Finding ways to prioritize yourself as a busy mom isn’t intuitive. There are many logistics of motherhood that make the day to day full of demands, so much so that it’s hard to find the space to think about how to prioritize yourself, let alone the time to do it.

Yet, without prioritizing yourself, you lose. You lose yourself. And your family loses you. They get a depleted mom who is half exhausted half overwhelmed. No one wins. Simply by reading this you’re on the right track. You are caring about you and that counts! While it may not be hiring full time help or taking luxurious vacations that are the way to prioritize yourself, there are accessible things available to you right now that can make a real difference.

Ways To Prioritize Yourself As A Busy Mom

I’ve boiled down the best and most effective ways to prioritize yourself as a busy mom to nine strategies. Here’s a look.

1. Grow yourself.

Growth provides a lot of natural pleasure. It feels good to learn a new skill, make an internal identity change, take on a new hobby, or achieve a goal. This is because the brain feels really fulfilled when it’s growing.

Without growth, you’ll need a lot of external false pleasures like food, TV/social media, or even vacations (as an escape). It’s the seeking of external pleasures to fill what’s lacking on the inside.

As a busy mom who wants to prioritize herself, ask yourself the question, “what can I reasonably do during this season of life to grow?”

This could look like taking up a new workout class, starting a new type of book to read, setting a new goal, or working on a personal identity shift that requires growth. This can be something that doesn’t take a lot of time, but instead is worth the reallocation of time/money resources because it has such a big impact.

Growth matters. Humans are designed to grow, and without it, you’ll need a lot of false pleasures to feel satisfied.

Check out Mom On Purpose, my coaching community where I teach you wellness tools to become the mom you want to be.

2. Take a social media break.

Taking a break from social media is helpful for prioritizing yourself for two main reasons: 1) you’ll save time and 2) you won’t fall into the comparison trap.

When life is full, every bit of time counts, and the minutes scrolling count big time. So give yourself a seven day (or 30 day if you’re feeling brave) detox and see how much time you get back.

You’ll also likely find it easier to focus on yourself and making you a priority when you’re not having to managing your brain about all the people you see on social (i.e.: what happens with the comparison trap).

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3. Notice what you do have time for.

It’s part of our busy culture to say what we “don’t have time for.” One mindset exercise to notice if you’re in what I call “Time Scarcity” is to ask yourself what you do have time for.

For example, I have time for TV, I have time for audiobooks, I have time for getting my hair done, I have time for scrolling social media, etc.

When you frame your day in what you do have time for you’ll notice if you’re spending your time in ways that don’t serve you, that you would prefer to spend differently. This can help you eliminate what’s not actually something you want to spend your time on, as well as add in things that help prioritize taking care of you.

4. Evaluate your relationships.

There may be relationships that you’re participating in purely out of habit but that aren’t serving you and where you’re headed in your future. Evaluate who you spend the most time with (in person as well as connecting with on the phone, etc.). If who you’re spending time with and energy on doesn’t help you align with who you want to be, make a decision to spend less time and energy with them.

This doesn’t need to be a dramatic change, but simply can be a shift away from prioritizing them and towards prioritizing your relationship for yourself.

5. Learn to say “no” without the guilt.

Saying “no” is mostly challenging because of the tendency to want to be seen as “good” and avoiding causing someone else’s negative emotion. For example, to say no to your sister in law, requires you to be okay with her having negative emotions, and it requires you thinking that you’re still a “good” sister in law. This typically happens subconsciously, so noticing it is useful. The solution to this is to focus on yourself so that you can allow other people to feel how they want to feel.

You can say “no,” love yourself, love the other person, and be okay if they experience negative emotion. This is a life-long skill worth practicing that is nothing short of life-changing!

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6. Start small, but make it impactful.

Making yourself a priority doesn’t need to take a lot of time. It just needs to be enough time.

For example, if you want to get in shape, you don’t need to start going to the gym for eight hours a day. You go to the gym for whatever is enough time, such as an hour. That’s enough for you to get in shape.

In the same way, you can give yourself enough time to make yourself a priority in small ways.

For example, you could look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and say mantras that feel good and true to you, as a way to connect with yourself every day. This wouldn’t take a long time but compounded day after day could have a huge impact on your relationship with yourself.

7. Focus on what feels good.

It’s not necessarily about DOING more but instead about prioritizing what feels good to you.

It can be tempting to make prioritizing yourself a “checklist” of more to-dos. But resist this temptation and instead focus on what really refuels you. If you’re not sure, try a few things and see what genuinely feels good to you.

Making yourself a priority is personal to you.

8. Re-evaluate your calendar.

Take a look at your calendar with critical eyes to see what’s working for you and what’s not.

Is every hour scheduled? Are you overscheduling? Underscheduling?

Time is always up for grabs, and even when it doesn’t feel like it, there are endless opportunities to make changes to how you spend your time. You just have to be open to the idea of it mentally.

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9. Remind yourself that you matter, too.

There are many actions that you can take to make yourself a priority but they’ll only work if you believe that you are a priority. This means you have the mindset that you matter. It can be easy to forget to think this. It’s easier to focus externally on everyone else. And yet, taken to the extreme, that results in forgetting about you. To avoid this, remind yourself that you matter.

Tell yourself every day, “I matter. I care about me. I am a priority.” This simple mantra will help you reconnect with yourself. It’s a validating exercise that will increase intimacy with yourself, and ultimately lead to feeling better and taking better actions.

A Final Note

Prioritizing yourself has a huge payoff—you become the inspired mom, with light shining through her, like you’ve always wanted to be. You can be her. You are her.