The mom game is about having it all, having the best kids, and being perfectly put together every single day. It’s about having a career, hobbies, and close personal friendships as well as the perfect marriage and an envious love life. And in creating this life of perfection, you still manage to be best friends with your kids from the time they are infants until the day you die.
The more Pinterest-loving overachiever moms you know, the more you understand exactly what I am saying. And the more you try to be like this, the more you understand this truth: none of that results in winning.
All too often I talk to women who missed out. They focused so hard on winning this complex game that life passes them by, leaving them weary and unsatisfied. In trying to win, they end up losing themselves.
I’m here to tell you that you can win the mom game. You can win in a way that is fulfilling, satisfying, and overall beautiful. Here’s how to do it:
1. Know Yourself and Your Values
Are you working yourself ragged trying to advance your career, when you are perfectly happy with the position you are currently in?
Are you feeling depressed day in and day out as a stay-at-home mom because you think you can’t afford child care if you go back to work?
Let me ask you this: who decided what you should prioritize in your life?
I grew up with a stay-at-home mom who said child care was bad for kids, and also told me I had to work full-time and be my family’s breadwinner. Talk about mixed messages!
Here’s the truth: YOU decide what kind of life you want to live. No one from your past and no one in your present gets to craft the future you. You can be anything you want to be. The only catch is that you have to know who that is.
So, who do you want to be?
Do you want to be a mom who makes perfect cupcakes, packs bento box lunches, and scrubs the house on a religious schedule?[Text Wrapping Break]Do you want to be a mom who teaches responsibility while also teaching your kids to shake it off and have fun?
Do you want to have an identity that includes a professional career? Is it the career you currently have?
The first and most important step to winning the mom game is to know yourself and who you want to be. This gives you the framework for what “winning” actually means to you.
2. Accept the Phases
When I became a mom, a friend gave me a golden nugget of wisdom. She told me that everything with children is a phase, good or bad. Be prepared for everything to change, because it always will.
Grasping this concept is a key to winning the mom game. There is never truly a finish line when it comes to parenting. Our kids keep changing, evolving, and learning. We should be right there doing all those things right with them. We can avoid the regret of missing out on things by embracing them as they come. Live in the moment, soak in the gift of motherhood that you are given today, and truly enjoy it before it goes away.
Oh, and just like our kids keep changing, so do we. So those values and goals you established in the first step? Those may change over time, too. And if they do, that’s okay. Winning is about embracing the journey, not the destination.
3. Choose Your Feelings
At the end of the day, the choice of winning and losing is up to you. How are you going to feel about everything that went well and everything that went unexpectedly? Are you going to feel like a failure for not getting any Instagram-worthy pics that day, or are you going to feel the success of nourishing one more day of life into your precious little humans?
You choose how you feel. This concept can be difficult to swallow, but once you do, you will realize that you can win the mom game every single day just by showing up and being true to yourself.
~~~
It’s hard to be your best self as a mom when you have legal questions weighing you down. If you need to chat with a lawyer friend at no charge, click here to schedule a coaching call with me.