Finding Your Purpose As A Mom

Hi there. Welcome to the Design Your Dream Life podcast. My name is Natalie Bacon and I’m an Advanced, Certified Mindfulness Life Coach, as well as a wife and mom, if you’re here to do the inner work and grow, I can help. Let’s get started.

Hey gang, how you doing today? I wanna talk with you about finding your purpose as a mom. This is something that I coach on so much and I have to say that the way that I can help you solve this challenge can really change the trajectory of your life in the very best way. I use this in my own life and it has been so impactful regardless of the season, and it’s because I define purpose so differently than most personal development and mindset experts. Before we dive into that, I wanna invite you to head on over to my Instagram at Natalie Bacon Coaching.

Come say Hi. Come see the new beautiful baby boy that joined our family last month. I’m sharing more personal things over on Instagram. I would love to connect with you there. If you do come over there from this episode, send me a DM and let me know that you’re coming over from the Find Your Purpose as a mom episode, and I’ll know exactly um, where you’re coming from and we’ll be able to connect and I’ll be able to get to know you more. I know on the podcast it’s so fun that I get to talk with you, but it does sometimes feel one-sided. So Instagram can be a great way to foster a little bit of that community. Alright, let’s dive in.

What does it mean to find your purpose as a mom? That’s what I wanna start with. I think that finding your purpose as a mom means discovering and embracing a sense of meaning, fulfillment, and direction in your role as a mother, it involves understanding your values, your strengths, your passions, and aligning them with your desires for your life. It goes well beyond the day-to-day tasks of caregiving and delves much deeper into how motherhood fits into your overall life journey. When you clarify your purpose as a mom, you will know what matters most and you will be able to make such better decisions with ease. And I think that for anyone listening who feels kind of stuck or that you have trouble making decisions or kind of just in that overwhelm, understanding your purpose and clearly defining it can be so freeing. It’s like a weight is lifted off your shoulder. You will better navigate challenges and make better decisions because you will have a north star. You will have a sense of intention and direction behind the decisions that you’re making. I think that your purpose serves as sort of this guiding compass and can even provide a sense of fulfillment in your role.

It’s not necessarily that you’ll always feel motivated, and we’ll talk more about that in a minute, but instead it’s you’re remembering your why. You know where you’re headed, you know why you’re doing what you’re doing. You have this clear kind of vision for you as a mom and your role as a mother, and that can provide you with some thoughts and a mindset that feels so much better. I think that your purpose will be unique to you, and mine is unique to me, and I think that our values, our beliefs, our passions, our life circumstances, our cultures, you know, all of it influences us, and yet we can still decide on that purpose. So I say that because there’s no one size fits all answer, and it also may evolve and change as you grow as a person and as your children grow. I think that when you consider the question, you know, I want to find my purpose.

How do I find my purpose as a mom? It can feel overwhelming at first. Like you don’t know where to start, but I think that hopefully in this episode, you’re going to get some takeaways that help you do it in a concrete way that really changes your life. So one thing I want to mention here is that purpose isn’t the same as passion. So if a client says to me, I want to find my purpose, often what they’re telling me is that they feel stuck and unmotivated and they want to feel more excited and passionate about their lives. This is very different than creating your purpose. Knowing your purpose certainly helps keep you headed in the right direction, but it doesn’t mean that you’re going to feel passionate and motivated every day. So if you think of purpose, like your reason, your why, your vision, your intention as a mom, it’s the meaning that you give.

It’s the path that you want to be on that’s different from a feeling. So I like to point this out because it’s not just semantics. If a feeling is what you’re after, the way to create that feeling is very different than the path you’ll take to define your purpose. And you can do both. I highly suggest doing both, but they’re not the same. So just to be clear about what you’re really after, do you want to feel happier and more passionate and more motivated? Is that what you’re looking for? Or do you want to have more direction, intention and meaning in motherhood? You definitely can have both, but the paths to get there are just different. They’re just different questions. So what I see often happening is they’re just lumped together. Like, I wanna feel happier and more passionate and have more purpose and direction, and they’re not the same. So if you just think about the emotions that you want to feel, maybe it’s motivated, passionate, happier on one hand, and then on the other hand, you wanna have more direction and intention and meaning. That’s what we’re talking about today.

I think that both of these processes though, are internal. So in this episode specifically, I’m gonna talk with you not about creating more passion, happiness, and motivation, but instead about purpose, specifically the direction you are headed in motherhood. So hopefully that already just helps clarify things for you. If you want to create more happiness, I’ll talk about that in another episode, and we do that work inside Grow You as well. But it’s just a completely different process than setting an intention, than finding your purpose. And with that, My next point that I wanna make is that purpose isn’t outside of you. So in layman’s terms, we do say, I wanna find my purpose, but I wanna point out that it’s really not about something that you’re looking for outside of you. That’s why I don’t really love the language finding, even though, you know, I don’t think it’s terribly problematic, and I used it obviously for this episode because I think we can all relate to that.

But when you’re doing the work specifically in your own life, I want you to know that purpose doesn’t come from outside of you. It’s within you. It’s something that you decide on. So to find your purpose, you need to turn inward instead of outward. And I would say that this is probably the biggest mistake that when I’m coaching moms, I see it’s focusing on looking externally, looking outward instead of looking inward to create, to define your purpose. And so by understanding that it’s an internal process, you actually can empower yourself to take ownership of your journey of where you’re headed, and it allows you to create a purpose that is meaningful and fulfilling to you, rather than seeking that external validation or approval from external sources.

So just remember that your purpose as a mom will be unique to you, and that’s why it’s so important to look inward and it’s sort of an ongoing evolution and exploration that can bring depth and meaning to your journey as a mom. So that is to say it’s not, oh, you just decide it once and it’s done forever. It can evolve over time. I have three questions that I want you to consider to uncover your purpose. These questions are from the Motherhood Toolkit Inside Grow You I have an entire curriculum that teaches you how to do this and specifically how to create your North Star as a mom that will help you live into your purpose. If you’re in there, you can access it in the library under Motherhood. These three specific questions though will help you get started and you can get the rest inside Grow You.

The question number one is, what’s a win for you as a mom? Question number two is what’s important to you as a mom? And question number three is, where are you headed as a mom? Without deciding these answers on purpose, I think that the defaults in our modern world today is to focus on performance and success. So more practically what that sounds like is, did your kids make honor role? Are they accomplishing a lot? Are they on the right teams and in the advanced classes, are they winning? Are they participating in the best activities or enough activities? Do they have a lot of friends? Are they doing quote unquote well or their best? There’s nothing wrong with performance and success, it’s just that it’s externally focused. So if it’s your North star, if that is your purpose, it can become problematic long term because self-confidence and then self-worth will be determined based on external sources.

And this is not good We don’t want to define our worth based on what’s happening outside of us. Instead, we want to get that worth and self-confidence internally for what’s going on within us. So instead of kind of using that cultural norm of performance and success being the purpose, ask yourself, what’s a win for you? What’s important to you and where are you headed? So let me give you some specific examples. A win for me as a mom is I respect my kids. I validate their feelings, I hold boundaries. I teach them, I hold myself accountable for my own mindset work and my own feeling work and my own happiness. What’s important to me as a mom is that I focus on connecting over correcting. This doesn’t mean that I never correct, but it does mean that I prioritize connection first, where I’m headed as a mom, I want to create a home with a family who enjoys being with each other when they no longer have to be.

Now, I can only control my part of that, but that is my North Star. I got that from Andy Stanley in his book, Parenting, Getting It Right. I just love this idea that guides me that is completely different than kind of success and performance being my purpose. So very practically, when the calendar seems full and we’re struggling to make time to connect as a family, I go back to my purpose of creating a family who enjoys being with each other and consider fewer things on my calendar being the answer. Without this sort of purpose and intention and knowing where I’m headed, I might be thinking thoughts like, oh, this will pass in a different season and completely miss the opportunity to intentionally live into my purpose. So this is why purpose is so important for you to define the answers to these questions because it will help you make better decisions, better decisions for you. If your neighbors have all their kids in five activities, that’s great for them, but are you able to have all of your kids in five activities each? And also at the same time, live into your vision for yourself as a mom and for your family? And if that vision has connection at the heart of it and you wanna prioritize family time, but you don’t have any of it on the calendar and you haven’t in a while, then there’s a mismatch there. And it’s never too late to do this work, but it does take awareness. It doesn’t come from seasons changing. So I think zooming out and thinking about another role can be really helpful here. So if you work outside the home, wherever, have you know that your role as an employee comes with specific responsibilities and there’s a specific purpose for that role in the company?

When I think about my entire company as a whole and I think about the vision and the purpose, I think about how it’s designed to inspire moms to live their best lives. The way that I do that is with mental and emotional wellness tools. Everything I do in my business is aligned with this vision. I don’t post random target dress links because that’s not what my platform is about. So applying this to your family, focusing on what you can control as a mom, knowing that you can’t control what your kids do, but you can control what you do. You can also control how you think and how you feel. You can ask yourself what you’re trying to create here as a mom, what your purpose is for yourself and your role as a mom. And let that guide you and your purpose can change and evolve over the years, but it won’t change daily or weekly or monthly.

Just like in my business five years ago, my purpose, my vision was different than it is today. The same would be true of any job that you have or have had in the past. It’s probably evolved, but it doesn’t evolve daily. I think the key is to decide deliberately what your purpose is during this season of motherhood and live into it. Because you will show up so much more equipped to navigate challenges. You will have more confidence, you will feel a little bit more motivation, and you will make better decisions and you’ll make them more easily. So instead of finding your purpose as a mom outside of you, decide what your purpose is as a mom during this season. Make it concrete and specific so that you get the joy of deriving meaning from your role as a mom, and yet give yourself permission to redefine it. One of my colleagues is a coach for women in midlife whose kids are out of the home. Her vision, her mission statement, her purpose as a mom looks different than mine does today. And that’s the evolution of purpose. Start today with the season that you’re at, answer the questions that I gave, and you will experience more intentionality and have more meaning and fulfillment in your role as mom. That’s what I have for you today, my friend. Take care.

If you loved this podcast, I invite you to check out Grow You my mindfulness community for moms where we do the inner work together. Head on over to momonpurpose.com/coaching to learn more.