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. All right. Hello, I am live over in the Facebook group. Hey, I am live over on Instagram. I’m live over in the Facebook group. I’m live on the podcast. We’re doing all sorts of live things today because I wanted to share a little bit of an moment.

Cara Harvey 00:01:00 I had post conference and figured it would be a good tip for you. So I’m going to try to look straight ahead because I’m here on Facebook. I’m also going to be over here on Instagram. So if I’m looking up, I’m looking around. You’re watching this on YouTube later because we’re probably going to put it on the podcast. I’m looking all over the place, but I wanted to talk to you about why you need to stop waiting for the perfect week. I just came off the conference. It was absolutely phenomenal. But I had the post conference hangover and I was struggling to get myself back together. And so I was doing my planning this week, and I was talking to my husband, and I said, I feel like I’m just always waiting for a week to be quote unquote, normal. Have you ever found yourself there where you’re just waiting for the week to be normal? I said, oh, I was away for the conference last week. Now here I am. I’m going away Friday with my book club.

Cara Harvey 00:01:44 We’re going to be going away for a trip, so I’ll be gone Friday, away for the weekend. And then we come back. My kids have a day off of school. We come back, then I’m away again. You know, there’s just always something that throws the schedule off. And I thought about it and I thought that if I added it up, like between summers and between just regular schedule, we would have more days that are inconsistent. We would have more days that are not normal. Then we actually would have days that are normal. Think about that. The three months of summer, there’s always something to move in the schedule around, right? That’s just three months out of the 12. Now think about every time your kid has a day off of school, right? Think of it every time you’re on vacation, every time you’re doing something else, it changes things. But we’re always waiting for the perfect week. And I realize I was saying that to myself. I found myself in this repeated pattern of, well, I’ll just do it.

Cara Harvey 00:02:34 When the week lets me catch up. I’ll just get back together when I can have time to catch up. Do you ever find yourself saying that? And I was putting some goals off. I was putting off cleaning my bathroom, which I just did, by the way. I was putting off getting organized. I was putting off doing all these things until I had the perfect week. Maybe that’s happened, right? And I wanted to remind you that while you’re waiting for the perfect week to happen so that you can get caught up, your life is happening around you. Your goals are sitting on a pretty vision board that you made for 2024. Those dreams in your heart, those things you wanted to do, that book you want to write, that podcast you want to start that home decor project, that Reno project, that thing that’s on your heart is just chilling there. And it’s waiting and it’s waiting and it’s waiting for you to say, I’m tired of waiting for perfection. Now we have this thing in the purpose of Mom Club.

Cara Harvey 00:03:23 We call it intentional in perfectionism. It’s like, I know it’s not going to be perfect. I know that the week’s going to be funky, but instead I’m going to go in with the intent that I’m going to do my best with what I’m handed. And I want to remind you that there are no perfect weeks. There are no days where everything goes smoothly. I can’t even tell you, in my 40 years of life that I’ve had a full seven days where everything has gone to plan, where I’ve completed everything on my to do list, where I’ve checked every box off, where I felt super focused on everything every minute of the day. It doesn’t happen, but we spend so much time waiting, right? We’re just waiting and we’re waiting and we’re waiting for the week to be perfect so that I can catch up on my laundry. I just need the week to be perfect so that I can sit down and get that work stuff done. I just need the week to be perfect so that I can figure this out, but it’s not going to be perfect.

Cara Harvey 00:04:13 And last night we were doing planning and I was talking it through with my husband. I was like, I keep waiting. I keep saying, oh, I’m ramping up for the perfect week. I’m ramping up for this thing to happen, when in reality all I’m doing is wasting time that is precious and finite. When I could be moving the needle forward. And I’m using perfectionism as a procrastination tool. And this was like a big thing we talked about at the conference. Like, maybe you’ve been there where I was like, waiting for the time to prepare. I will get in my morning routine and my workout when my kids are sleeping in. When my kids go back to school, I’m going to go work on that passion project right when I have all the time in the world this summer, right? That’s what you think. I’m going to work on this thing, and we keep having these goals we want to work on, but we’re actually just procrastinating. And it’s tied hand-in-hand with our perfectionism.

Cara Harvey 00:04:57 And then procrastination becomes our tool that’s getting in the way. We think we’re being smart about it, right? Like, oh, I just I’m not putting too much on my plate right now. And that’s real. Like, that’s reasonable. But if you find yourself taking the same goals and over and over and over again, like looping them through, I’ll work on them when I’ll work on them. What if you find yourself saying, I’ll work on it when you could be using procrastination as this tool that’s getting in the way of your goals? I said with the conference, I shared this seven years. It took me to feel, quote, ready seven years to be ready in order to do it. Once I decided I was ready, it was game on. Like we had a great event. The book never was like on my heart, but I kept thinking, I’ll put it off and put it off once I decided I was in. Where have you not decided you’re ready to be in? And where has that happened? In a place where perfectionism has taken a hold on you.

Cara Harvey 00:05:47 I have so many things and I’ll tell you, okay, this conference originally was supposed to be my book launch. Book number two was supposed to come out. That was the plan. There’s no book. I’ve not written a word. Right. But we have the conference anyway, I Definitely allowed perfectionism to become my procrastination tool around this book. I was waiting, well, I’m just so busy and this is me. Like, I know the things and I’m saying it right. I’m just so busy. I have too much on my plate right now. I’m working on this business thing. I’ve got this thing going on in my personal life. I never can work on it. And guess what? I didn’t do this year. A second of work on this book that I know needs to be written, especially coming off the conference. The content of the conference actually is the content that’s going in the second book, which was just really cool to get to see it and apply it and teach it in real life.

Cara Harvey 00:06:34 I left that weekend being like, I cannot believe I haven’t written this book, I can’t write, and it’s because I allowed myself to wait for perfect. I do it too, and I’m the one teaching it. So I figured I was like, let me talk about this. Because again last night, I’m sitting there with my husband and I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m going away. And I listen, don’t get me. I’m super excited. I told my team this morning, like, what first world problems like, oh, I have to go to the winery with my friends this weekend. Like, oh, woe is me, right? But I was like, oh, I could just use some routine. I could just use my structure back. But it’s when we learn to adapt around that that the magic happens. It’s when we’re able to adapt and say, I’m going to work on things when they’re not perfect. I’m going to work on things when my schedule isn’t the best. I’m going to work on things anyway, that things move forward because, yeah, and that’s the small steps, because we need to be looking at the progress towards our goal and not just the end goal.

Cara Harvey 00:07:24 When all you’re looking at is, this is where I have to go, I want to run this five k, I want to write this book, I want to run a conference. All these big things we want to do. It’s so easy to procrastinate because the time isn’t right, but instead when you break it down in the small chunks that we teach, when you move forward, tiny, tiny, tiny steps, right? That’s when you’re able to say, I’m going to move and look at progress over perfection. And it’s cliche and we all say, but it’s true. I tell the members of my community all the time, there’s two pieces of your goal, right? There’s your goal, the thing you want to accomplish. Then there’s the habit of showing up for your goal, right? It’s really, really important. I want to chat with you now and invite you to grab one of my top free resources that have been downloaded almost 4000 times, and this is my ultimate weekly planning checklist.

Cara Harvey 00:08:12 If you are ready to go into your week feeling less frazzled and more in control, this checklist is for you. It’s going to help you set up your week, save time running around, and plan out all the time you need for you, your goals, your family, your business, the whole thing. It’s the exact same checklist that we use in the Purpose Driven Mom Club every Sunday. And not only do I give you the checklist of what to follow to plan your week, but I will give you a Trello board if you want to use Trello with it. Absolutely free with a video tutorial, it is going to take you less than 30 minutes a week to plan the week and save you hours. If you want to go and snag this checklist, you can go to a purpose driven romcom slash podcast checklist and it’ll be there absolutely free for you again. Go to a Purpose Driven Mom Complex checklist and get your copy. It’s not always about did I complete the thing? Did I write the book? No.

Cara Harvey 00:09:00 Did I show up for it? No. Okay, right. We all have these goals we show up for and maybe we don’t hit them, but it’s in the showing up. The magic happens. I had a weight loss goal this year. I want to lose some weight. I’ve lost about £10. I feel really good about it. Right? I didn’t hit my official goal. The year is not over yet. Whatever. But I’ve showed up. I had an injury, I’ve got back to back injuries. I had a car accident two years ago. I hurt my arm last September. I’m actually coming back from an injury that like is still not fully healed. And I showed up and I did my exercises and I feel stronger and I feel great if I only looked at the scale. And this is a great example because it’s a common one. But like insert goal here, right? If I only looked at the scale, if I only looked at that one piece as my measurement of success, I would feel like a failure.

Cara Harvey 00:09:41 Every minute of my day. I would feel like I was doing everything wrong. I would feel like I didn’t know what I was doing, but if instead I said, how about I celebrate my progress? How about I stop waiting for this to look perfect on the scale? In order for me to feel like I’ve achieved something? Well, that’s that’s it. Right? That’s what we need to do. So I want you to think about a goal you have for the end of the year and ask yourself, what are the steps I need to be taking to move forward on them? How can I move forward on them. And how can I celebrate that? We talked about the todo list at the conference. This is really the celebration of showing up for your goals. This is really saying like, what did I do today to show up for my goal every time I finish a workout right now, like today, I did some push ups. I have to do them on my knees. I cannot fully support myself in my arm a year later, so even modifying every time I’m done with a push up or any plank or anything where I have to hold my arm up because I tore ligaments in my arm here and I had to rebuild all that strength I get done and I’m like, I’m so proud of you.

Cara Harvey 00:10:33 Way to show up for that. Because you know what I could do? I could just skip the pushups completely. I could be like, I’m not doing any. But you know what I did instead? When push ups show up in my workout and I’m just giving this exercise example because it was something I did today, I couldn’t do them at first. Right when I started different programs, I’ve been doing them. I started doing wall pushups, like I’d stand against the wall and I would push myself so I didn’t have to put the pressure on my arms. I’m now to the point where I can do them modified on my knees, maybe one fully up, but my arm just it just doesn’t have the strength. And I could beat myself up and I could say, you’re not doing it perfectly. Or I can say, look at what you did do. And like. Speaking of exercise, we talked about this at the conference. Someone had a question about how do I show up for movement. I barely any time.

Cara Harvey 00:11:10 I said five minutes. She’s a doctor. She’s super busy. She like wants to do some movement. I said, what can you do? She’s like, I can walk around the hospital. I can walk from my car. I can take the stairs. Let’s focus on that. Like, let’s focus on those small, tiny things instead of the perfection of what I can’t get an hour workout in. It doesn’t matter. I can’t get an hour to write my book. I might as well not even show up, right? That’s what our brain wants to tell us. But that’s not the truth. That’s us using perfectionism to procrastinate on a goal in a dream that we have. One of the things that I always share with people is like, there are people out there waiting for you to hit your potential so they could reach a higher level of theirs. And it’s not to put pressure on you, but it’s to say you can empower people by the way you show up. And when you’re not showing up at all, you can’t do that.

Cara Harvey 00:11:52 Right? So my question for you today is what are you waiting for? I want you to think about something you have going on for the rest of the year. It’s end of year time. And ask yourself, what am I waiting for? What is the goal that I put that big one? Go back to 2024 vision boards. Go back to the pretty one. If you cut pictures out, use Canva. Whatever you did, go back to that vision board and ask yourself, what was the one goal that I put on here that I really wanted to hit? What was the one goal that I was like? I do not want to miss this goal and I haven’t made progress on it yet. Pick that one and the goal right now. October, November, December. We got three months. It’s not for you to complete that goal. I want you to make your goal for the rest of the year. I want you to make it that you’re going to show up for that goal a certain amount of times a week, three times a week.

Cara Harvey 00:12:30 I’m showing up for this goal, whether it’s five minutes or an hour, whatever it looks like. And I want you to stop being afraid of moving forward imperfectly. And I want you to embrace in perfectionism and allow yourself to say, I’m going to show up. Pick that goal. I want to pause today and thank Balanced Ness for being one of our sponsors, not only the Purpose Driven Mom conference, but of this podcast. If you want to unlock your family’s true potential, you’re going to want to head over to Balanced nest.com/chart, because here’s what she’s going to do for you. She’s going to just help you discover how understanding your family’s unique human design can transform the way that you parent, teach you how to tailor your approach to meet your child’s specific needs and actually make deeper connections. I went through and created some of these family charts to understand my family’s human design, and it was absolutely eye opening. It helped me go through and navigate parenting with confidence. Part of human design and doing it with your kids and your family is helping learn how to align your parenting style with your child’s natural energy.

Cara Harvey 00:13:28 No two kids are alike, and you’re not the same as every other mom, so why are we trying to parent the same? This is going to make parenting made personal. It is not one size fits all approach. It’s a personalized roadmap. If you want to get your own free, personalized roadmap, you can go and head over to Balance nest.com/chart. Fill it in for your family and she’ll send you back an entire report and what to do next to help empower your family’s growth and live a harmonious life. Isn’t that what we all want, right? Peace in our homes? Head over to Balanced nest.com/chart and get your free Human Design charts for your family today. Listen, I’m going to be doing some more quick tips as we gear into the new year. I’m doing an end of year planning half day, I would say, because it’ll go like 10 to 2 workshop. It’s on the 17th of October, so this is going to air on the podcast on October. I don’t know, it’s going to air after it comes out.

Cara Harvey 00:14:20 A purpose driven romcom slash podcast for 31, I think. But you can go to a purpose driven romcom slash end of year planning right now and join us. It’s $27, you can get in. We’re going to plan out your goals for the end of the year. We’re going to plan out the holidays. We’re going to get your menus planned, your gift list done, your time block set so that you can go to the end of the year feeling like you’ve moved forward, that needle on any of your goals. Okay, so it’s a purpose driven mom.com/end of your planning. If you have more end of year planning stuff that you want me to cover, I’m showing up more on my socials. That was a commitment I made to myself post conference social media. It tends to drain me a little bit so I don’t feel this like urge to show up. But this is what I’m gonna tell you. Let’s be real. I just talked to my team about this morning. I was allowing perfectionism to get in my way of showing up on social media because I was like, oh, look, I don’t have any.

Cara Harvey 00:15:08 like I put my makeup on this morning. It’s pretty much done. Like I don’t have my makeup on right now. My hair is kind of done. I don’t really have a plan. I don’t have a strategy. Like I was like, oh, I can’t show up on social. And I said, I’m getting in my own way, which is what stemmed me to do this live today. I’m getting in my own way because I’m allowing the fact that I can’t show up in social media perfectly to get in the way of me showing up at all. So I said, let me make a small goal, and I have a little sticky note here, and it’s taped so I can’t show you, but it says, just show up on my stories daily. I said, oh, I’m going to do this week and show up on my stories. I have no content strategy. I’m just going to do it. And then I felt inspired, which is what happens. We start to show up for our goals slowly and then we get inspired.

Cara Harvey 00:15:44 I didn’t plan to do alive today, but I was thinking about it and I was like, you know what, screw it, I’m just going to go live. I went above and beyond my goal, pat myself on the back. I’m proud of you, Kara, for showing up on your live. It was a bonus. I want to start getting to weekly lives next week, but hey, here it is. And I’m going to move forward because I’ve been allowing perfectionism to get in the way of showing up on my social media. One of the things I realized was that we could have had so many more people at join our conference if I had done a better job of sharing on social media, but I just got tired and I didn’t want to show up and I was like, I don’t have the perfect strategy I got in my head. And so I’m committing to myself for the end of year. This is my goal, is to show up on my social media so that I can reach more moms point blank, and I want to anchor in that.

Cara Harvey 00:16:24 Why do I want to do it? Because I want to reach more moms. Because I want more moms to go after their goals. Because when moms are achieving their goals and when moms feel good about themselves, the world is a better place. That’s it. I’m going to get out of my head with the rest of it and show up. So what’s your goal? If you’re live on Facebook with me, comment on the video. Replay if you’re live here on Instagram, comment here on the replay as well and go to a purpose to vermont.com/end of your planning. Come and join us. We would love to see you. Listen, if you’re listening to this in the future on the podcast A Purpose Driven mom.com/podcast. 431 if the audio is wonky, I’m pretty sure this is another one. My mic was not working. It was like clicking in and out when I got on. I have no idea if my mic’s even working. The sound might be terrible, but I thought this was the message I needed to get out there today.

Cara Harvey 00:17:04 And I cannot let perfectionism get in the way of somebody who needs to hear it. I want you to do the same Comment with your goal is come join us the end of your planning. Let me help you out. Have a great day. I’m going to say goodbye over here on Instagram, and then I’m going to say goodbye over here on Facebook. I’m going to be doing a lot more in this group coming. This is a commitment I’m making. I know I’ve said it before, but I’m showing up and I’m not letting perfectionism get in the way. So you let me know what is the goal you’re going to work on? Comment below. 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.

Cara Harvey 00:17:51 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.