In several of my online communities this week, we’ve been discussing how hard it can be to stay motivated when you’re not meeting your goals, or when you’re feeling down or in a funk. And with summer coming soon, we mom entrepreneurs need plans to help us keep focused and on track through the summer months when chaos with kids reigns.
After giving it some thought, I’ve come up with five simple ways for mom business owners to keep happy and motivated.
Stop comparing yourself to others.
Comparing yourself to others doesn’t make you better and won’t help you achieve your goals. In fact, it most often causes us to feel inadequate and more like a failure, since we’re focusing on our fears while admiring someone else’s top achievements. Not a healthy plan for happiness. Your job is to evaluate your priorities, set your goals according to those priorities, and take action on those goals. Who knows what goals those other folks have?
Remember, too, that whatever you believe is true. So if you believe you’re not good enough, smart enough, thin enough, rich enough, experienced enough, etc., you will go searching around until you find “proof” that your belief is true. When you compare yourself to others, you’re usually trying to prove some limiting self-belief that you actually need to kick to the curb.
Stop trying to do what everyone else thinks you should do.
Everyone you know, whether you ask them for it or not, probably has an opinion about you, your house, your life, your kids, your work, etc. So what? Those opinions aren’t nearly as important as your own determination of your priorities. Of course, it is completely normal to want others to validate what you feel. I get it. But the real judge is you. Trust yourself and act according to your own priorities and goals. As others see you doing that, they will likely admire you for doing just that. Hey–I do! 
Clean up the company you keep.
Do your friends, family and the people you see and talk to on a regular basis make you feel good about yourself? Do they respect your goals and honor your priorities and boundaries? If not, it’s time to do some clean up work in your community. Surround yourself with people who support you, believe in you, want to see you achieve success on your own terms. Stop letting the energy vampires and nay-sayers have any of your time. They don’t deserve it if they’re more interested in you following their agenda than supporting you in following your own.
Try something new.
I love this quote from Mark Twain: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” If you’re stuck in a rut, feeling drained, unable to focus, it may be that you just need to shake things up a bit, either in business or in life. Think about your kids: it’s amazing how proud they feel when they try and accomplish something new, isn’t it? When was the last time you did the same? The jolt of confidence in learning to dance, play the piano, shooting a video, or starting a blog can be totally invigorating in several areas of your life.
Take time to enjoy the present.
As they say, “The present is a gift.” I’ve coached so many women whose entire focus has been on how they’ve done things in the past. Ask them how things are going and they’ll tell you: “Well, it’s better than last year, when we . . .” Or when brainstorming a new business plan or marketing strategy with them, they’ll consistently refer to the way they have always done things. Other mompreneurs I coach are totally focused on what is going to happen in the future. Everything to them revolves around “the next–the next time, the next customer, the next opportunity. While it’s great to learn from the past and to use it as a benchmark, and it’s necessary to look forward and envision the future we want, it’s a crime to miss out on the present. There’s a reason gratitude journals are so popular. Start keeping one so you can intentionally enjoy where you are today, wherever that may be.
