Us mums spend a lot of time looking after children, relationships, pets, homes and careers, and in amongst it all, we often forget to care for ourselves.
Life gets busy, and there are constant demands on our time and energy, but it is vital that we make space to focus on ourselves – for the good of our current and future wellbeing.
Someone who’s learnt this from personal experience is Tanya Maree Biddle, a life coach and mum-of-three, who’s found true happiness by learning to love herself, set boundaries, and approach child-raising and relationship-scaffolding in positive new ways.
Tanya helps women make great changes in their lives, and today, she’s sharing some valuable advice with us.
Thanks for your time, Tanya. How can us mums prioritise ourselves, while continuing to provide love and care for our families?
The big mistake I made as a new mum, and the mistake I try to prevent my clients from making, is believing that our needs and our happiness aren’t as important as those of our children and partner. So often, we lose ourselves in the process of becoming mums, and become our own lowest priority.
Getting past this self-limiting belief is the first step to prioritising ourselves.
We also need to make practical changes.
I’m in love with my diary and being organised, and have found that scheduling time for myself into the family calendar is essential. As mums, we schedule in medical appointments, bill payments and kids’ sport, so why not ‘me time’?
Whether it’s an uninterrupted soak in the bath, an appointment for a facial, or a session at the gym, putting this ‘me time’ on the calendar, and making it a non-negotiable, teaches our partner, kids and ourselves that we are just as important as everyone else.
This ties in with boundary-setting. Why is it important for mums to set boundaries, and how can we make them stick?
How others treat us is a direct reflection of how we treat ourselves. This means that setting healthy boundaries begins within. Our level of self-love and self-respect will determine what behaviour we will, or won’t, tolerate from others.
As well as protecting our personal space, emotions and physical body, my personal experience has proven that setting boundaries around how we allocate our precious time, and how we manage family finances, is also very important.
Having the ability to set and hold healthy boundaries has a two-fold effect:
- It protects our overall wellbeing, and
- We set the example for our children, so they’re able to learn that skill for themselves.
If you’ve struggled with setting boundaries in the past, it can feel really uncomfortable calling your loved ones out on their behaviour, and it can be a rude shock for them, too!
So, start with some self-reflection on where your limits are.
At what point do you start to feel negative emotions, discomfort and burn out?
This will provide some insight into your values, what’s important to you, and where your boundaries are.
Remember too, that we all have boundaries – it’s just that we struggle to communicate them, set them, and hold them with the ones we love.
In the beginning, I suggest that you:
- Start small. Don’t bite off more than you can chew
- Use ‘I’ statements, like “I feel disrespected when I call your name and you don’t reply, can you please acknowledge that you have heard me?”
- Be consistent. Yes, you will sound like a broken record. Yes, your little humans will try to push the boundaries to see how serious you are. Yes, you will struggle not to scream like a banshee (think happy thoughts!), and focus on being the bigger person.
- Also, keep in mind that boundaries don’t have to be set in stone. Be willing to be flexible and make changes where and when they’re needed.
As mums, our ultimate goal is to raise good humans. What should we be focusing on to do this?
When I dreamt of being a mum, my sole focus was on loving, cuddling and playing with my new little human, and watching them grow and develop.
I had no real vision of how I was going to parent, what values I wanted to instil, or the adults I wanted them to be.
I guess, if someone had asked me, I would have said I wanted them to be responsible, independent and kind people, but I couldn’t have defined how I was planning to teach them that. I just assumed they would turn out ok. After all, I did, didn’t I?
However, now that two of my three kids are adults, I can see where I went wrong!
- I did too much for them, when I should have taught responsibility for themselves and their possessions early
- I fixed their problems, instead of letting them struggle, fail, learn and experience the consequences of their actions
- I did more punishing than rewarding, when I should have encouraged them with lots of praise and acknowledgement when they got things right, and
- Most importantly, I wasn’t always on the same page as my partner.
What I know now is that before you have kids, it’s important to openly discuss your parenting styles, values and beliefs.
When parents have opposing beliefs around parenting it causes a lot of tension in the relationship and lots of confusion in the kids (until they work out who’s the good cop and who’s the bad cop) #imthebadcop.
What are the hallmarks of a positive, loving partnership, and how can spouses best support one another?
I’m of the view that we need to take that internal rule book – that list of ‘shoulds’ that we learnt from our parents about what marriage is – and set fire to it! Burn that thing to ashes!
This is because we are often disappointed when the expectations around how relationships ‘should’ be, aren’t met. The gap between what we expect, and what we receive, causes us pain.
Instead, it’s important to have open, honest and (sometimes) uncomfortable conversations with our partners about our expectations. Discuss what we need to feel loved, nurtured and supported. How does that look, and how does that feel?
Also, be willing to acknowledge and accept that people have different ways of showing support. For example, just because your partner doesn’t try to sign all their friends up to your new business venture, doesn’t mean they don’t support you and want to see you succeed!
Last, but not least, emotional awareness is a really important part of caring for ourselves and re-focusing our experiences.
Could you explain what this is, and how we can build emotional awareness as mums, partners and people?
Emotional awareness is being consciously aware of how we’re feeling, what we’re thinking, and what actions we are taking when faced with certain situations.
Having a greater understanding of our emotions, and more control over their frequency and intensity, is vitally important for our physical and mental wellbeing.
Emotional awareness, starts with awareness.
In the beginning, it can be quite tough to build this habit in ourselves, because we tend to react with very little control. Challenging situations or issues come up, and we let our big emotions take over. We don’t really stop to consider how these situations are making us feel, or what stories we’re attaching to them.
This is where emotional awareness helps, and it’s not inherent – it’s something that needs to be practised. Emotional awareness is like a muscle, because we need to work this muscle to build its strength, so that awareness becomes a habit.
To raise your emotional awareness, it helps to place sticky notes around the house asking:
- How am I feeling?
- What am I thinking?
- What stories am I telling myself?
It also helps to start an emotional awareness journal. At the end of the day, reflect on the times you felt a really strong emotional response and ask yourself:
- What happened today that created a strong emotional reaction?
- How did I feel?
- What story/ies did I tell myself?
- How did I react?
- Was that story/ies true?
If we do this on a regular basis and build that awareness muscle, we greatly improve our emotional and physical wellbeing, and we have greater control over our reactions to certain situations.
This will have a flow-on effect to all other areas of our lives, and I wish everyone well in finding a new kind of focus in your family life.
If you like, you can find me on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/tanyamareelifecoach/ and Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/tanyamaree071/
