do that|?

Well here’s one way; In the notes in your phone, write a title: ALLOW and under it (when you are feeling all Penny Positive) write a list of things that make you the amazing mum you are today. This could simply involve the fact you have kept your kids alive, or that time you supported your mate through a break-up, or even that you actually managed to drink a whole cup of coffee while it was hot…and if you can’t think of things that make you brilliant, ask your mum, aunt, BFF and then write them down in the allow folder.

Then, when the monkey on your shoulder starts tapping at your head, go straight into your ALLOW folder and read the good stuff about yourself – over and over again until your brain can just think about all the good stuff.

And if this feels too hard – because frankly it isn’t for everyone – you need to tripwire your brain out of the negative mindset. Find something that makes you feel good – but it has to be a thing not a thought – so a song, a book, a picture, a quote.

When you start to feel a bit pants, then play that song really loud and sing along to the lyrics – loudly. The brain will then be ‘tripped’ into a different action/a different pathway. If you then practice it, the brain starts to associate that song with a positive mindset and boom you’ve switched your mindset.

The drudgery

I’m not a miracle worker – sometimes being a mum is just sh*t. And in my honest opinion, there is no balance, because most of us want to do it while also really wanting someone else to do it for us too. I’ve been looking for that fairy with her magic wand for a long time and I still can’t find her.

Working mum guilt

Stop looking for a work-life balance. It doesn’t exist. Fact. The minute you stop chasing something that doesn’t exist it all gets that little bit easier. I prefer to look at it with my clients as a work life blend. Most of my clients are working mums, most are also running their own businesses too and I try to get them to adopt a little bit of acceptance.

I started my business when I was 26 weeks pregnant because the firm I was working for went bump and no-one would employ me with a bump. Two kids, running a business, a divorce and years as a single mum made me really look at how I managed. Sometimes life gets the priority and sometimes work gets all of the attention.

If you have to work, if you want to work, this is life – and our kids will be okay. In fact both my kids have a work ethic and say that they are proud that they have watched me run a business while they have been growing up.

That’s meant that sometimes I only worked until 11am, so I could watch a non-competitive sports day (kill me now) and it also meant that sometimes I had to drop everything to take my seven-year-old small to hospital on his birthday. He got seven stitches on his seventh birthday and I didn’t finish what I was working on.

And here’s the thing; I can remember the hospital, the snuggles, my brave boy, but I’ve no idea what I was working on. It’s about how we address our priorities. It’s down to us. It’s down to our choices.

Trusting your instincts

Our animalistic instinct is there for a reason – it keeps us alive. It keeps the people around us alive. It’s the part of our brain that we have kept as we have evolved. Let’s have some faith in it. If you need to back up your instinct; ask yourself what do you know as fact?

Switching off

The key to switching off is simple – we have to switch on to something else. The simple fact is you can’t just switch off. We say to ourselves so many times; ‘Right then, I just need to switch off.’ And then do everything else but switch off because all we can think of is all those things you want to switch off from. And our brains are then hardwired to all the things we need to switch off from – it’s on a monorail to stress. 

Wellbeing is not a state of being, it’s a state of action. To switch our brain into another state we have to take action. So if our intention is to switch off from work, we need to decide what we are going to switch on to. It could be as simple as switching on to a podcast, the latest series of Selling Sunset or a walk in the fresh air. But we have to take action. We can’t just think we are going to switch off. 

And then it’s about creating a routine and habits that the brain then associates with switching off – the power of habit stacking allows the brain to transition into a different frame. It means you have to act with intention and think about what you are going to do – not what you don’t want to do. 

Bringing up a teenager

I advocate lots of trips away (also could be viewed as running away) with said teenager safely stashed at parents, friends, locked in the basement. On a serious note, follow the Ps; Pause, Process, Plan. And from experience spend time with them away, do stuff with them. And then do stuff without them to stay sane too.

The constant worrying

– See tripwires.

Trying not to shout

See the three Ps above and sometimes shout. I’m known as the shouty mum. My kids are okay. In fact, if I’m going nuclear they barely react. If I am quietly disappointed (usually accompanied by white anger) they sh!t themselves. Pick your battles.

Lack of support

This is about finding your tribe, finding your people. And they may change as your kids grow and move into different circles. Find the people that understand – and tell them how you feel. And let them tell you how they feel – and hold each other up…with wine. This is less about our mindset and more about the people we surround ourselves with; our cheerleaders can help prop us up when our mindset lets us down.

Self-kindness

And the key, having a positive mindset approach to parenting starts and ends with being kind to yourself, forgiving yourself and accepting yourself – and there’s only one person that can do that – YOU. When you teach your kids to ride a bike, it takes practice, it takes some stumbling and some grazed knees and some kindness and encouragement to get back on the bike.

This is how we need to train our brain, with practice, with progression and with kindness to ourselves encouraging ourselves to get back on that bike again.  My Manchester Mindset approach is all about being practical, being real, straight-talking, it’s no messing. It’s about cracking on with the right tools, and crucially sometimes saying ‘well that was a big pile of you know what, tomorrow we’ll try again.’

Sarah Knight is the founder of Mind The Gap Business Academy and a 49-year-old perimenopausal mother of two based in Manchester and a certified NLP Practitioner, specialist trainer and business mindset consultant with years of front-line experience that she has harnessed to help support and develop individuals and their organisations.

Her coaching, consultancy and training programmes provide hands-on, practical, tailored training that empowers individuals and helps them to develop their own personal styles; all beginning with their mindset.

Photos by Gustavo Fring, cottonbro, Tima Miroshnichenko, Keira Burton via pexels