How to be a Mama, a Business Owner and Stay Motivated

by Guest Blogger, Nichi Hirsh Kuechle of My Healthy Beginning

A friend and colleague called me this week sounding a bit like she was between a rock and, well, another rock. She was asking me about motivation, specifically how I stay motivated and pull off being a mom and a wife – basically she wanted to know how I get s#*& done. I was flattered. And nervous.

Flattered because she’s the kind of person I get flustered eating in front of. Nervous because she is looking to me for advice. Yes there are a certain amount of items on my list that get accomplished every week, however, I’m certain I represent every mother when I say there are several more that don’t.

Of the items that don’t get accomplished, most of them aren’t important and some of them are. It’s when the items that are important get swept under the rug for busy work that really gets my goat. There are, however, systems I have in place to stay motivated and feel on top of (even when I don’t) my workload, both as a mother and a business owner.

1. Self-care as a Priority. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t plug in time for myself. This could mean a 3 minute meditation, 5-10 minutes of journaling, or 20 minutes of reading. It nearly always means physical exercise of some kind. This is important to me because it helps me stay focused, clear, and strong. There are days when even the above doesn’t feel like enough.

2. Eating Well. For the record I’m not perfect. I mostly avoid refined sugar, keep my dairy consumption low and protein count high while throwing in a daily juice and/or smoothie. I work for double the amount of veggies than fruit and eat every few hours, if not more often. Some days I feel like I’m floating I drink so much water.

3. Supplementation. Can’t go without my supplements. Some of what I take/need changes monthly or with the seasons or my energy level so I adjust accordingly.

4. Bodywork. Bi-weekly adjustments, monthly acupuncture and yoga all play a part in how I feel and perform.

5. Calendar. I live by it. If it’s not on my calendar, it doesn’t get done. My “calendar” isn’t just a page with a date for each square telling me how quickly time is flying. I use Google Calendar and Evernote lists to keep myself organized both for at home and work. Funny enough, I work from home so those worlds get easily intertwined.

6. Kick the Busywork to the Curb. We all have ridiculous To-Do lists, and if you really look at them, busywork takes up more than a few lines. There are items on those lists that can be easily delegated to friends, family, partners and able children to allow you more time for focused and concentrated work than “busywork”. For example, creating the family calendar is a necessity to the optimal functioning of the household. This is not busywork. Busywork is copy/pasting the Christmas card list in alphabetical order into Excel. Your spouse can do that while watching TV at night or your 4th grader can take that on as an extra credit assignment from mama.

7. Project Management. This still makes me laugh when I say this, like I work for some corporation at home here under my roof, however, if I don’t utilize my calendar to schedule in time for projects, busywork takes over. At any given time I might have 3 or more projects with deadlines (whether my own or for someone else), and as much as I’d like to get one of them done at a time, I have to manage my time accordingly. For example each project might get 30 minutes to an hour a day (sometimes more, not always less) in order to get it complete.

Finding time to nourish myself among all of my responsibilities can feel like a full time job. It’s taken me almost 10 years as a mama and nearly 16 years as a business owner to really figure out how to pull it off (and don’t forget the reality check here that I am not Super Woman), so I partnered with my friend Amy Riley of Loving the Pregnant You to teach you how I do this (and on a budget).

Together we are bringing you More Than a Quick Fix, an event to nourish the Pregnant and Postpartum You. For more details, CLICK HERE. Nichi Hirsch Kuechle supports moms from pregnancy to parenthood as a Childbirth Educator, Birth Doula and Nutrition Response Testing Practitioner in Minneapolis. She publishes a weekly e-zine called Raising Healthy Families, which offers tips and ideas to bring ease, clarity and understanding to your parenting. She also teaches a variety of live and virtual workshops. You can get Nichi’s New Parent Tool Kit & How to Raise a Healthy Child ebook for free ($47 value!), by going to: http://www.MyHealthyBeginning.com.