As moms, it can sometimes feel like we’re constantly being forced to choose – like life is a constant push-and-pull battle between family, finances, and fun. Most of us want that lucrative, impactful, and fulfilling career we’ve always dreamed of. And we want a happy, balanced, loving home that allows us to be present and involved moms and partners.

And we also want to feel like ourselves – pursuing hobbies, building our dreams, and simply enjoying life right? So why does the modern world make us feel like we have to choose? Like we simply can’t have it all – or at least not all at once?

The truth is, mama, you can have it all – the family, the finances, and the fun. But how on earth do we drop the struggle and decide we really can have it all? It all starts with shifting your mindset.

The Power of Your Mindset

Did you know that your brain is plastic? No, not the kind of plastic they use to make Tupperware containers and water bottles. I’m talking about the other definition of plastic – meaning something is pliable, malleable, and able to be reshaped.

This remarkable process is known as neuroplasticity – a phenomenon that quite literally allows your brain to be rewired, reshaped, and entirely transformed in a process that goes something like this:

• Every emotion you experience, thought you think, and action you take is triggered by the firing of an electrical impulse in your brain that travels down what’s known as a neural pathway.
• When you frequently or intensely think a thought, feel an emotion, or perform an action or skill, those neural pathways become strong and well-paved – making it easy and effortless for your brain to continue sending signals down this “superhighway”.
• This is how we experience things like “muscle memory” or doing things on “autopilot” – and how we can get stuck in recreating the same patterns over and over. It’s simply our brain sending impulses down easy-to-navigate and familiar neural pathways.
• But when we begin deliberately thinking new thoughts, cultivating new emotions, and/or practicing a new action or skill, our brain is forced to start blazing a new neural pathway.
• As your brain tries to forge this new pathway, it’s the equivalent of bypassing your trusty, smooth superhighway and instead traveling down a bumpy, overgrown dirt road – which can understandably feel uncomfortable, unnatural, and downright challenging at first.
• But if you keep using this bumpy, overgrown dirt road, it eventually becomes smooth and well-paved – becoming easier and easier to navigate until it can replace the old roadway entirely.

This ability to forge new neural pathways to intentionally rewire and retrain our brains is the secret sauce to having it all as a mom. It’s how you can quite literally transform your brain from feeling overwhelmed, burnt-out, and forced to choose – to feeling empowered, capable, and ready to create the life of your dreams.

Mindset Hacks to Help You Become the Mom Who Can Have It All

The key to having it all is rewiring your brain to believe in a new identity as a mom who can, in fact, have it all. Rewiring your brain doesn’t happen overnight and definitely takes some concentrated effort. But with time, repetition, and practice, you can hack your mindset to become the woman and mom who has the kind of life and fulfillment you’re craving.

Here are some of the most potent mindset hacks you can start implementing today to become the woman who no longer has to choose between making money, being there for her family, having lots of fun, and loving yourself along the way.

1. Your Relationship with Time

A lot of us, on default, have a pretty negative relationship with time. It can be so easy to slip into default “autopilot” thoughts like: There’s never enough time, or I’m just so busy, or I need to hurry up and do XYZ!

But these are simply thoughts your brain is defaulting to – they are not facts. When you start intentionally shifting your thoughts in a way that creates a more positive relationship with time, you’ll notice that these feelings of stress, rushing, and scarcity begin to melt away. If you choose to start thinking and feeling like you have plenty of time to do everything that’s important to you, your actions will start aligning with that and you’ll begin using your time differently.

If that sounds far-fetched right now, a good place to start is by asking yourself, “what DO I have time for?”. And then find ways to start incorporating things that are important to you rather than simply jumping to the next thing on your “to-do” list.

2. Ditch the Affirmations and Use “In-Between” Thoughts

Affirmations (the repeating of positive statements) are often touted as a particularly powerful way to transform your mindset. But the truth is, much of the time, affirmations can be a total flop – and sometimes can actually have the opposite of their intended effect.

That’s because your brain is smart – like really smart. So, if you’re repeating an affirmation that your brain thinks is total bulls#%t, there’s no amount of repetition that’s going to make it believable. So, rather than repeating an affirmation that is some far-out, idealistic version of what you want, practice reaffirming something believable.

For example, instead of repeating an affirmation telling yourself you have all the time you need when you feel frazzled and like you’re juggling a million things, start with an in-between thought – and try telling yourself something like “I have enough time to do [insert small task/10 minutes of self-care/etc.]. These in-between thoughts are actually believable and can serve as baby steps to get you closer to the mindset and life you really want.

3. Practice the 1 Degree Rule

When you’re trying to make changes or accomplish a goal, looking at how far you have to go can feel overwhelming and defeating. And this can result in feeling paralyzed and unmotivated – making it an uphill battle to get any traction. So instead of constantly focusing on your end goal and how far you have to go, get in the practice of using the 1 degree rule.

The 1 degree rule is a concept borrowed from the world of aviation. Pilots are taught that for every one degree a plane veers off course, it will miss its destination by one mile for every 60 miles it flies. So while a 1 degree shift in flight course is nearly imperceptible at first, this itty-bitty amount of movement adds up in a big way.

And the same can apply to your mindset and your life. If rather than focusing on your end destination, you instead focus on those tiny 1 degree shifts you can make each and every day, they will eventually add up and create changes beyond your wildest imagination.

4. Ask Better Questions

Your brain is a problem-solving machine. Present it with a question and it will immediately get to work trying to figure out the answer. So, one of the most powerful and effective mindset hacks you can implement if you want to have it all, is to ask yourself better questions. Some examples of some garbage questions that your brain might like to default to may include things like:

• Why is money always tight?
• Why can’t we just have more fun?
• Why does this job suck?
• Why don’t I feel more connected to my spouse and kids?

If you really want to hack your brain and start creating a life that has everything you want, let’s come up with some more productive question like:

• How can I start making an extra $300 a month (or insert any number that feels just slightly out of your comfort zone)?
• How can I make this more fun?
• What do I enjoy about this job? And what would I like to be doing career-wise if I could do anything at all?
• How can I find more ways to connect with my spouse and kids?

See how the first set of questions sends you into a spiral of negativity? But the second set of questions is empowering and sets your brain to work on finding positive solutions.

5. Stop Building Someone Else’s Dream and Start Building Your Own

When we’re young and working our way through the “checklist” of life, it seems like we’re full of life and ambition. We work hard to finish school, get that job, find the partner, have the kids, buy the house, or whatever your “checklist” looks like. And then once we check those major boxes, we sometimes kind of just stop dreaming and growing and settle into our lives.

We can find ourselves feeling like we’re simply living for our job, our family, or both. And like we don’t have a ton of purpose or direction other than to get through the day and cross things off our to-do list. But life is way too short, and your purpose is way too big to simply sit on the sidelines and just get through life.

To truly have it all, you have to tap back into the part of you that has dreams, goals, and aspirations. These don’t have to be some crazy, lofty goals – like running a marathon, making a million dollars, or writing a novel – but they should feel good to you and help you grow. And once you figure out what you want, make the decision to start taking tiny actions to build your own dreams – not someone else’s.

Ready to Be a Woman Who Has It All?

Your brain and your ability to rewire it is hands down the most powerful tool you have when it comes to creating the life you dream of and having it all. You don’t have to choose between a fulfilling job, a great relationship with your family, a healthy body, or fun and leisure. It’s all available to you.

The first step is believing that you really can have it all. And then, it’s just a matter of intentionally harnessing the power of your mindset to become the woman who has it all. And the best part is – this process never stops. Once you start dreaming and growing, it’ll spark more dreams and the next level of “having it all”.

So, to all the moms out there, I say we refuse to choose. It’s time to create the life that lets you have it all!