Why We Get Overwhelmed As Working Moms (Its Not What You Think) And How To Stop Feeling Overwhelmed
A lot of what we talk about at For More Of What Matters is how to make life as a working mom run a little bit more smoothly, how to set up the systems and routines and create the habits that will help us get everything done that we want to get done, without making us feel overwhelmed.
It can be easy to think that once we do the right things, then we won't feel overwhelmed. If our overwhelm is caused by having too much to do, not having a good system in place for getting it all done, and not having a good support system, then we can just solve for those things and then we won't feel overwhelmed.
But that's not actually how overwhelm works. And regardless of what situation we're in, our situation is not what actually causes us to feel overwhelmed.
Overwhelm is a choice that we make, because feeling overwhelmed is created by our thoughts and not by our circumstances.
The idea that our thoughts create our feelings, which cause us to take action, which creates all of the results in our lives was taught to me by Brooke Castillo. She explains this concept on The Life Coach School podcast. I highly recommend listening to that podcast if you wanna dive into this concept more.
But basically everything that we feel, everything that we do comes from our thoughts and every single thought that we have is a choice that we make.
Our circumstances are the facts of the world, the things that are not based on our own opinions, or our own thoughts.
Using myself as an example, my circumstances are that I have a full-time job, I have four children, I have a husband who works a full-time job and who also is building a farm from scratch in his free time, and, I am also building a business on the side of being a full-time working mom.
Those are all factual. I could document those things. I could prove them to you. There's really not any way to dispute them.
Those are my circumstances, and what we tend to do as working moms is to say that because of this list of circumstances, I feel overwhelmed. Because I have a lot on my plate, a lot of responsibilities, a lot of things I need to get done every single day, I feel overwhelmed. And that's just not true.
And the reason for that or how I can explain that that is not true is because two people could have that exact same list of circumstances and one person could feel overwhelmed and one person might not.
Our overwhelm is actually caused by two basic underlying thoughts that we have on repeat about our circumstances that make us feel overwhelmed:
I don't have enough time.
I don't know where to start.
So depending on your circumstances, it might be very easy to get people to agree with you and to say that those thoughts are true, that you don't have enough time to get everything done and of course you don't know where to start with it all. But just because you could find people to agree with you or you could find evidence to support those thoughts, don't make them universally true.
Because, two people could have that same exact list of circumstances. One feels overwhelmed because they're thinking, "I don't have enough time to get everything done, and I don't know where to start." And then you might have another person with the exact same set of circumstances that says, "This is a lot, and I'm capable of a lot."
The second says, "I can do this. I only have so much time in a day, so I'm gonna plan out what my day looks like and I'm gonna get it all done. And I have my goals mapped out so I know exactly what the next step is."
Our thoughts cause our feelings, which cause our actions and which cause our results. If two people have that same set of circumstances, one person thinks I don't have enough time. I don't know where to start. She then feels overwhelmed, which paralyzes her. She doesn't decide the next thing to do, doesn't take any action, and then is just kind of lost in this overwhelm. She then proves to herself that she doesn't have the time to get everything done and she know where to start because she isn't getting it all done and isn't getting started. Her results will be there to prove her right.
The second person who has the same set of circumstances but is thinking, "I will do what I can. I can organize this in my calendar. I know what my next step is," that person is going to feel more motivated, more capable, more ready to take the next action, more energized, and so she is going to do that. She will take imperfect action. Not every single thing from her to-do list is going to fit onto her calendar, but she's gonna get done what she can. And then you can imagine what the life of that second person looks like compared to the first person who let the thoughts take over and cause overwhelm and inaction the results that she doesn't want.
You can imagine how different the results of those two people look.
That is how we choose overwhelm for ourselves when we don't have to.
How we actually get rid of the overwhelm is to just make the choice and to practice having different thoughts and actually practice living them out in our lives so that we can really start to believe them and eventually they replace the thoughts that make us feel overwhelmed.
That is how you stop feeling overwhelmed.
In the for more of what matters group coaching program, we solve for both of those overwhelming thoughts - I don't have enough time and I don't know where to start.
The tool that we use to solve for "I don't have enough time," is Power Planning.
Power Planning is a process that I learned from Sam Laura Brown in her group coaching program for perfectionist entrepreneurs: Perfectionists Getting Shit Done. You can learn more from her on The Perfectionism Project podcast. A lot of what I do in the For More Of What Matters group coaching program is taking what I've learned about perfectionism and about thought work and power planning from Sam Laura Brown and applying it to life as a working mom.
In For More Of What Matters, we go through Sam Laura Brown's process of power planning, but it's just tweaked a little bit to make it make more sense for a working mom.
The three basic steps to Power Planning as a Working Mom:
Brainstorm your to-do list. Take everything that you have bouncing around your head and put them all on a list.
Enter the items from your to-do list onto your calendar for the week.
Throw the to-do list away.
To brainstorm your to-do list, sit down with a blank sheet of paper and physically write out everything that you need to do. Write as thorough and specific of a list as possible. Keep asking yourself, "What else?" to just keep adding to the list until you get everything out of your head and onto the paper. Include things that you need to do for work and for your personal life.
Then we take that list and start filling in our calendar for the week.
First, we put any commitments that we have made onto the calendar. This will include things like appointments and meetings scheduled with other people, plans that you've made as a family, and it may also include a commitment that you've made to yourself that you want to make a priority, such as the times that you plan to workout.
Then we schedule clean (or guilt-free) rest. Clean rest is so important when it comes to overwhelm, because when we are thinking, "I don't have enough time," that means that I don't have any time to rest.
When we are power planning, we're building in time to rest right off the bat so that as we go through the week and follow through with that plan, we get the rest that we need, which helps make it a lot easier to not be thinking these overwhelmed thoughts.
Your brain and body need rest so intensely, they make sure that you take it. If you think you're not getting any rest time in now, think about how you might be falling asleep when you sit down to watch a movie with your family, or scrolling on your phone instead of doing some sort of work that you intended to do, or mindlessly eating a bag of chips before you start making dinner.
Our brains will pull us out of whatever we're doing to force us to rest when we need it.
Or think about the days where you just don't feel like you have a lot of energy - you move more slowly and you're less focused. Your body and brain will force you to rest. It may show up as hunger, distraction, slowness, or illness, but that demand for rest is there is some form. And so, instead of us getting that rest by not following through with our plans, we build guilt-free rest right into our plan for the week.
This makes it a lot easier to stop thinking, "I don't have enough time," because you don't have to think, "I don't have enough time to rest," anymore, now that you've built in time to rest.
After commitments and rest, we are then going to fill in the rest of the calendar with the things from our to-do list. It isn't all going to fit, so we need to work through the list, prioritizing what is most important to get done, what is going to have the greatest impact on our lives and make the most of our time.
Anything from the to-do list that doesn't fit onto the calendar needs to be delegated to someone else or thrown out.
And we are not jamming that calendar full. This is a realistic plan, for the real-life version of us that needs to eat and needs time to transition from task-to-task.
All of that needs to be considered when we're putting things into our calendar. Don't worry about doing this perfectly, though. You might overload your calendar when you first start doing this process, but over time, as you get better at estimating how much time you need for certain tasks and how to build in buffer time for yourself to stop for a cup of coffee, or a chat with your husband, or to clean up a mess with the kids. There has to be room for real life, and the skill of planning for all of that will come with practice.
And once the calendar is full, it's just full. There's no to-do list of things that I need to get done, even though I have no idea when or how I'm gonna get them done. Because when we plan our week with a to-do list full of things that we don't know when or how we're gonna get them done, of course we're gonna be thinking that there isn't enough time to get everything done.
With power planning we replace thinking "I don't have enough time," with a realistic plan of what we're going to get done for the week, and then we follow through with that to the best of our abilities and everything that didn't fit on the calendar either needs to be delegated to somebody else eliminated from our to-do list altogether.
Your calendar then, will be reflective of what is most important to you, what actually fits into the purpose and the vision that you have for your life.
Anything else just needs to get deleted. It just needs to get put off. We might have to say no to the event that our friend invited us to or to the volunteer opportunity, depending on where it fits on the list of priorities and how much room we have in our calendar.
And so the remaining to-dos can either be thrown away with the to-do list and forgotten about until the next time you brainstorm your to-do list, or it needs to get put on a to-do later list. You can reference your to-do-later list when you're making your to-do list, but it's not a to-do list. It's not things I need to do. It's intentionally things I'm not doing right now, but I want to consider doing later. This can be helpful if you have a lot of fear around throwing out your to-do list in case you would forget something you would need to do. However, I would argue that if you forgot about it, it probably wasn't that important to begin with.
Power Planning allows us to transition from an overwhelming to-do list to a real workable calendar to make it easier to stop thinking, "I don't have enough time."
And then the other thing that we use, and for more of what matters is a step-by-step system for mapping out and accomplishing all of our goals.
In For More Of What Matters, the thought, "I don't know where to start," is then easy to let go of, because you already have that next step laid out for yourself.
In For More Of What Matters, you have a simple momentum challenge that you are working on for the month. Something that is doable fits into your calendar and is building your momentum towards your goal so that you could continue working towards your goal without feeling overwhelmed because you're not thinking, "I don't know where to start."
And we make that momentum challenge small enough that it very easily fits into your calendar, fits into your schedule, fits into your life, so that you're not thinking, "I don't have enough time."
Those systems we put in place and the practices that we have within the group coaching program is how we make it easier to eliminate the thoughts, "I don't have enough time," and "I don't know where to start," so that we can accomplish all of our goals as busy working moms without feeling overwhelmed.
If you found this helpful, you’re going to want to join us in the For More Of What Matters group coaching program.
Inside the program, you'll have step-by-step guidance of making plans and actually following through with them to reach all of your goals, and you'll have the added support of working with me as your coach and accomplishing your goals alongside other busy moms who are facing the same challenges that you are. You can join us in the For More Of What Matters group coaching program on Patreon, or follow me on Instagram @andrea.wieneke to learn more.
