I hope your Mother’s Day is absolutely amazing. The day can have a lot of positive and sometimes big emotions and those emotions play a huge role in our choices, energy, and overall health and wellbeing.
Mother’s Day can bring up a lot of wonderful emotions of joy, appreciation, and thankfulness. But it may also be a day that brings up uncomfortable emotions of grief, sadness, and disappointment.
You may be in a tough stage with your kids, strugling with your relationship with your kids, or maybe longing to be a Mom and dealing with infertility, your motherhood experience is different that what you dreamed it would be, you wish your relationship with your Mom was better, wishing your kids were little again and wanting to savor that special time again, regret, comparison to other moms making you feel like you don’t measure up, or maybe you do so much and feel under appreciated, under valued, and disappointed that your spouse or kids do not acknowledge you the way you would like.
You seriously could ruin your own Mother’s Day, if you let your emotions get the best of you.
Emotions also play a HUGE role in our health. It is often not even about the food, but the underlying reasons why you have an insatiable appetite, choosing comfort foods that may make you feel worse, and eat to numb our pain. These emotions can also drain your energy making you not want to workout and lead you to feeling worse. This is how RE:Defined is different. I want to help you uncover these real emotions so that it becomes more effortless to make healthier choices.
I am sharing 5 tips to make sure you don’t ruin your Mother’s Day and to help you have the best - healthy and happy Mother’s Day. You can apply these suggestions to any emotion that threatens your joy, health, and wellbeing.
1. Process your emotions instead of numb them, stuff them down, or ignore them. It is so easy to keep going, push through, and try to numb our uncomfortable emotions, but that can make us tired, sick, and destroy our health & happiness. Learn to sit with uncomfortable emotions and not have to eat, drink, or do anything. Journal and get your feelings out, so they don’t weigh you down. Releasing these emotions is health and restores our mental and emotional energy.
2. What do you want or need? Need a day off because you work hard loving, serving, and caring for little ones everyday? Don’t feel guilty for wanting to have some time to reset and recharge. It makes us better moms when we don’t run ourselves in the ground all the time.
Want to spend time with your kids? Get your needs met by communicating ahead of time that you would love to play a family game, go for a hike, or family bike ride. Don’t expect your loved ones to always know what you would like. Tell them because it can change from time to time.
I know some of you have chosen to not even have kids and that is okay too. You should not feel bad for not wanting to have kids or for wanting as many kids as you can have.
Also want to encourage you to not fall into the comparison trap that leads to discontentment. Comparison is known to rob our joy. You are unique and everyone has different gifts and talents. Celebrate your uniqueness and choose instead to be inspired by other mamas instead of feeling less than.
3. Set Expectations. Our expectations can be so high we are left with disappointment. Sometimes the goal of honestly just being grateful for the mom you have and for getting to be a mom is how to have the best day ever. I don’t expect anything. I am just thankful. When I am grateful for what I already have and keep this special day focused on the gift of being a mom, I can bring so much joy, contentment, and peace. Zero expectations then anything above just brings even more joy.
4. Creatively celebrate your Mother's Day and that of your own Mom and Mother-in-law. We often celebrate on two different days and often early. This is a great idea if you want to enjoy a nice brunch or going out to eat and avoiding the long wait for a table on Mother’s Day.
5. Realize YOU are the best gift you could ever receive and your giving it to your kids everyday. Our kids do not need more material possessions, they need us. You eating healthy, getting adequate sleep, and exercising is improving your life expectancy and the quality of your life. It will help you to be around and actually enjoy your kids.
Working out can help us be more loving, patient, less stressed, have the energy to raise great kids.
If you are putting off taking care of yourself because you are caring for your kids, remember you caring for yourself is in turn caring for your kids. If you don’ t take care of yourself for you, do it for your kids.
“For each hour of moderate exercise, studies show an increase in average life expectancy of 2 hours.” “If a person simply does the minimum recommended weekly amount of moderate exercise, they can potentially add 3.4 years to their life”
I know for me I want my Mom and mother in law to be around. They are the best grandma’s for my kids and I want to be around for my kids. Exercise and healthy food is proven to improve our health span and provides a better quality of life.
Eating healthy and working out is so much more than looking good. It impacts how we show up, how our brain works and remembers, our energy levels, how we care for others, our confidence, our moods, and prevents so many health problems I know you don’t want to live with.
Push play with your workouts. Choose to nourish and care for your body. Stop trashing it and being mean to yourself by not taking care of yourself. Enough with the excuses. Make it happen. You and your kids will be so happy you did.
If you want quick workouts and more support to actually make taking care of yourself happen, please click here to join the waiting list for the Summer Series (enrollment starts May 22nd).
With love,
Jessica
P.S - I'd love for you to share these helpful tips with your friends, your sisters and your Mom.
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