I am a personal development junkie……
So when I saw multiple posts about how amazing High-Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard was, I felt compelled to write High-Performance Habits Of A Stay At Home Mom.
I purchased High-Performance Habits on audible right away and became engrossed in the content. So powerful! If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. You can purchase it here
The problem with many of the personal development books on the market is that they really aren’t geared toward stay at home moms.
Even the books that are written for moms usually just tell you to outsource everything so you can hustle. No offense to anyone who outsources (more power to you and no judgment. Mamas gotta do what mammas gotta do) but I want to hang out with my kids and enjoy homemaking. Even cleaning! Sometimes 🙂
After listening through the book on audible I thought, man I wish they had more practical tips for stay at home moms. Which made me think, maybe you should create, implement, and share High-Performance Habits Of A Stay At Home Mom.
So here you have it! The High-Performance Habits…#momstyle <3
The first thing Brendon talks about in his book is the importance of creating not only good but the right habits to maintain long term success. How do you know what habits to create and maintain success over the long haul of being a stay at home mom?
These habits are going to take being intentional and consistent in order for them to actually work. The only way to gain the full benefit of the right habit is Consistency and time.
Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE -Darren Hardy
Do not expect to create these habits for one week and reap the benefits. Give them time.
Create A Personal Mission Statement
The first time I read about a personal mission statement I was obsessed with the idea. I was actually kind of annoyed at myself for never taking the time to create one. I knew my core values but had never prioritized them.
There is power in naming it, writing it down and seeing it on paper.
Brendon talks about seeking clarity. A personal mission statement is a way of becoming very clear on your core values and what kind of life you want to create in your home. We all know what is important to us, but having your values floating around in your head isn’t a solid plan on how to live them out.
When you take the time to create a personal missions statement, you become very clear about what you want for your life. It makes it much easier to prioritize tasks, set goals, and make life decisions when you have a solid foundation in place.
Having a personal missions statement also gives you a bigger purpose and motivation for creating the right habits as a stay at home mom.
Make Your Personal Health A Priority
Mama, you NEED energy to not only thrive but to even survive!!! We walk around like zombies and people wonder why we yell at our kids?
I get it, sometimes you just don’t get sleep as a mama. I’ve been there. My first baby did not sleep through the night until she was a year old and it almost killed me. I was miserable. The first time I got a full night sleep I felt like a new person.
My energy was at an all-time low and my self-confidence was dwindling every single day. I found myself overwhelmed, depressed, and growing resentful at a steady pace.
But If I’m being real, my low energy was caused by so much more than just not sleeping.
Let me paint you a picture…..
You are up all night with a crying baby and of course, pass out in a deep sleep just an hour before your alarm clock goes off.
You roll out of bed feeling like a zombie and looking like Ursula, stumble to the coffee maker in desperate need of a fix, tripping over three little people asking for a snack.
Frustrated because you are slangry (our family term for sleep deprived and angry) you are a little nippy with your kids and get them anything in reach for breakfast just to make the noise stop.
You get your kids ready for school which takes all morning because you are fighting over what they will wear for the day (you didn’t set out their clothes the night before because you were aimlessly scrolling facebook while simultaneously watching Netflix). No judgment, been there many times.
By the time you drop the kids off at school, the only thing you’ve put in your body all morning is a cup of coffee….or five. By now the coffee has kicked in and you are still slangry but on a caffeine high. So you feel really really off. Like, tired but full of energy and jittery at the same time.
By now you are hungry so you stop at Starbucks and order the fattest bagel in the land smothered in cream cheese. Which really just adds to your already desperate situation.
Did I mention it’s Monday? Congratulations, you just had the crappiest most unproductive start to your week.
Life avalanches throughout the week and you end up covered in coffee stains, the same t-shirt you’ve worn all week and one hundred loads of laundry mocking you in every corner of your home.
Which leads to a terrible awful no good very bad weekend. Then everything starts over again on Monday.
This is why the small habits that we create actually compile together and make up our lives. Choosing to make your health a priority is the first step to becoming a High Performance Stay At Home Mom.
Here are a few ways to get more energy TODAY including tips on how to get more rest for the tired mama! <3
- Drink Water! Make a commitment to drinking 12 ounces of water BEFORE your coffee.
- Take Supplements: Mama, your body NEEDS a multivitamin at the very least.
- Make Wise Food Choices. Swap out that bagel for an egg bite. They are actually amazing.
- Move Your Body: There are a million at home workouts on Pinterest. Grab any, and get your sweat on.
- Make Sleep A Priority – See How To Get More Rest For The Tired Mama
Create A Routine, Not A Schedule
Routine = Flexibility with boundaries.
Every single mom knows that schedules aren’t a real thing and flexibility is not an option.
Take today for instance….
I had planned to drop the kids off at preschool and head home to dial in and focus on writing this post. Halfway home I got a call that Rosalee (my 3-year-old) had a fever and I needed to pick her up.
The old me would have been upset that my schedule was getting a monkey wrench thrown in it. But instead of getting flustered, I picked her up, brought her home, snuggled with her for a bit, got her some water to keep her hydrated, and put on paw patrol for an hour so I could at least get a little writing done.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to hit a gym class but just couldn’t get there in time because someone had a meltdown t minus five minutes before we were about to leave.
Instead of blowing the gym off completely and pout about missing my favorite class, I’ll go to the gym and just work out on my own. Yeah, I missed my favorite class, but I still was able to get a great workout in.
By creating a flexible routine for you and your kids, you give yourself and them the permission to be human. It will make your life less stressful by taking the pressure off yourself to keep a perfect schedule.
Develop Influence With Your Littles
Before I had kids, I thought I was gonna be the boss mama. I didn’t even explore the option of my kids being badly behaved because I was going to be super strict with them and had all the answers.
Then I had kids and I learned that parenting is a world of beautiful colors. Every single color and shade you can think of except…… black and white.
There are literally no black and whites with parenting which is part of the reason there are millions of different views on it. And different strategies work with different families and even different kids within the same family.
Do you feel confused? Good. That means I am doing a great job of describing what parenting is like.
One thing that has dramatically shifted my parenting is being intentional about becoming influential in my kid’s life.
The more I tried to control, manage, and boss around my kids, the more I lost power over them. Even at very very young ages. Kids don’t need a boss, they need a leader. And great leaders lead by example.
You see, impotence (meaning the inability to take effective action or helplessness) is the opposite of influence (meaning the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.)
When you seek to gain power and control over your kids you will eventually become impotent in their lives.
In other words, the more you try to gain power, the more you will lose it.
Start to shift your mindset to develop influence over your littles rather than control. You will impact their lives so much more by seeking to become influential with them.
But remember that influence is earned, not given.
Create A Decluttering And Organizing System
I am an organizational junkie. I cannot create or be effective in a messy space. A cluttered space = a cluttered mind. Creating a decluttering and organizing system in your home is imperative to be an effective stay at home mama.
Just like eating healthy, this small but powerful habit makes or breaks so many areas of motherhood.
How many times have you been so overwhelmed by your messy home that you ended up sitting in the middle of your kitchen floor after the kids go to bed getting sucked into the dreaded social media scroll?
Sometimes it’s not even about social media as much as just letting your mind blank you in sweet silence. It doesn’t even make sense unless you’ve been there.
By taking the time to create a decluttering and organizing system, you will simplify and streamline housekeeping allowing more time to do something actually constructive.
Spending that sweet silence after the kids finally go to bed doing something constructive like reading, yoga, or meditating is so powerful.
But in order to get that time, you have to establish a system that works.
Create An Effective House Cleaning Routine
I used to dread house cleaning. I would wait until my house was dirty until I cleaned it. Then I would have to spend one or two whole days cleaning and catching up on laundry. I dreaded it, complained about it, and was completely overwhelmed.
Or I would spend all my time “kind of” cleaning. Do you know what I mean by “kind of cleaning”? It’s those times you bring a load of laundry up and start folding it but then get distracted by a million other to do’s and it ends up sitting around all day or week. Yikes! It is one of my biggest pet peeves.
When I came up with a cleaning routine that worked for me, It changed everything. My house is not always perfectly clean but having a routine and sticking to it has my house pretty darn tidy for a family with three little kids the majority of the time.
The best part is that I really don’t spend all my free time cleaning.
Yes, I do clean and pick up often throughout the day, but by implementing this cleaning routine, It allows me to have free time to do things like do a craft with my kids or write on my blog without feeling guilty.
The other amazing thing about a cleaning schedule is that when I do get behind after a busy week or vacation, I don’t feel like I have to freak out and clean everything to get caught up.
I simply fall back on my cleaning routine and do one task each day until I’m caught up. I’m ok with the rest of the house having to wait in order for me to get caught up on my time frame.
For a very long time, I let housework run me. I literally felt like a slave. Dramatic? I know. I’m a little dramatic sometimes. But who wants to spend every single day being in reaction mode to housework? That is not a fun life and frankly one of the main things that make being a stay at home mom suck.
Now, I am the master of my housework. If I have gotten behind on laundry from a long trip, I refuse to stress out over the five loads that need to be washed. I just do one load a day until I am caught up. Easy, peasy, lemon, squeezy <3
In Conclusion: I hope this post has planted a seed in your heart on how important it is to establish smart habits as stay at home mamas.
By gaining clarity about what you want your home to be, making your health a priority, becoming influential in your kid’s life, and creating systems around homemaking, you will become a high performer at home.
I know that it is easy to feel like it doesn’t matter and you have been forgotten by the world.
That is a lie from the pit of hell. YOU matter. Your Job MATTERS. And taking the time to be intentional and establish good habits MATTERS.
You can do it, mama. I believe in you! <3
If you found this post helpful It would mean the world to me if you would share it with three friends and pin it to your favorite Pinterest board <3
Xoxo
Colleen
May Your Coffee Be Stronger Than Your Toddler
High-Performance Habits Of A Stay At Home Mom
High-Performance Habits Of A Stay At Home Mom
Pin to your favorite Pinterest board to read later! <3
So many good tips!!! ?? Thank you for sharing!
Thanks so much for taking the time to read! <3
Love these tips!! So practical!
So glad they were helpful!