Nurturing Habit

We are in a period of time like none any of us have experienced before. It feels overwhelming, scary, and stressful. There are so many decisions we are trying to make every day, in an environment where we have never made decisions like these before. So how the heck we figure out what we should do when we are uncertain? When everyone has an opinion and they don't necessarily make sense, or they might even contradict each other. What should you do when you are afraid, or when everyone around you is afraid? What should you do when even our leaders don't make sense? What should you do when you find yourself in a situation where you have no experience to guide you? What you'll hear in this episode

• How to make clear and confident decisions when you don't feel clear at all
• The three steps to take before you make any decision
• Several free resources from me to support you in this uncertain and stressful time.

Links for this episode: Complete show notes for Episode Connect with Doña on Instagram Get the Get Back In Control Of Your Life workbook and get regular updates about the podcast Work with Doña - email me a note with what is currently frustrating you most. I'll reply with the next step in the process.

Would you stand in front of a bus for your kids? Are you making decisions that are the equivalent of many tiny steps in front of a bus, over many years? The outcome is still the same - and it isn't good for you or your kids. Sometimes we do things that are great for our kids, but are actually a detriment to ourselves. And then we feel really stuck in this decision. In this episode, I coach a divorced mom who has moved and changed jobs to live closer to her co-parent, which is great for her son, but is making her miserable. She feels stuck and unhappy and so tired. In this conversation, we dug into where the positives are in her life, how to reconnect with the kinds of things that light her up, and how to hold this current situation a little more lightly, so she can have more joy in her day to day life in spite of the uncertainty of what her future will bring. What you'll hear in this episode

• Why listening in on someone else being coached can be so valuable
• An example of intentionally shifting your thoughts to feel better right away
• An exercise to reconnect with what lights you up (even if you think you don't know)

Links for this episode Complete show notes for Episode 55 Connect with Doña on Instagram Get the Get Back In Control Of Your Life workbook and get regular updates about the podcast Work with Doña - email me a note with what is currently frustrating you and how you'd like your life to feel. I'll reply with the next step in the process.

What you'll hear in this episode

• How Erika found herself again after being swallowed by motherhood.
• Why roller derby is a great sport for finding your strength and determination.
• How being in a community with people with all different kinds of bodies can really shift your relationship with your own body.
• How to sell your work without feeling sleazy.

Links for this show: Complete show notes for Episode 54 Connect with Doña on Instagram Get the Get Back In Control Of Your Life workbook and get regular updates about the podcast Work with Doña - email me a note with what is currently frustrating you and how you'd like your life to feel. I'll reply with the next step in the process.

Do you know what you need most in each season? Does winter feel different to you than other seasons? Winter is so much harder for me than any other time of year, which requires some major commitment to my self-care. Which, as I confess in this episode, I've not been doing.

What you'll hear in this episode

• how I have to care for myself differently in the winter
• how I've been failing to do so
• what I'm adjusting and why
• ideas for ways you can care for yourself better in these darker months, too

Links for this show:

Complete show notes for Episode 53

Connect with Doña on Instagram

Get the Get Back In Control Of Your Life workbook and get regular updates about the podcast

Work with Doña - email me a note with what is currently frustrating you and how you'd like your life to feel. I'll reply with the next step in the process.

Guest Melissa Camara Wilkins, award-winning blogger, speaker, author of Permission Granted: Be Who You Were Made to Be and Let Go of The Rest, talks with me about the ways we can give ourselves more permission to be our whole selves, and what that can do to expand our way of living.

What you'll hear in this episode

• Why the discomfort of showing up as your imperfect self is worth it
• What to do if you reach decision overwhelm in IKEA
• The kinds of permissions I'd like to give myself and my clients, after reading Melissa's book
• Several questions you can ask yourself when you're stuck

Links for this show:

Complete show notes for Episode 52

Connect with Doña on Instagram

Get the Get Back In Control Of Your Life workbook and get regular updates about the podcast

Work with Doña - email me a note with what is currently frustrating you and how you'd like your life to feel. I'll reply with the next step in the process.

Sometimes what you need to pull yourself out of a funk is cozy slippers, hot tea, and deep conversation. Other times, what you need is permission to slam your body into another strong woman while roller skating. When Erika Tebbens found herself drowning in motherhood after moving across the country to a new community, the way she found herself again was through the surprisingly fierce community of roller derby. Erika is host of the Sell It Sister Podcast, and a coach for female-identifying people who want to make more money in their businesses without either complex systems or sleazy sales tactics and in this episode she shares her story of how she fought her way back to herself through a method that surprised even her.

What you'll hear in this episode

• How Erika found herself again after being swallowed by motherhood.
• Why roller derby is a great sport for finding your strength and determination.
• How being in a community with people with all different kinds of bodies can really shift your relationship with your own body.
• How to sell your work without feeling sleazy.

Links for this show:

Complete show notes for Episode 51

Connect with Doña on Instagram

Get the Get Back In Control Of Your Life workbook and get regular updates about the podcast

Work with Doña - email me a note with what is currently frustrating you and how you'd like your life to feel. I'll reply with the next step in the process.

It is so easy to make friends when you are 4, or 8. Right? "Hey, do you want to play with me?

Yet it feels so hard when you are 33, or 48. "Um, hi, I think you might be cool and I'd kind of like to know you."

AWKWARD.

This episode is all about making it feel a little easier to make those first connections with new people. Because what I've discovered is that we can actually learn a lot about how to make friends from how our kids do it. Our adult brains just want to over-complicate the whole thing.

So check out Episode 50 now for some ways to un-complicate making friends as a grown up, and get more confident about saying hello to that cool-looking chick at the park. And then have the courage to try again if that connection doesn't work out. What you'll hear in this episode:

• Ideas for where to meet interesting new people.
• How to start a conversation with a stranger.
• How to to make an impression as a good friend.
• How to keep the connection going - without being creepy.

Links for this show:

• Complete show notes for Episode 50
• Sign up to get notified about the upcoming self-care class.
• Connect with Doña on Instagram
• Get the Get Back In Control Of Your Life workbook and get regular updates about the podcast
• Work with Doña - email me a note with what is currently frustrating you and how you'd like your life to feel. I'll reply with the next step in the process.

Does your home feel chaotic, overwhelming, and like there's constantly too many small things to keep track of, so you aren't making any progress on any big goals or dreams?

Yvonne Marcus teaches Agile project management methods to moms, so they can more efficiently run their homes.

In this episode, she tells us all about what that means, the basics of how to do it, and the kind of results that her clients are seeing - like drinking coffee hot every morning, saving money, and watching their kids help solve their own behavior struggles. I mean, wow. And what I love about this is that it takes the weight of household management off the shoulders of the mom, where it usually sits. It increases communication and engages the other family members, even young kids, in taking ownership of personal and household responsibilities. And doesn't that sound amazing?

What you'll hear in this episode

• what the heck is Agile project management and how can it be used to make your home life more efficient?
• How Yvonne manages to drink her coffee hot every morning
• Some ideas for functional chore charts for kids of all ages
• Why functional over pretty is so important
• how to handle big goals vs. small goals and goals at different ages
• how and why you need to delegate a lot more work to your family - and why that is so hard
• how Yvonne schedules her self-care on the family schedule every day
• how to identify values and a mission statement for your family
• the two questions Yvonne asks her kids to get real insight on their day

Links for this show:

Complete show notes for Episode 49

Sign up to get notified about the upcoming self-care class.

Connect with Doña on Instagram

Get the Get Back In Control Of Your Life workbook and get regular updates about the podcast

Work with Doña - email me a note with what is currently frustrating you and how you'd like your life to feel. I'll reply with the next step in the process.

How do you feel about weekends?

At various points in my parenting journey, I have dreaded them, looked forward to them, and felt entirely undone by them.

A friend of mine admitted recently that she's been watching the clock on Sunday afternoon, counting down until bedtime, because in the morning she can send her kids back to school. And she feels kind of terrible about that. Another friend has been feeling bad about not focusing enough on her kids on the weekend.

Here's the truth: We're all experiencing different things on the weekend, but a lot of us are feeling bad about our experience.

So in my mission to create more happy moms, I have some tips to make your weekends happier, no matter what kid season you are in. Let's banish that Monday guilt, OK?

In this episode:

• Why weekends might feel hard for you right now.
• 3 tips to make weekends feel better, no matter what season you are in.

Links for this show:

• Complete show notes for Episode 48
• Sign up to get notified about the upcoming self-care class.
• Connect with Doña on Instagram
• Get the Get Back In Control Of Your Life workbook and get regular updates about the podcast
• Work with Doña - email me a note with what is currently frustrating you and how you'd like your life to feel. I'll reply with the next step in the process.

How often have you wished you could just do something without being afraid? I know in my own life, fear is often the root of why I hold myself back, why I do not take that action or say the things I want to say.

Enter Kate Swoboda, who has literally written the book on this topic. Kate is author of The Courage Habit,creator of YourCourageousLife.com and Director of the Courageous Living Coach Certification, where I received my coaching training.

Kate firmly believes that the absence of fear is not the goal. The goal is to live comfortably with fear, and know how to work with it, and take the action you want to take anyway. It is because of Kate's training and wisdom on this topic that I have braved so many of the very hard circumstances that have appeared in my life in the last few years with some amount of grace.

To learn how you can be more courageous and navigate the hard stuff in your life with much more ease, check out this week's bonus episode with Kate Swoboda now.

In this episode:

• Courage is a habit; it takes practice.
• If affirmations don't work for you, try reframing instead.
• Do more than talk about Brene Brown's work; really learn how to practice vulnerability.
• What's your kryptonite? Think about where you get stuck over and over - that's where your work is.
• The best way to find your community.
• Kate's On Fire and On Purpose practice.

Links for this show

Complete show notes for Episode 47

Connect with Doña on Instagram

Get the Get Back In Control Of Your Life workbook and get regular updates about the podcast

Work with Doña - email me a note with what is currently frustrating you and how you'd like your life to feel. I'll reply with the next step in the process.