Hi, I'm Sam, the inner voice and self trust coach for women who refuse to choose between career success and being fully present with their kids.

This is journal entries where we break free from self sabotage, reconnect with our inner wisdom and feel truly fulfilled in everything we do.

Let's dive in.

Hello.

Welcome back to Journal Entries.

I.

I've been talking a lot about how moms, especially goal oriented, potentially type A working moms don't need to go after balance.

What we actually need is to feel inner peace.

We need to feel inner peace when we are at work and feel productive and pride and confident and enjoy what we're doing at work.

And then when we come home, we want to feel inner, inner peace when we are with our kids, when we are cooking dinner, when we are doing bath time and bedtime routines.

It's when we try to balance all of these things and prioritize all of them in the same capacity that we burn out.

Ever since talking about this though, it's been weighing heavy on me because in my head I'm wondering if there are listeners out there that are thinking, wow, Sam must be so peaceful and just float through her days.

Especially as a single mom, it can be overwhelming, it can be overstimulating and it is.

I'm definitely not at peace all of the time.

I'm definitely not calm all of the time.

And there are times where I feel so depleted.

Just the other night I was giving my son Griffin a bath and I was on the floor texting my sister saying I have not felt this depleted in so long.

It's just like all of the energy is drained out of me and I don't understand why.

And then of course I realized all of the reasons why it probably was drained out of me.

But I want this episode to be a awareness around the fact that inner peace can still be within us even during the overstimulating times and B, I'm going to show you how that actually happens.

Because even though I feel depleted and overstimulated and overwhelmed and all of these normal emotions happen, I have a way to process them and I have a way to call in or to summon this inner peace that allows me to be present in the moment and patient because let's face it, my kid is a four year old.

He is what is causing a lot of the overstimulation and the overwhelm and me feeling depleted at the end of the day.

So this episode is for you if you are want that quote unquote balance between your career and family.

But you feel like there's just no way that you could do that because your life is too crazy, your kids are too crazy.

By the end of this episode, you are going to be able to summon your own inner peace, even during challenging emotions.

Because having inner peace definitely does not mean shutting out big emotions that come up for you, if that.

It would be the opposite of what I preach for you to you with journaling.

Kids will be kids, work will be work.

And you are not this emotionless woman.

When frustrating things happen, you are allowed to feel overwhelmed.

You are allowed to feel angry and frustrated and whatever emotions that you have.

Inner peace is about getting your nervous system back to normal when it gets thrown off faster than when you're dysregulated or out of balance or overstimulated.

So when you think of inner peace, that's what you can think of.

It's not this floating.

I don't know, maybe that's what I just think of as I keep saying this word, float.

So we're just going to go with that.

I think of this, like, floating, peaceful.

This woman who's, like, never bothered by anything.

But that's just not realistic.

There are times, rightfully so, where our emotions spike, our nervous systems spike.

And I'm going to go into the example that happened the other night for me or the other morning.

This was like, right in the morning when I was supposed to be going out the door, dropping my son off at daycare.

And even besides this one story, there are just so many times as a mom where I under my breath, say, oh, my fucking God, that was good.

I feel like that's exactly how I say it.

Usually it's like when I'm putting my son in the car and I have that, like, what is it, two seconds, maybe from the time that I close his door and walk around to the front of my door, I take this huge inhale, and then I exhale as I say that.

And I just kind of, like, shake it off, Literally, I shake my body.

And then there are mornings when you're rushing, but for me, that's only 1% of the time.

And when I talk to my clients, they have every morning feels like they're rushing.

When you're rushing, you are in this frenzied state.

I know that you can picture this and probably even feel it.

Maybe your heart is even starting to race a little bit right now.

But when you picture mornings that feel peaceful, it's the opposite.

It's almost calm.

It's relaxing.

Maybe you even picture yourself doing different things.

However, there are certain mornings, like weekday mornings, where you just have to do certain things and you have to be out the door by a certain time.

There is a way that you can choose to feel inner peace.

Even though your kids need their jackets on at certain times, even though they need to eat breakfast and they're not eating breakfast, even though they're stalling, putting on their clothes and putting on their shoes, and you feel like you're going to be late.

When you are able to focus on this inner peace during those times, you're able to mostly not fully, but mostly calmly and patiently explain your frustration instead of putting it on your kids.

I think that's the biggest difference and a huge takeaway from this episode is that when you are feeling inner peace inside and not letting your frustration or overwhelm or anger take over you, that is when you show up differently, you respond instead of react.

There is a time and place to process that anger and overwhelm and frustration.

But in the moment when you are rushing, trying to get the kids out the door, trying to get yourself to work on time, that's not the time to do a brain dump and process all of this stuff.

This is the time to take a deep breath, focus on how it is that you want to feel.

And again, when you can channel that peaceful feeling, you show up differently.

You won't yell at your kids to get their jackets on.

You yourself won't be literally running around your house trying to find your shoes.

Instead, you might show up how I did the other day when Griffin was just having one of those epically slow mornings.

And it was one of those 1% mornings where I felt like I was rushing, where we were just behind and not just behind.

I was trying to do too many things at once.

And when I do that, I overstimulate myself.

And that puts me into this feeling of feeling rushed.

Even if I don't have anywhere to be, I feel like I'm behind.

So I recognized this.

I knew that I did that to myself.

And I took a deep breath when Griffin was still not getting dressed.

And Griffin noticed that I was frustrated, and he called me out on it.

He said, stop being frustrated, and he was starting to get upset.

And I knew that this was about to spiral downhill quickly.

So when he said, stop being frustrated, I took a deep breath and I calmly stated, I am frustrated.

I'm frustrated because I waited too long to get dressed myself.

You can either wear your pajamas to school or wear this outfit that I picked out for you.

And so I Owned that I waited too long to get dressed, which is true.

That was true in the moment.

And then instead of putting anything back on him, I just gave him the two.

Two options that he could do.

And I was truly fine with either at that point, PJs or the outfit.

And he decided to wear the outfit.

So I said, all right, great.

Stand up from your chair and I will help you get dressed.

He resisted.

He was like, no, I don't want to.

I had to get up and pack some things in his backpack for school anyways, like his blanket for nap time.

And so I said, all right, I'm going to pack your backpack, and then we will get you dressed.

And so I went to go do that as well as get his shoes from the door.

And the jacket, I got everything, and I just brought it over to the living room where he was.

And by the time that I got back, he was hiding under a blanket, but he was peeking out like I could see him, even though I felt even more rushed, because now he's hiding.

Now this is one extra step to get him out from underneath the covers, change, and out the door.

I took another deep breath, and I calmly said, griffin, would you like to stay in your pajamas or change into these clothes right now?

And he said he wanted to change into the clothes.

And so I said, okay.

I knew that the TV was still on, so I said, you can change into your clothes while watching the TV or while turning the TV off.

And of course, he said he wanted to still watch the TV show.

He immediately came out from hiding, and we changed right away.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I put both of his shoes on him, and I was just going so fast that I put his shoes on him.

And then I went to go get my jacket on, and he starts whining.

And I'm like, oh, my gosh, what now?

Right at this point, externally, to him, I think I'm coming off as calm, but internally, I'm still like, let's go.

And he starts whining.

And so I come over and he says, I put two different shoes on him.

He has two different sets of Ninja Turtle shoes.

So they were both Ninja Turtle shoes, but they were two different kinds, one from each pair that he has.

And I was present enough and calm enough to laugh and to use that as a moment to not feel even more frustrated, to not feel like, ah, fine, let's go get your other shoe.

Where is your other shoe?

Like, that could have been a whole other spiral.

But channeling that piece.

And owning my frustration earlier in this whole spiral of him getting changed allowed me to not race around for the other shoe.

I had a genuine moment of laughter with him.

We both giggled about him wearing different shoes.

And then I calmly went over and found the other one.

We put on his shoes, we got his jacket on, and then we left.

We weren't even that late.

This was just one of those mornings that I was frustrated.

I felt like I was rushing.

I had a million things on my mind.

And that's just so common for women.

Feeling inner peace on a consistent basis is not about eliminating all of those other very normal feelings.

It's about allowing those feelings to come and having a process to work through them, which I do through journaling.

And that will help you establish how it is that you want to feel.

Maybe inner peace isn't the word for you.

Maybe you want to feel calm or independent or worthy, fulfilled.

You can come up with how you want to feel and how to get there.

I will link my Calm Mind blueprint in the show notes.

It's a free download that will actually help you unintentionally create your word and how to get there.

That's not what it's for.

It's to go from overwhelm to inner peace.

But the prompts that are in there, there's five different prompts and it will guide you to what you want and the direction to get there.

But once you achieve that, there will still be those over stimulating and overwhelming moments.

And it's not about pushing those away.

It's not about never saying oh my God underneath your breath.

And like, do you ever clench your hands being like.

Or like go into the other room and just take a few deep breaths for yourself while your kid is screaming in the other room because they want you right by their side.

All of that still happens.

You can still choose to shake it off, take a few deep breaths for yourself, slow down.

And by the way, physically slowing down your body and breathing are two ways that I actually impact your nervous system.

Your nervous system will regulate just from those two things.

Not from saying I am calm, I am calm, I am calm.

Which is why affirmations are fun and inspiring and great and I did them for years and years.

But those aren't the things that will actually make you calm.

Breathing will walking slowly back into the room where your kid is willing.

And they always say that with parenting.

You can parent in the moment with your kids in the meltdown or whatever it is that they're going through.

But a lot of Parenting is beforehand, right?

If you're trying to help them with sleep, you parent them through their sleep struggles in the daytime before you even get to that.

And that's the same with this.

You help yourself through these overwhelming times beforehand in your journal.

You can journal through how you want to regulate your nervous system, how you can channel your own inner peace so that when these situations happen, you can confidently honor that, yeah, this is a hard frickin moment.

But you can also stay present in it.

You can also stay peaceful in it.

And you can stay patient with yourself and with your child and with your spouse or whoever else is around.

You can stay compassionate with yourself and with your child or whoever else is around.

That, to me me is what inner peace looks like when you are in the thick of it.

I hope that this helps because being a mom is tough and putting all of these expectations on us, even the expectation of I want to feel inner peace, that can feel like one more thing.

And so I hope that this episode gave you permission to want to feel inner peace and even gave you insight on how to feel that without feeling like you can't feel those challenging emotions and that you can't experience the challenging times.

All of those things can be true while you feel inner peace, patience and presence.

Again, I will link the Calm Mind Blueprint in the show notes.

You can download it and look at all five prompts at once and it will be about a 10 to 15 minute journal session for you to journal from overwhelm to inner peace.

But I've also set it up so that it's a five day journaling challenge where I'm going to email you for five days with just a little check in.

And each check in is about one of the prompts.

So for each of the five days you'll get one prompt with voice guidance from me via a private podcast.

It's called the Calm Mind Blueprint Experience.

You can only find the link for that through this download, so definitely check that out.

And if you loved this episode, please leave a review on Apple or leave a rating.

I would really, really appreciate that because the more reviews that this podcast has, the more women will find this podcast and be able to feel better and feel more worthy and feel inner peace themselves.

Thank you so much for tuning in today and I will see you next week.

Thanks for joining me for today's journal entry.

If something resonated with you, I'd love to know about it.

Screenshot this episode, share it on social media and tag me at Samantha S.

Says or even leave a review which will help more women find this podcast to create more fulfillment in their career and as a mom.

And hey, if you're thinking I wish I could get more of this, I've got you covered, click on the link in the Show Notes, which I customize each week based on what we're talking about.

And I always include the link to the Calm Mind Blueprint, which are my five journal prompts to go from overwhelm to inner peace in two to ten minutes a day.

Subscribe so that you catch my Thursday five Minute Journal With Me episodes and next week's full episode where we will continue this journey together.

I'll see you then.