Why It’s Time to Shed the Shoulds as a Stay-At-Home-Mom
Do you spend much of your day beating yourself up for everything you’re doing “wrong” in your life at home, as well as all the ways you’re not the mom you want to be right now? Are you doubting that you’ll ever get there? Do you feel shame at having failed - yet again - to make the changes you’ve been wanting to make for weeks, months, or even years?
Why exactly you’re feeling stuck right now
If you feel like you’ve been struggling with the chaos of your everyday life for a longer period of time, and see no possibility to rest, play, be in the moment with your kids, have a conversation with your partner, or actually enjoy being you, then please know that you absolutely have the ability to design the life you want any time you decide to do so.
Your brain has simply been going about its business of being as efficient as possible, offering you the same thoughts you’ve always had, and sticking wholly to what’s familiar, because that’s how it knows to keep you safe.
And it’s this that is driving you to repeat the same old patterns of behavior over and over again - the exact ones that have long been keeping you from making the changes you want to make in your life at home.
If you take a look at any given day and ask yourself how many times you say the word “should” to yourself - but then never actually follow through - you may be surprised at just how regularly you’ve been doing this.
“I should get up without checking my phone in the morning.” “I should get the kids to school on time without panic or rush.” “I should make home-cooked meals for my family.” “I should clean the bathrooms today.” “I should make some time for my husband.” “I should get myself to bed on time.” You think you should do better and be better, always - and yet you aren’t taking any steps at all to get there.
So then you invariably add a ton of self-judgement into the mix. And because you’re convinced that there’s a right way and a wrong way to be a stay-at-home mom and you’re not getting there, what naturally follows on from that is the feeling of shame at not measuring up.
But where do these ideas about the “right” kind of mom come from? We think they’re just observations of how the world works and that we’re simply stating facts about moms and motherhood. But they’re actually opinions that have been handed down to us by our parents, or society, or books we’ve read, or even just a random comment overheard at the playground.
Judgement, of course, definitely has its uses - after all it does a great job of keeping us alive when we judge whether it’s safe to go down that alley at night or spend time with that person we just met. But it’s certainly not useful when we’re trying to make changes to the way we do things at home or how we’re showing up in our relationships with our partner or kids.
Telling ourselves that we’re not good enough, incapable, inept, or inadequate in some other way will only ever drive a whole lot of inaction on our part - there is certainly nothing motivating about feeling this way about ourselves!
You are choosing your thoughts
What we have to realize is that what we’re really doing here is choosing to think this way. And the good news about that is that we have the power to choose something different any time we please. We can choose exactly how we want to show up in our lives, and we can choose to believe that we’re fully capable of making a change once we’ve decided exactly what we want for ourselves.
Any time you push yourself outside of your comfort zone and try things that go beyond what you’re used to doing day in day out (even when it’s not working for you), you’re going to initially feel a lot of discomfort and perhaps even experience a great deal of resistance. But what’s the worst that can happen with this? That you may not get to exactly where you want to be after all?
If you’re already experiencing not being in the place you want to be right now, the worst case scenario is you ending up in the same place you’ve always been. And life is always going to be 50/50 anyway - it will never be rainbows and unicorns all of the time; nor would you want it to be. So you can experience either the discomfort of sitting still and never getting to where you most want to be, or you can experience the discomfort of growing and changing as you step into trying something new. And there is so much power in deciding between the two on purpose.
Stop shoulding all over yourself
If you do decide you want to make a change, the most effective place to start is by accepting right now that you are 100% worthy exactly the way you are. This means throwing out the manual you have for yourself, which states that in order for you to feel like a decent mom and partner, you have to behave a certain way.
And this first step is key because your feelings always, always come from your thoughts - never from your actions. This means that no matter what you actually do, no matter how you show up, you still get to choose the way you think and feel about yourself.
Have compassion for yourself, and trust that you’re right where you’re meant to be right now, and that you’ll get to where you want to be in your own time (exactly how you’re meant to get there!).
The next step is to give yourself permission to truly leave the shame of your “failures” behind - by simply noticing every time should comes up for you and replacing it with could. The word could brings no shame with it at all because it doesn’t carry the suggestion that something about you is wrong and needs to be fixed immediately.
“I could get up without checking my phone in the morning.” “I could get the kids to school on time without panic or rush.” “I could make home-cooked meals for my family.” “I could clean the bathrooms today.” “I could make some time for my husband.” “I could get myself to bed on time.”
This simple change shows us all the possibilities that are available when we’re relieved of the pressure to become that “better” version of ourselves. Our incredible potential to grow when we accept ourselves exactly as we are right now and show ourselves true compassion and love is likewise revealed.
The third and final step is to come up with one thing you’re committed to getting done this week, and to tell yourself exactly how you’re going to feel when you’ve achieved it (this feeling is going to fuel you into taking action!). Then, at the end of the week, look back at what you did well and whether you were successful - wholly without judgement. You can then use what you learned to move forward with getting something else successfully completed next week.
Letting go of your old ways of thinking and shedding the shoulds you have for yourself will move you towards a new place in your life where you no longer make it mean that you’ve failed if you don’t get something done as planned. The self-judgement you used to feel will be replaced with compassion and a simple curiosity about why you weren’t able to show up for yourself the way you wanted to.
And you’ll have the new belief that you’re fully capable of making any changes you want to make, and quickly start seeing all the evidence that you can create exactly the life you want for yourself.
If you’re ready to reimagine your life as a stay-at-home mom, click below to set up a free coaching consultation.