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!

Cara Harvey 00:00:44 Welcome to the purpose of our Moms Show. This is episode 465 and we are going to be answering a question. What if it was easy? We are going to reframe our routines this summer and let you relax a little bit. Full transparency I can’t get my correct mic to plug in and I thought, let it just be easy.

Cara Harvey 00:01:02 We’re not gonna complicate it. So if this sounds a little wonky, it’s because I can’t get my podcasting mic to work at the moment. But this is the time I had scheduled to record, so we’re gonna let the perfectionist mindset work out the window and get started. I want to help you also take pressure off yourself. So if you want to check out the show notes, you can go to a purpose driven romcom for 65, because that’s pretty much what we’re gonna talk about. Releasing the pressure to have a perfect summer and releasing the pressure to make it feel like it has to be hard. Okay, I want you to think of these two questions as we go through and chat today. What if the summer didn’t have to be hard with the kids home, with everyone wanting your attention, with all the things on your plate? And what if you let it be easy? I just recorded a reel and I put it up on my Instagram over at A Purpose Driven Mom. If you’re not hanging with me, go hang with me there.

Cara Harvey 00:01:49 And it was one of my lessons of 2025. So far I’ve been doing my summer planning, my reflection. We just finished our big summer planning workshop and it was the, the the trend that’s going around. It’s like, well, what if this was the point, right? And I realized that my mindset has really changed around the struggle. I thought for so long that if you weren’t working hard enough, if things didn’t feel hard, then maybe you weren’t doing it right. And I let this mindset lapse the past few years, and I found myself tugging on it again. I found myself struggling because things were challenging again. Things were not coming as easy as they used to, and I thought, what if I just let go? What if I stopped trying to square peg round hole this whole routines thing, this whole business thing, this whole mom thing, all of it. And I just let it be easy. What would that feel like? And it kind of gave me this idea for this episode today, because I realized that we’re always chasing, right? We’re chasing more.

Cara Harvey 00:02:48 And in chasing more, we’re making things harder than they have to be. I want to encourage you this summer to let it go right. This year I read Mel Robbins book, The Lethem Theory, and this really did help me release the pressure of everything. This year I turned 41 this year, so I feel like every year I get a little bit older and I get a little more wiser, and I realize that I’m holding so tightly to what I think things are supposed to look like in fill in the blank, right? My health and wellness, my weight, my relationships. My marriage, my parenting. My business. Right. I’m holding so tightly to what my brain. And it’s not always society. It’s not always what I like. I really don’t struggle as much anymore with like, that comparison thing that I struggled with in my early 30s and in my 20s. Right? It’s not so much what other people are doing. It’s me. It’s the pressure I put on myself. It’s it’s the person I am.

Cara Harvey 00:03:42 I loved a challenge. I love to challenge myself, to push, to drive. Like all of those things fuel me. And I had kind of created this picture in my own head, this box of who Cara is. And the past two years, I’ve realized that those same things aren’t what’s fueling me anymore. I don’t need to fit into the box my own brain has made, and and it’s been really nice to release it. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about that today, because I feel like that mentality of it’s supposed to look like this can really bleed into the summer, and we get frustrated because this is what I know I often do. Maybe you do too. June, let’s plan all the things and the beach trips. We’re doing all the things by mid-July. We’re burnt out, we’re tired, and then we feel like, oh, we’re failing because we’re tired and we’re frustrated with our kids and everybody’s home, right? We’re also trying to make everything happen. I want you to let it go, okay? Because summer is different, but it doesn’t have to be that much different.

Cara Harvey 00:04:41 We think, oh, and especially maybe like me as a type heir. Right? Oh, well, like, I’m gonna be relaxed and stuff this summer. So then I let everything go, and then I get frustrated. It doesn’t have to be that way either. It can flow naturally. Things can be easy because here’s the problem with summer routines. School year ended and I share this in the last episode. Even on the weeks that my kids are at camp from 9 to 3, which is the same time they’re at school, it just feels different. There’s just something about it. So the, you know, the end of the school year anyway, we call it May Summer, right? Like May in those first weeks of June, that’s when my kids get done school. Your kids might get done earlier, right? I know my kids have field day next week. Then we have field trips and all these other things. So the end of the school year already feels disrupted. Then we get to the summer where the structure is kind of thrown away.

Cara Harvey 00:05:27 Okay, so what do we do? We overcommit. We overcommit to all these things that are pinned on our Pinterest board. I don’t even know if people are still on Pinterest. I was like, I haven’t paid anything to a Pinterest board in a while. But you know the concept, right? This beautiful vacation, you want to have the activities, we’re gonna take hikes, and we’re gonna go on walks and we’re gonna read and we’re gonna play, like all these things we want to do, which are not bad things, but we overcommit, like I mentioned. So those first six weeks of summer, 4 or 5 weeks we are going and then we burn out and then we get tired, right? There’s also this like mom guilt component right around productivity and screen time, lack of structure. We feel like, oh well, we should write, have our kids off screens. They shouldn’t be on the screens as much. It’s the summer they have to play. It’s like if I let my kids go on screens too much, then I’m a bad mom, right? So then we have this pressure to make summer quote unquote perfect, right? We want it to be perfect for everyone, and then we go over and above.

Cara Harvey 00:06:25 Then we don’t give ourselves the rest and relax time. But what if instead you let it be easy?

Cara Harvey 00:06:33 I want to take a quick pause and invite you to get my brand new reading tracker and planner. One of the cool things we’re doing here at APM is monthly. I’ll be coming up with a new printable to help you with your goals, and I’m a huge reader, so I made this for myself and thought, let’s put it together for our audience. If you go to a purpose driven tracker, you can grab this using the code pod ten and get it for only $10. This printable reading tracker has challenges, trackers, goal setting, and some fun gamification to make your goals a little bit more achievable and a lot more fun. Again, go to a purpose driven tracker and use the code Pod ten to get it for only $10. Only for podcast listeners of the Purpose of Your Mom show.

Cara Harvey 00:07:16 So whenever you’re listening to this, wherever you are at in your exact summer moment, it’s for me, like summer is kind of just starting to kick off for a few weeks of this going on.

Cara Harvey 00:07:24 When this goes live. Just remind yourself that it’s okay to be slower. It’s okay to be easy. It’s okay to work for you. It doesn’t have to look any sort of way. I want to reframe this narrative though, because when I say easy, a lot of people think unstructured, lazy, right? We our brain starts to say, oh, we’re just gonna be. So go with the flow. It doesn’t have to be that way. Easy is aligned. Easy is what works for you. And if it’s more structures for certain things and less for others, that’s okay too. But you have to define it. So remind yourself that when I’m saying let it be easy, I’m not saying, you know, you have to just take everything you’ve done all school year and throw it out the window. But I am giving you permission to, not that you need it, but just in case. Lower the bar a little bit. But intentionally. Okay. I’m giving myself some permission to maybe ease up on some of our tech rules in the summer.

Cara Harvey 00:08:18 Why? Because during the school year, we have our tech contract. We sign. My kids have certain tech rules. I’m gonna maybe give them more tech time on the days of their home. Why? Because they are home and it’s okay. My kids aren’t going to turn into gremlins. If I go from one hour on their tablets to an hour and a half or two. Now, I do notice changes in behavior when my kids have too much tablet time, so I’m gonna pay attention to that. But I’m not going to berate myself if I’m like, I must plan out every single minute of our day so that my kids aren’t on tech. That’s exhausting, right? And that’s not the easy that we’re looking for. I want you to honor this season as a chance for your presence and not performance. Hear me again. Presence and not performance. And I say all this from, like, a little snarky spot of I was just scrolling Instagram Reels, and I struggle here. You might have heard me talk about this.

Cara Harvey 00:09:11 I struggle with the social media aspect of my business. I am not a content creator in the sense of what an influencer looks like. I’ve been doing this for almost eight years before TikTok, before some of these platforms. I struggle and I’m trying to get better because I know that if I share my content right on social media, it can reach more people. So that’s what motivates me. But the setting up the tripod to do a fake wake up in the morning makes me want to vomit. Like I cannot stand it. And so Ava is so funny because I was before I got on this, I was like, all right, I need to record some B-roll, which is basically like me doing things right, which I am going to do. So I need to record some B-roll where I’m, you know, going and recording me at the laptop and things like that so I can use it for social media. But I try to do it in a place where I’m like, okay, what I’m doing now is recording B-roll.

Cara Harvey 00:10:00 I’m going to spend an hour, change my shirt a couple times, walk around my house and record it. The goal of this is B-roll. I feel so, like inauthentic when it’s like, hold on, kids, let me set up the camera so we can walk into the house six times like it grinds my gears. We actually I recorded B-roll of me playing with my kids, and I always ask my kids, this is just an aside. It’s connected, not connected to the episode. But, you know, we’re just rapping here. But we were playing a game and I was like, oh, this. I could see this working in content somewhere, right? Us playing the game together. And I always ask them, hey, is it okay with you if I post this? This is always and again, my kids are little so normally they don’t care. My daughter’s getting to the age she starts care. My oldest, I have an 18 year old. You might not see him a lot.

Cara Harvey 00:10:39 Why? Because he cares more. So you know he doesn’t want me to post all those things. So I asked him, oh, is it okay if we if I set up the tripod here and just record us, like we can just be ourselves and play the game. But I just wanted to get a video so that I can talk to other parents about ways to, you know, spend time with their kids. Is that okay with you? It’s different. It feels different for me. But and again, I don’t know what it’s like inside anyone’s house, but some of it just like, exudes phoniness to me. And I say all this to remind you, nobody’s following you around this summer with a tripod, okay? And if they are good on you, but they’re. Most of them are not. Let this summer be easy in the sense of this is for presence and not performance. I’m not if and I and I want to caution you that sometimes it can be easy to be like this is content.

Cara Harvey 00:11:32 And I struggle with this myself too, especially if you have a business where I pause myself. Like we went hiking on Mother’s Day. My kids were adorable. We did tons of things. I could have followed them around with the camera the entire time and gotten got tons of videos, but that I didn’t want to. I wanted to enjoy the time. And it’s funny too, because my kids are at the age. My youngest in particular. He loves to like climb on every rock or tree. Mommy, take a picture. Mommy, take a picture. Like that’s like how he is right now. And I’m like, I have to sometimes tell him, like, my phone’s away right now. Like we’re out hiking. Like I’m trying to enjoy time. I don’t want to be on my phone. The point of being outside the point of life is not to be on my phone. And so, you know, I caution you, if you get into that place where you’re just constantly thinking like, this could be content, that you might want to take a step back, because that’s not the point of life right now.

Cara Harvey 00:12:16 Yes, I’m going to probably record me and my kids playing at the pool this summer and put it on my social media in a reel about something, but it’s just that mindset shift. And so just to bring all this back together to reframing that narrative around easy, don’t feel like you have to have this picture perfect summer because someone’s gonna judge you because you’re putting it on social media. It’s not about that, okay? Let things be aligned for you and your family. So let’s talk about three things that I think are really key when it comes to letting it be easy. And when I’m talking about it right now, I’m talking about your routines. I’m talking about your summer rhythms. I’m talking about the structures and the systems that are going to allow you to enjoy your summer. Okay. The first thing that I’m gonna suggest is simplifying your routine. Don’t scrap it. Okay? Who I go into this, we’ve been. So we’re like this tightly wound ball all school year. And then summer hits and it’s, like, free for all.

Cara Harvey 00:13:14 And we want to just, like, go ham, don’t scrap it. I shared this in last week’s episode so you can go back and listen to, but I really suggest keeping things bare minimum, which we’ll talk about in a second, because it will also make your transition to back to school easier. Your kids need predictability and they need routine. They don’t have to be tight knit, minute to minute routines. You want rhythms and flows, so simplify your routine. Don’t scrap it. I want you to identify non-negotiables inside your routines. Things like getting dressed and brushing your teeth in the summer. Very simple one. But when my kids are not at camp or it’s a weekend or whatever. It’s easy to let the morning go by and then it’s lunchtime. Everyone’s still in their jammies. Nobody’s brush their teeth. One of mine. And this is my personal non-negotiable. I’m dressed right now. Again, my uniform is jeans and a t shirt, so I’m not fancy the makeup. If you’re watching on YouTube, this is the makeup I put on this morning.

Cara Harvey 00:14:06 I’m not gonna reapply. It’s pretty simple. Like, I straighten my hair in, like, five minutes. You know, I’m not doing anything fancy, but there is something for me about all of us just getting dressed and brushing our teeth in the morning. So, like, that’s my non-negotiable. Is that our morning routine? Whether we have camp or not, you get up and you brush your teeth. You put your laundry in the hamper, okay? Make your own. We like to have, like, an afternoon little respite mid-afternoon after lunch. We’ve been swimming for a little bit probably. Or they’re coming home from camp. Quiet time, down time, reading time, time with a book. No tech time or it’s just like a decompress time. You can go play in your room. I like to structure that in as a non-negotiable for my kids, because it allows them to just also chill out a little bit on their own. You might want to have non-negotiable. I want one on one time.

Cara Harvey 00:14:53 This is one of my big ones this summer with my kids. I want one on one time for at least minimum 15 minutes a day with everybody in my family. I will take a lap around the block with my son. I might go paint my daughter’s nails, right? Play a video game with my husband. I want to do something one on one with everyone this summer. As many days as possible, right? Ideally 5 to 7. It’s an hour out of our day, but it is so worth it to me. So what are your non-negotiables? Is it that the dishwasher gets loaded before you go to bed? Right. I have a robot vacuum. I like to run it every single night. You know, is it that the counters get wiped off, the laundry gets put away? What are your non-negotiable things that you’re like? I know these make me feel better. And also for yourself. I know in the morning, I get up and I exit. Here’s my morning routine. I get up around six, I go downstairs, I get my phone right away, which I know, you know, we shouldn’t do it, whatever.

Cara Harvey 00:15:43 But I call my photos. I go through my memories. It’s a system I have. I do my Duolingo and now I learn. That’s the other app I’m using. I’m trying to see if it’s better because I’ve hit a year on my Spanish. So I’m like, yeah, let me see what this app is doing or whatever. I do my Duolingo, it’s fun for me and I. And then I read for ten 15 minutes. Then I go work out for 45 minutes, shower, brush my teeth. That’s pretty much what I do every single day. It’s a non-negotiable for me. What are the ones for you?

Cara Harvey 00:16:11 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. 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.

Cara Harvey 00:16:31 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 checklist and it’ll be there absolutely free for you. Again, go to a purpose driven checklist and get your copy. I also want to remind you that it’s important to maybe rotate some things and rotate and have flexible routines that rhythm going through and saying, this is what we do in the morning, no matter what time we wake up, this is what we do before bed, no matter what time bed is now, this is an important one for me as well. My kids have a pretty late bedtime anyway.

Cara Harvey 00:17:24 My younger two, my 18 year old, I don’t even know. It’s like 2 a.m. I’m like, can you go to bed? But he’s going to college this year, which, oh my God, it’s just wild to think about. And so he’s got to learn how to manage his time. But my younger two, seven and nine, they have a 9:00 bedtime in the school year, which is kind of late, but we do a lot of sports and activities, so by the time everyone gets home, everybody’s showers. It is what it is. Some in the summer I might let them stay up a little bit later. Not long. I shared this last week like that time between 9 and 11. That’s me and my husband’s time, and I don’t like to give that up. And we don’t even get it every night because my husband, he plays Madden. So he’s in a Madden league. He might be whatever. He’s got meetings. He’s in a couple school. He’s on some boards or whatever.

Cara Harvey 00:18:06 So we don’t always get that time. I don’t want to be argue with my kids because I’m tired. But in the summer they want to go for a night swim. They can go for a night swim. We want to go roast some s’mores outside. Let’s do it right. But we’re still going to have the same evening routine no matter what time we go to bed, right? They’re still going to brush the teeth, get the jammies on, etc. so think about it that way. Pick your simplified routines and say this is the minimum we’re going to hit this summer. If we hit more, cool. If not, again, it’s taking the pressure of having to do all of it. But saying these are the things that are important to me. I would pick one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. I also want you to choose one priority per area of your life. Okay. I’m going to give you three, maybe four areas of your life. And I want you to think, what is my top one this summer that I want to focus on? Because again, we’re just going to let it be easy.

Cara Harvey 00:18:58 We’re going to decide it. And it is you, your rest, your growth, your health, your exercise, your spirituality. What is one thing? If you’re like, I know I need to get up in the morning or whenever you do it right and get my Bible study done every day. That’s the one thing I’m gonna focus on. Decide once, right? I think, is it Kendra Nietzsche, maybe. Who says that? You know, decide once. What is the thing that you’re like this summer? I’m going to make this my priority area for me. Don’t pick a ton. Don’t pick 100. Pick one. I already mentioned mine is my exercise. I’m gonna make sure I get that. What about your kids? I already mentioned mine. My priority area this summer for my kids is going to be connection. It’s going to be one on one time with each of them every single day. What is it for you? Is it play? Is it learning? Maybe you homeschool year round so you’re, you know, you maybe you’re struggling with oh my gosh, all the kids.

Cara Harvey 00:19:46 And then, you know, some of the kids in the neighborhood are home. My kids want to go out and play, but we’re still doing school. What does that look like for us? What is it for you? Is it reading? Are your kids doing summer bridge programs? Are they at camp? Is it adventure outside? Pick one priority area there. Pick one in your home. I suggest maintenance. So it’s so interesting because based on your season, your home goals might be different for me. Actually my season I was doing my summer planning earlier today. We have a lot of open time now. My kids are at camps, we have vacations, but our evenings are open. I don’t do any activities for my kids and we’re coming off just a very exhausting school year of activities. So we pretty much have till August when football starts, which at this point my son is 95% doing football. I haven’t registered him yet, but he’s like the other day. He’s like, I don’t know.

Cara Harvey 00:20:32 And I’m like, I’m not gonna register you for an I don’t know, this thing is four nights a week. You need to know or we’re not doing a type of a thing. Right. So I said, I’ll register him by the end of the month. But August 1st starts football four nights a week. So really, July, because my kids are in school the first two weeks in June. So it’s the second two weeks of June and July, our activity less for us. Those. That’s six weeks my daughter might have tumbling, you know, occasionally, but we don’t do anything at night, so I actually have more time. So I decided for my home this summer that I want to go in kind of like a declutter mode to clean up what the school year left us, which is piles of crap everywhere. Oh my gosh, I think I’m gonna show you. So if you’re watching on YouTube, I’m gonna flip my camera and you’re gonna get to see. Don’t judge me. This is my office.

Cara Harvey 00:21:15 That is. I had a professional organizer come in. It’s beautiful, but it is Girl scout season, like end of year stuff. We’re going camping. We have back to back meetings. And I will say, I had Girl Scouts last night, and I have not unpacked my bag. I normally don’t get home till like 845 from scouts on Mondays, and I don’t unpack my bag till like Tuesday or Wednesday. And I have all of our stuff for our camping trip. I’m just gonna show you anyway, this is what the other side of my office looks like. Mind my thumb.

Cara Harvey 00:21:40 Oh my God.

Cara Harvey 00:21:41 I know, so if you’re listening on the podcast, you’ll have to just go to the YouTube to see it. And it’s just it irks me. There’s just stuff in every single surface, and I’m ready to declutter it this summer. And I have the time this summer. Now, some of you might be like, I have less time in the summer because maybe your kids are at traditional school all year, and then in the summer they’re home all the time.

Cara Harvey 00:22:03 My kids will be home a little bit of the time, but it’s the fact that we’re getting our nights back. My kids, the weeks they go to camp and the weeks they don’t go to camp, you know what my kids are gonna want to do after dinner and in the evenings go in the pool. We have a pool. So dope. My kids are old enough that they can swim pretty well. They don’t get to swim if I’m, like, working, but if I’m like, around right then I let them swim outside by themselves. I’m gonna use that time to declutter, to do these things. So for me, my home this summer is about resetting. I want to declutter. We’re also doing a remodel of both my kids rooms. They share a room. Right now we’re splitting up their rooms. I’m excited to reset our house this summer from what the school year tossed at us, which was a lot of just random stuff everywhere. Right? So what is your priority area? Decide now and then let the rest flow.

Cara Harvey 00:22:51 Tell your brain it is safe to let it flow. All right. And the last area I want you to pick one priority in is business or work, depending on what it looks like for you. So for me, I’m working this summer on getting my Etsy shop up, so you might be hearing some ads coming soon. I might be talking about it interestingly, because I batch all my episodes in advance, it might just be a bonus episode that we’ll toss in there, but momentum not. I have to do everything. Not overachieving. It’s like, can I keep the momentum? All right. The third thing I want you to do is pre decide and become okay with in perfection. Create a plan B and a plan B in your mindset and a plan B physically. How many times in the summer you’re like, we’re gonna go to the beach right now I’m recording this. It’s pouring out, right? You have a plan and it doesn’t go as well. Create that plan B mindset that if the things don’t happen the way I want them to happen, that is okay.

Cara Harvey 00:23:44 Go into the summer and be like, I’m gonna be like a easy breezy, you know, beautiful CoverGirl. What is it? Take me away. You guys remember that? Calgon, take me away. Like that’s my attitude. It is what it is. And I’m telling you, if you haven’t read, let them theory go. Do it. Give yourself grace when the day doesn’t go as planned. And use reflection time each week to ask yourself, what do we want to do this week? And because I’ve mentioned multiple times on this episode, in prior episodes, my kids will be doing different things each week. I need a reflection time to be like, Let’s tweak what’s happening. Let’s tweak what’s gonna work. I’m not gonna trash the routine, but I’m going to say, hey, we’re going away the second half of the week camping. I need to move some things around, be okay with imperfection, some other suggestions for letting it be easy. I want you to create kind of like a summer menu of routines.

Cara Harvey 00:24:30 So this is like rotating options instead of daily demands. You don’t have to do all the same cleaning things every single day. Maybe you have one block where you do that. You can rotate which routines, whether it’s like, okay, today our routine is an outside thing or reading or whatever it is. We do a lot of learning. We’re doing cooking here and things like that. I don’t homeschool, but my kids will do some homeschool ish things. We just learn. I don’t know, we just learn at home a lot. My kids want to pick up projects and sewing and coding. My daughter likes to code. Make a menu of those routines so that you can pluck them away. You can literally get popsicle sticks and just pick them out. What are we working on right now? I also want to recommend remind reminding yourself that 15 minutes in your routines matters. So if you get to the end of the day and you’ve been at the lake all day and you come home and you pick everything up and you’re like, I don’t feel like doing any of my evening routine.

Cara Harvey 00:25:18 Put on a 15 minute timer and say, what can I get done? And let it be enough? All right. Also, I just want to encourage you. Speaking of letting it be easy. Embrace boredom. This is my challenge for myself, too. For yourself and for your kids. It’s good for both of you. You know, Mike, I’m bored. I don’t care. I literally love when my kids are bored. Because my kids are. We call them box kids in my house. I showed you my my office, right. All those empty boxes are way in to be creations for my kids. I actually on Amazon I found maybe a year or so ago specific cardboard cutters. Like they’re different than regular scissors. There’s like little, little saws because they’re easier for kids to use to make creations. I haven’t found it. Don’t don’t bring an empty box into my house. Let me tell you, my kids are. They will find it. They will create with it. And I love it.

Cara Harvey 00:26:09 And I think, I do think part of what has gotten my kids at seven and nine to be this way is because I let them be bored. I have to remind myself it’s not easy. Like, let them be bored. They’re gonna whine, they’re gonna complain. Well, they’re gonna figure it out. And then when they’re bored, this is a reminder for me to let them play. They’re gonna make messes. They’re going to be loud. They’re going to want to build a pillow for it. And you’re gonna be like, I just put the pillows away. Let it be fun and easy. It’s so good for them and their brains. And also be bored yourself. Like when I was looking at our summer schedule today, when I was doing my planning, I was like, crud, we really don’t have anything like any night at this moment, right? What is that gonna look like? I don’t know, but I’m gonna read a book. I want to teach myself how to crochet this summer.

Cara Harvey 00:26:49 I’m gonna sit outside and just stare like I cannot wait to let myself be bored, and it’s gonna be uncomfortable, and you’re not gonna like it. But when you embrace it, it allows the ease to feel better. Just remind yourself slower. Summer does not mean it was less valuable or less productive. My summer word of the summer is refreshing, right? I want to come out. I’m feeling tense. I’m like a little bull, like right now. Or like I just wanna explode and I need it. Okay, this is that reminder that your worth is not based on all the things you check off this summer. Okay, so let it be easy. Let it be not planned all the way, but don’t scrap at all. Create some non-negotiables that let your things be easy, that allow it. So ask yourself, what is one routine that I can just simplify this summer? Again, doesn’t need to have my whole six point evening routine. Can I pick one thing from that? And what would easy look like for you? If you trusted yourself, that easy was enough.

Cara Harvey 00:27:52 Journal. Meditate. Take some walks. Enjoy your summer. You. Mom. Hello. Hi. You’re allowed to enjoy your summer, too. Okay. Routines are important, though. They don’t have to stifle your joy or take away the enjoyment of summer. They enhance it because you’re letting things flow. I want you to think of the word rhythm. Think of the word flow. And I want you to tell your brain that you don’t have to choose between structure and spontaneity. Okay, letting it be easy might be the most productive thing you do all summer. Show notes are at a Purpose Driven Mom podcast four, six, five. Go check them out today. Come hit me up on Instagram at a Purpose Driven mom. I would love to hear what you’re letting be easy for you this summer. 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.

Cara Harvey 00:28:51 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.