Stress Management for Moms

Visitors to this website often ask about stress management for moms. Being a “Mom” is a job for life, 24/7, and how you handle the responsibility is dependent on many things. There are work responsibilities that have to be handled independently from personal responsibilities with family members and friends. Trying to juggle everything within a limited amount of time is always a major challenge. Stress management for moms becomes a balancing act between other's demands and your own self identity. Women are often conflicted between pursuing their own aspirations or putting these goals on hold while attending to their life priorities of raising kids. Consider these perspectives as you address your job as “Mom.”

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

Stop and take a long look in the mirror. What do you see? Is this a woman who is comfortable with who she is and know where she is going? Or is this a woman in conflict? Stress management for women often involves knowing who you are—in other words being comfortable in your own skin. You will find at any given time in your life you will assume a variety of different roles, such as wife, cook, housekeeper, nanny, taxi driver, career professional, and friend. The amount of time you dedicate to each role changes as kids grow and leave the nest.

Taking time to stop and assess how things are going is an essential way to get on track with your life before time passes by too quickly. If you are not happy with the way things are going, it’s time to review your life priorities make a change. Being overwhelmed with stress doesn’t do anyone in your family any good. You need to be taking care of your own personal desires so that you can be better equipped physically, mentally and emotionally to take care of your family needs.

Create A Set of Personal Goals

Next in the stress management for moms program, establish your own personal goalsb based on life priorities. Knowing what matters in life and creating a directional path to attain your own goals helps keep you balanced during the stressful times that come along. One of the best stress management tools out there is simply allowing your inner compass to chart your own life course. Embracing 3-4 SMART goals helps you make decisions about which tasks are more important to address and when it’s appropriate to say “no” to certain requests for assistance. As a mom, you can’t do it all.

Build a Network of Support

Effective stress management for moms can not easily be achieved without a support network of trusted friends and family members. Even when your kids are infants and toddlers and you may be chanting nursery rhymes all day—living in isolation brings on the feeling of being out of touch. Isolation can increase the stress you are experiencing if you are not able to interact with the world around you. However, with internet and smart phones, such isolation can be a thing of the past. Stress management for moms includes regular communication with a variety of enriching and non-judgmental peers. Cast your net wisely. You don’t need many close confidants but those who you choose should provide support during both stressful and happy times. Seek to surround yourself with like-minded women who share your core values. Return the favor by being a good friend to your friends.

Maintain a Positive Inner Voice

There is nothing worse than playing the comparison game with other women. There will always be some mom who is more efficient, prettier, thinner, richer, or seemingly happier than you. Forget about it. Take care of your own responsibilities and if you fall into a comparison game, rev up your gratuity journal. Journal writing is a great tool to maintain your perspective and stop any self-depreciating comments that start within your head. Stress management for moms stops the negative inner voice from taking hold. Spending your valuable time listening to this negative inner voice gets in your way of living a fully productive and happy life. If you are allowing negativity to affect your life, write down the common negative comments and notice what patterns keep re-occurring. List the comments and rewrite them into positive affirmations. This can take some practice, but keep working at changing negative comments into more positive statements. Stress management for moms includes being happy with the way you are without criticizing yourself for not being perfect.

Here's another great website I recommend. Visit the Best Advice From Mom for more advice about stress from a mother and grandmother.

Moms and Stress

The Importance of Best Friends

Stress Relief Tips for Moms

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