Episode 12: Reclaiming Joy: How to Celebrate the Small Moments in Your Busy Mom Life
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
If you're feeling like you're repeating the same day over and over again, stuck on a hamster wheel of working, completing chores, and taking care of kids, one of the easiest and fastest ways to break up that cycle is to celebrate the small wins. We're taught to celebrate the big milestones in the life - birthdays, anniversaries, holidays - but what about all of the other amazing, beautiful, everyday things that we do and experience? What might shift if we focused as much on those celebrations as we do on what we didn't do?
This episode will help you see how powerful everyday celebrations can be for feeling good about your life and progress, despite it being busy and full! From personal anecdotes to client experiences, you'll learn practical tips on simple yet meaningful ways to celebrate. And bonus, learn how that can impact your kids and your family culture.
In this episode, you’ll learn…
00:28 The perfect poem to inspire you to celebrate more
03:26 Why celebrating matters
05:03 How celebration helps get you off the hamster wheel of daily life
07:44 What it means to create a culture of celebration
09:11 Personal examples of the impact of celebration
17:47 Practical ways and ideas for how to celebrate
26:37 Your coaching homework
links & resources mentioned in this episode:
A Bit Much by Lyndsay Rush
Find Lyndsay Rush on Instagram @Maryoliversdrunkcousin
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You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.
Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm really excited about this topic today. It's one I planned on a while back for today. And then I love it when I get a sign in my life, something that reinforces that, yes, this is the topic, this is what you need to talk about, this is what you need to hear this week.
And so, here's what happened this weekend. I, maybe a week ago, was listening to, an interview. On NPR as I was driving my older kids to piano, and it was with Lyndsay Rush, and it was about her new book of poetry that had just released. So if you don't know Lyndsay Rush, she is a poet. a poet who shares so much of her work on Instagram and her handle on Instagram is Mary Oliver's drunk cousin.
So that should give you an indication of what her poetry is like, but the interview was great. It was funny. It was charming. And I immediately, while my kids were in their piano lessons, Emailed our local indie bookstore and said I need a copy of that. Do you have any can you order me a copy?
I ended up purchasing one for a friend as well because I know I knew she would love it and You know as a poetry book is it's not one that I don't necessarily will read from cover to cover, but I was just flipping through to see what page presented itself to me and kind of like throwing a dart at a map, and it happened to fall open on this poem and so I'm going to read it here really quickly because it's one beautiful and fun poem.
But also introduces so well what I want to talk to you today about, which is Celebration. And so again, this is Lyndsay Rush. It's from the book A Bit Too Much, which is her collection of poems. And the poem is on page 173. It's called Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. I will be sure to put a link to this book of poetry In the show notes, please support her.
Grab a copy. If this is something that sounds interesting to you, if you appreciate poetry and a good smile and laugh and just heartfelt words, so this is every little thing she does is magic. So we throw her an elaborate surprise party for her job promotion. All of her friends and family fly in for the occasion.
We meet with jewelers to design a delicate gold ring for her second anniversary with therapy. We create a multi store gift registry for how she learned to set boundaries with her mother. We schedule a golden hour photo shoot of her and her new apartment, and we buy her a push present for deciding she does not want children.
We plan an all inclusive vacation to celebrate her deepest friendships. The outfits will be incredible. We host a five course dinner complete with effusive toasts for finishing her graduate program, doula training, yoga certification. We place a crown on her head and wrap a hot pink boa around her neck in garish jubilation for the life she is building brick by brick by and for herself.
So that is Every Little Thing She Does is Magic by Lyndsay Rush. I have goosebumps. And when we think about celebration, I have to just say when I read that we don't celebrate enough or we only celebrate the things that everyone expects us to celebrate, but not the small things, not the unexpected or the everyday things.
The women who are searching for a coach for working moms. The women that I speak to about potentially working together, they come to me feeling overwhelmed. They are tired and exhausted from the overwhelm. And I hear this a lot. Every day feels the same. I'm living in a groundhog day.
I do the chores. I go to work. I care for my children. There is no longer the joy, excitement, the excitement. Enjoyment, or even just contentment with life, it all feels like work and it all feels the same.
Similarly, the to do list will never actually be done. That too repeats day after day. After this deadline or project, there will be another one. After this illness, sorry to break it to you, There will be more illnesses. After you clean up this mess, the kids will go and make another one. Ask any parent what the weekend is like.
That is what it is like. You just move from one mess, one project, one thing to the next. It's never ending tidying.
And if you don't pause to recognize that you made it through that thing, if you don't pause to celebrate, and we will get to what that word actually means. Shortly. But if you don't pause to celebrate that you submitted that deliverable or completed that project, you will stay on the hamster wheel, the hamster wheel that makes life feel like Groundhog Day.
It's just on to the next thing. Celebration, the way I view celebration, is an act of pausing that hamster wheel. It is putting a wrench into the wheel that otherwise would continue to spin and spin day after day with, the same stuff, different day. Maybe a little bit of it shifts, but on the whole, it's the same.
And celebration is driving that wedge. Maybe it's just a minute. Maybe it's pausing for an evening, or even a period of time. But even if it's just for 60 seconds, it's a pause.
There's so much life that is lived between milestones. So again, we are, taught or conditioned to celebrate things like birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, the first day of school, the last day of something. We're taught to celebrate the big things. We're also, taught, though maybe not directly, that it's a bit over the top, or too much to celebrate all the little things.
It's just so interesting to me, right, that that book of poetry is called A Bit Much, which there's a poem, that was her most popular, I believe, poem or the poem that put her on the map called A Bit Much. And that it ties into this idea that if we celebrate all of those little things that society tells us aren't big enough to celebrate, that it's a bit much.
And I wonder if some of you are thinking too, because I had this thought, if we celebrate all of , the little things in between, in addition to the holidays and the milestones in our lives, like, that's more that we have to do. That's another thing to plan. So now, not only do we have to do all of the work , to Create the celebrations for our kids and our families and ourselves for all the milestones, but now the little things too,
but I want to offer that celebration can look so many different ways. It can look different for each of us for whatever it is that we're celebrating. And my goal today with this episode is to help you understand what you could gain by creating a habit of celebration. a culture of celebration in your family, in your marriage, on your team, in your workplace, or in your business, and then to take the stress out of those celebrations.
I, especially for parents, know that it can be stressful. It does bring a certain level of stress, maybe anxiety, or overwhelm to think about planning the celebrations that we know already. Birthdays, holidays, there's so much that especially as parents and working moms that we carry the mental load for.
And so there may also be that coming up for you now, that association with the word celebration and that it means more work, more to do, more to think about. And so I want to give you some easy examples, some small examples of what it could mean and how it could look to celebrate in a different way. I want to offer ways that you could essentially reap the rewards of celebration without creating more work for yourself and show you that it can be simple.
It can also be a bit much and over the top and that's great too, but if that is too much for you, that it can be simple.
A couple of months ago, I finished a six month long certification program for executive coaching, something I had wanted to do for a long, long time. I know I've mentioned it before. Early on in that program, we learned and talked about the reticular activation system. Maybe you know that term as well.
It was a concept that I had understood and actually was using with clients in coaching. I just didn't have the term for it, didn't know what it was called. But my favorite. example of how this plays out or shows up in our everyday lives is when you are looking, for a car when you are car shopping.
And this is very timely for me. We've been on our car shopping journey for the last couple of months. Actually, finally, completed it. We brought home a new car last weekend, so excited to be done with that. But yeah, When you are car shopping, when you are researching and looking into what's the next car that is going to work for me or for our family, I'm going to toss out some examples from my recent car search, right?
But when you are looking at and reading all the specs on say a Mazda CX 90 or a Tesla or a Kia Telluride or a Rivian, we were looking heavily into electric vehicles, suddenly Because those cars are now top of mind for you, they are in your consciousness, you start to see them everywhere. Oh my gosh, everybody has a Kia Telluride.
Or oh my gosh, you know, for Rivian having such a small market share in terms of the auto industry, the cars that are on the road. Suddenly I was like, in our small neighborhood I've seen like four Rivians in the last month. This is crazy. Everybody must have one. Well. Maybe, maybe those are all new purchases, but what's likely happening is that now that it is in your awareness, you start to see it more.
You notice it more, whereas before you weren't looking for a Kia Telluride. And so you weren't noticing that lots of people are driving those on the road. They, they are everywhere, but now that's all you can see because you're looking for it. There's a part of your brain that is scanning your environment, looking for it.
And so what if the same could be true for what you do, what you accomplish, how you feel when you are feeling really proud of something or your progress on something. If you are aware of, thinking about, and then therefore looking around your environment to find proof of the ways that, that you are successful, that.
You are making progress, that you are creating wins in your life. You will see more and more of it. Now that doesn't mean that, the to do list and what's next and the projects that keep us somewhat on a hamster wheel won't be there. They will still be there. I'm not talking about toxic positivity where we disregard or gloss over or shove down the feelings of stress or overwhelm.
Maybe we can see that those aren't the only things we have to look for anymore. We can also look for the ways that we are doing so much. One of my earliest, earliest blog posts on my website. I'm sure you could find it if you search the archives very, back to the very first or second page of articles that I've written on my site, I'm talking eight plus years ago, was about creating what I called a ta da list at the end of your day.
Instead of a to do list where you just cross things off and see, at the end of the day, only what's left. Only the things that you didn't do. You flip it. Maybe you still use your to do list to make progress throughout the day, but at the end of the day, you review all of the things that you crossed off.
And you think, Ta da! I did all of those things! It's like magic! Look at everything that I was able to do today. And you feel that sense of pride. It's similar to when you have a new baby. And the power of three things a day. I used, a notepad to write down three things that I wanted to do each day, while I was postpartum, while I was on mat leave with my kids.
And I would celebrate the heck out of the fact that I took a shower. Or took a walk or binge watched an entire season of Gilmore Girls while also taking care of an infant. That's a huge accomplishment in those newborn days when you're tired and all you're doing is nursing or feeding a baby and changing diapers and rocking a, maybe a colicky child.
that was my experience. It's huge to on top of that, be. Taking care of yourself or taking a walk. Those things are worth celebrating.
How do you like to celebrate your wins? That's a question I ask on my intake form for any new client that starts working with me. And I have a lot of great examples from those forms. Clients have shared with me over the years how they celebrate. But I also have an equal number of clients who say, I've never actually thought about that before.
Or one client who said, in quotes, Wow, my mind just went blank. I don't think I know. Or others who've said, I'm realizing I don't do this at all. If that is you, you're not alone. Celebrating ourselves is not what we are taught to do. It almost falls into that boastful, braggy category, right, that we must not toot our own horn or promote ourselves too much.
That's too much. And I certainly have my own thoughts on that and where that conditioning and those teachings come from. But I want to offer too, that if celebrating out loud feels a little uncomfortable to you at this point, that is not the only way to celebrate. Celebration is. Simply about recognition.
It's about acknowledging yourself. And if you want to make that an outward thing that involves other people, or is a big out loud thing, I love that for you too. But what we're talking about here is looking for proof in your life that you are doing so much acknowledging that you are making progress.
Even when there are days or weeks or seasons where it feels like you're not, where it feels like every day is the same and you are on a constant hamster wheel. And celebrating can be as simple as pausing and reviewing your ta da list at the end of the day. It can be taking a deep breath and relishing the feeling of having done a hard thing or finished something or having shown up in a way that you're proud of.
When you take that breath and acknowledge yourself, you are solidifying that feeling so that it's something you recognize and something that hopefully becomes more familiar to you.
I talked in episode three about creating a monthly wrap up process and one of the items that I include in my monthly wrap up process is to go back through all of my photos. So on my phone from that month and, delete the duplicates or the ones where everybody's eyes are closed or the things that I no longer need because I just snapped, you know, a photo of where I parked my car in the parking garage so I wouldn't forget it.
That is also a great opportunity for celebration. I can't help but feel in awe of all of the things that I did in the past month. When I look at those photos, that is a moment to celebrate life, to celebrate all that you are doing, even when it felt like maybe this last month was so full of work and just chores and daily life that you forgot all of the things that you did.
I want to give you a few examples, that I have gathered either from my own life, from clients again, and sharing how they like to celebrate , so here's just a quick list , of ways that other women are celebrating their successes big and small.
Their wins, I will also say their wins big and small. Dinner out. Taking a trip. That's a big, that's a bigger one, but maybe if it's a bigger celebration, it's worth that. With food or a treat. So many of you love to, grab a really good pastry, or a chocolate, or ice cream, or something like that, food related, a treat related.
Take the afternoon off work. Give yourself a couple of hours to play and do whatever you want as a way to honor and recognize what you've completed. So many have said with champagne or a glass of wine. I love to keep a bottle of champagne in my refrigerator at all times. This is actually another really great planning tool.
That I share with all of my clients and I'll share with you here too, that when you are choosing your top priority for the week, what is the one thing that you absolutely would love to get done? You choose it because it is the thing that would warrant or be worth stopping by the store, grabbing a bottle of champagne and popping that open at the end of the week to celebrate because you did that thing.
So that's a big one. Time with friends. Time at the spa, getting a manicure, or a facial, or a massage. Treating yourself to a piece of clothing, or jewelry, or a book. Shopping in some way that is exciting and feels fun and like a treat to you. Having sex. What a fun way to celebrate! Fancy coffee all alone at a cafe.
So there's the fancy coffee, certainly a great way to celebrate, and then bonus all alone at a cafe to just enjoy it while it's hot. So good. Then there are the smaller ways that don't necessarily take money or time. Well, they take time, but they don't take money. There's nothing you have to go purchase or do to spend money on the experience.
But maybe you reflect through journaling. You take a moment to write out how it feels to have completed that thing, what you are actually celebrating. I have had clients who add their celebration to a wins list. So whether that's a Google Doc or a Trello list or some other place that you are adding all of your wins to a list that you could review at a later point.
I will say this is really great for practice. Performance reviews, when you have to remember back on the year, all of the things that you've done, the accomplishments, the value that you've provided in your role at your company for your team, so great to add all of your celebrations and wins to a place where you can easily grab those.
Take a picture. I love this one that a client shared a while back. Take a picture of the moment of the thing just to have and reflect on and review later. And this last one I think is so meaningful, tell someone, so many women tell a partner or tell a best friend, tell a coach for all of my clients, celebrating can be as simple as coming in and being seen by someone else.
I did this thing. There's so much power in saying out loud to someone. I'm really proud of myself. I completed this certification program. I finished a book. I read 10 books this year. Can you believe it? Or, I had this really tough conversation that I've been meaning to have for a long time. Or, I finally opened a 529 for my kids!
Or, whatever it is, big or small, to tell someone is to be witnessed, to be seen, and it also gives you permission to share that part of your life, of your story with someone else. I also highly recommend sharing your wins out loud at home where your kids can hear. Especially as they get older, let your kids hear what you're proud of yourself for.
I can't remember where I heard this recently, but I tried it with my kids that evening. It must've been on a podcast, I'll have to go back and look, but whoever it was, was talking about going around the dinner table and sharing a high, a low, and a buffalo. So a high point in your day, maybe a low point in your day, and then something random.
That's not necessarily a high or a low, but you just want to share. My kids. I think that night all of them shared like what they had for lunch, what was the school lunch today, because we often play roulette and just show up and see what's being served and hope that somebody likes it. And your high could be something that you are really proud of yourself for, something that you completed that was a challenge that you overcame.
Not only does it help them see you as someone who. Maybe doesn't have all the answers or finds everything easy, but if you happen to share something about work, it gives them insights into your work, into your day. I love to share accomplishments or completing things that have been on my list for a while.
That feels like a win. And I love to share that with my kids. And that is creating that culture of celebrating our progress along the way.
I think a big piece of this is experimentation, of course. Maybe you try some of these ideas for celebration to see what you like and what feels comfortable and what fits, maybe what a stretch celebration goal is for yourself, but ultimately to create your own rituals of celebration. We do that so naturally with the big things with holidays or with birthdays, you know, my children know that we're going to hang their happy birthday banner that I made when they were young that gets hung in the house and they're going to have a cake and they get to choose the dinner for their birthday that evening.
That's a ritual that we have created for celebration. But what are the rituals that you want to create to celebrate? The in between moments, the things that we aren't taught to celebrate in between, how will you do that? I'll give you a personal example. A couple of years ago, I met a woman who makes beautiful heirloom, home pieces, and she had this beautiful story around this set of coupes.
Glasses, glassware, and her vision for these products, these coupes to be coupes that you pass down to your children that really hold a special place in your life. And even if I just pour sparkling water or some kombucha in them, I have certainly poured champagne into those glasses, but those are the glasses that I connect now with celebrating in between the big milestones moments of my life and it is so fun to be fancy and drink out of those glasses that that is a ritual that I have created for myself.
They symbolize for me celebrating what I am proud of myself for.
As with all things that we practice and do, Well, I guess as with all things that we try on and then practice and slowly create in our lives, the more you celebrate all that you're doing, All that you are being, all that you are creating, the more comfortable that will feel, and the more you will see in your everyday life, all of the things that are worth acknowledging, recognizing, and celebrating.
And I think we want to consider the impact of that. Hey, just think about what might shift for you if you could add in more of a focus towards all that you are doing instead of only seeing all that you are not or that you have yet to do. Ask any one of my one on one clients how celebrating makes them feel, and I am confident that they will tell you that While it may have felt uncomfortable at first, because it is truly a challenge that I give to all of them, but that it is one of their favorite parts of coaching.
It is one of the skills that they love the most when they walk away with all of the skills that they walk away with after coaching that learning the skill of celebrating themselves has been really pivotal. So if you want to create more time in your days, you want to solidify your priorities and your purpose as a parent and in your career, and if you want to be the kind of person who celebrates The crap out of her life.
Come coach with me. I am accepting new one on one clients. And the best way for you to know if this is for you is just to apply. There's no obligation , answer a few questions, and I will get back to you with whether or not I think you could be a good fit, and then we'll go from there to decide together on next steps.
You can find the application on my website at themothernurture. com forward slash application. And as always, you can grab the links to everything that we talked about, including Lindsay Rush's new book of poetry over at the show notes on my website at themothernurture. com forward slash podcast.
And I want to issue you a challenge. as we sign off here today to go and find something that you can celebrate today. And 📍 whether it's just pausing to acknowledge that internally for yourself or doing something outward to celebrate or telling somebody else, a friend, a partner, a colleague, that you start to practice looking for all of the ways that your life has so much in it to celebrate.
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