There’s this belief that if you’re a mom and you work, something has to give from one of those areas all the time. So, in today’s episode we’re talking about how you can get to the root of this thought and live empowered in your work/mom life. Let’s dive in! 

In this episode Allie discusses: 

• The thought that you can’t be doing good in your work life and mom life
• How to tell if a thought is helpful
• How to tell if a thought is harmful
• How to empower yourself from there
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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.

Hey friends! Welcome to The Purpose Show podcast! We’re going to keep it real short and sweet today. I have some thoughts I want to deliver to you. Food for thought for you to sift through. So, this is a quickie episode. 

I’ve been hearing so much lately about women that are working mothers (which every mother is a working mother in my opinion) who have jobs or businesses where they’re generating cash, and they are raising children. 

There’s this belief that if you’re working and you’re a mom, something has to give from one of those areas all the time. In a sense, they can’t both be good. You can’t be doing really well in both of those areas. You’re constantly having to choose. 

And that might be true. It might be true. I’m not here to argue with it at all. It makes sense. It makes sense that it might be true. 

I get this in my DM’s. I see it in my comments. I see it outside of my community. I see it all over the internet.

I hear about it at the park. I hear about it when I meet moms in real life. And I’m not sure where it’s coming from. But I want to empower you to figure out where it’s coming from. 

That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Rather than focusing on whether this belief is true or not and getting into some kind of debate or clinging to our own thought processes in any way, I want you to go somewhere else with this thought instead. Instead of arguing whether it is true or not, I want you to go somewhere else with it.

I want you to ask yourself this question: Is this belief helpful or harmful to me specifically? Not to the world. Not to anyone else. Is it helpful or harmful to me?

To decide that I want you to check in on where this thought stems from. Is it coming from love or is it coming from fear? If a thought is coming from love, it’s helpful. 

Here are some symptoms of something coming from love and being helpful to you: It feels good; It empowers you; It uplifts you; It energizes you; It enables you to be your best self and show up with love because love begets more love.

If something is coming from a place of fear, it can be hard to self-diagnose because you get all wrapped up in the weeds of your own thoughts, stories, experiences, and opinions. We have these biases about ourselves, everyone else, and everything else, and it just gets really hard. 

But if something is coming from a place of fear, it is unhelpful. It may even be harmful. It may not necessarily be harming you, but it definitely doesn’t deserve a place in your life if it’s not helping you, right? 

What are the symptoms of something coming from fear? What does that inner voice sound like? If it’s not love, it’s coming from fear. 

It feels low. It feels bad. It feels negative. It doesn’t feel good. It disempowers you. It breaks you down a little bit. Even if it’s slight, it breaks you down a little bit. It makes you feel tired. It does not energize you. It might make you feel a little hopeless. 

It might make you feel bad about your life choices, which of course that can empower you to make changes. It’s not that you’re supposed to feel amazing, like everything is rainbows and unicorns and perfect all the time. That’s not what I’m saying at all. If something is dragging you down a little bit and disempowering you, it’s coming from fear. 

Again, this is all neutral information. I’m not saying that nothing should come from fear. Obviously, that’s not human. That’s not reality. 

We’re just trying to get clarity within ourselves here. Not about if something is right or wrong, true or untrue. We’re just trying to figure out where these beliefs are coming from. 

We’re going to neutralize all the emotion around this working mom situation and the story that all of these mothers who also are generating cash are struggling with and buying into. Whether it’s true or not, you can still unsubscribe or subscribe because it could be true or untrue for you. We want to neutralize this, find where it’s coming from, and see if it’s helping us or not.

If something is coming from fear you’ll feel it in your body in a negative way. You can also feel if something is coming from love in your body. But I find that it’s easier for people to notice if something is coming from fear in their body.

You might feel a little resistance in your stomach, your chest, and your heart. It just kind of feels like a little bit of dread. You might feel shame. You might feel guilt. But you can feel it coming up somewhere in your body because the body keeps the score. It’s our messenger. 

If something is coming from fear, you can use that to propel yourself forward. You can use that as just information and notice that you’re feeling this way. You may feel like this is coming from fear and it’s not helping you. So, I’m going to use that information to move forward, doing better. Like my favorite Maya Angelou quote—know better, do better. 

But if it is not propelling you forward to know better or to have a realization and go do something about it, then it is not helping you. It is harming you instead of helping you.

And maybe I’m not just talking to working moms. Maybe I’m talking to stay-at-home mothers who don’t see themselves as working. They don’t value themselves or they’re pretending that they value themselves but deep down they don’t. 

I was a stay-at-home mom for over seven years and it was the hardest thing. It was the hardest thing. Ultimately, it wasn’t where I was meant to stay, but that doesn’t mean it’s true for everybody. You have your own truth. You have your own story. 

Maybe there are other women saying this about working moms. That if they’re working and being a mom, something has to give from one of those areas all the time. They belief that’s a fact. But actually, it seems like that’s your fact.

I want to just dispel all of this. I want to diffuse the tension. Let’s just make it really neutral and put all of our assigned meanings aside. Let’s put all of our stories aside. 

What I mean by putting your assigned meaning aside is that everyone takes neutral words or a neutral statement and assigns all of this meaning to it based on your own story, your own dialogue, your own inner voice. Based on what you have been through and what you believe at this point, you assign all of this meaning to it. 

It’s neutral until you assign meaning to it, so let’s remove that. Set it all aside and look at this as a fact. Let’s just say it’s true and something does have to give all the time. 

Why is that so negative? What makes that so negative? What are you believing about that that would make it have such a negative weight with the way you’re saying it? 

Do you see what I mean? All of this is just your own perception being wrapped up in a statement. Let’s remove all of that. Just neutralize it completely. 

Don’t ask whether it’s true or not true or what it means or doesn’t mean. Instead ask if it’s helpful or harmful to you. Whether it’s coming from love or fear.

Notice that. Because if something is coming from fear, it brings up in you this feeling that you want to do something about it. At least for me it does. I don’t want to be guided by fear. 

I say often to my husband and to my team, I do not make decisions based on fear. I almost do a lot of the time. I go there naturally because I’m a human being. But I refuse to make decisions purely based on fear. 

I did that for way too long and it was frigging miserable. It’s not where I belong. It’s not where you belong. It’s not where anyone belongs. And so, I refuse to go there. 

I make decisions out of love. Love for myself, love for others, love for life, love for my time. 

I value my time. I value myself. I value my business. I value other people. 

I go where I feel is led by love. That changes situation by situation. I don’t want to make decisions out of fear and I’m sure you don’t either. No one is volunteering to make decisions out of fear. So if it’s coming from fear, we have some work to do. 

That is the power of neutralizing a belief and looking at where it’s coming from. Is it helping you or harming you? From there, you can take action. 

If it’s helping you, great! Now you just grounded yourself in this belief. You’re staying empowered. You’re staying energized.

You’re enabling yourself to be the best version of yourself. To show up in love because you’re so grounded in your decision to be a working mom or to be a stay-at-home mom that is in camaraderie with other working moms and stay-at-home moms. 

There shouldn’t be these BS mommy wars anymore. It’s ridiculous. It’s division. It’s patriarchal division amongst women. 

If it’s coming from fear and it’s disempowering you and you realize that now, you can stay neutral. You don’t need to shame, guilt, or blame yourself or anything like that. 

You now know where it’s coming from. Now you’re empowered and you can start to ask where all of these beliefs came from. Maybe you realize that when you were growing up, your mom said certain things about being a working mom, or about other working moms, or working women in general. Or your dad did. 

Or your mother-in-law has said many things. Or Your father-in-law has certain beliefs and you really respect him. Maybe an aunt, a caretaker, a loved one, or a friend’s mother said a comment once when you were five. 

These things in our subconscious form how we live. It’s not our conscious mind, it’s our subconscious mind. And to get to those things, we need to neutralize the story and stop looking at it as true or untrue because that’s so baseless. 

Where is it coming from? Love or fear? Because ultimately, that is what really matters. That is what is going to open your eyes and show you where you need to shift and empower you to make inner changes that will reflect in your external environment, in the way you’re living, in the way you’re speaking, in the way you think of yourself, the way you think about others. 

This is food for thought, something to sift through today. Is it coming from love or fear? Is it helping or harming? 

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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