In today’s episode I’m talking about non-negotiables in motherhood. When you’re overwhelmed and stressed out, something has to give. You have to make a choice. This is where non-negotiables come in. This is such an important message; I can’t wait for you to hear it. This episode is short and sweet, so let’s jump in! 

In This Episode Allie Discusses:

• Why non-negotiables are important in motherhood

• What non-negotiables she has in her own life

Mentioned in this Episode:

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Mom life. We’re surrounded by the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. We’re supposed to get through it. Survive. Cling on by the last little thread. And at the same time, Carpe Diem—enjoy every moment because it’s going to go by so fast. The typical mom culture that sends us all kinds of mixed, typically negative messages. We shouldn’t take care of ourselves; it’s selfish. The more ragged you run yourself, the bigger your badge of honor. But also, ditch your mom bod and work out. Don’t yell. Make more money. Show up. Be better, but not at the expense of time with your kids. I am putting a hard stop to all of this. While being a mom, running a business, and whatever else you might have going on is hard, it is a lot and there’s lots of giving of yourself, the idea that motherhood means living a joyless, nonstop-hustle-with-zero-balance kind of life, where you give and give and give and never take, needs to stop. 

I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime (at least most days). Stop the mom guilt and shame game. Stop cleaning up after your kids’ childhood and start being present for it. I want to help you thrive in work, home and life. I believe in John 10:10 that we are called to living an abundant life and I know moms are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, some business and life hacks, spirituality and lots of other good stuff that leads to a life of less for the sake of enjoying more in your motherhood. I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.

Hi friend! I’m super excited for today’s episode because it is short and sweet. This is just something that I’ve been wanting to share with you. It’s a little bit of a perspective shift and a very permission-giving episode. 

Not that you ever need permission to be your best self and make the right decision for you and live your best life. But sometimes we act like we need it. And so, I want to give it to you anyway, even though you don’t need it. 

This episode is about non-negotiables. Specifically having non-negotiables in motherhood. I want to tell you a story and it’s from back during the time of my life when I had really little kids. I had four under five.

I feel like people that know me now and are a part of my online community today think that time of my life was not chaotic, or actually they think that my life in general is not chaotic at all. And that’s not true. It is. I’m really open with sharing the real moments and the ins and outs of my life. 

It’s not that it’s perfect or it lacks chaos, it’s just that it’s not more stressful, chaotic, or overly full of excess than it needs to be. It’s simpler. When my kids were under the age of five it’s not that it wasn’t chaotic and crazy. For sure it was. 

But chaos makes you come to a point where you have choices to make. When there is more chaos than you’re okay with, when you do feel a little crazy and feel like, “This is not how I want the day to go. This isn’t how I want to feel. This isn’t how I want to feel about my kids, my home, or my life.”  

if you start to feel that chaos and meter getting too high for what’s okay with you, then you have to intentionally make a choice. Maybe it’ll be multiple choices, or those choices are going to be made for you. And if the choices are made for you, then they’re made without you. And when a choice for your family and your day is made without you, the results will never be good for you or your family.

Let me recap that. When you have an overwhelming amount of chaos in your life, in your day, in yourself, or all of the above, that chaos makes you come to a point where you have choices to make. You have to make a choice. 

You can’t keep going the way you’re going. If you keep pushing and you keep believing that you have to do it all, you have to finish the entire to-do list, you have to do all the things you said you were going to do for this birthday party or whatever it is that’s going on, that chaos means you have to make choices. 

Something’s going to have to give in order for the chaos to stop. If you don’t intentionally make those choices and you just keep plowing through, then the choices are going to be made for you. And again, when choices are made for you, they’re made without you. 

And when that happens, when it comes to chaos in your motherhood, the results are not going to be very good for you or your family. At the very least, they’re not going to be as good for you and your family as they could have been if you’d been the one in charge. 

When you’re overwhelmed in chaos, you’re doing your day and things are feeling really stressful, there’s just a lot going on, you’re barely making it, and you decide to just keep going, just keep pushing through, and you don’t make any choices, you don’t make any cuts, that’s when something is going to have to give. Whether you say so or not. So you might as well say so and choose what it’s going to be. 

This is where nonnegotiables come in. For me, it’s a nonnegotiable that I feel mentally okay in my life, that I feel emotionally and mentally sound, good, and not super chaotic. Does that make sense?

Even back then in that crazy season of my life with four under five (let’s keep going back there because I know a lot of you are there and that is a really crazy time no matter what) it was still a nonnegotiable for me to take care of myself. It was a nonnegotiable that I feel okay internally.

It was a nonnegotiable for me to feel like I still had my identity. I still am a person. I’m not just a mom. I’m not just a housekeeper. I’m not just an anything. 

I’m a woman. I have children. I’m running this home. I have friendships. I love to take baths while I read books. I enjoy wine nights with my friends. It was a nonnegotiable that I still had this identity. 

Anytime I got to a point where that wasn’t happening. Anytime I got to a point where those things were starting to slip, where I didn’t feel like I was being myself, I didn’t feel like I had any time for myself even though I desperately needed it. 

Anytime I felt like I was stretched way too thin and all I had was a to-do list and everything was just taking over. Anytime I felt like my life was running me and not the other way around. Anytime I got to that point, I had a choice to make.

I needed to make a choice to let something or some things go and prioritize. As Greg McKeown says, “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” Or something else will. Or the choice will just be made because that’s how life works. 

Okay, girl, here is the truth that I say all the time that I really need you to understand: You will not live out the motherhood you want to live out by accident. You won’t get there without purpose, if you don’t know where you want to go and how the heck are you going to get there. 

Spoiler alert, you won’t.

And I don’t mean this to be dark or discouraging, but it’s just the truth that we all need to take a look at because having the knowledge of this truth is powerful. 

That enables us to know, “Okay, I need to know where I want to go. I need to be a woman of intent and to live on purpose. Otherwise I’m going to get somewhere random by accident rather than where I want to go on purpose.” 

So here is what I have created to support you in this idea.

This is a mix of mindset stuff as well as super, super practical steps to moving from super chaotic and stabbing in the dark, ending up nowhere by accident, versus taking ownership and control of what you can and getting somewhere on purpose. 

It’s called Hassle to Harmony. 

It is a free live video class, a webinar, where I am teaching you all kinds of things. Like I said, a blend of mindset, mentality, and super practical stuff. 

It’s free to sign up! It’s going to be amazing!

You can sign up at alliecasazza.com/hassletoharmony. 

I can’t wait to see you there. It’s happening really soon, so go sign up before it’s gone! Can’t wait!

I had to make a choice to let some things go. To take care of myself. To prioritize and reconfigure what needed to get done that week, what was happening on that day, to cancel something on the calendar, to let go of something in my life. However that looked like that day or that week. 

Here’s an example. There was this one day during this time in my life. I remember Emmett was really little. We hadn’t moved to the Midwest yet. 

I hadn’t started my business. I had my blog and stuff, but it wasn’t a business. I had the four kids, and they were all under five. 

There was this day where there were Cheerios and crackers all over the living room, smashed into the floor by the kids. The kids and I were in my room together. I was showered, dressed, and I felt really good.

We were just lying on my bed together. We had been watching a cartoon, but we had paused it. We were talking and looking at Emmett. I remember we were making him laugh. We were just enjoying each other and I felt great. 

Like I said, I had taken a shower. I had gotten dressed. I wasn’t ready to go to the Oscars or anything, but it was just one of those days where you feel good. I had a bra on, maybe a little mascara or something. 

I felt okay. I felt good. I took care of myself. I made a few minutes to just refresh, put deodorant on, bring those girls up where they belong, put a little mascara on. 

I was just snuggling with my kids. I was focusing on them, because earlier that day the kids had dumped out the box of Cheerios and they had gotten out the crackers without me. They had made a mess while I was cleaning in another room. I had a bunch of stuff to do that day because we were hosting something that weekend. 

And I started to feel that chaos pull. I started to get to that place where the chaos was totally taking over and it was too much. I was about to snap at them and they were just little babies and toddlers. They were little, little, little ones really just being kids. 

When chaos gets to a point where it’s too much, you stop letting your kids be kids and you stop letting yourself be a human being with limits. When you get to that point, that is where the nonnegotiables have to come in. 

So, I stopped that morning and I thought, “It is a nonnegotiable that I am patient with my kids. It is a nonnegotiable that I feel okay mentally and emotionally. And right now I am not. It is a nonnegotiable that I prioritize myself and my kids, so something has to give.” 

Something had to give that day and it wasn’t going to be me because if I give up myself that affects my children. That affects my relationship with them. That affects my relationship with my husband. That affects my relationship with my entire family. It affects the entire vibe and energy in the house. 

And the truth is nobody really cared if the floor was vacuumed but me, so that could give and be taken care of later, and I could prioritize myself. That was when I made the decision to bring the kids in the room with me, turn on cartoons with them, take a quick two-minute shower, get some deodorant on, get a bra on, get dressed, fluff my hair a little bit, just put it in a cute ponytail or something. 

I made myself feel like, “Okay, I got this. I show up for my day. I got this. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but I feel better.” 

I just took some deep breaths. I let the kids watch TV for a second. I did those things and I prioritized myself for a minute. 

Then I saw them being so cute on the bed. We paused the cartoons and we were snuggling and having a good time. We had a really leisurely day. 

I remember later that night after the kids had gone to bed, I vacuumed up the carpet and I picked up the house in 10 minutes. The house looked fine because, you know, minimalism. I felt really good. 

It is negotiable that the floor is vacuumed. It’s negotiable that there are not Cheerios all over the floor. That’s negotiable. 

But it is not negotiable that I am okay. It’s not negotiable to me that I have my kids’ hearts. And that I didn’t scream at toddlers again, because you guys know from my story and all the vulnerable episodes I’ve done that I have been there. 

It’s not negotiable to me that they lose out to the way the fricking carpet feels. Who cares? It’s not negotiable. 

It is negotiable that the house is perfect. It’s negotiable that it is even presentable. It’s negotiable that it’s picked up. 

It’s negotiable that everything is done for the party or whatever we were doing that weekend. I don’t remember what it was. I just remember there was something that was going to be happening and I had a bunch of stuff to do. 

It’s even negotiable that I go to bed right on time. I could always stay up a little bit and catch up. Or not.

I would rather cancel the thing we were hosting that weekend and have a good relationship with my kids. I would rather feel mentally and emotionally sane, solid, cared for, confident, and know that I took care of myself and know that I had a good relationship with my kids and a good relationship with my husband. All of that is nonnegotiable. But it is negotiable that everything else is perfectly in line. 

So when it comes down to it, with all of these hats we wear and all the different things we have going on all the time, you have to understand that a lot of the time you’re good. You know how to balance. You know how to find that harmony. 

You know when to lean into work a little more and when to lean into family a little more. When to lean into taking care of your house and getting that in order more and when to lean into playing with your kids more.

Right now, as I’m recording this, I’m getting ready to move. I’m moving in just a couple of days and the house is a disaster. There are piles of things of what’s going to go in which box and what’s going to belong in which room of the new house because the new house has a different amount of rooms than our current house.

There are things and decisions everywhere. There is stress attached to that. But I know that my feeling that stress is a choice. 

It’s negotiable that we get everything packed up in time. It just is. Things can always be changed. It’s not negotiable that I don’t damage my family and my relationship with them during this process. 

What are your non-negotiables? These are going to be your priorities. When the crap hits the fan, you get really stressed out, chaos starts to take over and it kind of feels like it’s winning, you have a choice. 

You have a choice to step back, look at your nonnegotiable list and say, “I’m not doing this. I’d rather cancel the thing this weekend. I’d rather say I can’t go to this thing I’m stressing out and rushing around for. I’d rather be late. I’d rather not be super perfectly put together with a full face of makeup, enjoy my kids, be patient, get their shoes and socks on and just show up as I am.”

Whatever it is, you have a choice. When chaos is overwhelming and stress is growing, you’ve got a choice. What are your non-negotiables? What are your priorities? 

When something has to give are you going to be the one to say what it is? Or are you going to let that choice be made for you? This is a big, huge piece of being an action-taking, problem-solving woman. And this is what we’re always talking about. 

So what’s it going to be? What are your non-negotiables? What are you going to choose when the choice is yours to make?

Thanks so much for hanging out with me! In case you didn’t know, there’s actually an exclusive community that’s been created solely for the purpose of continuing discussions around The Purpose Show episodes. It’s designed to get you to actually take action and make the positive changes that we talk about here. I want you to go and be a part of it. To do that, go to alliecasazza.com/facebookgroup. 

Thank you so much for tuning in! If you’d like to learn more about me, how I can help you, how you can implement all these things and more into your life to make it simpler, better, and more abundant, head to alliecasazza.com. There are free downloads, online courses, programs, and other resources to help you create the life you really want. 

I am always rooting for you, friend! See you next time! I’m Allie Casazza and this is The Purpose Show.

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