Cara Harvey 00:00:03 Welcome to the Purpose Driven Moms show here at A Purpose Driven Mom, we believe that it’s possible to manage your home, work on your personal goals, and grow and scale an online business. Most productivity tips out there tell you to hustle more and make you feel shame about not being motivated enough. And we’re here to dispel this myth. I’m Kara Harvey and I am on a mission to help work at home. Moms realize that they have the power to go after their dreams, take care of themselves, and manage their home without perfectionism, guilt, or having to sacrifice their sleep. If you’re ready to shift your thinking around productivity and get some practical tips to help you manage your mom life, toss your earbuds in while you fold the laundry. And let’s do this! Welcome to the first episode, 421 gearing up for the end of summer. And I want to talk to you about the lessons I learned. Having a slowed down summer. The past few summers, I’ve tried to do less when it came to work and hustle so that I can be refreshed.

Cara Harvey 00:01:01 The school year is tiring. Let’s be real. It’s a lot of hustle and bustle. It’s all the go, go, go. And I wonder sometimes why we do it. I wonder why we continue to grind ourselves to the ground to keep up with other people. Just waiting for summer. This summer I decided I wanted to take some lessons that I could bring into my school year, and I’m going to share those ones with you. show notes. They’re going to be at a purpose for romcoms. Let’s practice for 21 and let’s talk. Maybe your kids are back at school by the time this airs. It is the first day of school for my kids. My kids are going to be in first grade, third grade, and 12th grade. So we are embarking on senior year. I don’t have a kindergartener anymore. Everything feels, like it’s moving very fast. And that was my biggest lesson was how much I loved slowing down. I’m going to cliff notes to my summer and some of the things, and I’m going to pull out these lessons that I’m going to take into the year.

Cara Harvey 00:01:55 And I want you to try to do the same. I want you to reflect on your summer today. I want you to think about how it’s gone, what you wish you did, more of, what you did less of. And then I’m going to give you some tools to kind of help make this a reality, and not just a thing we do. At the end of every summer, we reflect and we say, this is how things have been, right? Let’s really talk about it. Last summer, I decided I didn’t want my kids to go to camp the whole summer. Typically, my kids had gone to camp 9 to 3, both of them, and my daughter aged out of the camp that they went to at the preschool. So I thought, let me try this. I was realizing that summer for us was starting at 4 p.m. and I didn’t want that. I wanted more time with them. So I did kind of a 5050 split. We had about five weeks of camp maybe, I think it was 660, 46 weeks of camp, four weeks off.

Cara Harvey 00:02:40 Two of those weeks were vacation weeks and the other two were staycation where we were home, went to the beach. We had slowed down and it was really nice. So this summer I decided to do the same thing. I want time with my kids. So I said let’s do it. And I had all the intentions. I set up all my camps like I teach you to do. I did it in January. Everything was ready to go. I had backwards planned my work. I’m like, great, I can work these days. I can not work these days. And then two of the weeks that I picked for camp, we lost because of planning. One was a planning situation. We had to move the camp. There was no other week that my daughter could go. It was for a Girl Scout camp. So we just, you know, got the refund on that one. And then my son went up having surgery and he’s fine. Tonsils his fourth set of tubes. And they said the recovery could be up to two weeks.

Cara Harvey 00:03:21 We didn’t want to risk it with camp. So he didn’t go that week. And so that means he really only had like three weeks where he was at a camp, and I was not prepared for that. I had prepared myself for five weeks of camp. Right. I was like, all right, five weeks on, five weeks off, we can handle this. It’s one additional week for me, right? I added one last week of camp. So one more week of, we call it mommy camp of being home not prepared. And I loved it. But there were some things I wish you had done differently. One of those things that I realized I hadn’t done well enough was planning right. I had pre-planned out a lot of what summer would look like. I had thought about working from home with them, what I was going to do I had batched. If you’ve been listening to the podcast over the summer, I had batched a bunch of episodes like I was ready to go, and then I lost those weeks and it really threw me for a loop.

Cara Harvey 00:04:10 A couple things happen. One was that I had opened up my schedule so people can have calls with me because I thought my kids were going to be at camp, so people had booked with me, but my kids were home. So that really threw my schedule off, because when my kids are home, I wanted to be more present with them. So on those weeks, I found that I was doing my work calls. They were really great. They understand the boundaries, very minimal interruptions. We’ve kind of train them well of the routine of mom doing things like this in the office, but then I wasn’t getting any of my computer work done. So lesson one for me was when going to plan for next summer, I want to make sure that I’m frontloading more of the computer work. I have a webinar coming up. Make sure you come and check us out. The club is opening soon. We’ve got the conference in just a month from airing. Actually, I’m so excited. So when I’m recording this, it’s early August and I just went today to the venue.

Cara Harvey 00:05:02 I checked it out, so excited, me so good. But there’s a lot of computer work I had to get done, and I realized I hadn’t given myself enough time to do that during the work hours. So my number one lesson when it comes to working is to make sure I frontload more of the stuff I have to do at the computer. And this is easy to do because I know what it is. I have systems, I have operating procedures. This webinar, right. I knew the date of the webinar. I knew when I was doing it. I have a maybe a couple things I’ll change on the slide deck, but we have the emails written from last time we have the page done. I could have done all of this in June, and then when it came to August, all I really needed to actually do was update a few things, but I did not. In my brain, I was like all up time later and I kept putting it off. I wish I had because now I’m at the point at 7:00 at night when I’m recording this.

Cara Harvey 00:05:51 It’s not my ideal time, but both my kids are at sports. My husband’s at football with my daughter, my or with my son. And my daughter is at cheer. And I was like, cool. I have a little bit of quiet time in the office. Let me record. This episode was supposed to be recorded three weeks ago, but because I had lost that time and I got behind on my batching, here’s where I’m at. So this is the lesson I want you to take into the rest of the year is batching works. If you can create systems and procedures and if you know, hey, these are the next things I need to get done. If you’re rinse and repeating webinars, if you’re doing your social media, all of those things that you can do in advance, do as much as you can. Now, I will say I recorded a lot of podcast episodes before school ended, and that was so helpful. I think I’ve had to do two. The last episode in this episode is the only two I’m having to do over the summer, you know, after school ended, which is really good feeling, but I wish I’d done just a little more.

Cara Harvey 00:06:40 And so I want to remember this. I want to remember going into next summer to batch your podcast episodes ahead a little bit longer. Make sure you’re pre-planning anything you can. So when you are working with your kids home during the summer in particular where you want to have a slower vibe, you want to get it done. You don’t just want to. I want to get on my coaching calls. I want to get on my the interviews I’m doing. I want to help the people in my coaching group, and then I don’t want to work with the computer stuff. And what I found happening was the computer stuff was getting left to last minute stuff was getting done sloppy. I’m feeling really frazzled because of it, and that is actually something that is in my control, right? There’s stuff that’s not in my control. My son scheduling the surgery last minute, like not in my control, but what is in my control is I know that I record an episode and it launches every Monday. Look, I know these things, right? So what’s in my control is getting them done in advance.

Cara Harvey 00:07:29 The lesson I’m going to continue to take, I’m taking that one for next summer, but I’m taking it to the end of the year. Having the podcast batch was beautiful for me. It was so much less stress. I didn’t have to worry about it. And I used to do this all the time and I got really off my rhythms. So this is something I want to make sure I take into the fall and into the holiday season is I want to be batching. So I’m going to continue to have kind of a push in September where I get as much as I can get done, especially for us. We move to the conference September 28th. Then again, purpose of romcom slash conference. I don’t know if we’re gonna have tickets by the time this is airing. We only have ten tickets left at this exact moment in real time. So we might not have them left then. But we’re going to close this out. We’re moving right into summit planning, and we’re starting to plan our summit for the end of March, which means I’m on interviews.

Cara Harvey 00:08:14 My time is limited, so I really want to use September to batch. I want you to ask yourself, when it comes to working from home, what sorts of things can you do in advance? What things are in your control? I think a lot of times we get into this victim mindset of like, well, I can’t work because my kids are home. False. I can maximize my time. Listen, I dropped my kids off, I came home, I ate my dinner. It was so I wanted to turn the TV on so bad I was like, I never get the TV to myself. But I said, I’ve been itching for I have not had my kids out of the house. Like for let me think. Yeah, it’ll be almost four weeks that they’ve been somewhere out of the house, like at a camp where I’ve had time to work. I’m going to take this time and I’m going to use it. Then maybe I’ll go watch my TV while I do some stuff on my computer.

Cara Harvey 00:08:55 But it’s really that intentionality. So I want you to remember that your business is in your control. For some things. Take the stuff that you can control and do them in that way. I could have pre-planned a little bit better. I could have done these things in advance so that I could have a slower summer. And I don’t always need to batch this hardcore. I don’t need to always do things three months in advance. So don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to. But if you know you’re having a season like the holidays are going to be here before we know it, I don’t want to work once we finish our 2025 planning challenge, which tends to be like the second week in December, I don’t want to work very hard. Between that and the new year, I want to also take a break. And so knowing that that’s coming, it’s predictable. I know it’s going to be here really sets this fire under me to say, okay, what can I pre-plan and get done? It doesn’t just have to be work stuff could be everything you could have done.

Cara Harvey 00:09:46 All right. So that was one. I’m going to pause to invite you to something brand new. We’re doing here at 2 p.m., and that is the very first in-person, purpose driven Mom conference. September 28th and 29th. I am hosting an event right here in Philadelphia that you can attend where we can be together live. The goal of this conference is to help you decide what dreams you want to work on, what goals matter to you, and to really embrace the person you are now in motherhood. We’re going to spend time mapping out the end of your year, creating time blocks for you to work on these dreams and goals. And I have three incredible guest speakers coming to help you embrace and love your mom life journey and go after your goals and dreams. This event is been on my heart for years, and if you go to a purpose driven romcom slash conference, you can hear and read all about it. And I want to let you know that this event will sell out. We will be capping around 60 attendees, so as soon as it sells out, it is done.

Cara Harvey 00:10:46 I want you to head to a Purpose Driven mom.com/conference, or check out the Shownotes for the link and come join us in Philadelphia. We are going to have the most incredible experience. It is in September. You have enough time to plan to make it happen, to tell a friend, we cannot wait to see you at the Purpose Driven Mom conference and have some in real life time together again. That’s September 28th and 29th, and you can go to a purpose driven Nme.com conference to learn more. Number two thing I learned was how freeing it is to remove some people pleasing tendencies that I have. So I am working on it. Right? I actually there’s a certification I was going to get in July. I didn’t get it. I haven’t gotten it yet, so I think I’m still going to work on it. But it’s on people pleasing. It’s a life coach specialization certification with people pleasing. And I was like, I need this and then I will help other people with it. I did not realize the amount of pressure I was under like this school year to quote unquote, perform for others.

Cara Harvey 00:11:41 And I worked this through with my therapist for the past couple of months. But I really have found myself back into unhealthy, people pleasing behaviors. And maybe you can really feeling like you can’t say no. Feeling on edge a little bit pressure. For me, it’s always like, I don’t want people to feel left out. So inviting everyone to do things this is, I don’t know, remember if I shared this on the podcast, but last Halloween, this is something that happened. My daughter, you know, I had talked to one of my friends who has a kid her age about trick or treating together, and then it turned into a whole thing and we had like 20. It was a big a big group going trick or treating. I thought it was going to be so much fun. My daughter had the worst time ever. Kids were pushing in front of her. She felt like she was getting yelled at more than other kids. Some people’s parents weren’t like watching their. It was not as much fun and she does not forget that.

Cara Harvey 00:12:29 And we’ll say, mom, remember Halloween’s coming. I don’t want to want to trick or treat with anybody else. Right. And so it’s that kind of, well, I don’t want anyone to feel left out. It comes from a good place, but it’s been detrimental to me. And I didn’t realize how hard it was hitting me until this summer when I backed up So I just gave a business tip. Let’s talk personal for a second. I backed up in the summer. Now we see people all the time in the school year. My kids are walkers, so we walk to school, you know, we talk to everybody. Hey, what’s up that we see at school? Very social. You know, people at pick up and drop off and they’re in sports. They’re in activities like we’re constantly with and around people. And over the summer, when you’re not constantly with people, it’s hard to remember people. And I notice this a lot. I tend to be. If you’ve ever read the Life Council, I highly recommend it.

Cara Harvey 00:13:15 It’s like, I think the subtitles ten friends every woman needs one of these is the yes friend and the yes friend I am for a lot of people. I have a yes friend for myself, but there is a yes friend in other groups. And this is the person who’s always like, coordinating activities and stuff. I realize that I’m that person. Like I’m always the one, hey, let’s go trick or treating. Let’s go to the playground, let’s do this. And then all of a sudden, summer hit and nobody was texting me to hang out, and I got my feels about it. I’m not gonna lie. I talked to them in therapy. I was like, wow, that’s like actually really hurtful Because I’m realizing that I’m always thinking about other people, but people aren’t always thinking about me. But I had to also, at the same time remind myself, I currently probably have about 22 text messages that are unread in the summer. I’m just moving at a different pace and so is everyone else.

Cara Harvey 00:13:57 So I’m not. I’m not mad about it. I’m not upset about not getting invited to things as much like the FOMO of that. Like completely is dissipated. I used to get really in my in my feels about that one, right? Like, why are they hanging out without me? Like feeling left out. And this summer was really good for me because it reminded me a few things. One, I actually don’t care that much to hang out with 100 people I would rather have like a core group of people. It’s nice because my kids have each other to play with too, so they weren’t asking for a ton of playdates because they have each other. But also, I realized one I don’t need to be always filling our schedule with other people. Like we’re okay without it, and it doesn’t mean what I was making it mean. Sometimes during the school year, if I didn’t get an invite or my kid, I would feel like a lot of things about it. But in the summer I started, you know, if I see people hanging out on Facebook, whatever, I just didn’t care because I realized that it isn’t about me.

Cara Harvey 00:14:51 I have all these text messages people are trying to it’s it’s just the summer vibe I’m getting back to people late to, and it was actually freeing for me to realize that not everything is about me. If you’ve ever heard the art of saying no, this is a really good one. You cannot change how people think or feel or act or respond. There’s four in there. I’m butchering that little think, feel, act, respond whatever. You can’t, you can’t. You’re not in charge of that. And one of my core issues is I’m a little controlling. Like I want to control those things. I want people to think things or feel things. And I, you know, I want to control everything. I work on it in therapy. Right. But one of the things I realized was like, it’s not all about me. People aren’t doing things to like and listen. Maybe somebody was like, I want to hang out with Kara, but because it was like, out of sight, out of mind, like summer is, we’re all busy.

Cara Harvey 00:15:37 Everyone’s got different schedules. We just didn’t see as many people and I didn’t feel any obligation to make an extra effort, like I made a general effort if my kids asked to hang out with somebody, if we wanted to go someplace, if, you know, like I would text somebody and be like, oh, you want to go to the park? Or, you know, I made some effort. But I tend to do this like above and beyond effort because I don’t ever want anyone to feel excluded. And it’s really tiring for me. It’s a mix of like, that’s not my job, but like, I don’t want to I don’t want him to feel bad. But the lesson here was one not everything is about me. I think that was a big lesson. But also, you don’t have to say yes to everything. And that was really eye opening. I don’t know what it was about summer, but I just realized, like, I don’t feel any obligation to make anything happen. And I liked it.

Cara Harvey 00:16:27 I didn’t want to step into that cruise director role in the summer, and I didn’t. And guess what? It’s fine. We’ll get back to school. We’ll have play dates, girl Scout starts again. We’re going to be fine. But it was really nice to back up. Which leads me to my next lesson, would I? As much as my kids are annoying me right now, I loved all the time with my family. That was the best success of the summer was hanging out with my family. We spent so much time together. We went camping. We were out in nature, a lot of tech, less time, like just being games. I, I loved camping, I’ll talk about that in a second, but we spent a lot of time together and again, now we’re cruising to the end of summer where we’ve been inside too much. It’s been raining or too hot. My son’s recovering from surgery, so I think we’re in that like we’ve had too much time together phase. But what I will say is I loved every not every minute.

Cara Harvey 00:17:20 That would be such an exaggeration and a lie. I loved having time with my family, is what I’ll say, and the lesson I want to then take into the school year with that one is we’re going to say no to more things so that we can spend more time together. Now, this is challenging because sports have just started, and so I’m trying to make these decisions and I want you to do the same. Football started footballs four nights a week and my son is seven. He’s not seven yet. He’ll be 7th September fifth, but he’s almost seven. Four nights a week is a lot. But this what he wants to do. We went back and forth about it. So football’s taken up our evenings. My daughter is in competitive cheer. That takes up a lot of time too. She’s also in Girl Scouts. Well, this year it came to do you want to do Cub Scouts again? To my son. And he was like, no, I’m good. And my immediate thought was the FOMO, that fear of missing out.

Cara Harvey 00:18:03 But our Cub Scout den is our friends. It’s funny. It’s the Girl Scout brothers, basically. And they. I really like those people. I like hanging out with them. It’s super fun. And I started, oh, he’s going to miss out. We’re not going to have time with our friends. They’re going to forget all that, those thoughts. And I said, what? Why would I even do something if he isn’t like super into it? And so we had a family talk and the discussion became the activities we’re doing this year are going to be ones that you love. If we’re feeling mediocre about something like, we’re not going to bother. Last year, soccer, I signed my son up for soccer. So you went to soccer? He said. I guess so, right? He was six. In kindergarten, soccer is like, quote unquote a thing people do when they’re that age. So I signed him up so we could try it. He didn’t really love it. I said, you wanna do soccer again? He said, no, right.

Cara Harvey 00:18:47 That’s how we know football. My kid got his pads that day. He’s in the backyard wearing them like he is in my daughter with cheer saying, I don’t want to do things just because they pop up. I want to be very intentional about our schedule because our schedule is tight enough as it is. And so I just want to encourage you, as you’re going in the school you’re starting, you’re going to start seeing everybody posting their fall sports and then their fall activities, and you’re going to be like, oh, my kid should, my kid should. What is your kid want to do? And there is this exploration phase where they have to figure it out. I think my kids have kind of figured it out, which I feel really fortunate. My oldest took him to about fifth grade to realize basketball was his thing. So we did the three sport thing for a while. I really just want you to go and make intentional choices. It is okay to say no to things. There were times the summer people would be like, you wanna go splash pad? We have a pool.

Cara Harvey 00:19:33 So like, I’m okay. Like that being a splash pad. So I would As much as I’d want to hang out, I’d be like, no, we’re just going to hang out at home today. And it’s scary. Isn’t it scary saying no? I was like, oh, what are they going to think about me? But sometimes I just don’t have the bandwidth to be social and I just didn’t want to. And that is okay. And the lesson I’m taking into the fall is that it’s okay to say no, fill our schedule with things that provide us joy, and then be intentional about family time. We started a family monopoly. Super excited about it. We love games. I noticed also when we came back from our vacation to Tennessee three weeks ago. This has been the hardest three weeks we’ve had, and it’s because we came back and things went right into mommy’s got a ton of work to do, much more TV time. Isaiah surgery, like my son’s behavior was not good. We were really struggling.

Cara Harvey 00:20:19 And I, I recognize that it’s because he’s been he had too much tech. He went from he’s a very creative, very active boy. He went from the first half of summer where we were outside and swimming and moving, and he got to get that energy out to the second half of summer, where it was more like, mommy can’t play a game right now because I gotta work or it’s raining. So you’re stuck inside. But I gotta go work. So, like, you know, like it was just boiled up and there was a lot of tech. I even noticed it today I came home, I went downtown to look at the venue for the event. I came home, my husband was working from home. He parents, leans toward the TV more than I do. So I know that they’ve been watching TV all day and I could see it in their behavior. And so I want to take this into the fall of we need to be outside. We need to be together as a family.

Cara Harvey 00:21:02 We need to keep our tech boundaries. I would say we kept our tech boundaries about 70% of the summer. I had made some tech boundaries at the beginning of the summer of when we were having tech and when we weren’t, and we kept them about 70%. I feel good about that. The weeks that we kept our tech boundaries were harder. Parenting weeks for me because they require me to be a more active parent, but that is the parent I want to be. I really recognize this year like I want or this summer, more time with my kids, and I want to figure out how to make that happen in order to have that time. So here’s how we’re tying this lesson. Back to lesson one. In order to have that time with them right where I’m not feeling pulled, I gotta go work. I’m behind, I’m behind, I’m behind. Because that’s how I felt for the past three weeks. I need to do the pre-planning and the batching in advance. Right. So when winter break is coming and my kids have two weeks off, I want to have the things done.

Cara Harvey 00:21:53 I want to be able to take the actual time off. So you see how it all ties in. Now, what about you? How could you pre-plan to eliminate some guilt? It allows me to work at a better schedule for myself when I pre-plan, and then I get the time with my family. When to pause real quick and invite you to an absolutely free webinar that I’m doing on August 28th that is going to help you find seven hours to work on your goals without feeling like you have to get up early or stay up late. I know that it can feel challenging to find the time in your schedule to work on all the things you want to work on, so I’m going to be going through my method that has four parts to it to allow you to create a plan for yourself for September and beyond. That will help you not put the goals on the back burner. I know that you created these amazing goals in December. You set down, you were so excited. And then January hit.

Cara Harvey 00:22:41 Still a little excited. And now we’re getting ready to go into September soon. How many of those goals have you accomplished? Do you need help figuring out how to find the time? That’s what we’re going to talk about at this workshop. If you go to a purpose driven romcoms seven hours, you can get your absolute free seat, sign up, it’ll get you access to the replay if you can’t get on live. And we’re going to talk all about how to find that time without sacrificing your sleep, without feeling the mom guilt that you should be doing something else, and without burning out and hustling all the time. It’s possible, and we’re going to talk about it. Go to a purpose driven romcom set seven hours and I’ll see you there. the other thing I learned lesson wise this summer is making sure to keep the self-care habits that fuel me in the summer. Summer meant later nights, later mornings, things like that. I wasn’t in therapy a lot this summer because of my schedule. I was like, well, I don’t want to be in therapy when the kids are here.

Cara Harvey 00:23:29 That’s what I told myself. We didn’t get to church as much because as we were traveling. I wasn’t doing my reading in the morning, and my mental health suffered a lot in the past three weeks, kind of coming out of a fog right now for my anxiety. If you’re new, I struggle with some high functioning anxiety and there are just times I came back from vacation. Everything kind of went on this downward slope. I felt overwhelm, my brain spiraled, I kind of withdrew, and I wasn’t doing good. So I immediately was like, let me make a therapy appointment. It’s been about three weeks. I need to talk to my therapist. And the lesson on that one is therapy and all of those self-care things we do to, quote unquote, fill our cup. Those are proactive strategies that we should be using all the time, not just when we are feeling stressed and burnt out. It’s one thing to be like, I’m really stressed today. All right, I’ll go do some yoga.

Cara Harvey 00:24:12 Well, your cup’s like already minus minus, minus five, minus five, minus five, minus five. And then you’re like, let me do one yoga plus five. But I’m still -30, right? That’s why we do the self-care regularly. That’s why it’s frequently in our calendar, because this way it’s being used. It’s like that five and one. Have you ever heard this? Like with our kids? Like our kids need, five positive interactions or even, I think humans, five positive interactions for every one negative interaction. Right? You need to constantly be filling your self-care cup when you don’t need it. So when you do need it and the burnout is there, and the overwhelm and the anxiety and the stress you can pull from it, I knew it right, but I started to forget it. I started to get into habits that were not. I was watching. I personally was watching more TV. I was getting sucked into stuff. It wasn’t fueling me the way that I needed it to feel me.

Cara Harvey 00:25:00 And then my last one is just that I want to get away. We went camping at the start of summer. It was the best it was. We’ve never been tent camping. I loved being outside, I loved hiking, I love slowing down. I love that our biggest decision was, what game are we playing? And I want to bring that into my real life, I think. I don’t know actually if I’ve shared this on the podcast, I’ve shared it in the purpose of my mom club. But my husband and I got back from our first camping trip and we said to each other, I think we do this. And so we are actually, I’m about to move into dream mode. I teach it a concept, dream, learn, plan and do. I was going to do dream mode this summer, but I just it didn’t fit in. So in September I’m moving into dream mode on what this would look like for us to when my oldest goes to college next year, get a trailer, and travel mildly full time.

Cara Harvey 00:25:44 And I say it that way because the way my husband’s job is, he can work from home sometimes maybe 4 to 5 days, so maybe two weeks out of the month. It just depends on on what’s going on project wise for him. He needs to be home in the summer and the rest of the year is a little more fluid. I can work from home, right? So I’m going to go into dream mode. And we decided next year when my kids are going into fourth and second grade, we’re going to take them out of school, homeschool, road school, if you will, and travel. So we might go away for one week, come home for three or go away for three weeks. Come home for one. and just go see the world will all work on the road. My husband can work on the road. We’ll get to experience this as a family. My kids are at the perfect age for it, and it’s something my husband and I both feel really passionate about. So, you know, we talked about it with When my daughter is sad, she’s like, but here I’m like, we can come back to everything.

Cara Harvey 00:26:31 We’re not selling our house. So it’s not like we’re doing this full time, and if we don’t like it, we can come back, right? Like we can leave for a week, come back. I’ll just re-enroll them in school and we’ll keep it moving. And so that was a huge decision that we made. And probably my biggest lesson from summer is that if I put all the things I said today into one little pretty bow, it equals taking this year to travel, to be with my family, to be in nature, to slow down, to not worry about what other people need. It’s funny because as soon as I told people about travel and it was, how did it impact them? Right. But if you leave, what about me? Right. And and and and it’s human nature, so won’t fall to anyone. But it was just fascinating that that was, you know, the initial talk and then the pre-planning, the big one. Right when I’m home, right. Say we’re home for two weeks and then we’re going to go out for two weeks.

Cara Harvey 00:27:15 I record all my podcast episodes. I get as much work done. So when I’m on the road, I log in to do my coaching calls, when I have to do the minimum and then push when I’m home. So it was really fun. It has been a very fun summer. We’ve been working really hard behind the scenes on the Purpose Driven conference. I’m so excited to meet everybody in person today. When I was walking through the venue, oh, chills. Like it’s just going to be so transformative. So it’s been an amazing summer. We still have one vacation to go. So when this airs the week before, we would be at the lake with my sister. So I still have one more vacation to go, which that is the other lesson, the pre-planning that was poor planning. I’m so used to going back to school after Labor Day that I didn’t think when we booked this vacation that in August we’d be fine. Well, it overlaps with football, which like isn’t a huge problem, but next year I would rather not if we’re going to play football, but well, actually, as I’m saying it, maybe this won’t be an issue at all next year because we’ll be on the road, you know, God willing.

Cara Harvey 00:28:06 But we go to the lake, we come home. My daughter is chair choreography, and then Monday she starts school or they both start school. So there’s no like, transition time. Now, what are we going to do with all this reflection? Hopefully, as I was talking, you started to think about your summer. You started to think about what worked, what didn’t. I want you to go to. One of my favorite free tools is called Future Me. Go to Future Meat dot Morgue. You can write yourself an email and send it to yourself to remind yourself all these things. So what I think I’m going to do is I’m going to take this podcast, put it into one of the transcript softwares that I use, and I’m going to email it to myself, and I’m going to have it come out in April once the summit ends. And I kind of go into my recipes and then I start planning. So it gives me enough time to batch, it gives me enough time to think, it gives me enough time to plan and get ahead.

Cara Harvey 00:28:50 And it’s going to be like a reminder of all the things I wish I knew at the end of the summer. You can do these all the time. You can send it to yourself next summer. You can send it yourself in a month. I use this tool for myself and my clients. At least once a week I will send myself the tiniest little reminders, write of things I just don’t want to forget. It’s a great little online assistant. It’s free. You can donate because I think they’re a nonprofit if you want, you know? But you don’t have to future me, dawg. We’ll put all those shownotes up at a remarkable podcast for 21. Thank you for hanging out tonight. I said, tonight it’s nighttime. I don’t know when you’re listening to this, but I’m used to, I’m like, it’s nighttime now. Again, not my ideal time, but here we are. Have a wonderful end of August. I hope that the school year has started. Good for you or will start for you wonderfully.

Cara Harvey 00:29:35 If your kids haven’t started yet. And again, come hang out with me everywhere. Purpose driven mom and we would love to have you in our community. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Purpose Driven Mom Show. If this episode served you in any way, we would really appreciate it if you headed over to wherever you listen to podcast, hit that five star and leave a review and a rating. That’s how more moms can find us and we can grow our community. If you had a tip or an make sure you come over and tag me at a Purpose Driven Mom on Instagram and share it with your friends. The best way for us to get this message out there of less hustle and less shame and more intentionality, is for you to share it with people you know need to hear it. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you and I can’t wait to connect with you more outside of the podcast.