FTBM Podcast Ep305: Why the Wrong Voices Are Keeping You Stuck

[00:00:00] I hear great advice all the time. I really do. But unless the person giving it is a mom who gets what it means to be fully present for kids at two completely different stages of development, with limited support, with the invisible load, and with everything that comes along with this life -respectfully, I'm probably not tuning in.

And if you've ever downloaded something that was supposed to make your life easier and instead just made you feel behind this episode is for you. 

Vanessa: You are listening to the Free to Be Mindful podcast, where busy moms get practical tips and real talk conversations to find calm joy in a little more breathing room in everyday life. I'm Vanessa Licensed therapist, mom, coach, and a mom to a tween and toddler. Each week we get honest about motherhood and mindset helping you live with more presence, less pressure without losing your well, you know.

Here we go.

Hello and welcome to episode 305 of the Free To Be [00:01:00] Mindful Podcast. I hope that you're feeling good, looking good and doing better in this world than you were yesterday. So today I wanna talk about something that happened to me recently, and I promise you, the moment I describe it, you're gonna feel it.

I came across this brand on Instagram, and as soon as I saw it, I genuinely loved it. The content, the messaging, the energy, it pulls me right in. And then of course I went to the website and I felt the same way. This person is really doing the work and speaking to moms and women who are building something. And I'm not gonna name the brands because honestly, it's great. And this episode isn't about the brands per se. But it is about their lead magnet.

So you know how it goes. You drop your email address and then you check your email, you get a free resource. And as soon as I opened it, it was multiple pages, a document with like multiple tabs. Real work obviously went into creating this and I can appreciate that, but here is where too much detail can actually work against the goal.

Because [00:02:00] yes, it was thoughtful and it was detailed and it had an hour -literally- hour by hour breakdown of the family day from the moment that the kids wake up all the way to the time that they get to bed.

And it was the perfect guide if you were training another person to take over your job as a mom. That's exactly what it was. But despite being impressive and despite knowing that someone obviously put enormous thought and care into each and every section and each and every tab of the document, I couldn't even finish reading it.

I was exhausted by just looking at it, and I couldn't imagine handing over this resource to another mom who's already overwhelmed and expecting it to help her feel better, knowing that it was just gonna leave her more overwhelmed. Instead of feeling inspired, I felt stressed.

And again, not a critique of the brand at all, because she probably created something that works really well for her life and wanted to genuinely help other people. But what this [00:03:00] episode is about is what that moment made me think about, which is something that I come back to often. 

Who are you taking advice from?

And more importantly, is that person's life anything like yours? Because you already know if you tune in, I have a 12-year-old, and an almost 2-year-old, and a dog. I have three different businesses. I'm a therapist, podcaster, speaker, and mom, and those things just don't take turns, right? They happen all the time. Sometimes at the same time, every single day.

So when I come across content that talk about slow mornings, and I see it constantly, I'm sure you do too, about waking up an hour before your kids wake up in silence and stillness and journaling for that entire hour and meditating before you even look at your phone. I have had to make the very intentional choice about how I receive that content. Because I'm the number one person, obviously believing in mindful living. That's what this podcast is built on. That is what I teach, that's what I practice and that's [00:04:00] what I preach. Right.

But I know that I don't have to journal for an hour to feel that mindful living. My morning does not start in silence. It starts with a toddler and a preteen and a dog who all needs something from me. Before I've even taken the first sip of coffee.

And for a long time, I would see those slow morning routines on social and feel this like quiet background guilt like I was doing life wrong. Like if I were really committed to mindfulness, I'd figure out how to do that. But then I have to ask myself, who is this advice actually for? Is it for the 25-year-old who's single and no kids and no one depending on her, because that life is completely different than mine and probably completely different than yours.

Nor is my life the same as a 40-year-old woman with no children. And no knock on it because every life has its own challenges. But we do have to stop measuring ourselves against a version of life that was never meant to be [00:05:00] ours.

I think that this is one of the sneakiest ways that we actually undermine ourselves by letting wrong voices become the loudest voices in our lives.

And respectfully, and I truly mean that, respectfully- out of the loudest voices in entrepreneurship, in productivity, in leadership, whose voices are they? They're typically men. And some of the advice is genuinely useful. But there are parts of it that simply cannot be applied to our lives, not because it's wrong, but because it was built fundamentally just from a different experience.

A man without children has different capacity than a woman without children. And then women without children has different capacity than me. And my situation looks different from a single mom. because we are not the same, and our invisible loads are not the same.

And even in a two-parent household, and we talk about this all the time, there are different things that your kids come to you for and different things that they go to [00:06:00] their dad for. And that is the assumed responsibility, the invisible load, and it shows up before 7:00 AM before the first meeting, before anyone else in the house is even fully awake.

So the advice, the frameworks, the lead magnets, the morning routines, they have to be filtered through your reality. Not a fantasy version of your life, not a comparison version, your actual, current, full, beautiful, chaotic life.

And this is me not telling you to stop seeking help. Please do not hear that because that would be deeply hypocritical coming from someone whose entire career is built on being sought out for help.

Seek help always. Seek it from your therapist, from your community, from your neighbors, from mentors who have walked a similar path, and friends who actually know your life, and not a highlight real version of it: the real version, the a PM version, the I'm Exhausted, and I don't know if I'm even doing it right version, right?

Those are the people whose voices deserve space in your head. [00:07:00] The ones who know your name and your kids' names, and what your weeks actually look like. Social media can be a part of that. I've genuinely learned a ton from people that I've never met in person. But there is a difference between receiving inspiration from someone, and letting someone who doesn't know your life tell you how to run your life.

And the question is always, " Does this person understand my context? Are they speaking to my specific reality to the season that I'm in right now, to the load that I'm carrying, the kind of mother and leader and the woman that I actually am?" And if the answer is yes, please, by all means, listen, take it in, let it land.

But if the answer is no. You are allowed to put it down. You're allowed to scroll past that. You're allowed to close that tab, to leave it on the digital shelf and protect your peace. Because when you do that, it's not weakness. What it actually is, is self-respect, and you're allowed to guard what you let into your mind.[00:08:00]

And here's the through line, through all of this is that the overwhelm from that lead magnet, the guilt from the slow morning content, and the noise from voices that were never speaking to your life, it all comes from the same place. It all comes from looking outward for a permission slip that was always yours to give yourself.

And sometimes the loudest outside voice isn't even on social media. Sometimes it's the one in our own heads that keep us planning instead of doing. Because I know I'm in this group, some of us spend so much time organizing, that we never actually get to the doing. We color code the plan. We make the spreadsheet, we research the system, we find the perfect template, set up the folder structure, make a list of all the things we're gonna need to make, and we tell ourselves "that we're being productive." Of course, how could we not be? Right? We're being strategic. We're preparing.

When sometimes what we're actually doing is [00:09:00] hiding. Because a perfect plan that never gets executed is just a really beautiful way to stay stuck. Done imperfectly beats planned perfectly each and every time. The messy version of what actually happens is worth more than the "flawless" version that lives in a color coded document.

So if that's you today, please Amiga, put down the planner, and start the thing. Let it be imperfect. Let it be a little messy. Let it be real. Because done is the goal. Not perfect.

And here's what I know about women listening to this show, and that is the moms who are listening, are leading, are also building, and you're holding more than anyone ever fully and will maybe ever realize.

And you're not lacking information. You're not lacking strategy or lacking a better template. But what you are lacking is permission. Permission to [00:10:00] trust what you already know.

Because you know your children and your home and your capacity on a Tuesday morning when the toddler didn't sleep, and the 12-year-old has an attitude, and the dog needs to go out, but you have a 9:00 AM call, right? Does that sound familiar?

No schedule. No matter how beautiful the formatting knows that. No lead magnet knows that. No influencer, no matter how organized her Sunday reset looks, knows that. But who does know that? You do. And that knowing that deep, intuitive, sometimes exhausted, always trying, fiercely loving, knows that it's not something that you outsource. It's something that you protect and it's something that you trust.

Mindful living isn't about doing things perfectly. It's not about waking up your kids with the right frequency it's actually being present enough, grounded enough to show up as yourself, the real version of you, not the checklist version. And showing up as yourself for the [00:11:00] people who need you the most. You are the expert on your own life, and it's time that you start acting like it.

So I want you right now to think about one thing that you've been carrying that was never actually yours. Not the responsibilities that are real and true and yours, right? Those we probably need to check off. But what I mean is the standard, the comparison, the advice that arrives from a life that looks nothing like yours. And somewhere along the way you picked it up and started measuring yourself against it.

Feel how heavy that is to even carry for a second. Feel how much energy it takes to hold a standard that wasn't built for you. And now ask yourself, " what would it look like today if you moved through life as the expert of your own life? If trusting your own read of your own kids, your home, your capacity, without checking it against someone else's blueprint." That version of you is not aspirational because she's already in there. [00:12:00] She's just been waiting for you to stop outsourcing her to another authority.

Amigas, thank you so much for spending this time with me today. If this episode landed for you, please share it with a mom friend or with an Amiga mom who needs to hear that she doesn't need to earn her authority as a parent, because she already has it. And if this resonated with you and your values align with my messaging, know that I am available for speaking engagements and for private one-on-one mom coaching. All the links are in the show notes.

And of course, remember in a world where you are free to be anything, you're always free to be mindful. Catch you next time. 

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