Balancing Act: Prioritizing Yourself Without Guilt

Find out more about my next workshop Thriving Together: A 1/2 Retreat for Mums and Teen Daughters by clicking here 

Summary
In this episode Louisa Larado discusses the importance of self-care for women, particularly mothers. She emphasizes that many women often prioritize others' needs over their own, leading to burnout and resentment. Louisa shares simple strategies to reclaim personal joy and create healthy habits that not only benefit themselves but also serve as a positive example for their children. The conversation highlights the significance of modeling self-care and the impact it has on family dynamics and personal fulfillment.

Takeaways

• Women often put themselves last, especially mothers.
• Creating a list of activities that make you happy can reignite happiness.
• Prioritizing self-care is essential for personal fulfillment.
• Small daily habits can lead to significant changes in mood.
• Modeling healthy habits influences children positively.
• Taking time for yourself can increase overall productivity.
• Living on autopilot can lead to feelings of emptiness.
• Self-care is not selfish; it's necessary for well-being.
• Leading by example is crucial for inspiring others.

Find out more about my next workshop Thriving Together: A 1/2 Retreat for Mums and Teen Daughters by clicking here

Want more? You can check out my website for more free resources or follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

Disclaimer: The information contained on today’s podcast has been provided as general advice only. The contents have been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or individual needs. Before making any decision regarding the information, strategies or products mentioned on today’s episode, please consult your own financial advisor or other professional first.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Cost of Putting Others First
• 5:53 Breaking the Cycle of Autopilot Living
• 9:08 The Importance of Prioritizing Yourself
• 14:21 Creating Healthy Habits for the Family
• 16:43 Finding Joy and Rediscovering Passions

Transcript

hi and welcome to the Living My Life Like It's Golden podcast. I'm your host, Louisa Larado And today I just wanted to have a chat about what I see holding so many women back and stopping them from living a more abundant, fulfilled life. And it's something that is just so, so simple to fix with a few simple strategies. And I wanna share those with you today. So stay tuned for that.

Thank you so much everyone for tuning in today and I think this is a really important conversation that needs to be had and I think there's quite a few people that need to hear this message because it is so normal for women, especially those that are mothers, to always put themselves last, to take care of everyone else around themselves first before prioritizing themselves.

And this comes at a really big expense because in order to do this, in order to be everything for everyone else, then we're failing as women to take care of ourselves, to prioritize our own self-care. And I don't know anyone that is actually happy by doing that. It definitely brings some joy and happiness to...

nurture and care for others. But when it is constant, when it becomes a chore, when it becomes draining, it can actually lead to a lot of resentment and a lot of burnout. And you just need to look around to see that we are busier than ever. It is the norm to be busy. It is the norm to have kids with these really packed schedules that you're dropping them off here and there. It is normal to just be on the go constantly.

What is not normal, in fact, what is thought of as more as selfish is women taking more time for themselves to do the things that they feel passionate about, that recharge them. And I want to speak from my own experience. So I took ages to learn this lesson myself. And I remember becoming a mum for the first time, which was just over 15 years ago now. And all of a sudden,

my life just transformed to having this child that depended on me for everything. that sort of, that pattern then continued in so many other areas. All of a sudden I felt like I had to be the one that had to do everything, that there was this big responsibility on me. And it was not because my husband wouldn't help out or anything, it was definitely nothing like that. He was amazing.

But it was because I felt like I had to control this situation and to have control of the situation, I needed to manage everything. needed to look after everyone else, make sure everyone else's needs were met, make sure things around the house were done the way that I like them to be done, made sure that my husband's needs, my kids' needs, my friends, my family members' needs were always met before I even thought about.

spending some time for myself and even that became like a foreign thought to me. And over time you forget, you lose touch of what do you actually enjoy on your own? What did you like to do? Like how many of us have lost that connection to what really lights you up? What really makes you happy? Is that something that you take time every single day to prioritise in your life?

And I think the big reason for this, well, I know for me personally was all the role models in my life showed me that this is just what women did. And I had an amazing mom growing up. She was a stay at home mom throughout our whole schooling. And she was always there for us. You know, every, all of our needs were always met. We'd always had food to eat, beautiful clean house. She was always taking us to wherever we needed to go. And I'm

witnessed her putting us before her own needs our whole life. And then when I had my own kids, I looked around at my friends who also had kids and they were doing the same. And what we learn through the role models and the examples that we have in our life. And if that is just the norm that we do everything for everyone else, we need to have more control over our lives. So we feel like nobody else can ever do a good enough job or stack up to our

the way we want things to be done, even if people offer help. I don't know about you, but I can think back on the amount of times that people have asked me, can they do anything to help me? And I always say no, even though I would love help. And I don't know why I do that, but I think it's this ultimate feeling of, I just don't feel like anyone else can do the jobs or the things I need help with to the standard that I want them to be done. And I want to have that control of it.

And this happened for ages, like, and it's still now and then still happens and I need to remind myself of this now. But what I realized through this process was that when I'm prioritizing everyone else around me or all the things, and sometimes it's the most stupidest things like just prioritizing having all the dishes put away or clean the laundry basket emptied, like stupid things that literally do not

impact my overall health, happiness, wellbeing really in any way. But there are these things in my head I think I just have to get done and I will prioritize that over taking five minutes to myself. it just doesn't make sense but we have these really high standards and these really high expectations on ourselves and I see so many women doing the exact same thing. And what ends up happening, at least for me,

was I found I was just living on autopilot. So I would go through my days, day to day, exact same thing. It felt like on repeat. So wake up, get the kids sorted, get myself sorted, school drop off, go to work, come home, kids activities, making dinner, cleaning the house, maybe exhaustingly.

crashing on the couch for half an hour to watch a show before falling asleep and repeating the same process again and again and again. And it feels like when you're living that way and you're on that busy mode all the time, you're always in that doing, doing, doing, you feel like you've always got to be on for everyone else. What that led to was just never stopping to enjoy the moment. And it doesn't feel like you're living, it feels like you're just...

existing, you're going through the motions, it's the same, basically the same day on repeat over and over. And to me, that is not a fulfilling life. Where the fulfillment comes from is really in the little things in the present moment. And there's some really simple ways that we can create these in our day. But before I talk about those, I want you to know

that it is not selfish to take a bit of time to prioritize yourself. In fact, it is the opposite. is selfish if you don't because I know for me when I was in this doing mode, when I'm doing everything for everyone else or I'm controlling every situation, I am definitely not the best version of myself. I'm maybe appear to be doing really well, but on the inside it feels I feel resentment. I feel

angry, I feel frustrated, I feel burnt out. Really isn't the ultimate goal of life is you want to do things that make you feel good. Really that's what we want. We want happiness, we want freedom, we want flow, we want ease but really why do we want those things? Because we want to feel good. We want to move away from pain and into feeling good. So when we are

doing and controlling every situation because we feel like that's just the way we have to be. What that does is generally it doesn't feel good. Whenever you're controlling something or you're doing something out of obligation that is putting you in that sort of like mind. So you're feeling that resentment, that anger, that frustration. And all that does is it just creates more things in your life that

lead to anger, resentment, frustration and that's why this cycle continues. And you know there's a reason on the planes where they say put your oxygen mask on before you put on anyone else's because you can't care for yourself, you can't be there for other people if you are running on empty. You can't look after those around you, you can't show up and be the best version of yourself.

But also if you have daughters yourself, and I do, I've got two daughters, what role model are you setting them?

Louisa Larado (09:42)
Do you want them to be on that constant, busy doing mode where you just feel like you've got to put everyone's needs above your own? Like, is that really what you want for them? So we need to remember that the biggest teachers in our children's life, despite what they're consuming on social media and all the influences they're watching.

We really are their biggest influences. They learn through watching how we are, how we are in our life, how we interact with others, how we handle different situations. We're setting them up with all these ideas and beliefs and thoughts of how the world works. And you need to be mindful of what those stories and what those versions of yourself that you want to be teaching to your children.

that you really want them to be if you want them to be successful because I know as a mom, I want the best for my kids. And in order for them to have the best, I need to show up to them as the best version of myself. And what I noticed is when I started prioritizing my own self care, and I'm not talking about

you know, spending days and days doing stuff for myself. I'm literally talking about starting with a few simple habits. it could be like five minutes every morning to go enjoy your cup of coffee outside in nature and do some grounding or something like that. Really simple things. It doesn't have to be anything massive to start off with. These little habits where you know you're

getting to that point where you are getting burnt out or feeling frustrated, where you can actually stop and do something for you,

Not only will that help you transform your own mood and help you feel a bit better in the current situation, but it's also showing your children, if you have them, when things get too hard or when things get frustrating, you can actually stop and take some time for yourself. Stop and prioritize yourself. And then they can start doing the same thing in their own lives.

It's really essential for women to have this toolkit of strategies and tools that they can use when things aren't going well, when they are feeling that frustration or they're feeling too busy.

So when I personally started doing this, it literally started with like a five minutes every day of doing something just for myself. It wasn't anything big. And it would always be something really simple like enjoying like a herbal tea outside in nature, maybe bare feet, doing some grounding or reading a chapter of a book that I like. Reading books was one of my passions before kids and then I completely forgot about it for about 10 years. And that's something I recently really got back into again is reading.

So maybe reading a chapter of a book or I really enjoy writing. So doing some writing or going for a walk in nature. Little tiny things to start off with. It doesn't have to be big. And then once you start feeling a bit more comfortable about that, you start to implement a few more habits that help set you up with your day. So now my day always starts in the morning, going to the gym.

almost morning, so every morning there's a few rest days in there, but it starts with movement because I know the days that I move my body, I feel so much better. My days always involve a bit of like healthy meal prep as well because I know that's going to set me up for some feeling really good when I eat good food, it makes me feel better. So let's just say on average in my day, there's about an hour.

Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less, but usually an hour of my day is dedicated to stuff that is just purely for me. Still means there's plenty of other time for everyone else, but what that time does, it actually makes, I've found, adding that hour that I take away from where I used to be rushing around in the mornings, getting school lunches ready, trying to do some cleaning or whatever I tried to do before work and school in the morning.

My time is so much more productive now. It is crazy. Like I feel like taking an hour for myself has like freed up an extra two or three hours in my day because when you are running on empty, when you're always doing stuff for everyone else, you find that you are just going through the motions and you're so much less productive as a result. And there's actual scientific proof.

Do your own research, but there's a lot of evidence to show you that. especially when we like multitasking and things like that, you are so much less productive. It's like you're trying to run around on petrol is on that, below the empty mark and the fuel light's been on for a week and you're still driving around. You're not gonna get very far. And that's exactly what happens to you if you're just in this doing mode, giving to everyone else mode all the time.

When you stop and you actually slow down and you start to take this time for yourself, it's crazy how much more time it frees up. Like my mornings, I wake up early, I go to the gym, still have enough time to get the food ready, still often have time to do whatever cleaning up I need to do and still usually have about five, 10 minutes to spare. can just sit and chill while I'm waiting for the time that we've got to drive off to school and work in the morning. it, I don't know how, but it just...

creates all this extra time in your day. Plus now I'm becoming this great role model for my kids. I'm modeling healthy habits. I'm showing them that it's really important to prioritize my self care. And they've noticed, know that I'm a way better person to be around on the days where I've done these things as opposed to the days where I'm not. I'm not a snappy, I'm a lot more tolerant of things. I'm a lot more easygoing and

Everyone in my family benefits from me taking that time every single day to do something for me.

And as a result, my eldest daughter, my 15 year old has just joined up the gym with me in the last couple of weeks because she's seen the benefits of these healthy habits. I haven't asked her to exercise or go to the gym, but she's just watching and watching and seeing the impact it has on my life. And has now decided she wants that for herself. So it's amazing that I can create these great opportunities for my own children.

not by me doing things for them, not by me telling them you've got to do this and you've got to do that, but just by leading the way. if you're a mom or even if you're just a woman that has other people that look up to her, I want you to know that it is so important that you do these things for yourself so that you can feel better and that you can be a good role model and you can

Be an influencer to all those people around you in your life and they are going to get so many of the benefits of it. Now, if you're not even sure where to start though with any of this, especially if you've just been in this autopilot, busy doing, giving to everyone else mode for a long period of time, often we forget what we actually really enjoy.

Louisa Larado (17:07)
So what I want you to do is I want you to make a list and just brainstorm on this list all the different things you think of that make you happy, that light you up, that bring you some joy. And it doesn't have to be big things. You can definitely put some of the big things on there, but anything that you can think of. And if you have forgotten what these things are, because maybe it's been a while since you've done any of these actions.

then think back to what you used to enjoy. Think back to when you were a kid, what were some of the things you used to enjoy doing? And have this list out and you can definitely add to it as you go. But big things, little things, just create whatever that you can think of. So it might be going for walks outside, it might be going down to the beach, walking in nature, might be having drinks with friends, getting on the phone with a loved one. It might be playing board games.

doing something creative like painting or drawing. Maybe it's training yourself to manicures or pedicures or some other sort of beauty treatment. It might be making a gratitude list each day. Maybe it is gardening or any other hobbies that you enjoy. So it really doesn't matter what goes on your list. This is only for you. You know when else it's going to see it. But I want you to...

challenge yourself in the next week to try and do one thing off your list every single day this week. And if you've got a really busy day, just schedule a little thing in. And just when you're doing these things, do them mindfully. Don't be on your phone. Don't be scrolling through things. Just fully enjoy the moment of doing whatever the activity is that you have chosen. And...

Just notice how that makes you feel. And this is just a really simple step to get you started. But what this is going to be doing is setting you up to...

start prioritizing yourself and you can definitely add more things as you go. Maybe there's something you haven't done for ages and you think I really want to get back into that and you can take this as your permission to give yourself to do that thing. To start off whatever it is you want to do. Maybe it's making a change to your diet. Maybe it's to start doing a little bit of exercise or just going for daily walks or move your body in some way.

Maybe it's just to drink enough water or to go to sleep half an hour earlier or wake up half an hour earlier so you have some time to do these things if you don't think you have the time in your day. The next thing I want you to do as well that's really going to help you set yourself up for success is schedule these activities into your week. So if you do like a weekly planner or if you've got a diary or your phone or wherever you plan your days, schedule in.

when you're to do these actions because that little action of prioritizing it is going to make you a lot more likely to make that happen. Now, these are just a few little tips to get you started over the podcast in the next few weeks. I want to share a few more tips to help you live a more abundant, fulfilled life because you really deserve to, not just for yourself, but for the benefit of everyone around you. And I really want you to live your best

happiest life. Now if you are in the Perth or Mandurah region I am holding a live in-person workshop in a couple of weeks.

Now it's called thriving together and this half day retreat is going to be a special time for moms and their teenage or young adult daughters to come together and have a morning of self care and inspiration. And you know what, being a mom is hard, but being a teenager or a young adult is also hard. So it's so important that during this time we're prioritizing things like self care, self love and lifelong healthy habits.

And this will help you just get through this period without burning out and keeping your relationships intact. So during the workshop, we'll be covering topics like self care and wellbeing practices, mindfulness, understanding and managing codependency, healthy habits and goal setting and empower decision-making. It's gonna be such a fun morning and just really inspiring and empowering for those who attend.

If you're in the Mandurah or Perth region, you can find out more at louisalarado.com slash thriving, or you'll find the link in the show notes below. If you can't attend this workshop, if you're not in the area, then just stay tuned to the podcast.

Make sure you're following along or subscribe to this podcast so you can get so many more great tips to live your most abundant life. If you've enjoyed today's episode, feel free to share it with a friend who you know will also benefit from it or leave me a review. Now I'm looking forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thank you so much for listening.