I will acknowledge I’m one of those moms, actually I have a great calendar system. I use it. I don’t have any drama around that at the moment. I’m sure it comes and goes, but at the moment I have a pretty solid system. So here’s the thing about your calendar, whether you’re using it or not, you decide what to do with your time. We get to this place where we feel out of control. Like everyone’s trying to take a piece of us. I’ve gotta do this for the school. I’ve gotta do this for, you know, my parish. I’ve gotta do this for the baby. I’ve gotta do this for my husband or my job.

And we feel this deep sense of being out of control. But just like no one puts food in your mouth, no one makes you put anything on your calendar. And it’s really hard to sit with that truth because even my brain wants to go, But, but, but, but the truth is, you opt into everything that then creates an item on your calendar. You want to take your kids to the dentist. I mean, let’s be honest, my friends, none of us really want to do that. But we all have this moment when we’re like, Ooh, how long has it been? And then we schedule them and then the day that comes around we’re like, Ugh, that’s on the calendar.

But you chose, you want to take the kids to the dentist on some level because you’re doing it. Same thing with every group you’ve signed up for. There’s part of you that wants to do it, so you’re doing it. Sometimes the thing that we want the most is to avoid the conflict of saying no, but then own that. Since becoming a life coach, it brings me great peace to just say, You know what, Sterling, we’re not ready to grow here yet. So we’re gonna go do this thing that we don’t really feel like doing, but we choose You okay with that kid? Let’s go.

Right? Because maybe there’s part of you that doesn’t love going to the mom’s group. Maybe you don’t like the conversations that are happening there. Maybe you’re embarrassed that your three year old takes toys outta people’s hands. But if you’re going, it means some part of you wants to go. And as we talk this quarter about having more peace, part of having more peace is just not feeling like someone’s forcing you to do something. And yet we act like it a lot. We act like someone’s making us do something we don’t wanna do. And then your body is gonna have a very negative response to that.

Because it feels very unsafe to do something that you don’t want to do and feel like you have no choice. And so you want to get to the place where you see your choice. Now, I was just coaching someone in our program who had three young kids, right? Like five, three and a baby, and she was describing it and my brain was just remembering, Oh yeah, that’s how that was back then. Oh my goodness. And she was talking about wanting to get things done. But then, you know, the baby’s teething. The three year old’s melting down the five year old’s like you never read books to me anymore. You feel terrible.

And you really wanted to clean out the pantry or get ahead on laundry. And so in that season of life, we feel like we have no choice. But for me, step one would be, I want these children. And you know, I like to sassy joke that I didn’t want any kids, which was absolutely true until I was 24. But then we really only planned one out of six of our kids. The rest of them were all gifts of surprise. And so in a way, my brain and the father of lies likes it when I think, Well, I didn’t want any of these children. Now I’m stuck here with five, three and a baby. Ugh. I mean, that was such a dark time for me and I didn’t have any of these tools and I would’ve just pouted or probably overeaten, you know, that’s how I coped with things back then. Netflix and food.

And so the first thing is just realizing you do want the kids. How do I know you haven’t gotten rid of them? That’s a choice. You know, plenty of parents just leave. So you chose to stay. You want these kids and you want them to have some level of parenting because we all know you literally could just put them in front of the TV for eight hours and like stop them for lunchtime and nap time. You could ignore them. And so part of you wants a different experience for them. And just knowing that you choose that feels great, feels great, I want you to celebrate it.

And then you look at your calendar. Now, for those of you in the five, three and baby crowd, you probably don’t have a, I didn’t have a calendar then I, I think I would now, I would probably have a rhythm to the day, like just some general sense of meal times, nap time, outside time, book time, something like that. But we all know at those ages, you know, one cold wipes out the plan, teething, baby wipes out the plan, poopy, blowouts, rain. You know, it’s just a, it’s a vague plan. That’s also why I didn’t have a calendar at those ages. You know, I wasn’t really, we weren’t really going anywhere.

But then, you know, even if you don’t have a calendar for a mom in that phase, you still just want to know that you’re choosing how to spend your time. And so I would probably just tell myself a lot. I’m choosing to do the mom thing right now. I’m choosing to be a b plus parent. I’m choosing to practice having peace because that’s what I’m gonna have to teach these kids as they get bigger. And that skill is extremely valuable because I can use it for the whole rest of life. I met a young mom recently and she had one baby who was three months old. And I forget what I asked her. I asked her to do something and she just very calmly said, Oh yeah, I don’t do, I don’t take the baby outta the house after six or something like that. And she was so calm and she totally owned her response. And I was so impressed. I was like, Wow, there is a mom who knows what she wants and just creates a life that gives her that. Because the thing we were doing was really fun. That’s why I was surprised that she just so willingly said no. Even though now I can’t remember what we were doing, I remember just being like, Wow, all right.

And just thinking, I wish I would’ve had that skill when I had one baby, just to be like, No, I wanna be home. And not to think, oh, the good moms or the moms that know how to manage their babies better go out more. So we wanna just own how you spend your time. And then for those of you that do have calendars, please, please, please, please, please have my voice in your head. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, whichever day makes sense to you. Review the week, just turn the page and go look at what was on there last week and ask yourself, how did it go? What did I learn? Where was I stressed out? What do I need to stop doing? How can I set myself up for success more?

If your family life feels crazy, it’s your job to change it or to sit everyone down and be like, Do we like living an intense life? Some families really like that. I know a family that just does extreme outdoor things, but everyone loves it. It’s totally their thing. And then my kids, you know, they really like camping. They camp a lot, like pretty much one weekend a month. They’re camping. It’s a lot of camping, but we like it. It doesn’t stress us out. They have a good rhythm for packing and unpacking. And so I actually have no bar or judgment about what the calendar should look like, but I know that it should probably feel more peaceful than it does. And so the only way to have more peace is to change the things on the calendar or change your thought about them and leave them

On there. You know, I remember when I was taking my daughter to gymnastics and it was annoying to me and I had like an 18 month old who just wanted to pull everything out of my purse. And you’re always like, that’s fine, until they hit the button on your keys and your alarm goes off. Or they rip something that you didn’t want them to rip, and then you’re like, Oh, actually it isn’t fine . So we were just doing that thing at gymnastics and my daughter wasn’t very good at gymnastics and she didn’t enjoy it.

And I let her do it for a while. Just one of those, Oh, maybe she’ll get better at it and then enjoy it more. But I could just see it just wasn’t her thing. And to this day, it’s not her thing at all. And my seven year old who isn’t in gymnastics, but I watched the way that she moves her body and she likes gymnastics style things. So she would’ve really enjoyed that. And so I got to this point where I just thought, Well, I don’t need to be in gymnastics. All my friends had a kid and dance or gymnastics. And so we did it, but then I just quit and it was okay.

And so I want you to realize that no one puts anything on your calendar without your permission. I want you to know that deep in your bones, that everything on there right now, you want to be on there. Even if the only reason you want it to be on there is because you don’t want the level of conflict that it would involve to take it off. And I want you to just love yourself for that. Be like, Hey, I love you. And we don’t wanna have that conversation so we think this’ll be better. I know you’re not excited to go, but this is what we’ve chosen.

And so this can bring you so much peace and freedom. And what it really is that we’re talking about here is agency helping your brain to see that you get to choose. It’s pretty cool. No one puts anything on your calendar without your permission. And for those of you moms who don’t have calendars or in that little kid, kid phase of life where in my opinion you don’t really need a calendar, I want you to make peace with how you’re spending your day. I wish I could go back to Sterling when she had a five, a three and a one year old and just say, You know what, Hey, I know this is not your favorite way to spend your time, but you love these kids, You did want them, and you wanna be a B plus mom.

And that means following them around and doing the little kid thing. How can I make the little kid thing a little better for you? Right? Because then once we’re calm, we have agency, we drop into the ability to problem solve from peace. I love you guys so much. I just really do. And if you’re stressed out, I want you to consider hiring a one-on-one coach. We have some really great coaches and you can work with them for 12 weeks. You meet with them once a week for 12 weeks and it will utterly change your life. And you are not paying for the time that you spend with them. You are paying to go to mindset school where they will teach you the tools to experience a problem in your life and then know how to calm down and solve it.

I wish we could give people little certifications like, Oh, you are peace certified. You know the tools now to have more peace in your life because I promise you, God has given you crosses, but they are so much heavier than they need to be because of what you think about them. So I don’t know if we talk about one-on-one coaching here a lot, but you can go to our website and you can book a discovery call with a one-on-one coach and they will coach you for three months and it will be the best money you ever spent. And it will change your life from that year on just like it did mine. I wish I could have grabbed Sterling with a five, three and a one year old and given her those tools. I would’ve enjoyed that phase a lot more. And I’m about to be done after this podcast and my 11 and a half year old is going to have made lunch for all the rest of the kids, which blows my mind. I can’t even, It’s just the coolest thing you guys. It’s just the coolest thing. And so life does change and there are different challenges, but it’s just beautiful. Every stage is beautiful. I’m praying for you. I remember you are Made for Greatness.