As a full time working mom, you bet I have struggled with Working Mom Guilt from time to time but honestly it has just passed on. Perhaps some other mom has collected the residuals of what my feelings were about and today I’d like to openly discuss 8 ways to get rid of working mom guilt.
We live in a new time, a new era, and no matter what life was like for our moms, their moms, our great grandparents, that is not the time we live in and our thinking as a collective group of intelligent women of today must be in the mindset of today. This article is for moms, working moms, that just really need to know how to shed the guilt. Stop hauling excessive emotional baggage.
Let’s take a look at 8 ways to get rid of working mom guilt and how you can lavishly live your job out loud and still experience the best of life in every aspect, it is possible!
My Own Guilt
Long ago, I worked for a major wireless corporation. Pregnant with my first child, and totally concerned how my future daughter would ever thrive without me around each day was a great way to make myself feel guilty and I ended up asking for Job Share, which they refused. Not only did the company lose me, they lost the other person who was wanting to be my job share partner as they denied her request as well. We both left and between us 20 years plus of experience walked out the door.
I Owned My Guilt
I owned my guilt, day after day, not gaining a paycheck, staying home, cleaning, and cooking, and trying to be supermom. However, owning my guilt through this path was no fulfilling and I always felt like I was faltering or not doing enough, so, I reinvented me, went back to work and here I am.
I reinvented myself, and I consider myself a full time working mom, working in and out of the home and I am raising three great children (well when the teen hormones are not kicking in)!
8 Ways To Get Rid of Working Mom Guilt
Here’s what I know, if you stick to these principles, you will rid that toxic Working Mom Guilt and you will be stronger, and feel more self-fulfilled, I do!
1) Take Control Of Work versus Family Time
A day of work ends, when it ends, don’t bring it home. You have smiling faces that need to fill your heart and your head with their details, drop your work at the door. You must take control of when work ends and Momming begins. Draw a line in the sand, give the kids your attention and if something at work still needs to be dealt with bedtime does roll around, leave it until the kids are asleep.
Turn off Cellular devices, ban them from the dinner table, and share the time with your family, focus on them, because you are no longer working, you are now MOM. Keep your life separated and it will keep on moving.
2) Focus on your Financial Success
You get a paycheck, you are paying bills, you are feeling good as you succeed. Keep this feeling with you each day and remember you are working towards the financial success of your families’ needs and each day contributes more to the bottom line, GO YOU!
3) That Was Then
This is not ‘Leave It To Beaver’ time or ‘Bewitched’ where drinks are made when the guys walk in, aprons are worn when serving food (unless you are serving food fast in your clothes, ha!). Today, it’s about enjoying your glass of wine while you get dinner or while you and your partner and kids prepare the meal. Today is about everyone pitching in together, not about one lady running the house while the ‘big guy’ goes out and earns.
You are a force, you are part of the world, it is not the days of submission and taking care of the provider because you are a provided too. Keep YOU clearly in focus and never use the old days as your gauge. Whatever worked then was then, this is one time when OLD will never be NEW again, WOMEN have paved their way, so own it.
4) Encourage Other Moms
We all know other moms out there that we work with or socialize with that are feeling the guilt. Help them, bring them into our universe. Provide them the e-Book for a good, fast read and some empowerment or these great podcasts to help them hear other working women’s experiences and then move forward. I believe that it is about helping each other step forward to help each other master the ‘non-guilt’.
Follow the footprints others have made and land standing up and experiencing a revelation of NONGUILT. We are all in this together and talking about it, brings it to the forefront and then it can be batted away, like a pinata that eventually falls once beat one enough, so will the guilt. It’s a matter of harnessing the power.
5) Follow Passion
Don’t just jump back into the world of work unless you can honestly say you love what you do. If you follow passion a paycheck will follow and guilt will not.
6) Define Friendships
Guilt is as guilt does. If you surround yourself with people that don’t believe in working as a mom, you will end up taking on all that negativity and really have guilt wearing you down. Define your friendship circles, wrap yourself into work groups and church groups and social activities that provide for the working mom. Groups that meet after work, or with kids, or on weekends or at restaurants. It’s not about the house, the place it’s about having fun, and not being made to feel awful for your decision to work.
7) Grab Me Time
Remember, for you to be at your best you have to be at your best. Who are you? How did you get to where you are? Do you have hobbies? Enjoy sports? Do them, activate your life and keep on being you. Me Time is essential to functioning on all levels from being a mom to working and thriving. ME time is essential to you whether it is grabbing a glass of wine and kicking back with a book or taking a bubble bath, do it for you, and then come back to the world stronger and revived
8) Schedule & Maintain
Schedule everything, and maintain that schedule. Chaos kicks in when there is no schedule. Sure you can throw the schedule out when the time is right, but weekday scheduling to make it through work, and any kid commitments are crucial. Owning your life starts with owning your schedule. Account for your time, keep in on track and don’t let the world run you, you run your world. This is the most critical step in ridding guilt because you can only take on so much and this part of the ridding mom guilt starts with being able to say, “NO!”
Lavishly live life out loud and rid that working mom guilt!