Mom Writes First
Mom Writes First inspires busy moms to make their writing dreams a reality.
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Mom Writes First
10. Overcome Mom Guilt + The Question to Ask Yourself so Guilt is a Guide not a Burden!
Have you ever been swept up by a tidal wave of guilt when you sit down to write, feeling like you're choosing your passion over your kids? That's the monster known as Mom Guilt, and it's exactly what we're taming in this episode. I'm Jen, your fellow mom and writer, who's been right there in the trenches with you. Together, we'll explore a transformative four-step process to navigate these tricky emotions, so that we can write more and still be the awesome, incredible moms that we already are!
Take the QUIZ to discover your writing style, and get tips on how to leverage it to write more!
Ready to take back your time and add hours to the day so you can finally manage it all? Then you have to check out the FREE Time Audit Guide. You'll get coaching, worksheets, and tips on running your first time audit so that you can finally write your book without burning out. It's absolutely free, and it's my way of supporting and empowering YOU!
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What if I told you that Momguilt was completely unnecessary? If Momguilt has ever stopped you from showing up to write, then you have to listen to this episode. You are listening to MomWritesFirst, the podcast that helps busy moms write every single day. I'm Jen. I'm a mom of five, a lawyer-turned-life coach, and I'm developing a habit where I write every single day. Come with me on this journey. We're going to empower each other to build a daily writing habit so that we can write, publish and sell our first book.
Speaker 1:Hello MomWriters, this episode is a topic that I am super passionate about. Today we're talking about Momguilt. We're going to look at it, examine it and we're going to learn to move past it. That way, it stops getting in the way of our joy, our dreams and our goals, especially when it comes to writing. On this episode, I'll share with you my four-step process that I use whenever I'm feeling that Momguilt bubble up, and I'll show you how to recognize guilt and realize that it is completely unnecessary, and how and when we can also use it as a guidepost to reconnect to our deepest values. I know that this four-step process works because I have used it to overcome Momguilt myself. Here's the thing Momguilt is a bunch of malarkey. It is a scam. I know this because I know that, no matter what a mom does, somebody is going to have a thought about it, somebody is going to judge it, somebody is going to judge it as wrong. I have seen, over my 15 years as a mom, countless articles and social media posts about this, and about Momguilt in particular, as if we should feel guilty, like at some kind of twisted rite of passage, and I have seen Momguilt derail the dreams and goals of way too many women, especially those of you who want to write, but tell yourself that you can't be a good mom and a good writer too. Well, no more. The jig is up.
Speaker 1:Today, I'm going to teach you the four-step process for kicking all that mom guilt to the curb, so that you can make time and space for writing while still showing up as the incredible mama that I know that you are. Before we get to that, though, I do want to tell you about a little something that I made for you. It's a gift, a gift from me to you, to help you to write more. Here's what I know as moms, we have a lot going on, and we all have a unique way in which we manage all of that. It's our unique mom superpower that helps us get all those things done every day, and what I have realized, both for myself and from coaching other women on this exact topic, is that we can use our mom superpower to actually develop a daily writing habit so that we write even more, and I made a quiz just for you that's going to help you unlock what your mom superpower is and then give you all kinds of super specific tips that are going to help you develop a writing habit that actually works for you in your life. You can find the quiz on my website at momfirstcoachingcom, and I want to invite you to take it. If you have ever wanted to create a writing habit that is actually personal and workable for you, then you definitely need to check out this quiz. So get momfirstcoachingcom slash quiz. You'll find it there.
Speaker 1:All right, let's go on today's topic. We are talking about guilt, so fun, right? Let's first take a minute and think about how does guilt show up in our life? Show up in our life. Here are some things to think about.
Speaker 1:Has guilt ever stopped you from pursuing something that you actually truly, really do want to do? Before you say no, just hit the pause button and reflect a little bit more. Have you ever gone to a party or gathering that you didn't want to go to out of a sense of obligation? Have you ever said yes to an extra project at work, knowing that it would mean that you wouldn't have time for the other things in your life? Did you decline an invitation to an event or a club or an outing that you actually would really love because you felt like it would take you away from work or home? Have you ever delayed something that you want to do? Have you ever delayed your writing, for example, so that you could take care of some household chores? If the laundry or the dishes has stopped you from writing, then you need to keep listening to this episode. Did you plan a vacation only to spend it feeling terrible and like you needed to return emails or take care of other tasks or pay bills the whole time? Did you ask for time off work to attend a kid's game or a recital, only to feel guilty about it the whole time? I'm guessing yes, because a lot of moms answer yes to these questions.
Speaker 1:If guilt shows up in these ways in our lives, then chances are it's probably showing up in our writing life too. Have you ever felt selfish or like a bad mom for taking time to write? Do you feel like you're taking time away from your kids, away from your household, away from your work or away from other obligations whenever you make space to write? Do you feel like a good mom would be able to make time and space for everything that she wants to do with her kids while still making time for writing? Have you set a time to write but then not shown up, delayed it or backed out because you thought you should be doing something with or for your child instead? If these questions made you uncomfortable in any way, that's an invitation to look a little bit more closely at them.
Speaker 1:The key here, the idea here, as with so much of the work that I put out into the world, is to bring more mindfulness to this area of your life. A lot of times, when we are acting out of sense of obligation, even when it's something that we think we should be doing or would be good, like taking care of our kids, we end up acting out of a place of guilt, not a place of love. Now, maybe you think that's serving you and that's okay, if you like your reason for making whatever choices that you're making, then keep going. My friend, you got this, but maybe, just maybe, you aren't quite feeling like you have it all together in this area. Maybe you want to stop doing the things that you really don't want to do and start doing the things that you do want to do, like writing and enjoying it. If mom guilt has ever stopped you from writing or it stops you from enjoying your writing time, then this episode is here to help you.
Speaker 1:I use a four-step process to really recognize that mom guilt and then kick it to the curb. So that's the first step. Okay, the first step is recognizing the guilt, realizing that what it really is is just a feeling in the body. The second step is to identify the thought that causes that guilt. The third step in the process is to do our best to then figure out where that thought is coming from. Is it coming from our social conditioning? Is it a thought error? Is it a sign that we're not aligned with our values? What does that thought really actually want to tell us? And fourth, we change the thought pattern itself, we interrupt it and we move forward with more intention. Let's break that four-step process down even more. So first, recognize guilt.
Speaker 1:Guilt is a feeling For me. It feels like I've been hit in the stomach. I often notice that my shoulders hunt forward and I kind of want to curl up and hide. When I feel that tension in my body, like I've been hit in my stomach and I'm curling up and my shoulders are hunching, I know that it's time for me to check in, get a little deeper and see what's going on. It's time for me to really get curious about my guilt. And that's really what the second step is about. We're going to get curious about the thought that's causing the guilt. When I feel guilty about something, I try my best to really pull myself into a place of curiosity, not a place of judgment, and I try to ask myself what's leading me here to feel guilty. It's important to remember that guilt is just an emotion. It's not good, it's not bad, it just is.
Speaker 1:Guilt, like any other emotion, is always caused by a thought in our head. So what thought is it that is causing us to feel guilty? Once I uncover that thought, I like to take it out and examine it. I love to literally picture a thought like a twisty piece of string that I am taking out and looking at it. If you've ever read Harry Potter and I know I personally have read it a few times with my kiddos you can kind of compare this idea to the Pen Seaf right where Harry can examine all the memories, and that's how you know. Looking at this thought kind of feels like for me. It's like I take it out and I look at it closely. Thinking of it like this helps me to remember that the thought is not me, it's not a part of me, it's just a sentence in my head. When I look at that thought I first try to ask myself where did this thought come from? This is a really important step because it helps us know what we're going to do with the guilt and with the thought that's causing the guilt. So that takes us to step number three, looking at where that guilt came from.
Speaker 1:Guilt comes from the idea that we have somehow made a mistake, that we did something that we should not have done, or that we didn't do something that we should have done. It takes some self-reflection, but what I have found is that the way to deal with guilt is to start recognizing where your guilt in the moment is actually coming from? Is it a product of social programming? Is it a thought error? Or is it actually a guidepost, a signal to you that perhaps you have stepped outside of alignment with your own values and your own expectations? How can you figure out where the guilt is really coming from?
Speaker 1:When I am gut-checking my guilt, my go-to question for my brain is is this something that I want to feel guilty about? Is it useful to me to feel guilty about this here? Lending my brain? That very simple, straightforward question is a little bit of a mind hack because, rather than letting my brain spin in a place of I made a mistake, I'm such a bad mom, I'll never get to be a good writer, I'll never show up as a mom I want to be I instead turn it into something that's useful for me. Is it useful for me to feel guilty about? This brings me back to reality and helps me to move forward. Thank you.
Speaker 1:The fourth step in the process is to change the thought and move forward with much more intentionality. The way to do this is going to depend a little bit on whether or not the thought is a product of social programming, a thought error that's based on, maybe a cognitive bias, for example, or if it's somehow a violation of your own values and expectations. I'll go into a little bit of detail on each of those so that you can realize how you can recognize a feeling of guilt as a product of social programming, a thought error or a violation of your values, and then how you can change it. Guilt is a product of social programming when it is based on unrealistic societal expectations and unconscious social conditioning. One of the easiest ways to tell when you are experiencing guilt that is based on this idea of social conditioning or social expectations is that your thoughts are contradictory and you are not able to win, no matter what. Let's use a very straightforward example to illustrate this.
Speaker 1:So, for example, I work with a lot of women who are trying to carry on a lot of roles, both as mom and as amazing worker and also as writer. So oftentimes those moms will come to me saying I feel guilty for having to work when my child has a game or a recital and at the same time I feel guilty if I take that time off of work and actually go to the hockey game or the recital or whatever. Talk about a joy killer, right. I've also heard and I bet many of you have experienced that feeling of feeling guilty for not returning emails or checking emails while on vacation, but then also feeling guilty for not being able to turn off one's mind and just relax and enjoy the vacation. After all, what kind of a monster cannot just sit and chill at the beach for crying out loud, right? So do you see how there are these two competing thoughts and you can't possibly win?
Speaker 1:A lot of times when those kinds of thoughts percolate up, they're a product of guilt that is based on unconscious social conditioning. My experience in working on myself and with others has been that simply realizing that the thought is coming from outside of ourself, from expectations that may no longer align with our own personal worldview and what we're trying to create in the world, often leads to that thought, that feeling of guilt, completely losing any power that it has over me. In other words, just becoming aware of the reason behind the guilt results in less or no guilt. On the subject, let's talk about the second way in which guilt might show up. Guilt can sometimes be the result of thought errors or cognitive biases. So, for example, there is a cognitive bias called hindsight bias, where we judge our past decisions or actions based on our current knowledge, without realizing that a lot of the information was not available when we initially made the decision or when we took action. A sure way to spot hindsight bias is a thought I should have known.
Speaker 1:All right, so let's say that you are really in flow with your writing. Okay, you're working really diligently. You realize that it's getting to be about that time where you have to go and pick up your kiddo from school or daycare, kids club or whatever. And as you're writing, you're just like super in flow and you're like I'm just going to take these five extra minutes because I have plenty of time. I usually get there plenty early. I'm going to take these five extra minutes and write. So you do that and then you go to get your kid and as you're driving there, there's an accident. There's tons of traffic, you can't get there and you end up being late to pick them up. Your thought I should have known that the traffic was going to be bad and I shouldn't have stayed. To finish that writing is an example of hindsight bias. In this case, you couldn't have known, but you're nonetheless using that past action against yourself.
Speaker 1:Another kind of thought error is over-responsibility, or thinking that we have more power than we actually have over a situation. I recently spoke with a woman who was dealing with a lot of guilt around, wanting to continue to try to get her own work published when she had been talking to a friend who had gotten a number of rejection letters back to back to back and had realized just how hard a time that friend was having. Obviously, the woman I was talking to had no real control over whether or not her friend got those rejection letters, but that didn't stop her from kind of hitting pause on her own dreams. So when something like that comes up for you, you can move past it by asking yourself hey, what are the factors that actually created this situation and did I in any way contribute to it? Did I intend for it to happen?
Speaker 1:The last thought error that I want to talk to you about today is when our brain tricks us into thinking that, for some reason, feeling guilty is good for us. We see this in thought patterns like if I feel guilty like really guilty and beat myself up for not showing up to write every single day, then in the end I'll actually be more likely to show up and write. I'll beat myself up today for not doing it and then I'll do it tomorrow. Guess what my friends never, ever, ever did guilt motivate you to do something. Guilt is going to keep you stuck. Instead of beating yourself up for not writing, what you want to do instead is come up with a thought that's actually going to motivate you to write.
Speaker 1:There are a lot of thought errors that we can have when it comes to guilt, especially as moms, and especially as moms who have a dream to write. These are just a few examples. If they're not resonating with you and you're still feeling like you're in a guilt spin, I've found it to be very helpful to look at that feeling and ask myself what I would tell a friend that was guilty, what I would tell a friend that was experiencing that same feeling of guilt around this same circumstance. Oftentimes, we are so much harsher on ourselves than we are on those that we love. All that said, sometimes our guilt is actually more of a guidepost than anything else, and this can be one of those places where guilt can actually be a little bit useful, especially if you are like me and you want to live a very intentional, mindful life that is aligned with your personal values, in situations where we are not living in alignment with our own values and our own expectations of our life. If we're not in integrity with ourselves, guilt can then pop up for us, and when it happens like that, it is a guidepost for us. This is a good thing, because we want to live a life that is authentic and consistent with our morals and our values and with our hopes and our dreams.
Speaker 1:One of the most powerful things about being a human is that we get to decide what our values actually are and how they work in our lives. When we aren't consistent, when we aren't living in keeping with those values, guilt is a sign that something actually really does need to change. Recognizing this and moving forward with more intention, in a way that is more aligned, is how we overcome guilt. For me, asking myself that question I mentioned earlier about do I want to feel guilty for this particular situation, whatever it is that helps give me insight into whether it's really my values that are at issue or whether it's something else, like that programming or cognitive biases that I was talking about, a thought error. If it's something that isn't in alignment with my values, I don't want to feel good about that. I don't want to sit in guilt, of course, but I want to use that guilt as a guidepost to make a course correction and bring my life back into alignment with my values, thank you.
Speaker 1:Let's give a really easy example of how this idea of a misalignment of values might show up in our life. Let's say that I have a plan to write and instead of writing when I say I'm in a right, I take my kid out of urgent care because they're sick or they got hurt. When I take a step back and I look at that and I say, hey, I feel kind of bad for not showing up to write for myself this week. And when I said I was going to, but then I realize, oh no, I actually want to be a mom that takes her kid to urgent care when they need to go to urgent care, so I don't feel guilty. That helps me to make sure that I am on track and aligned with my values.
Speaker 1:Now let's take that similar scenario. Let's say I had a plan to write and I didn't show up and instead of showing up to write, I spent the whole time just scrolling on social media. And I feel guilty about that right Because I set aside time to make space for my writing. I set aside time to make sure that my kids were occupied or taken care of in some other fashion, that all my other obligations and duties and responsibilities were taken care of, and I had this specific time to do my writing. But instead of writing, I doom scrolled on social media.
Speaker 1:That is not an awesome use of my time and when that comes up I want to feel a little bit guilty about that just for a second, because that guilt is a sign that I am not in alignment with who I actually want to be. I'm not showing up as the gen that I want to be moving forward. So think of it like putting your hand on a hot stove. You put your hand on a hot stove. You don't want to leave it there, so I'm not going to sit in that guilt right, but I just take that as a warning. I take that feeling of guilt as a warning that something is not in alignment, and that is how guilt can actually really be a guidepost for us.
Speaker 1:That, my friends, is the four step process that I have used to overcome mom guilt. To recap we first learned to recognize guilt when it shows up for us in our bodies. That helps us to get out ahead of this situation. It's kind of like that idea of putting your hand on a hot stove. You notice it right away, you notice it in your body and you take action by removing that hand right. So notice when the guilt shows up in your body. That's the first step.
Speaker 1:The second step identify the thought causing the guilt. We do this through a lens of curiosity, not through judgment, not through blame, but rather curiosity. The third step is we do our best to figure out where is that thought coming from. Is it a product of social conditioning? Is it a thought error, like a cognitive bias, or is it a sign that we have perhaps stepped out of alignment with our values? And depending upon which one of those it is, we then move forward with the fourth step to change the thought pattern itself, make an adjustment and move forward with intentionality.
Speaker 1:Okay, my friends, I hope that you found this helpful this week. If you got anything out of this podcast, it would mean the world to me if you would share it with somebody else. If you share the podcast with others and take me over on Instagram at mom rights first, then I will be sure to give you a shout out. So thank you again so much for listening to this episode and, in case no one has reminded you today, you are a resourceful, creative, whole human being. You are ridiculously capable. You've got this. You are loved, and your ideas, your words and your stories matter. Keep on writing. I will see you next week.
