A Mom's Perspective: Opting Out of Hard

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As parents in the time of COVID - we have all navigated days where we are:

1. working virtually AND
2. in person managing children

And having to juggle both at the same time.

I have to confess - I enjoy being a mom and I enjoy working. I don’t like mixing the two though - it’s like drinking a long island iced tea on a humid day in July… I won’t be coherent by the end of my drink. I get stressed because I feel like I’m straddling a fence and I’m not really on either side.

I like this visual as a reference.

I am the circle and the arrows are my productivity. When I am juggling BOTH work and mom duties at once, it’s like I’m going off in a number of directions and I’m not getting very far in any particular area/task/project and surprise, surprise - I suffer. My sanity suffers, my energy suffers, my attitude and outlook on life suffer and worst of all for me is I feel like I’m failing at being present for my kid. Because honestly, I’m not being present for him. 

I’ve had to draw some hard lines on days like these. This looks like - taking PTO to be fully present with my kid. This looks like asking for childcare help from family, this looks like “hey hunny, if I take the morning, can you take the afternoon?” It can even look like telling your co-workers, “I’m on mom duty and I won’t be able to answer you til after my kid’s bedtime.”
You could take the perspective of “Will you remember this in 20 years?” and if the answer is no - then forget about it and move on. BUT I CAN’T DO THAT. What I can share is that establishing these boundaries makes a difference.

Here’s why - I know when I’m not truly showing up and I deeply feel that pain, in my heart. True, I may not remember that specific instance in 20 years, but I will remember that dull seeping feeling during that season of my life where I juggled too much and struggled as a result. For me, it’s less about one instance, and more about the compound of one instance, that turned to three, that turned to normal, that turned to OMG - this is NOT what I signed up for.

Because here is the visual I strive for…

Making headway - real headway on the things that matter.

We’ll dig in deeper on time management practices in another blog that have helped me navigate parenthood as a working mom, but what I want to remind you and if you need to hear it (because I need to hear it) is that you have permission to *‘opt out of hard.’

What does this mean?

You’re a goal oriented mama - you want to do family stuff, personal stuff, mom & dad alone type stuff, but you have those pesky job stuffs, household stuffs, just plain living stuffs and who knows what else. Life is hard. But we don’t have to make life harder than it needs to be by continually over committing ourselves. So here’s some steps to get us off this hamster wheel.

Ask yourself the following:

1. How are you feeling - really? If it’s a 5 or less on a scale of 10 then move onto the next question. If you’re a 6 or above - then you can gauge your energy from there. However the following steps can still apply.
2. If this were easy, what would that look like? How would that work?
3. Give yourself permission to do the easy thing and commit to that choice.

Here’s a type day that is not entirely uncommon in my house:

“I had back to back meetings today, I got nothing really done on any projects, my kitchen exploded, why does my toddler insist on making every bedtime difficult and the only thing that felt productive today was getting all the laundry done and put away because… meetings.”

Here are things I certainly could do - 

• Angrily clean the kitchen 

• Do after hours, semi-productive project work for my job

• Drink my problems away with half a bottle of wine 

• Fall into a mindless screen stupor to just give myself a mental break

• Make breakfast for dinner
  
  

Here’s why most of those are ho-hum ideas at best -

• Angrily clean the kitchen - yes, you’ll have a clean kitchen, but while you are cleaning you are also going to be stewing and if you had asked yourself question #1 from above - you would be honest and tell yourself. Nope, the clean kitchen is just not happening tonight. 

• Do after hours, semi-productive project work for my job - Again, you could try to do productive job work, but if it’s already the end of the day, are you really setting yourself up for success for tomorrow by being tired, because you worked late? 

• Drink my problems away with half a bottle of wine - Albeit, a choice I have imbibed in on particularly difficult days. This does leave you foggy, slow and even more tired the next day. 

• Fall into a mindless screen stupor to just give myself a mental break - I didn’t put a TV in my house until I was 34. Yup - no TV in any of my young adult to adult living situations, till 34 years of age. Our TV is mostly used to play spotify playlists even today. Why? Because TV is a distraction I know I don’t need. I sit in front of a screen during most of my waking hours for my job and I was not going to relegate my evenings to continuing to sit in front of screens. 

I left out make breakfast for dinner because - it’s easy. It requires minimal ingredients and dishes to clean afterwards and you are giving yourself sustenance to fuel you into tomorrow. So that tomorrow (regardless of what gets thrown at you) you are mentally sharp and you have given your body and mind a healthy buffer to be better, tomorrow.

Not everything needs to be done now, today, yesterday, or even at all. And when life is extra hard - guess what? You can ‘opt out of hard’ and move on with your life. 

 

Activity Framework

When you are feeling run-down and out of juice prescribe yourself with the following questionnaire:

1. How are you feeling - really? If it’s a 5 or less on a scale of 10 then move onto the next question. If you’re a 6 or above - then you can gauge your energy from there. However the following steps can still apply.
2. If this were easy, what would that look like? How would that work?
3. Give yourself permission to do the easy thing and commit to that choice.

In the above section, I gave a typical example - one that I suspect very likely resonates with you. But this simple framework can also be used on a variety of situations;

• Do you really want to throw a big birthday party for your kiddo or can you ask someone else in your family to plan and host it?

• Meal prep hard for you? Make it easy and spend a nap time coming up with a rotating meal plan that is delicious, nutritious, minimally involved and just rinse and repeat those recipes til you’re tired of them. Truthfully, we’re all pretty habitual eaters, even though we claim we like variety. We do like variety, but not when we are the one’s constantly having to exert the energy (mentally and otherwise) on making variety happen daily. Opt out of hard my friend.

• Look at your to-do list. I mean really look at it. If you REALLY had to get something done, prioritize that and let the rest fall where it may. Someone else’s agenda that they are in turn putting on you is just that - someone else’s agenda. Your agenda should reflect the intentionality of a master do-er. And guess what? Master do-er’s don’t actually do it all - they put in place support mechanisms and delegate a whole hell of a lot. And don’t feel one tiny twinge of guilt doing that too.
  
  *I can’t take credit for this phrase - this was used by a life coach - Katelyn Denning of Mother Nurture.