Ep. 19: How to Move Forward and Survive the Rest of 2020
In the last 6 months (yes during a Pandemic), I had a baby, homeschooled a preschoolers, ran a business, continued a podcast, ended a 10 year old event planning company, and survived parenting 3 kids while working from home.
So this week we're taking a "le pause" to reflect on the past 6 months (since the baby just turned 6 months old) in order to plan for the rest of the year. If you don’t have awareness of where you are in the present, it’s hard to figure out how to move forward.
By using the same feedback loops and system of reflection I apply to my business to my life, I am able to make a plan for how to move forward.
Listen in to learn more about what to do and how to apply this process to your life so that you can plan out the rest of 2020 with success!
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Episode Transcript
Welcome back to the Power Mom Minute podcast. This week I wanted to take a moment to pause, take a breath reflect on the last six months and talk about how to move forward through the rest of 2020. Since I've been reading a lot about sleep training, we're going to take what I call, call LA pause in life right now to stop, stop, assess the present. Think about that, the future and how to get there.
[00:00:22] I'm all about feedback loops, which I talk about for business. But I think that it can be applied to our lives also. And if you don't know what that means, stay tuned. I promise you we'll get through the rest of 2020. And now let's talk about how
[00:01:19] Now, before we get started, you might have heard a few episodes on the podcast recently from the pregnancy and parenting in a pandemic live series, where I interviewed 17 experts covering different topics, ranging from fertility to mindfulness, to health and fitness. Child anxiety, homeschooling working from home productivity and more, these experts share tangible tools, tactics, and strategies to help you survive as a parent, not just now during the pandemic, but in the future while you navigate Parenthood, if you haven't listened to these episodes or want to hear them all sign up for free access to all 17 expert sessions at parenting.
[00:01:57] Pandemic series.com again, parenting pandemic series.com.
[00:02:04] Okay. Mamas, it's time to sit down and talk about the reality of the rest of 2020.
[00:02:10] And so today's episode, I want to talk about feedback loop and how I'm applying, what I do for my business to also my life. So, this week, I had a big moment, little pandemic, baby turned six months old, and I kind of had this like, wow moment where I realized not only is she six months old, but this girl has not been out into the real world or met out anyone outside our little family.
[00:02:33] I also started to realize that my son has three days of in-person preschool left and that kindergarten distance learning is starting in only three weeks. And I'm going to have three kids at home, distance learning, all of this going. So, I decided that this would be a great episode to talk about how to stop reassess and figure out how the rest of 2020 should go.
[00:02:57] So how exactly do you move forward then? I like to use feedback loop. And what does that mean? It's stopping and assessing what works, what didn't work, what you should continue doing, why they did or didn't work and the effects. If you don't have awareness of where you are in this present moment, how are you even going to figure out how to move forward?
[00:03:20] So I've been using feedback loops for the last couple of years in my business. I've been doing it quarterly and try to do it even every two weeks, which is what we were supposed to do, but it's really helped to reassess and recalibrate every single step of the way to make sure that we're not. Continuing to do things that are either draining for our business or that are just not working, but this can totally apply to being a mom and to everything going on in your life at home.
[00:03:48] Every year, I have a quote word of the year and at the end of 2019, I deemed that my word of the year for 2020 was going to be surrender and not surrender in the fact of giving up, but surrender in the definition that you allow yourself to be what, which is right in front of you to stop forcing and to focus really on trust and survival at the time I was going into having my third baby and I knew that I would have to take a pause in my work and I would really have to figure out how am I going to make this all work little, did I know that right after I would have her COVID would hit. And so even more, I was forced to surrender.
[00:04:28] So how do you actually apply these feedback loops to your life? Usually, I would do it every two weeks after a business sprint or after every quarter to analyze my goals. But this time around, I wanted to apply feedback loops to my three month and six-month baby period, because at three months is when you're quoting, deemed ready to go back to work.
[00:04:49] Usually it's after maternity leave, but we were in the middle of COVID. So that was kind of weird. And then six months is where I decided, okay. Six months in we're really going to hunker down and figure out what is going on. And especially because school starting and all of these other things are happening, I thought six months, which is right now would be a great period of time.
[00:05:11] So figure out your time you want to stop and do these feedback loops. Whether it's every couple of weeks, every quarter, every two quarters, whatever that is.
[00:05:19] let's walk through this process. The first step is to figure out what worked. For me over the last six months, the three top things that worked were, say know how to eliminate distractions and how to manage and prioritize my relationships.
[00:05:36] For me some big changes happen. At the end of 2019. I decided to close my event planning. Company after having it for 10 years, it was one of those babies that I held onto for so long, because I just didn't want to give it up. . A lot of my past clients had reached out to me saying, Stephanie, will you do just one more year for me? And I had to say no, because I knew I didn't have the capacity with a third kid coming.
[00:06:00] Along with learning how to say no, I really honed in, on creating my system for being able to analyze what to say yes to, or no to, and I think I'll go through that in another episode because it's kind of a little process, but it really helped me streamline every time an opportunity came on my plate, how am I going to say yes to it?
[00:06:18] Or how am I going to say no to it? Because right now for me, time is my most valuable resource. And so, if I keep saying yes to things, I'm not going to be able to do it all. The second thing that worked was how to eliminate distractions along with saying no quarantine has allowed me to eliminate a lot of those distractions.
[00:06:36] I've now become so laser focused on my goals on what I want, what I have time for. And it's really because the pandemic has created the. Actual physical ability to eliminate things in my life.
[00:06:48] It’s really forced me to rethink what's going on. Instead of running around after kid activity, after kid activity, it's made me stop to think about where we are in our family, what we have capacity for, what we enjoy doing and what we didn't enjoy doing and has allowed me to sort through that all.
[00:07:09] And the third thing, how to manage and prioritize my relationships because we are in quarantine. I've really had to home in on who do I really want to be spending my time talking to . Now it's time for me to really cultivate those relationships. Who's aligned with my values, who do I want to make the effort to talk to keep in touch with? for me, quarantine has really done that.
[00:07:33] What they didn't work over the last six months. No routine or schedule was my number one. I didn't prioritize that. I didn't prioritize that because I also felt like I was drowning and I had a newborn, and I know I can make all the excuses in the world, but I realized that moving forward, not having a routine or schedule will not work for our family.
[00:07:51] So that's going to be something. I focus on for how to move forward in 2020, which we'll get to that. Number two, what didn't work was reading the news, social media in the morning, waking up and reading everything that was going wrong in the world.
[00:08:04] The first thing when I woke up was definitely not great on my mindset. So that is another thing that I am going to focus on changing as we move forward.
[00:08:14] There were a lot of things that didn't work in 2020, don't get me wrong. But the third thing was health and fitness.
[00:08:20] I gave myself six months postpartum to just be with my baby, be with the kids and not really focused on myself, but I realized because I didn't focus on myself I have so much shoulder trauma, neck trauma, everything is falling apart. And it's really because I didn't prioritize that.
[00:08:38] So, how can we take all of this and move forward? I want you to think about all the things that worked for you and what you want to continue doing and keep doing that, prioritize those things, figure out where on the list of importance.
[00:08:52] Those are and put those in your daily routines. And then. Think about all the things that didn't work. And if you want to either get rid of them because they didn't work, or you actually want to fix them. For me, all the things that didn't work in our life, I actually want to continue and fix.
[00:09:08]in summary, these are the top five things that can help everyone to move forward. In 2020, there are things that I'm going to be doing and things that I believe will really help. Create a better, more stable path moving forward. The first is to continue to surrender. And again, I don't mean giving up. I just mean be open to what's in front of you and make those changes. Just continue to accept what's happening and make changes moving forward.
[00:09:38] The second is don't stop. Put your head down, keep swimming, be open to creative solutions.
[00:09:45] That's what I did. even though I was on maternity leave, I decided to launch a new product because for me, I needed my mind to keep going. I needed something to keep moving myself forward. Don't stop. Don't stop doing things. Don't stop and panic. Just keep moving one step in front of the other, even if it's tough, you can do it. I know you can.
[00:10:08] The third thing to move forward in 2020 is again, reassess what's important to you and why it's, if it's not important, let it go say no, because you don't have time for that mama.
[00:10:22] The fourth thing. Along the lines of that is elimination, but more in the sense of detail, the things in your business, your life, socially media, whatever that is, that is draining your energy.
[00:10:34] So eliminate those energies vampires for me, I know moving forward, I stopped reading the news and the first few hours of my day, I don't care if it makes me the person who doesn't know what's going on in the morning, but seriously just helped me so much. I can't continue. Can you be a positive person?
[00:10:52] Everything that goes into my head during the first two hours of my day is just purely negative.
[00:10:57] And the last thing is focus on your needs. Focus on your family needs, listen to your body. Focus on really what's most important to you, your family, your body, whatever that is.
[00:11:09] those are the five things that I'm planning on doing to move forward in 2020.
[00:11:13] And I really think that it can apply to all the moms out there too. I know we're entering this crazy period school starting. We're all thinking about the same things of how are we going to do this kids at home distance learning, parents, working, all of the things. But I think if you take time to really reassess all the stuff that didn't work did work all of that in the last.
[00:11:36] Six months and make a plan moving forward. I think you'll be able to start off the school year, start off the next few months of the year on a better foot. So, mamas, I know you can do this. I know why I'm struggling, but I'm trying, every day, I think one step at a time we can do this, and we can do this together.
[00:11:56] Thank you so much for joining me this week and I will see you next week.