Sometimes, being a working mom feels impossible. Like, running-on-the hamster-wheel-and-going-absolutely-nowhere ridiculous.

 

 

Now don’t get me wrong – moms who stay at home or work at home don’t have it any easier. I lost my child care for a couple of days this week and spent my day of working from home with the kids, and since they’re homeschooled, I know exactly how crazy a work day at home with kids can be. Let me paint the picture for you…

Thursday morning was the day off. It poured rain all night and I tossed and turned with a sore neck throughout my sleep. When I dragged myself out of bed to the sound of more rain, I got through brushing my teeth and putting on some sweats before I went down to the kitchen. My phone alert went off to remind me that I had a coaching meeting in 10 minutes, so I told the kids to finish up breakfast and we would plan our schedule for the day in half an hour. While I was logging on to my meeting, the tornado warning came through on all the phones in the house. This was not a watch, people. The warning told us to take cover, so I grabbed my laptop and told the kids to bring their oatmeal bowls into the basement pantry immediately. After commands for silence during my meeting and threats of major consequences for any transgressors, I took my meeting.

 

 

Somewhere partway through the meeting, my son decided to go upstairs and get his breakfast. During a tornado warning. He had gotten up late because we were out at church last night and I told them all they could sleep in, so he had. When the warning came through, I’d just called him downstairs and he hadn’t gotten any food. When he was sitting there watching his sisters eat their oatmeal, he got upset because he was hungry and he just knew he couldn’t interrupt my meeting. So he left. Of course, I had to deal with his poor judgement (leaving the safe space during a tornado watch), attitude (because he didn’t think I’d help him eat because I was busy), and frustration (because he felt it wasn’t fair that everyone else was eating and he was hungry). All this before 10 am – the army has nothing on moms! So yeah, being a mom (working outside the home or not) is a lot.

 

 

Back to the hamster wheel… Now, I generally use my day off to do things like write a blog post, run errands, and manage the house. NOT homeschool the kids. But since that’s what needed to happen, I needed to combine my work and their work, as well as the care and feeding responsibilities into ONE DAY. I had a lesson plan from the teacher that went from 830 am to 430 pm, plus my list of things to do which included grocery shopping, a library trip for an overdue DVD, styling two girl’s hair, writing this post, cooking something for dinner, three phone interviews, picking up the house before the cleaning people come tomorrow, and making a few calls to get things arranged before our trip to my grandmother’s memorial service next weekend. Clearly, something wasn’t going to get done.

 

 

I was tempted to chuck the whole plan. I mean, the younger kids wouldn’t fail out of school because they missed two days of work, right? The big girl needed to get her speech right for the science fair presentation, but other than that I decided everything else was optional. So with that attitude, we planned the day – only the essentials, unless we were super efficient and could add the fun stuff. You know what helped me not fall over in a puddle of despair because the day wasn’t working out as planned? That coaching meeting in the midst of the tornado watch.

My coaching program officially starts in March. I’ve been having lots of thoughts about how I can’t add anything else to my schedule, and that I’m going to be wasting a lot of time and money on this program because I won’t be able to give it the attention it deserves. So I spent my coaching meeting exploring that thought process. What the coach helped me see was that the feeling I produce when I think that way is “hopeless”. I feel that way about getting things done, giving my kids what they need, what kind of humans I’m raising, and whether I’m doing anything well (particularly at home – work seems easier to do well!).  That hopeless feeling is familiar – and it’s absolutely counterproductive to what I want and need to do. Hopeless produces nothing – no action, no inspiration, no plans, no results. And when I stay with hopeless, I show myself with my lack of results that I really can’t get done what I need to do. I’ve confirmed my original thought with the results I’ve gotten. The coach reminded me that time is for me to decide how to use – 10 minutes of focused action can be worth one hour of scattered running around. So I get to choose whether I have enough time, or whether I want to believe that I can’t fit anything else into my schedule. One makes me feel powerful and capable, and the other makes me feel weak and ineffective. My thoughts, my choice. And that’s the best thing ever, because the only person that can control my thoughts is me! The way out of hopeless is through my mind. So I’m practicing other thoughts, ones that produce the feelings and actions I need to get the results I want. I don’t feel hopeless now. I know it’ll come back, but the next time hopeless comes up for me, I can know that I brought it back with my thinking, and I can choose other thoughts that serve me better. That is the practice I’m choosing for me!

 

 

Have you ever realized that the way you feel is because of the thoughts you’re thinking? How do you feel when you know that your thoughts are completely your business and in your control? Please share in the comments below!