How to introduce healthy habits and not fail

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Hi guys, Wendy here. Welcome to the healthy and thriving career moms podcast, your weekly dose of inspiration and motivation for thriving with your healthy habits, especially in the midst of the crazy mom juggle. I get that you're busy and that taking time for you is not always easy, but I'm here to help.

So let's jump in.

Hi guys, and welcome to. The first official

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episode of the first season of the healthy and thriving career moms podcast. I am so grateful to have you here today, where we are going to get stuck in to the topic of habits. Now I appreciate this might not sound like the most super sexy subject, but we have to start here because this is really the basis for everything that I want to be sharing on this podcast, the tips and tricks, the speakers that I want to bring you, it all comes back to habits.

So what is that? Well efficiently.

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The definition being a routine or practice performed regularly an automatic response to a specific situation. Now, if you are maybe a working mum who is spread too thin, maybe a little bit stressed out, maybe your automatic response to a specific situation right now might be overwhelmed, might be all sorts of things, but really, and truly habits have been the thing that have helped me to stay grounded.

As

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a working mum, as somebody who has multiple different things that they're involved in. I have two businesses that I run. I have a five-year-old little girl I have been. Primary caregiver for the first number of years of her life. Obviously now with the situation due to the last 18 months, my husband is at home more and is able to, to be there.

But for the large majority, I was managing it all on my own. And obviously, as I've shared with you in the trailer, my

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experience of hitting burnout, I just know that. You know, in order to be a truly fulfilled present parents, I needed to look after my wellbeing. So it was really that I started to get into our case.

So how do I do this? Like, there's all the things, there's all the overwhelm, there's all this stuff I've got to deal with. Like how and cause inevitably what would happen is I would be like, right, this is it. Monday's coming. Absolutely. Yeah. Run five Ks and I'm going to be on a diet and I'm going to do all the things and I'm going to be the perfect mom and I'm not going to

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shout and all the staff and you know what all of that is just really setting yourself up to fail because nobody is perfect.

Nobody can do all the things. I mean, one of my favorite sayings in the world has done is better than perfect, purely because as a working mom, things don't always go according to plan, actually nine times out of 10. Definitely don't go according to plan. So it's almost being accepting of the chaos that ensues as a working parent and almost

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embracing that, not knowing that, okay, life is going to throw you curve balls, your kid's going to get sick, or you got to have a deadline at work or whatever it is.

And actually your habits are what is going to keep you grounded. So it's. Working out what those habits are, what are those absolute fundamentals, almost those values that are going to keep you on the wellbeing path, keep you as the healthiest version of you. And I, I'm not talking about, you've got to be

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a certain size or a certain fitness or run marathons or do all these things I think nowadays, and don't get me wrong.

It's really inspirational when you see these incredible. Moms and women in business women out there who, you know, especially when you see those where the moms like had a million kids and she's got a six pack and you just looking at that going okay is late. I'm not even finding time to get out for a run right now.

I mean, I am definitely not the six pack. So, yeah, that is not what you're

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going to get from this podcast. I'm not going to be, you've got to be the certain type of person, but what I'm looking to help you really establish is what is your baseline? What is your baseline for success? And I don't mean success in the sense of smashing it and being this perfect mom.

Who's like on the PTA and doing all the things and running the marathons and bossing it in the boardroom and whatever it's about. What is your basis? So, just as an example, recently,

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my daughter picked up one of the many colds that circulate at this sort of time of year in the UK, where we are right now.

And obviously because of the nature of the last sort of 18 months, kids have maybe not be mixing as much. So there's a lot of bugs going around. So needless to say, I had a busy week planned out. I had deadlines. I wanted to hit, I had podcast recordings. I wanted to do, I had all the things and then my daughter got her.

And that was it. She was home. And because my husband's self-employed, he

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wasn't able to not be at work because he had commitments to clients, et cetera. And obviously the nature of my work is that I can flex it. Naturally. I started to cancel a few things and then realized very quickly that I was trying to be in two places and that wasn't working.

And then I was becoming a bit shouty and that wasn't fair to my little girl who was feeling horrendous. And then we very sadly had a bereavement in the family, which completely knocked me for six. Cause it was quite unexpected.

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And it was that moment where it was like, right, what am I holding true to my values?

Right. For me and for people who know me and who know me well, or perhaps if you've been following me on social media, you'll know that family is a huge value to me. The other value that I hold really dear is my health and my faith. And yes, while I absolutely love my business and I love to help people get healthy.

I had to reassess. Against my

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values as to what my priorities were going to be. And it meant that I had to strip my diary back. It meant that I had to cancel the move things. It actually meant that I had to push out the deadline that I set for myself for launching this podcast. At first, I was so disappointed, but then I was like, hang on.

I am practicing what I teach. Yeah. Which is to give yourself grace, which is to give yourself the space and know that we're all just doing the best that we can do as moms.

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And I just think, you know, I love to say to people, especially if you find yourself getting upset about a situation or someone said something or something, I always just say, let's just always assume best intent.

With somebody. That's how I like to live my life. I just always like to assume best intentions with people and it's served me well. So why don't we do that for ourselves? Why don't we assume best intention for us as moms? Why are we the people. We will chastise ourselves and we're almost bullying

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ourselves and say these negative things, oh, you should do that.

Should do that mirror and all the shirts we're shooting on ourselves all the time. And so rarely I feel it's our responsibility to flip that, switch, to change the story, to rewrite the story that we're telling ourselves. And this is really where I feel before we even get into the habit stuff. We need to unpack the mindset.

'cause I think mindset is everything. Mindset is what

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holds us together when everything goes crazy, which it does as a mother. And so how are you minding your mind? How are you minding and protecting your mindset and not allowing all this stuff to come in and crowded and make you. You know, start to catastrophize and start to sort of get down on yourself.

And I just want to challenge you with, um, well, as moms, we're always big for a, to do list. I want to challenge you with a, not to do list. And this is my not to do list saying yes

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to stuff that drains me feeling guilty for saying no feeling responsible for other people's responsibilities. We're very good at that.

As moms feel guilty for giving my body rest and space. And self-care what were you stressed about? Things that are out of my country. And bully and speak harshly to myself. So that's on my not to do list and that's a little less that I have up in full view to reminds me to check myself, to remind me, to protect my mindset.

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We know that we would never speak to our children the way that we speak to ourselves. Sometimes get, even though we know that we still do it. So this is really to challenge you to think, how am I talking to myself? What am I saying to myself? And so maybe it's the habits of minding your mind that we need to start with first and foremost to really get your head around.

Okay. Protecting my mindset, making sure that I

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am being kind to myself, that I'm giving myself grace, and then I can start to do the habits. That are going to serve me, whatever that looks like. So typically with my clients, we'll look at a number of factors, really, a lot of the time, it falls from a health and wellness perspective into sort of five key areas.

We look at nutrition, we look at exercise, we look at sleep, we look at stress. We actually look at clutter and that's not just a physical clutter. That's a mental clutter.

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But before we get into all the sort of the nitty gritty and the action point. It's really just an, a mindset context, thinking about what you want to embody as a mom, not what you think you need to embody, but what do you want to embody as a mum?

And this is where the comparison game, especially with social media, especially with seeing everybody. And it's also remembering that guys, social media, Is highlight reel. It's what

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other people are choosing to show you in terms of the best bits of themselves. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't.

I won't necessarily put up on social media. I might put it up in my stories. So, you know, I do like to keep it real, but I won't sort of post on my main Facebook page when the dog's been sick. And my five-year. 30 feet on the floor, maybe, maybe not now, but maybe when she was younger or when the house is absolutely chaotic, like we don't tend to put the crazy up there.

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We only put the lovely family portrait that we maybe had done or the lovely day out that we had, whatever it is. The problem is mums, is that we're looking at that we're squirting through that and we're thinking, oh my goodness, everybody is just smashing it. And I am just an absolute wreck. What is wrong with me?

And then we start the shame cycle and shaming ourselves and everything that goes with it. So changing your mindset on what is achievable and what is lasting, and that's where the habits come in.

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So we're going to get into. More on this podcast about understanding how to create good habits, understanding how to make.

Easy and sustainable. Uh, it's identifying at what habits you need. The five key areas of, of habits that I work with with moms, we're going to go into more detail and we're going to actually, you know, pick those topics and I'm going to share all my juicy tips and tricks with you. We're going to talk about how to create habit stacking, which is.

Save you time, not help you multitask

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more. We really going to embrace the progress over perfection. And this is my commitment to you. As the podcast hosts for the healthy and thriving moms podcast. I'm also so excited to bring you some amazing guest speakers over the coming weeks who are really going to.

Show you how they put a lot of this into practice for themselves. And they're also going to show you how they don't necessarily get it right all the time. And they really are going to keep it real with you. So I'm excited to go on this journey with you and

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really, I just want to encourage you to take away from today's episode.

Checking yourself on your mindset. Like, where am I in my mindset? You might be like, I am absolutely brilliant. I have got a solid mindset. I have a positive mental attitude that holds me steady through the storm, but you actually might be that person. Who's like, actually my mindset is really not good. And so how are you going to build good habits that are going to serve you and that are going to

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nourish you you'll mind, body, soul, all the good stuff.

If that mindset is out of whack. And so you might be thinking, okay, so when do you find I need to work on my mindset? How do I do this? And again, we're going to cover this in a lot more detail in further episodes. Just things like setting your intentions, setting your intentions, thinking about what your values are.

So an exercise that you can do as a it's a visualization exercise. You can sit there in a quiet moment. And by this I'll probably mean there's probably

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sitting on the loo with your phone in your hand. So instead of doing that, just put it to the side, take those those few seconds while you hiding from your kids and think about where you see yourself in the future.

And often you want to think maybe five years down the line, but maybe that's too far for you to imagine. So you want to bring it back maybe three years, maybe even a year. And I think sometimes we can often overestimate what we can achieve in a year, but underestimate what we can achieve in three years.

So this is why I like to give that kind of guideposts there and say, think ahead

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and think about how the best version of you is showing up. And that's not the perfect version of you before you jump to that. What's the best version of you. Okay. The best version of Wendy, the best version of Wendy is someone who shows up for her family, her friends, her community, the best version of Wendy is a person who prioritize her wellbeing and self care who looks after her mindset, who nourishes their body with good food who moves her body,

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who nourishes her minds with good things with nourishes her soul with good people.

That person is healthy. Fit steady and is prioritizing herself care. That's the best version of me for you. That might be completely different, but it's thinking about what is the best version of you. And when you've got that picture in your mind, we're then going to work on the step. That we all going to take

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to move you to that next best version of you?

Because the thing with habits is that people want to do all the habits. When they first start, they want to do the exercise that will do the eating. They want to get eight hours of sleep a night. And then when they fail on one of those things, because they've tried to boil the ocean, they feel like a failure, but actually that was always setting yourself up for failure.

What I advocate for is picking two to three healthy habits. The two to three things just works for me

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because maybe it's two bigger things. Maybe it's three little things, but generally it's two to three things that you want to improve, but they smaller things. So if it's like, you want to get more sleep because you're not sleeping as well, then it's a habit such as at nine o'clock you put your blue light glasses on.

And if anybody doesn't know what blue light glasses are, they are actually designed to. The sort of the light that comes through from the, your screens and devices that actually stops the melatonin

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releasing in your body, which triggers you to be sleepy. So why do you think it is that you can just binge Netflix episode after episode after episode and you're not tired.

And then the next day you just feel like death warmed up. So this will actually mean that by say half nine, 10, o'clock your body goes, yep. I'm ready to rest. And you go up to bed earlier, then bingeing, the next episode. That one little thing can be considered a habit that moves you closer to the goal of having better sleep, quality, sleeping more.

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Whereas someone might say, oh, I'm going to sleep eight hours and I'm going to do this. I'm gonna do that. And like all the things. But actually it's about breaking it down step by step. So that's what we're really going to get stuck into in the next episode. So I really want to encourage you to come and join us for that.

I would love you to like share and subscribe and do all the good things that you need to do to show me that the content that I'm providing for you is of value. And I so appreciate you being here and I'm so excited to speak to you more on the next episode.

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Take care. Everyone have a wonderful day. So what kind of busy mom or you take my free quiz and find out which of the full profiles you might be.

You'll get your results straight away, and I'll even send you my top tips based on your results to support you on your journey, to healthy and thriving. Go to the link on my show notes and take a couple of minutes to find out what you are. Thank you for listening to the healthy and thriving career moms podcast.

For more resources to support you on your. Is it my website, wendygriffith.co.uk.

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And please also come join our Facebook community healthy and thriving. This is a safe, no judgment space where we share and inspire each other. And if you got value from today's episode, I'd be so grateful. If you would share this with other career moms who would benefit to either through social media or leaving a five-star review, you can find me at Wendy Griffith, live healthy on Instagram and Facebook until next time.

Stay healthy and keep thriving.