How to Save Your Sanity this Summer as a Stay-at-Home Mom
If you’re feeling the urge to move bedtime earlier and earlier as the summer goes on, know that there are simple ways to start enjoying this time before your kids go back to school without having to rely on camps or babysitters as a means of escape.
And the first step is to get clear on how YOU want to feel right now and to ask yourself how you can create this - always remembering to come back to the question of how this looks for you in reality.
Because if you’re feeling stressed out right now, this is a reaction - and we always have the power to choose how to react to any situation at any time. All of the feelings we don’t want to experience (such as overwhelm, pressure, and resentment at everything we simply must do over the summer months) come from being reactive to the demands we feel are being made of us. We think we should take our kids to all the fun events on offer, and that we’re somehow responsible for making sure everyone around us has a good time.
But this is simply not true. You cannot “make” other people happy - you can only create it for yourself in what you choose to think and feel about your summer. So if you don’t want to head into “back-to-school” feeling drained and depleted, follow these three simple steps to a stress-free summer:
1. Visualize your ideal summer days
As the temperatures start soaring, I love the suggestion by Brain Coach Jim Kwik that you can choose to be either a thermostat reacting to the environment you’re in, or a thermometer that sets the temperature (and thereby changes the environment along with you).
If you want your summer to be relaxed and chill, start showing up in a way that sets this mood for your kids too - cut out the rushing from one activity to the next and come up with ways to move slowly through your days closer to home.
Plan out your schedule, starting with an activity YOU want to do first and truly honor this priority. Because if you go through the summer doing none of the things that feel good to you in your body, you will quickly become depleted and be running on empty as you place all your focus on serving others.
If you want to visit museums or the zoo, take note of what time of day you naturally have the most energy, and make sure you pay attention to your body’s responses while you’re there - some activities may feel too much for you to do alone with the kids on long, hot days and there is no shame in acknowledging this and saving them for a time when you have help from your partner or someone else.
The key thing here is to never make yourself wrong, or tell yourself you shouldn’t feel a certain way - where you are right now is exactly where you’re meant to be, and you are the best mom for your kids, no matter what.
2. Stop arguing with reality
When everyone is spending all their time together, there will always be noise, and someone will always need something, and someone will always be disagreeing with someone else.
What makes this so difficult for us is thinking that it should be any other way - that the kids should all be happy all the time; that they should be quiet when we want them to be; that they should be able to entertain themselves.
We don’t conform to this ourselves so why do we expect them to?
Of course you can set any rules or boundaries or consequences you want in your home, but remember to also have some in place for you, too! When my brain starts to offer me all the reasons why I need to move bedtime up to 4pm, I follow the steps below to access the part of me that knows I have all the answers within me to creating exactly what I want and need for myself:
P - Pause when you feel negative or unpleasant emotions come up.
L - Lay your hand on your cheek for comfort and really focus on the sensations of your fingers and palm touching your face.
A - Ask yourself if what you’re telling yourself in that moment is true. If you feel it is, ask yourself if there’s another, more useful way of looking at the situation.
Y - Yield a new result in your life by shifting to a more playful mindset (curious, creative, connecting, and cultivating possibility rather than seeing things as black and white).
Remind yourself often that you can always have your own back through P.L.A.Y. and also make it a daily practice to play - to do something that lights you up (for me that’s dancing to a song I love) - to give your mind the space it needs and to show your body what it’s like to feel profoundly right in who you are.
3. Stop people pleasing
We so often tell ourselves that we’re only good or worthy if we meet some outside expectations that other people have of us, and this is often compounded during the summer months when we see everyone’s photos of their perfect-looking vacations on social media.
But when we’re always doing what we think is required of us, and ultimately becoming dependent on other people’s approval to feel good about ourselves, we’re never able to show up as our true authentic selves or have any sustained sense of self-regard.
Not only that, but when we don’t allow ourselves to say no to the things we really don’t want to do because of a fear about what other people will think - either about us as a person or as a mom - we only ever end up feeling resentful. And while we may think we’re the only ones who suffer here, we’re not actually being selfless - we often get a hit of dopamine when we do things we see as “for” other people, and we also deny them the opportunity to experience an authentic relationship with us.
I love this quote from Glennon Doyle:
“Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.”
When you commit to protecting your time and energy, honor the priorities you make for yourself, and, most importantly, keep coming back to your visualization of how you want your summer to feel, you can truly create any experience you want for yourself.
If you’d like help with giving yourself permission to experience the summer you want to have as the person you want to be this year, click on the link below to schedule a free coaching consultation.