Why is it so much harder for you – yes, you – to give yourself space?
‘Cause you’re afraid that would mean slowing down your ambition.
Like, you’re not going to tap out of the kids thing – so you have to take that free time from somewhere….. And in your mind, the only thing left is your business. Which you don’t wanna do.
So if the choice is having long, lazy afternoons or growing this business…. Yeah, you’re taking the hustle afternoons every day over that.
‘Cause the one thing you won’t ever do is let go of your ambition. (No shade – I’m the same way.) If I’d wanted to keep staying on the “lovely life no stresses stay at home” train, I would’ve!
But I wanted to do something more with my life. And so did you. And that’s why we’re both running these businesses.
So…. If we take that away as a possibility…. What’s left for us?? Anything? Other than that old trope of crumbs on the floor, messy living rooms, and kitchen cabinets from hell?
Uh, yeah – ‘cause that’s not acceptable to us, either. You and I, we’re too high performance to put up with that. So we shouldn’t.
But there’s one area I think you’re forgetting….
No, it’s not the whole “if you don’t take time off, you’ll be hurting your brain performance” stuff. That doesn’t fly when you’re in the thick of it in launch mode and just trying to get those emails out (with all the new objections you got in days 1 and 2 to add to it).
Nope, you’re in solid “got to get this done by 7am mode” so your prescheduler will go out. Letting it slide is not an option. (Nor should it be! I’m not one of those lazy-fuzzy “consistency is what you make of it” business owner types. And I’m betting you’re not, either.) Anyhow.
The one place you forgot to pull from is….
Drumroll, please….
All the delegateable parts of your home and business.
Think about it. You’re the only mom who’s parenting your kids.
You’re the only face on your reels or Tiktoks or YouTube podcast.
You’re the only CEO vision-maker/direction-decider for your company.
You’re the only one who can exercise your body or refresh your brain with some diamond painting.
But all the rest of it? That’s free stuff. That’s available stuff.
‘Cause no, it doesn’t always have to be you picking up the groceries. (You know that already.)
It doesn’t always have to be you cooking the meals.
It doesn’t always have to be you uploading the emails.
It doesn’t always have to be you fixing the Kajabi lessons.
But… remember…. It also doesn’t need to be you doing anything past the recording of your content (for the podcast episodes) – someone else (or even AI) can handle all the editing and titling and show-notes-ing.
It doesn’t need to be you choosing which picks from your new brand shoot to refresh where on your website.
It doesn’t need to be you sending the weekly check-in reminder to all your clients in Honeybook.
It doesn’t need to be you pulling in all the yearly evals with your clients and analyzing them for notes and culling a few course update tasks from their feedback.
And it also doesn’t have to be you who’s making the menus for your family – chopping the veggies every week – getting the laundry from the dirty clothes baskets to the washer and back again to their dressers – even getting everyone to everything, doesn’t have to be you!
What if you started thinking at this level about everything in your home life and business??
Throw out all the “good moms go pick up the cake for their kids” (which you’ve delegated up to from “good moms bake the cake for their kids”).
Why not “good moms make sure their kid is having a birthday party, and that someone is handling it, and show up themselves”? Who says you can’t delegate the invitations and the decorations and the logistical handling?
Who says a “good” mom does all the room cleaning and family room pickup and “dishes forgotten on the table” and counter wipeoffs for her kids?
Who says she does all the coat closet organizing??
When your kids are at a certain age, they’re super capable – and no, their sports teams and homework loads do not excuse them! We’ve gotten way off track with the number of chores we expect from our kids as Americans – did you grow up with that? Did I?
I sure as heck didn’t! No, I was doing the bathroom cleaning and the vacuuming and the dishwashing – all of it, for everybody, since I was age 9!
And did it take me ages? You bet, when I was grumping about the noise level of the vacuum or having to do the whole house myself. Or getting dirties out of the sink.
Did that make my dad any less inclined to have me do it? Did it make him feel sorry for me that I didn’t like getting my prissy hands dirty cleaning toilets? Uh, no! I hear you laughing back there – that just made him double down harder!
And okay, maybe you don’t take that kind of tough love approach with your kids. (Or maybe you do.)
But the bottom line expectation stays the same – you are doing these chores to help out our family – paid or not, that’s up to you – and you the kid don’t get to argue about it. You’ve just got to do it.
And I’m talking way beyond the “make my own bed and take my own dirty dishes to the dishwasher level and maintain my own hygiene” here.
Like, that’s just basic existence level care for self. We’re not even to roommate level in college or when you move out, have your own apartment, for how much you’re going to have to take care of around the house!
Side rant over. Or maybe not so “side” rant.
But who do you think is gonna train your kids on laundry when they’re teens off in the dorm room? (I’ve got one there right now. She’s been running the house since she was in high school.)
Not their roommates – not their RAs – that’s not their job. It’s you – it’s yours – and you have to do that right now. Not as a “2 weeks before college” crash course.
And of course, side benefit, you get to skip doing the bathroom cleaning or lawn mowing or bread making or what have you all the way from now till when they leave the house.
But that’s the way it works, doesn’t it? You train them to get good at this – they’re not doing everything, just part of it – and then you parcel out all the little parts to everyone in the household (minus you – you’re already doing the logistics and mental load side of this) – hire anybody you need to to fill in the holes – and poof, it’s done! And it’s not all on your plate!
And what’s important here, is you didn’t stop your Q1 content planning session at Starbucks so you could go supervise baseboards. Or chicken marinading. Or veggie chopping for supper.
That’s all handled. And you still got your free time – don’t tell me you just chopped all the chicken yourself and did the launch planning but skipped your workout to accommodate this – and now it’s all fitting.
Which is as it should be. And is, in my world. Yours too, if you stay around here.
So now, Lord, would you grant wisdom to both of us here. Would you show us, Lord, specifically where there’s another task we can outsource right now. Something else that, if we had the SOP written out, we could hire a contractor to do that, or have our kids start doing that – but we just hadn’t thought about offloading it. We just got too used to doing that. Oh, it’s quick. Oh, it’ll just be 20 minutes. Oh, it’d take so long to train somebody up on this to my QC standards. Lord, show us where all these energy leaks are. I was going to say tiny, but You know they’re not always small – in fact, they’re adding up to quite a lot of energy and brain space and work time lost throughout the day. Which is contrary to how we wanna honor You in this, Father, ‘cause You’re the One Who gave us these businesses. You’re the One Who called us into this. So would you maximize our time and talents and efficiency in this, in this niche You’ve divinely called us to serve, and show both her and me how to keep pressing in to the new levels You have for us in our area of gifting. And supernaturally clear out the mindset trash that Satan sends that’s keeping us stuck in our current level of time and tasks and outsourcing. Because it’s in Your Name we pray, and it’s for Your sake that we’re even able to be here at our computers doing this to spread Your light in the world – it’s for all these things we pray, amen.
