Mindfulness for moms is what I’m most passionate about because of how these practices have impacted my life and my client’s lives. My hope is that they’ll help you, too!

Before using these tools, it was like my life was happening to me and now it’s like I’m the designer of whatever I want in my life. Of course, I still have challenges and there are hard days (and seasons), but I’m equipped to handle them in such a more empowering way. Instead of trying to control the world, I know I can control myself and that is enough. Instead of feeling busy and rushed all the time, I have space and do what I genuinely want for me and my family.

If you’re a mom who wants to start practicing mindfulness in your life, here’s what you need to know.

The Benefits Of Mindfulness For Moms

Mindfulness solves several challenges of modern motherhood.

First, it helps you unwind, relax, and enjoy your life even when your circumstances are packed with family, kids’ activities, work, community events, friendships, exercising, household responsibilities, and anything else on your plate. It helps you stay out of busyness, overwhelm, and being in the go-go-go, rushed energy. Whenever you’re finding yourself in “there’s just not enough time for the day”, this is a queue where mindfulness tools are needed. With mindfulness you won’t need a vacation to “escape” your life because you’ll genuinely be enjoying your life.

Second, with mindfulness practices, you’ll be able to be fully engaged when you’re with your kids, instead of feeling scattered like you’re not giving them attention.

Third, mindfulness practices can decrease stress, anxiety, and worry, so instead of feeling like you’re at the effect of these emotions, you’ll feel empowered to move through them. Instead of being an “anxious mom” or “worrying constantly” you’ll be a mom who sometimes experiences these feelings.

Fourth. mindfulness enables you to stop yelling, snapping, or overreacting. You’ll be able to find calm even with a baby screaming or a teenager not doing what they say they’re going to do. It is possible to parent and show up as your best self.

Fifth, you’ll be able to help your kids through challenging moments with mindfulness practices. Simply by modeling these tools in your home, they’ll pick up on how to be more empowered in their lives.

Sixth, you’ll have more connection in all your relationships as you feel more present, grounded, and have more energy to give.

Seventh, you’ll have fewer regrets and a more positive outlook on your future because you’ll understand how to rewrite your past in a way that serves you, and then design your future from your future instead of your past.

My specific take on mindfulness includes mindset and emotion tools that can help you work through everyday challenges and show up in your life with confidence.

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What Is Mindfulness?

There are many definitions of mindfulness and many that would lead you to believe mindfulness is about removing all thoughts (to the extent possible) and living directly in the present moment, always.

Another way that mindfulness can be defined is by meditation. But this is confusing two concepts. Think of mindfulness as the umbrella category and meditation as one tool to help you become more mindful.

I define mindfulness a bit differently than most. I define mindfulness as awareness with acceptance. This means awareness of your senses on a walk, for example, and it also means awareness of what’s going on internally for you, in your mind and body.

Awareness is where your attention is. So you can put your attention on anything. That is being mindful. You can mindfully eat a green bean, slowly noticing all of the characteristics. You can also mindfully sit and notice your thoughts or write them down and see what they are, specifically. Awareness is attention.

Acceptance is allowing. It’s not being in resistance. It’s openness, compassion, and curiosity. If I become aware of my habit of eating a cookie after dinner and I’m in acceptance, I’m not beating myself up for it. I’m getting curious about myself and my actions. I’m paying attention without negative judgments. Acceptance is a very active word. It is a practice in and of itself.

For more on mindfulness, check out this podcast I did called: What Is Mindfulness?


Mindfulness Tools For Moms That Really Work

There are many mindfulness tools that I teach and coach my clients with inside Grow You, my mindfulness membership for moms. Here, I want to share some of the best mindfulness tools for you to get started with.

1. Watch Your Breath

Start noticing your breath. Notice it inside your body and notice it leaving your body. Watch it coming in and going out.

Don’t try to slow it down. Just watch it.

This practice will bring so much direct attention to your body that watching your breath in this way will have a ripple effect on what you eat, how you move, and any negative emotion you feel (like anxiety or overwhelm, that show up with shorter breaths due to often being in a stress response state).

This is one tool that I recently started practicing and absolutely love to do.

2. Sit In 10 Minutes Of Silence

If you find yourself distracted, activated, or overwhelmed practice 10 minutes of silence for at least 30 days. This will help you get grounded and stay more present. It will be uncomfortable to do at first, but if you keep it up, your body will adjust and before you know it nothing in your life will have changed but at the same time everything will be different.

Click here to learn how to practice 10 Minutes Of Silence.

3. Separate Out Thoughts From Facts

Draw attention to what you’re thinking and separate out the facts from your thoughts. Facts are the “math” of what happened. Thoughts are your interpretation of the facts.

For example, if you say, “my sister in law is so disrespectful” that is a thought—it’s your interpretation of her behavior. Her exact behavior is the fact. Maybe she said something like, “I don’t like the way you parent.” Whatever it is that she explicitly said is the fact.

Separating thoughts and facts is so powerful because it shows you your mind. Most of us go around thinking our interpretation of the facts is the truth; that thoughts are facts. But that’s not the case. Facts are certain and thoughts are flexible. When you start to see the world this way, you really see how you can change your mindset about anything and feel more empowered, if you want to (this is what I teach how to do in the Mindful Journaling Course inside Grow You).

4. Stay In Emotional Adulthood

When you speak at home, attribute your feelings to your thoughts.

Most of us were taught that things outside of us cause our feelings.

For example:

  • “She made me sad.”
  • “They’re frustrating me.”
  • “My life is overwhelming.”
  • “My husband irritates me.”

None of these are true. This is what I call “emotional childhood” where we attribute our feelings to something outside of us.

Emotional adulthood is knowing that your thoughts create your feelings.

It sounds like this:

  • “I’m sad because I’m thinking she doesn’t like me.”
  • “I’m frustrated because I’m thinking they shouldn’t have done that.”
  • “I feel overwhelmed because I’m thinking I can’t handle this.”
  • “I feel irritated because I’m thinking my husband is doing it wrong.”

When you shift into emotional adulthood you attribute your feelings to what you’re thinking, even in the words you speak.

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5. Validate Your Feelings

Even though you are always the creator of your feelings, it doesn’t mean there’s an off ramp to the human experience. Meaning, you’re still a messy human with a messy human brain. Mindfulness is like showering, you need to clean your body every day, and in the same way, you need to clean out your mind to see what you’re thinking and feeling that isn’t serving you.

This means that when you feel irritated, anxious, frustrated, annoyed, or any other negative emotion, FEEL it. Oh my word, feel it. Instead of trying to “fix it” or “feel better” just go into your body and allow it to be there.

I promise this is the solution to allowing and processing emotion. When you do it this way, there’s no resistance. The feelings aren’t so bad after all.

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6. Go On Sensory Walks

For the mom who has her mind going in so many different directions, sensory walks are powerful to ground you.

Go on a walk and every 30 seconds or one minute shift your focus to a different sense. This gets you out of your head and into your body. You’ll have a more direct experience with your environment instead of thinking about your experience.

Instead of thinking “oh that’s a pretty tree” you’ll feel the breeze and hear the leaves. This can be incredibly powerful to help you get out of the relentless mental chatter that can be so consuming.

7. Journal As The Mom You Want To Be

Journaling is a powerful tool to help you live into your future, instead of repeating the past. Here’s why. On default, your brain prefers the past because you’ve already done the thing in the past so it knows what to do. Your brain thinks “oh, this is easy because I already did it, plus I know I’ll survive if I do it because I survived to this point.” This is your survival brain. This is why it’s easier to stay the same and why it’s hard to “get out of your comfort zone” and do new and different things.

You can override this part of your primitive brain that wants to repeat the past by directing your prefrontal brain (the more sophisticated, planning part of your brain) toward the future that you want to create.

The best way I know to do this is through journaling. Writing down who you want to be, what you want to create, and how you want the rest of your life to go, focusing on what you can control. This method of journaling is so powerful because you can control so much. more than you realize (it’s the process I teach in Mindful Journaling).

To get started, CLICK HERE for my 75 Journal Prompts For Moms free download

How To Apply Mindfulness In Motherhood

The mindfulness practices above will help you show up as the mom you want to be, from the inside out. And yet, the tool is only as good as the application, so I want to offer you some ways of incorporating these practices in your everyday life so you actually get amazing benefits as a result of doing this work.

Here are my best strategies for applying mindfulness practices in the midst of the fullness of everyday life.

1. Start with one tool at a time.

For any Type-Aer out there, learning about mindfulness tools can be so fun that it’s tempting to try to put them all into place at once or think it’s not worth it at all. This is a little bit of black and white thinking that will result in not doing any of it or forcing all of it—neither is helpful!

I suggest starting with one mindfulness tool, practicing it for two-to-four weeks, and then adding another tool. The idea is that you really transform your life when you practice these tools. The idea is not to be a “tool collector.” Start with one, and after a few weeks, add another when you’re ready.

2. Schedule mindfulness time in advance.

Thinking you’ll practice mindfulness “when you find time” is a mindset that always leads to never doing it, at least not the way you want.

Schedule time in advance for as much as you can, even if that means it’s only 10 minutes. Having a plan for when you’re going to do it can be so helpful because instead of needing an escape from your life or family, you know you have the time set aside just for you.

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3. Attach it to a habit.

One way to make any new thing into a habit is to attach it to a current habit. For example, after you brush your teeth every morning, you do 10 minutes of silence. That way it’s more likely to “stick.” You can choose any habit, just make sure that you choose one you do around the same time of day, at the frequency you want (e.g.: if you always shower in the morning, adding on a habit right before or after would be a consistent way to add in mindfulness).

4. Keep it light and fun.

Mindfulness tools are designed to help you, so be sure not to use them against yourself and feel “pressured” to do “just one more thing.” Instead, think to yourself, “how can this be light and fun?” Put your brain to work on making it part of your life in an easy way that maybe you haven’t thought of yet. What you focus on is what your brain will find evidence of.

CLICK HERE to download the podcast directory (and get the best mindset podcast episodes to listen to.)

5. Have screen free time.

Screens are amazing in so many ways, and yet used too much they can create the unintended consequence of overstimulation. Think: needing a break so you pick up your phone and scroll Instagram. This does the opposite of giving you a break—it actually is an escape from your negative emotion, so you avoid how you’re feeling, putting off the inevitable of that feeling continuing to reappear.

Instead, dedicate a few minutes of every day, say 15 minutes, for no screens. No phone, no iPad, no computer, and no TV. Just be. Be with yourself, and/or your family. Don’t clean don’t cook don’t “do”. Just be.

This will be hard at first because you’ll be forced to be with yourself and your thoughts, but I promise it’ll be worth it! Over time, you’ll get more comfortable in your own body, doing nothing, just being.

How To Help Your Kids With Mindfulness

One of the most common questions I get, whenever I’m helping a client, is “how can I teach this to my kids.” It makes sense that when we learn how powerful this work is that we want to teach our kids so they have these tools for the rest of their lives.

The easiest and most effective way to help your kids with this work is for you to model it. Here’s why. When you truly practice mindfulness in your life on a regular basis, you think differently, so you feel and act differently. You’ll find yourself saying things like “by nice today because being nice feels good” instead of “be nice today so people want to be your friend.” Another example is you’ll talk in the way the world works. Instead of saying, “traffic stressed me out” you’ll say “I felt so stressed because I really was focused on thinking this drive shouldn’t take so long.” A final example is when you send your kids to a friend’s house, instead of saying “I hope it’s fun” you’ll say “I hope you make it fun.” You’ll check in more with yourself and your kids, validating yours and their feelings. It’s just natural because it’s how you’re living. This is the best way.

Inside Grow You, I do have a specific course on How To Teach Kids About Thoughts And Feelings, where I walk through how to talk with kids about this. But as long as you’re practicing it in your own life, teaching it to them will be a natural side effect for you.

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A Final Note

Mindfulness for modern motherhood provides tools and resources to help you feel as good on the inside as your life looks on the outside. It’s a way of living that’s empowering, connecting, and lighter. It’s made the biggest difference in my life, and I hope that it does in yours, too.