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Mommy HullabalooTM by Julie Watson Smith Spotlight on the Mama Mindset A few years ago, I reached the age where young children call you ma’am as a sign of respect, where mammograms aren’t an option but a requirement, and where my weight doubles just by looking at my children’s cookie crumbs on the carpet. While I still have fleeting moments when I want to hide out in the back of my minivan, the transformation into middle-age motherhood has given me the opportunity to adopt a new attitude – one filled with bigger dreams, hotter passions and empowered desires. I have cultivated my Mama Mindset. Moms have been quietly cultivating their Mama Mindset for years by forging a sense of maternal community with peers through playgroups, scrap-booking circles and book clubs. Yet thanks to Mommywood – er, I mean Hollywood – with its bulging-bellied pregnant celebrities lining the red carpets, moms have become the epicenter of pop culture. No longer are moms viewed as frumpy housewives serving their family. Rather, we have evolved into alluring individuals filled with ambition and enthusiasm. Today moms are moving from behind the curtain to take their place center stage by cultivating the new Mama Mindset that embraces the role of mother and woman. A Mama Mindset offers you the opportunities to go and grow in the chaos of mommyhood and life. With a Mama Mindset, you start to elevate your own needs so that you can better tend to your family’s needs. (When mama’s happy, everyone is happy, right?) Blending motherhood and womanhood allows you to go within and release unrealistic expectations and assumed judgments, which unveils your authenticity – the center of who you are as both a mom and woman. Here’s how to position yourself for primetime by adopting a new Mama Mindset: Aspire towards something – anything. Whether it’s writing a letter or penning the next great novel, find something to stimulate your brain. Renewing a passion for a former hobby or starting a business, develop interests that connect womanhood and mommyhood. Make time for you. Having something outside of motherhood keeps you connected with womanhood. Children mimic our behavior. By showing them that your needs are also important helps create self-reliance and increases self-esteem. Rekindle the spark with your partner. You won't ever find time for your partner — you have to make it. Make date nights a priority. Write your spouse a love letter. Establish new routines and learn to forge a new kind of intimacy and closeness. Your closeness as a couple will extend to a closeness as a family. Learn the Zen of children. Children marvel in the simplest pleasures like a new sprout on an old tree, or the sound of the season’s first cricket. Toss your to-do list out for an hour or two and watch clouds drift by. Slow down and adopt a childlike sense of awe. Embrace your beauty. While lipstick and highlights make nice gift-wrap, the real present is knowing that you are beautiful, sexy and confident. You simultaneously exude strength and compassion. Embrace it and enjoy it! Succumb to the chaos. Life is what life is. It is combined with moments of utopian pleasure and sheer terror. Toss out expectations of a perfect life and develop your imperfectly inspired life – a life that imagines and excels in the chaos of the everyday. Sure, there will always be moments when your Mama Mindset will want to push the woman in you aside and spend every moment cherishing your children; and on the flip side, there will be days where your woman-side will want to dominate the day by dreaming about a quiet afternoon dawdling along the Venice waterways with nary a care in the world. But, by creating and cultivating your Mama Mindset – a mindset that has ample room for both mother and woman – you become the star that your family already knows you are. And that, mama, deserves a standing ovation. Meet America's #1 Chaos and Creativity Coach, Julie Watson Smith, MHS, CC.
Long-ago relinquishing dreams of perfection, Julie opted to embrace her
chaos (flaws and all) to inspire her imagination and create her imperfectly
inspired life - an authentic life that inspires, imagines and excels in
everyday chaos and beyond. Julie, founder and Chief Chaos Queen of Inspired
Imaginations, is also the author of several books including the
award-winning Mommyhood Diaries. She pens the columns and blogs, Mommy
Hullabaloo, Embracing Chaos and Imperfectly Inspired. Visit her at
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