About this Episode

Burnout in motherhood is more common than you think. I hear about it all the time in my DMs and in my coaching calls. Mothers are struggling with anxiety, depression, and burnout—but mostly in silence because so many think that admitting to their struggles means they’re a failure and a bad mom.

I want to flip the script on this. If you’re struggling and burned out, you have been failed by society and by your support system—not the other way around.

You deserve support to help you recover from burnout and guidance to help you design a life where your self-care is at the center—rather than on the margins—of your life.

In this episode, you’ll hear me share 3 ways you can recover from burnout and design a No Longer Last life where your health, happiness, and well-being are a priority.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

Why admitting you're burned out doesn't mean you're failing
The sneaky childhood habit that's keeping you stuck
Why "just take a day off" is terrible advice (and what actually works)
The framework I use every single week to protect my time and energy
A totally new way to see yourself that might just change everything

Episode Resources

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you.

Free 4B Self-Care Framework© Guide: A great way to get started on your self-care journey, this guide provides an easy-to-use framework that makes self-care actually supportive rather than another burden on your to-do list. Get the Guide
Rituals that Replenish: Instant Access Workshop: This DIY 3-hour workshop (1 hour per week) will help you get to know your true wants and needs and will help you develop the habit of practicing one self-care ritual in your daily life. Learn More
The No Longer Last Journey®: Live Coaching Program: This 12-month program includes monthly coaching & community calls, classes, reflection guides, and weekly self-care reminders to help you overcome obstacles, improve your self-worth, and make self-care a sustainable and supportive part of your life. Learn More

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey, I am Mia. Hemstad I'm a wife. I'm a mom

of two kids, and I'm a trauma-informed self-care coach. I also live with diagnosed PTSD and depression. I started sharing my mental wellness journey online in 2017 when I was diagnosed with postpartum depression and anxiety. And since then I've heard from hundreds of women who all struggle with the same thing, putting ourselves last.

This is a struggle that's. Keeping so many women burned out and unhappy through no fault of our own. By the way, I've been working on my own healing as an abuse survivor since 2013, but when I became a mom, I really started to do the inner work of figuring out why I was putting myself last, and how to start prioritizing myself for the first time in my life.

This podcast is about sharing. All of those lessons with you. So if you're interested in hearing honest stories, life advice, and inspiration that encourages you to make your health, happiness, and wellbeing a priority, then definitely stick around. [00:01:00] Welcome to your no longer last journey.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing? Oh my goodness. I have been through it the last couple of weeks. I had excruciating tooth pain in my front tooth and it ended with a root canal. And of course my kids were out of school, and of course my husband had to work. When he was supposed to stay home during their break.

But we survived it. We made it through, and I feel like I'm just like catching my breath. I'm excited to talk to you about today's episode and if you clicked on it, I'm assuming you're in a tough place right now. So I just wanna name that and hope you're coming into this with a lot of self-compassion and honestly feeling good about yourself because you've chosen to take time outta your busy day.

To try to learn more about this problem that you're facing with burnout and being trapped in this burnout cycle, that no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, no matter what advice and tips and hacks you implement, [00:02:00] you just can't seem to break out of this burnout cycle. You can't seem to stop ending every week, every month, every quarter, every year, feeling exactly as you were before.

Tired, exhausted. Anxious, maybe depressed, burned out, and resentful. We only get this one precious life, and it really upsets me to think about how many moms who are raising these incredible human beings, and we're missing it. We're missing it, and we're missing our own lives because we're so busy hustling and grinding through life, and we're stuck on this hamster wheel and in this burnout cycle that we can't even really enjoy the beautiful things that are happening around us every single day.

Or design our lives in such a way that they bring us joy on a regular basis and enable us to pursue the things that energize us and excite us. I. Used to be extremely burned out. I had some major rock bottom moments. At one point I had to call the National [00:03:00] Suicide Lifeline to stay alive. I don't use the word burnout lightly.

I think it is a very serious place to be in mentally and physically, and it can take years to recover. To be honest, I only really feel like I recovered fully from burnout over the last few months. Every few months and every year since. Working on my burnout. In 2019, it's 2026. Now, I made progress, but it didn't happen overnight.

It took years and it took a lot of work to get here, and that's part of why I create this podcast. Even though I have so many things on my plate, I just really wanna talk about this and have these conversations and share what I know and share what I've learned so that more moms can live their life to the fullest.

Because becoming a mom shouldn't mean that all of a sudden you're just like a servant. A slave, and you're beholden and trapped in this cycle of doing, doing, doing, hustling, hustling, hustling, and never being able to take care of yourself and meet your own basic needs. So [00:04:00] this episode in the next few episodes, I'm gonna be digging into the top four problems that I see mothers face that I work with in my coaching that I talk with via Instagram dms.

We're all facing the same exact problems and we're all being. Paralyzed by them, trapped by them, and exhausted by them. And over the next four episodes, you're going to really learn about these issues, externalize them, be able to see them, and tackle them head on so that you can start to release these shackles and live your life to the fullest.

So before we dive in, I just wanna remind you of two really important dates. So my coaching program is reopening on Sunday, April 5th, and during that week. From April 5th to I think the 11th, there will be a massive discount and a couple of bonuses that I only make available during these special open enrollment periods.

So make sure you're on my email list. And on the wait list to learn more about that, and I also decided that I'm gonna offer my

free one hour [00:05:00] workshop, my weekly wellness check-in, where I share with you a weekly practice that enables you to connect with how you're doing, identify what self-care you need.

And figure out how to free up some time and space so that you can actually practice that self-care. And this is one of my concrete tools that I utilize in my coaching program and with myself since 2019 that has helped me overcome burnout. And I'm teaching that method to you absolutely for free in a one hour workshop.

And that's on Saturday, April 4th. I think it's gonna be at 12 Eastern time. That's 9:00 AM Pacific time. I might change the date on that, but if you're on my email list. No longer last.com/letter. You will know about all of these events and enrollments and discounts, et cetera. So take note of that if you're interested in working with me more or in learning about the weekly wellness check-in.

Okay, so you're burned out. You're trapped in the burnout cycle, you think you might be, or you think you're on your way into the burnout cycle and you're not sure how to do it. You look around at all of your mom friends and everybody [00:06:00] is just going through the same exact thing and you're like, how do I.

How do I get out of this? Um, I remember having that same exact problem, going to play dates and mom groups, and everyone was like. Pretending to joke and laugh, even though all of us were clearly exhausted, resentful, and also like having a loss of identity, nobody knew what interested them. Because when you spend all of your, your habits truly make up who you are, how you spend your days is how you spend your life.

And when your days are full of just external, external issues and problems that you are so great at solving, you're. Making sure your family is moving forward and getting what they need every single day. But none of those things, actions, activities, have anything to do with you and your heart, your soul, your body, your wellbeing.

You end up feeling lost and confused. And I remember more than one time sitting at a mom group table and. They're just being dead silence. Like nobody knew what even to talk about. [00:07:00] There's no like, oh, like did you see that movie that came out last weekend? No, of course we didn't because I was doing five loads of laundry on Saturday.

Right. So it's something that affects a lot of us, but I think we don't talk about it because I think that to admit that you're burned out or struggling for whatever reason, we also. Accept that to mean that you are failing, that you're struggling because you're not good at managing your time, that you're struggling with burnout because you suck at this whole motherhood thing, or that you are feeling resentful because you are not as generous as you hoped that you were.

You aren't as giving as you hoped you would be. And then on top of that feeling of resentment, when months and years go by and you haven't taken care of yourself, is mom guilt? 'cause now you're like, oh, I feel really guilty that I feel resentful of my family. That I feel resentful of my responsibilities because children are a blessing and having a partner is a blessing.

And having [00:08:00] a, a life and a home to tend to is a blessing. So when we feel feelings of resentment and burnout, we shove 'em down because we have equated happiness and vitality to success. And success being the opposite of failure, right? So if you admit that you're not feeling happy and you don't have vitality or energy, you're feeling drained, you're feeling burned out, you're like, oh no, I am a failure.

And I don't want anybody to know about that. But I'm telling you in my dms and in my private coaching calls and in my private community spaces, more moms than not are feeling this way. And it's something that we need to really shame about. I think we. Part of it is societal conditioning and patriarchal conditioning that makes us keep all of this in the shadows.

Because if we just keep soldiering on and not asking for more, right? More time for ourselves, more resources for ourselves, more support from our partners in running the home and raising the kids, um, less responsibilities on our backs so that we can live and breathe and not [00:09:00] be holding our breath every single moment of every single day.

I think patriarchy and society is happy to have us shut up and not ask for one more thing. You know, we already asked for voting power. We already asked for equal pay. They don't like that. So I think that's part of what fuels our silence. And I want you to understand. That the more you deny how you're really feeling, the longer you perpetuate the burnout, and the longer you perpetuate the burnout, the longer it will take to recover.

I said earlier on that I fully acknowledge the burnout in 2019 when I had to call a national suicide lifeline to stay alive. It's 2026 now, and I finally feel like I am out. And on the other side of that burnout doesn't mean that I don't have problems in my life, but it means that I no longer feel this like.

Immense depression and anxiety. That, and, and full body fatigue that I felt when I was burned out. There is hope and I just hope for you that it with the tips I'm gonna be sharing in [00:10:00] this episode and in the next few, that you will be able to finally accept where you are and start to address it so that you don't have to take the next 10 years to recover and heal from burnout so that you can actually start to feel good in your body, in your mind, and in your life again, which is only gonna benefit everybody you love.

Okay, so I was thinking like, what do I wanna share? 'cause obviously I could write a whole book on this, but my top three for this episode starts with,

flip the order. Flip the order. So what do I mean by this? I want you to stop trying to fit your self care into. Your day after you've completed all of your work, I want you to stop treating your self care like a reward that you only get to have if you've completed your to-do list.

A lot of us don't realize that we're doing this to ourselves. But once you take a step back and start to analyze, why am I trapped in this cycle? Why can't I [00:11:00] ever find time for myself? Why is it that I start every week with goals and plans and intentions, and then the week goes by and I have yet to do any of the things I planned to do for myself?

The reason why this is happening is because you're living your life probably the way you were forced to live when you were a child. I know when I was a kid, play came after all the chores were done. And this is tricky because this is something that, you know, I do wanna instill in myself and in my children.

Sometimes there are things that are really important that need to get done, and if I give my kids their screen time and their tablet time before they've done their homework, they are way less likely to do their homework. So I'm not saying that it's a terrible strategy, but I feel like we learn that as kids and then we grow up and then we apply it to everything.

I didn't realize that for years of my life and well into [00:12:00] motherhood, I was putting my self care after the chores , were done. And guess what? It would be 10 o'clock at night. I would be hand washing the many baby bottles and water bottles and cleaning the kitchen and picking up the toys and wiping the food off the high chair.

And I'd be like, oh, did I do yoga today? Nope. Did I shower? Nope. Did I brush my teeth? Maybe did I do anything that brought me joy? Talk to a friend, go to a coffee shop, watch a TV show. No, because I was waiting to reward myself with self-care for when the tasks of the day were done and the tasks of the day were never done because there's always more to do.

There's always more to do. And if we think and kid ourselves that. We're one day gonna reach the end of the to-do list. And then finally, we can do the things that bring us joy and take care of our basic needs on a consistent basis. If we think that that day's gonna [00:13:00] come when the to-do list is over, we are lying to ourselves.

That day is never gonna come. And instead, I want you to start thinking of your self-care not only as something that's critical and essential. Just as critical. And it is essential as doing the laundry and doing the meal plan and going the, doing the grocery shopping and cooking the food. But it's something that enables you to do your to-do list.

It's something that fuels you, increases your capacity, makes it easier for you to solve problems, and there's so much research, scientific evidence to back this of how taking care of our needs, hygiene, exercise, nutrition, sleep. Improve our cognitive functioning, our working memory, our ability to pay attention, our ability to navigate competing priorities, which is literally the life of a mother.

By taking care of our basic needs, you are actually enabling yourself to tackle your to-do list in a calm, [00:14:00] coordinated. And smart way. But so often we put exercise, showering, brushing our teeth, seeing a friend for after the todo list is over when that day is never gonna come. So I have a story for you of how I learned this in real time, and it was by accident.

So one Saturday morning, my kids were like six months old and two and a half. Okay. I was in the trenches and I had an eye doctor's appointment and it was like at 8:15 AM on a Saturday morning. So my husband was with the kids home from work. I was a stay-at-home mom at this time. So I'm with the kids all day, every day I'm up all night breastfeeding, like you name it, I am.

I am in the trenches. I am exhausted. I am burned out. I get up early, go out for this doctor's appointment, and then on my way home I remember thinking, oh, I'm gonna pass by one of my favorite coffee shops. Oh, no, but I, I really need to get home. Like, you know what? If the kids need me, there's laundry to do.

You know, every Saturday I would do like six loads of laundry. We didn't [00:15:00] have in unit laundry at my apartment at the time, so I had to take it out. It was a whole ordeal. You had to sort the clothes, take it to the laundry mat. Sit there all day, make sure you have the cash and the quarters. Bring it all home, fold it, put it away.

It was a full day, all day thing. And when you're breastfeeding kids and you have a toddler that wants to go to the playground and you have a newborn that needs to be breastfed, it takes all day. Okay. And I was literally having this conversation with myself like, no, Mia, you have all this laundry you need to do, and if you don't do it on the weekend, when Jan's home, my husband, then you have to do it during the week.

And I've done that before and I'm bringing a double stroller, dragging laundry in one hand and a double stroller with two kids in the other. It's miserable. Right. There's a lot of pressure on you to do this Laundry and laundry isn't something that. Is non-essential. Literally you will not have clothes to where if the laundry dunk doesn't get done.

Okay. So it's not non-essential. But I'm having this discussion in my head as I'm driving and something in me just said, everyone's gonna be okay. Everyone's gonna live. Yeah. This [00:16:00] is important, but just this is a rare opportunity. It's, I was just. Filled with this like anticipation, this joyful anticipation of having my coffee from a coffee shop that I love in a, it's a beautiful coffee shop.

The environment's beautiful. I love being in beautiful environments. I don't wanna go right back into a messy house and the delight of just thinking about sitting in that coffee shop with the music playing. I'm not running after my toddler. I'm not making sure my 2-year-old breaks anything. I'm not holding my breastfeeding baby with one arm on my boob while trying to sip my coffee without spilling it on her.

The anticipation of drinking my coffee while it's hot with two hands and tasting it. With music playing and sitting on a cute, colorful couch, like the anticipation of that. I was like still stressed about my responsibilities that needed to get done, but I was able to turn into that parking lot and go to this coffee shop.

And when I was sitting there having my coffee, I still felt like the rumblings of [00:17:00] mom guilt, the tension of uncompleted unfinished pending tasks, but I managed it. Then when I went home, I noticed a huge shift in my energy. Usually on Saturdays, I'm dragging myself. I'm snapping at people that I love because I'm irritable.

I'm tired. The work week is done, but my week. Work week really isn't done. So even though my husband's home, I, instead of getting to relax, I have a million other things that I have to do. Right? 'cause there's the task that you do when your husband's not home, and then there's the task that you're able to do when someone is home.

And so normally I'm feeling really resentful and I'm exhausted and I'm irritable. And that day after going to the coffee shop and coming home and having just, it was like 30 minutes of alone time. I'm not even kidding you. I was noticeably calm. Not irritable and instead of like getting frustrated when my son like was mixing the clothes that I was sorting or [00:18:00] knocking things over, like instead of being frustrated, it was like I was delighting in motherhood and my kids' quirks and all of it.

And I was like, what's going on? Like I feel good and I have the energy to do this laundry and I have the energy. To take care of my kids, and I didn't end that day feeling like another Saturday went by and I did nothing for myself because every one of those Saturdays that happened, I wanted to, after I would tell myself after the laundry's done, I'm gonna go to a coffee shop alone.

I'm gonna bring my journal, I'm gonna bring a book, and I'm gonna read and journal and have my coffee and just like allow myself to have alone time. It's one of the things that I love to do and it never happened, and all of a sudden, by accident, I ended up having some version of this, right? Not the most perfect version.

I wasn't at the coffee shop for two hours. I didn't have a book. I didn't have a journal, but I just enjoyed my coffee in the peace and quiet, and I was like, oh my gosh. I think. There's something to this and what was [00:19:00] interesting is I didn't, it didn't go. Having that self-care moment didn't negatively impact my ability to do the laundry didn't negatively impact my ability to show up for my family.

It helped me. It helped me do the work with more joy, more energy, more capacity, and I was like, holy cow. I need to flip the order. I need to stop putting self care on the other side of the work. I need to stop putting self care as a reward for completing a to-do list, because that's why I'm stuck in the cycle where week after week after week after week would pass and I still didn't.

Do anything for myself. Years of my life are going by and I can't give myself something as simple as going to a coffee shop. And I know maybe some of you're like, I don't get it, just go. But there are those of you who understand that feeling of there's so much to do, I just wanna get it done. Because the weight of that to-do list mentally and physically on your chest feels like a huge burden.

And you just [00:20:00] wanna get it done so that you can breathe again. But while that works in the short term, it definitely hurts you in the long run. Because your needs as a human and as a person to do the things that fill you up, that replenish you, that those needs don't go away. And by deferring them and deferring them and deferring them, you become a human machine, which you were not meant to be, and your humanity and your your need for joy and things outside of work like.

It starts to feel like this hole in your chest and this deficit and this sadness starts to creep in, and then you, then you start to feel resentful and angry that you have all this stuff on your plate and that you never get a break, and that you're in this cycle that never ends. And this routine that demands so much from you.

And what I found, 'cause I hate it when people are like, well, just don't do it for a day. Again, if I don't do the laundry on Saturday, it doesn't get done. And then I'm stuck doing it with two kids in tow during the week. Okay. I really don't like the over simplistic advice when [00:21:00] people give moms and just tell them to just like, don't do something for a day.

It's like if, I know a lot of moms that if they just decided to opt out for a day, like the kids wouldn't have dinner to eat, there wouldn't be food in the fridge. Uh, they wouldn't have clean uniforms to wear to school like. The people who give that advice, they probably have a hired staff doing all of this for them, because for most of us, we can't just opt out of motherhood like we can maybe, like for a really special occasion, an anniversary, something a, a staycation you plan where someone's actually hired to come in and help out, or your husband takes off time from work so that he can be there and fulfill the many responsibilities that you're doing.

But that's the problem. We are basically telling moms, you only get to tend to yourself one or twice, two times a year, and that is not sustainable. We need methods and strategies that enable us to take care of ourselves on a weekly and daily basis. And this tip of flipping the order. [00:22:00] Became my saving grace because it didn't require that my husband took time off work.

It didn't require that I hired a housekeeper and a nanny during a time when I couldn't afford that. It didn't require any major logistics or planning. It just was me flipping the order so that the self-care was preserved and protected and made possible before I went and did the work. And not only does that protect me from burnout and help me feel happy, it.

Gave me the capacity to do the work from a much more energized and competent place. So I want you to try that. Flip the order. Stop putting your self care after the to-do list, okay? Okay. The next tip is

take stuff off your plate. And I know that it's really hard to do, and I have another epi episode planned where I talk about how moms have way too many competing priorities, and I challenge you and give you ideas for how you can whittle your priorities down from a dozen to maybe your top three.

[00:23:00] Okay? But for now. I am gonna encourage you to take stuff off your plate because the burnout cycle and being stuck in this routine where you're weak is grinding you into the ground. Has to do with the fact that you have too much on your plate. Moms are not suffering and stuck in this burnout cycle because you're bad at time management.

You're stuck in this burnout cycle because you have too much to manage. It is an impossible inhuman amount of things to manage Now. Like I just said earlier, there's so many things that you probably do and manage that if you don't do, your whole family will come to a screeching halt. However, I have found that most of the people I work with are perfectionists and they are eldest daughters, and they are.

Parentified children. Children who were forced into carrying adult responsibilities at a young age. And what this does to us psychologically is it makes us take on way more things and try to do these things at a exceptional superior level [00:24:00] that, um, squeezes every ounce of capacity from us and leaves nothing left for ourselves.

So, I know I say this a lot, but it's worth repeating that when you. Try to get yourself out of burnout and you wanna protect yourself and your health and your wellbeing is to look at everything going on. So I encourage you once a week to brain dump everything that's on your list, and I want you to go through every line item on that list and ask yourself, what can I decrease?

What can I delete? What can I delegate? So you're gonna look at each task, you're gonna go, can I do less of that? Can I get rid of this completely? And can I delegate this even though whoever else is gonna do it is gonna do it as well as me. A quick example, 'cause I'm not gonna go super into this. I dig into this way more in my free workshop, but I order my groceries and I know that's like very common now since the pandemic, but like.

There was a time [00:25:00] when I stopped because I was frustrated that where I , order my groceries here in Portugal. You know, I'm comparing it to California where like if something I ordered isn't there, the shopper would text me and ask me if I wanted a substitution. Here they don't do that, so sometimes I order groceries and I have a meal plan and like they didn't gimme the chicken that I needed, or, they weren't able to get me a certain thing and there's no substitution.

So the perfectionist in me was like, you know what? I'm just gonna do the grocery shopping myself because I don't like when the groceries come and things are missing. And guess what? Then I ended up spending most of my Sunday grocery shopping and then recovering from grocery shopping because my back and my neck really hurt because I have chronic physical conditions.

So it was really hard on my body. And the perfectionist in me is what made me do that. It's 'cause I don't like when certain things are missing. And I was wasting my precious weekend at the grocery store and recovering from the grocery store. I have since. Zoomed out. You know, when I do this weekly [00:26:00] check-in and I wrote down everything on my plate, it was like, no, this needs to go back into the delegation bucket.

I need to just order my groceries for delivery, even if it's not gonna be done as perfectly as if I do it, because it saves me hours, it saves me time, money, energy, and I'm not having to recover after the fact. And if anything's missing. Going to the store to pick up the one or two items that are missing takes me like 30 minutes at the most.

Versus when I was grocery shopping on my own, it was like three hours. So you know what? That's just a small example of like, yeah, when you delegate, girl, it's not gonna be done as good as you do it, but is it worth it? And now on Sundays, I go on a walk to the park or explore a new part of town, or I take a nap.

You know, and I'm not in pain all day from grocery shopping, and it's like, these are the things that actually feed my soul and what I had to trade for that was perfectly getting every single grocery item that I want and the way that I want it, [00:27:00] right? I absolutely hate the stereotype that women are, and mothers are control freaks and what have you, because again, there's a lot of things that you need to do right in order for your family to function.

But I bet you if you look closer, there's a few things that you can let slide, or a few things that you can allow to be less than perfect, and everyone in everything is gonna be okay. And this doesn't make you a bad mom. Or a poor manager of your home or anything like that. This makes you smart. This makes you emotionally responsible because you are designing your life in a way that supports you and your wellbeing because at the end of the day, you keep everybody's world turning and if you are spinning yourself out, doing so many things that you could probably have decreased, deleted, or delegated girl, we have to realign those priorities and put you at the center again, which I know makes a lot of us uncomfortable.

But life gets easier and so much better when you do it. One other example here, and then we'll go to the next tip, is deleting. People get confused by [00:28:00] this. Well, what do you mean delete mia? Sometimes there was once upon a time, somebody I had a relationship with who would call me every single day to dump all of their problems on me, and I would answer.

I would answer the phone, even though sometimes I would miss lunch, sometimes I would be taking that call. No joke during my lunch break. And then I didn't get a chance to eat lunch because I'm not gonna go into it, didn't get a chance to eat lunch. And then I'm at a work call and then all of a sudden it's 3:00 PM and I'm starving and I'm dizzy, and I feel like I'm gonna faint and it would derail my whole day.

And I remember a therapist one time was just like, why don't you just not answer the phone? And I was like, whoa, really? And don't get me wrong, this person like had a lot of control over me. And so I didn't feel that I could not answer the phone, but. Thankfully the wisdom of this therapist, she was just like, no, you're in control.

You are in control of your time. And I know that for a lot of us in life, we're, we're not in control of a lot. And honestly, having kids, [00:29:00] it, it, it reemphasizes just how much is outside of our control. For instance, I was gonna have a friend over on Saturday and then she was like, we can't come for dinner.

My child has diarrhea. There's so much outside of our control and especially when we have kids, it's even more so it's ratcheted up to 10. But that's why it's even more important that the few things we can control, like not answering the phone when you should be eating lunch is, it's like, yeah, you really should be noticing that you shouldn't just be giving away your time, your energy, and your control willy-nilly.

When it's such a limited resource as it is, we really should be protecting and valuing the moments that we have to take care of ourselves and not just giving it away. So deleting for me looks like being available all the time. That's something that I bet you, you don't put on your list when you make a brain dump and you're like, okay, I meal plan.

I grocery shop, I make food. I do the dishes, I wash the laundry. I take the kids to school, but you're probably not writing down. I answer the phone every time this person calls and give them an hour of [00:30:00] my time every day, and then feel anxious after those calls because they dump a bunch of problems on me.

They're never a positive experience, right? Deleting a relationship. It is a way to preserve your time and your energy deleting a negative belief like, I'm a bad mom if I do not volunteer at X, Y, or Z, right? That belief is not helping you take care of yourself. And so by decreasing, deleting, and delegating, I call this my 3D boundary setting framework.

I teach it in my coaching program. I teach it in my free workshop. It enables you if you do this once a week, it's magic and you slowly start to make the most of what you have, which creates more time or energy, more space, and it enables you to reclaim your life back because like I said, so much is outside of our control.

As moms, were already spread really thin. The individuality of Western society makes us do a lot of things in silos, a lot of things on our own. So we have to be even more ruthless about like where we give our time, energy, and space to. And the only way you're able to do that [00:31:00] analysis objectively is with a pen and paper and making that brain dump and asking yourself, what can I decrease?

What can I delete? What can I delegate? So I encourage you to do that. And again, in my free workshop, I'm gonna be teaching you like the three prompts to do this weekly wellness check-in and decrease. Delete. Delegate is one of 'em. It's an awesome one shop. I hope you're gonna be there. Okay, the last thing is

see yourself as a garden.

Too many moms, rightfully so, see ourselves as the manager of our families. We are setting goals. For our kids and our husband and our family, collectively, we are working towards them. And maybe you don't see it that way, but like the goal of your child getting a good education, for instance, you have to make sure that they're supported, they're going to bed on time, getting enough sleep, that they are getting their homework done, that they are able to go to a school and, be resourced in that way.

Whether it's making sure they have the right. Shoes, [00:32:00] clothes, socks, books, pencils, pens, rulers, backpacks tuition and extracurriculars and tutoring. Like there's so much that goes into the goal of I want my children to get a good education, I could create so many examples, but.

As moms, we are constantly moving our children and our family towards specific goals, and we are the ones, we are the driving force behind it, and we are making sure that if any problem comes up, which they always do, we address those problems. We find solutions, we research them. We do pros and cons, analysis.

We choose a direction and figure out if it was worthwhile. We manage and plan and analyze and fix, put out fires. We are managing our families. But the problem with that role, that mindset of like I am the manager, is you forget that you're a member of your family as well. And even with that mindset shift, I still feel like we need to push it a little bit further.

And I think we actually need to see [00:33:00] ourselves as a garden. And I know that might sound really woo woo, and it's a very flowery analogy, but it just dawned on me today that I'm not just like this productivity machine that like makes lists and gets them done on behalf of my family. I am the garden and my family is nurtured and nourished and sustained through me.

And my health, wellbeing and abundance. And if my garden is dying and overgrown with weeds and the dirt isn't even producing new fruit because it's so dry and is in need of. Fertilizer and it's in need of extra care, or I'm not watering it every day. So things are dying, like, you know, I'm not weeding it every day.

So things are getting overrun with weeds and the fruits and vegetables in my garden are being choked to death by these weeds that are sucking the nutrients outta my garden when I saw it that way, that I'm the garden, that my whole family [00:34:00] receives nurturing and nourishment and life from. Which is a fact.

I literally grew my children, the kids that are out there today learning and growing and playing, and they grew. I grew them. I grew them. And even though I'm no longer growing them inside of me, I'm still growing them outside of me, and they are still relying on me for sustenance and nourishment in a lot of ways to keep growing.

So I'm not a manager who just like mechanically shows up every day and is able to just do things from start to finish without any tending and caring and watering and nurturing. No, I'm a garden. I need sunlight. I need fresh air. I need fertilizer. I need nourishment. I need someone to water me every day.

I need someone to prune things. I need someone to weed the garden. I need someone to get rid of the things that are killing me, the pests, the bugs, the insects that are eating my leaves. I am a garden and you are a [00:35:00] garden, and if you see yourself that way, you can better accept your everyday needs, that people are coming to you for nourishment and sustenance and support and joy in life.

And when you don't take care of yourself, your garden dies. And it's not able to sustain your family. And I see this when I am not taking care of myself, when I'm neglecting myself, when I am not prioritizing myself in the resources that you know, that I dole out. And when I do the budget every month when I don't prioritize myself.

I become more irritable. I start to feel sick. I become more resentful. I become more anxious. I'm less able to handle my kids' temper, tantrums, the homework upset the activities, the the need to have hard conversations. The, I don't have the abundance and the capacity that this job of motherhood and marriage require.

You are a garden. And I [00:36:00] hope that you can start to see yourself that way and to stop seeing yourself in this like corporate, cut and dry. Money goes in, money goes out. Economic portal, that is a manager title. Like we are not these corporate analogies. We are actually more closely aligned to natural analogies like being a plant or a garden.

So, yes. Remember that when you tend to your garden, not only do you thrive and you benefit, but everybody in your life, your work, your clients, your family, your children, everybody benefits when you tend to this garden. So I really hope that you are able to take what you heard today. And try them so that you can break out of this burnout cycle or protect yourself from falling into it.

It is possible, it does take time, and again, don't forget that I am going deeper into these concepts and in particular the 3D boundary setting framework in this beautiful 15 minute weekly wellness check-in. [00:37:00] I'm gonna teach you how to find 15 minutes every week, what questions to ask yourself, how to solve the problems that come up as you.

Sit with these questions and journal these questions, and it is literally gonna become like the foundation of your journey to building a no longer last life, A life where your health, your happiness, and your wellbeing are prioritized. So remember that free workshops on April 4th. I'll put a link down below for you to sign up for the free workshop and my coaching program.

The No longer Last journey is reopening on April 5th with special discounts and bonuses, and there will be information about that as well. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you for listening, and if anything resonated, please let me know. You can DM me, you can leave a comment, you can email me. I always love hearing from you, and I hope you found this episode helpful.

All right, I'll see you next time. Bye.

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