Do you ever feel like as a Mom you have to do everything in your home? Do you feel like you’re a one-person team and need to take it all on?
Most of us Mom’s feel a strong desire to be Wonder Woman, and because of that, we take every single thing on by ourselves! We do this without asking for help, and then find ourselves overwhelmed, drained, and emotionally exhausted at the end of the day – only to start it ALL over again tomorrow!
Are you one of those Moms?
It’s okay to Ask for and Accept help!
When we live our lives and take care of our families with a, “I can do everything” complex, that’s what we end up doing – everything, and before we know it, we’re struggling to breathe because of all of the endless tasks that we have piled on ourselves!
Are we showcasing we’re the best Mom or partner to our loved ones if we end up losing ourselves and our priorities in the process? Are our kids and significant others enjoying how stressed and frazzled we are or do they want something more out of you that you’re not giving them? In any case, I know most of us don’t want to live like this, and we want to change how much we take on and to lower our stress levels that surround our daily lives working as a Mom and wife/partner.
With all of this in mind, our first step in changing our mindset is to believe and accept it’s okay to ask for help!
That’s right; I used the “H” word – help! I know as Supermom’s and wives/partners that we turn the other way when we hear the word “help” because we feel that if we were to ask for or accept the help that we’d be considered weak – but the opposite is true! Asking for help and taking it can lead to less stress! Ask your husband/significant other or your older children to pitch in more!
Below are five ways for Mom’s to alleviate anxiety naturally so they can be the best woman and Mom in their home:
Cut Your To-Do List in Half
One positive step to being the best Mom and wife you can be, without losing your mind and momentum is to look at your to-do list for your week and your day and cut it in half! Put a star behind the tasks that have to get done to help your family live and stay happy, such as washing dishes, doing laundry, or driving your kids to their soccer practice. These are all needed tasks because your family needs to eat, they need clothing to wear and to have a social life.
However, dusting the living room or cleaning the stove every day or every week isn’t a necessity. Sure it makes things look better in your home and makes you feel like you got a lot done, but to be honest, they can wait for another time. Trust me; your family will survive if they have to look at a greasy stove or dust in the home now and then. With these lower priority tasks put aside for another time, you allow yourself to have more time to spend with your children and husband/partner as well as taking care of yourself!
When you take the time to look at your tasks, you may even realize that you are doing chores or errands that you don’t need to do!
Choose a Certain Number of Tasks to Do
As a Mom and woman wearing many hats, the tasks we need to do pile up significantly, and not only does this cause us to delay completing a task we assigned ourselves but can also cause us not to do our best -which could lead to feelings of not feeling well or productive enough. We need to avoid this, and one way to make completing tasks easier on ourselves is to choose up to 10 tasks to do in a week – instead of the 30 jobs we put on ourselves!
Again, you’ll need to decide what are high priority tasks and which ones can wait when doing this. Look at your week in advance, every week, and determine what chores or errands need to get done in the week. Write them down in your calendar, notebook, or elsewhere and then make sure you commit to it! You’d be surprised how choosing which tasks you do instead of doing everything without a plan can help you have a productive week without making you exhausted!
BONUS – Choose How Many Tasks to Do Per Day Too!
A better way to make all of your tasks easier on you is to also choose up to 5 of them to do per day, from the selected weekly tasks. Breaking things down more, allows you to determine what needs to get done and what can honestly wait.
Set a Timer to Complete Low Priority Tasks
Since we still will need to tackle the low priority tasks, we need to figure a way to do so without exhausting us physically and emotionally. One way to accomplish these small tasks easier is to set a 10 – 30-minute timer every day for one specific task.
Setting a timer per task can result in you feeling like you did something productive and being okay with the fact that you don’t need to take all day on your tasks. It’s hard for us, Mom’s, to not clean or do something we think is perfect, but the more productive we feel, the easier that need will diminish. Yes, it can take time, but practice makes progress. Remember – we’re not aiming for perfection anymore!
Hire Help
In addition to asking your family to help you out in your day to day tasks, consider hiring help! You take on SO much already, and it’s completely draining you – to the point where you likely feel you desperately need a vacation!
Hiring a cleaning company, like Maid For You, can do wonders for your emotional health and can help rejuvenate you for when you’re more able to take on your daily tasks again! All of us need a break in life, but asking for help is something most of us refuse to do, but again, let me remind you, asking for help is not a sign of weakness but rather that of strength! Admitting you need help to alleviate your anxiety shows that you know what’s best for you and your family and that how you’re carrying on in life is not working.
Imagine how you’d feel if you hired someone, like Maid For You, to come into your home to do ALL of the laundry for the week – washed, dried, folded, and put away? I can hear your sigh of relief already – and why not?
You already do SO much for your family in the insurmountable tasks and chores you have to do every day – a break like this would only feel heavenly! Consider hiring the same company to do some light cleaning for you as well – things that need to get done every week! Take a week off of home cleaning – with everything you already do; you deserve a break and help!
Ask for Help as a Gift from Your Significant Other
With Valentine’s day around the corner, why not tell your significant other that the only gift you want from them is to consistently help you around the house, or to pay for a home cleaning service for yourself to indulge? A Year Of Free Time is the perfect gift, 1 year worth of cleaning service, ($3900 value biweekly cleaning at $150.00 or ) a gift certificate to Hand and Stone ($100.00 value) bath salts and a natural candle $50.00 value) to alleviate your stress. Can you imagine the release of stress you’d experience with such a gift?
Practice Self-Care
Another great thing you can do for yourself to help lower your anxiety and stress levels from all the things you do in a week is to practice self-care! No one can get things done while running on empty – so take time to stop, breathe, and treat yourself to free time to yourself! Yourself will thank you!
Take a much-needed break or mini-vacation! A break doesn’t mean that you have to spend a lot of money on vacation but to find creative ways to give yourself that break! You could soak in a bubble bath once a week for an hour or more. Instead of tackling chores after supper, go to a class or out with a friend for a night. Or even go to the mall for a whole day!
There are many different ways you can partake in self-care, and all of them will help you feel more relaxed, less overwhelmed, and will give you more energy! Once you start to implement self-care into your routine, you will begin to realize and accept that you already are enough and that keeping a perfect home or being the perfect Mom will not make you the best – taking care of yourself will!
You Already ARE Enough!
If you don’t get everything you feel needs to get done, know that you are STILL enough! Your loved ones believe that -now it’s your turn!
Avoid Burnout by Knowing When to Say “When”
You don’t need to reach burnout as a Mom or significant other! You have the choice to decide how much you do in a week or day, and if you will ask for help from others or hire help – the decision can be your greatest asset to defeating burnout!
Get to know yourself well enough through self-care to be aware of when you’re approaching that dreaded feeling of exhaustion and drowning. Awareness of approaching burnout can be your saving grace in saving your sanity! Follow these five steps to help alleviate your anxiety and see your life change!
Share in the comments below: What is ONE thing you can do today to start help alleviate your anxiety as a Mom and partner?