Back in 2019, I decided to become part of the solution to a problem I was up against. As a working mom of two daughters, I didn’t feel like I could find enough resources on issues I was facing. I could search online for articles, advice or read different parenting books but I felt like a lot of them weren’t grounded in my reality.
Thats when I got interested in this idea of building a community for mothers. A place and space for honest conversations and judgement-free experience sharing. I wasnt looking to re-create any wheels, I just wanted to find other women who were like me and connect in an honest and authentic way.
I loved it and I learned a ton about community building and even more about issues that mothers of all ages and stages were facing. That initial effort has since evolved into my brand solutions business and the Motherhood Merged Podcast.
My mission of community building and providing a resource to women, specifically mothers, is still the same. But at some point in my efforts, this one thought came to me and I just haven’t been able to ignore it.
Its this idea that motherhood is really hard. But many of us have this innate skill or have been conditioned to make it look easy. So the question I started asking myself is what would it look like if it were easy?
Seems like a simple question: what would your life look like if you let things be easy?
I don’t think it’s a simple question with a simple answer. Because I like to control all the things.
In motherhood and in my professional life, I’ve always felt the need to maintain a tight grip on the steering wheel. And that tightness has led to a lot of suffering. And the harsh reality in that is that a lot of times, that suffering is at my own hand.
There is a certain predisposition to suffering shows up in my life as a mom. It’s been a part of my conditioning and might be part of yours too, either as a mom or business owner or both.
As hard-working women and mothers there are a lot of responsibilities and challenges that land on our shoulders. But sometimes we also find ways to make things harder on ourselves. Its not always intentional.
I think its impoprtant to bring this topic to light in an effort to leave behind the suffering and to normalize letting things be easy.
Opportunities for Change
Your personal brand is the ways in which you are perceived from the outside. Its the work you do and how you do it. It doesn’t matter if you work for yourself as a business owner or entrepreneur or if you work for someone else in an industrial or corporate setting.
You have a brand to protect and grow to ultimately get to where you want to be.
Your journey is your journey so there isn’t a right or wrong way. But only you control the trajectory of your brand or business growth.
Let’s explore four different areas where you can make a decision to suffer through or to grant yourself the permission to execute with ease and flow.
The first element on my list is one to consider if it’s a barrier or a tool and that is social media. It can be a highly effective tool for brand building, community engagement, and marketing. But it can also be an overwhelming time suck with little measureable return on your investment.
So how might you be making social media more difficult than it needs to be? Two words come to mind for me. One is comparison and the other is confusion.
There is a lot of advice out there about the importance of social media. Seems like when you get one platform figured out, a new one pops up. There are so many brands and businesses that seem to have massive followings and it often seems like it happens overnight. There is a lot of pressure to go viral as well.
It might seem like social media creates overnight sensations or that other brands and businesses are bigger and better than you.
Keep in mind this truth when you start to get down on yourself: there is no such thing as an overnight sensation. And can’t compare where you are to another who is where you want to be.
I’ve heard Rachel Hollis talk about this a lot because her critics often dislike her because it appears that she came out of nowhere. When in truth, Girl Wash Your Face was her fourth or fifth book, not her first and she had a well-respected events company in California for a decade.
Let it be easy by focusing your efforts, time and energy on the platforms you truly enjoy the most or pair down to those that provide the highest level of engagement. If you dont enjoy live video, dont do it. If you don’t see high engagement on your twitter account but your IG stories flood your feed with DMs then reduce your twitter presence and go bigger on instagram with more content that will resonate with your ideal audience.
There are best practices but there are no rules of engagement for using social for growth. It can be as hard or as easy as you want to make it.
Another area to explore are your boundaries. Do you have boundaries and if so, how good are you at protecting them?
Time is a precious commodity and one of the complaints I hear most often is that there is never enough of it. How many times have you said that you don’t have time to do something or you would be better or do more if you only had more time?
Setting boundaries around your time is a big undertaking but it is one that offers big results. How can you let it be easy? Think about the ways in which you manage your time and the ways in which you let others have access to it.
I’m a big proponent of calendaring tools and project management systems. But two other productivity hacks that relate to the idea of boundaries are time blocking and batch working. I use both when I can to create chunks of time where I can be most productive and I share them with my family and staff so they know the times that are important for me to keep to myself.
An example is my family time block each evening around the dinner hour. On nights I don’t have event obligations, I am not available to my work colleagues or staff from the time I leave the office until my kids go to bed. That time is protected for the family as much as possible. This wasn’t easy at first but its allowed me focused time and opened up time later in the evening for me to get back to work guilt-free if its needed.
Asking for help is also not an easy thing to do but its important to understand why it can be an important way to get over and around barriers along your path.
Sometimes your mindset, ego and pride are some of those barriers standing in your way. Asking for help might seem like you are admitting defeat. If thats a feeling that rises to the surface for you, I encourage you to dig a little deeper to see if you can get to the root of that emotion.
Just because the feeling is your default, doesn’t make it your truth.
When was the last time you truly tagged in someone to help with a particular project or problem you were facing? And I mean actually ask for help, not assume someone is going to identify your struggle, and offer exactly what you need. Despite your best wishes, your employees, co-workers, teammates, family members are not mind readers.
Sometimes the benefit to asking for help is having that second opinion or person to bounce ideas of off and brainstorm alternate approaches. They can bring objectivity and are often times less emotionally invested. They can remove the struggle for you and get you focused on the problem and solution.
Outsourcing is another form of asking for help. You can outsource everything from grocery delivery to your marketing services (to someone like me.) Yes, there is often a cost associated with outsourcing in your business but you need to consider the opportunity cost of your time, energy, and even your sanity.
If your hourly rate is more than what you could pay a professional or an expert to lend a helping hand in a fraction of the time and at a higher quality, then its a no-brainer.
There aren’t any unwritten rules that dictate that only you can support your brand or business. With the online nature of the world, you certainly can find anything on google or youtube but I need to ask… why?
Why suffer through when you can seek the help of an expert to push you over the barrier you are facing. From design work to accounting and everything in between, if it makes your life easier why not keep an open mind.
Permission Granted
I created my brand solutions business for women who struggle with this very mindset block as they are building their businesses and advancing in their careers. When you feel that there has to be some degree of suffering or you have to unlock some level of difficulty in order to be successful, you are closing yourself off.
It’s the equivalent of standing in the corner of the party with your arms crossed when everyone is circled up and having a great time. You could easily join in but there is something holding you back.
It doesn’t have to be hard to be successful. It is okay to normalize the parts of your life and business that come easy and it’s great for you to seek out the hacks, tips, and experts to assist you when you need it.
Accept this invitation to let things be easy when it presents itself to you.
To do a quick recap, here are the four areas you can use as a starting point to evaluate where you could let things be easier.
- Your social media
- Your boundaries, specifically around your time
- Asking for help
- Outsourcing
If I can be of service to you as you look to tag in an expert or outsource some of your marketing and growth, I would love to talk more about my brand of support. Im here for your mom life and your growth as a industry-leading woman.
