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 episode 470. Today I have a treat for you. This is from the Purpose Driven Mom Club coaching calls, which every single Friday I teach a new topic on something that I teach in the program, but I teach it live.

Cara Harvey 00:00:56 I add a couple more things and we do some coaching. So I recorded just the teaching part because all about what’s in your control. I think this is a really hard one for us moms. We want to control everything, micromanage it all, be the one who makes the decisions. But sometimes we have to let it go because you cannot control what other people think, feel, do, act or say. And it’s hard. So this was informal. It wasn’t planned to be for podcast episodes, so it sounds a little wonky. Apologies in advance. You can check out show notes at a purpose driven podcast for 70. Learn more about the purpose to Vermont Club, the purpose to Vermont Club Pass. Come hang out on a Friday, call like this and learn about these topics. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it clicks something in your head and you’re like, yes, I’ve got to let it go and have a great day.

Cara Harvey 00:01:37 We’re gonna talk about.

Cara Harvey 00:01:38 What is in your control today.

Cara Harvey 00:01:40 This is one of the most helpful mindset lessons that I always remind myself of. And I go back to all the time, because oftentimes we hyper fixate on things that we actually have no control over. And we’re going to talk about how do you figure out what’s in your control? And then also how do you become okay with it? I think that’s the bigger one, right? Like, how do I become okay with the fact that I’m not in control of everything right now? Struggles that or that I can’t not micromanage? That sounds like not as kind, but like, yeah, like I can’t micromanage everything. Other people think do feel an act. I want to be in control. Right? So let’s talk about that today. This is an S and these are the same slides from S. But I’m going to teach it live. So if you want to go back you can watch the original video or you can watch this one. All right. So why do we feel out of control. Right.

Cara Harvey 00:02:29 We feel like, you know, we put on the the mom superhero cape. Right. So I should be able to control everything, right? If I don’t control everything, then we’re disappointed, right? Or we’re helpless, or we’re shaming ourselves, or we’re feeling like we’re flawed or broken. And when all those thoughts start to happen for you, when they start to come up and make you feel like, well, I should be doing better, I should. Right. We always say, stop shooting on yourself. That’s when I want to remind you of your locus of control that we’re going to talk about today. That’s what I want to remind you of. The things that are in your power and are able to do. I want to pause real quick and tell you about one of my friends, Denise, and what she’s doing over at her site. Denise. Albert, if you’re looking to declutter your busy mom mind and your home, you’ve come to a place. From juggling family schedules, meal planning, budgeting, and more.

Cara Harvey 00:03:21 This is going to help you get all the solutions in one spot. Listen, Denise is a mom of three. She understands what it’s like. And in this digital age, downloading all of your thoughts and your plans to your mind onto paper can make it feel like it’s 1997, right? But we know what it’s like to have a clear head. You can get planners, tools, and her incredible app where you can organize all of your kids photos, artwork, and more. If you’re trying to keep your space cleared and get rid of the paper clutter, you’re going to want to check out all that Denise has to offer. Her app has been a game changer. I will get pictures sent over from the teacher and I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want to forget about them so I can store them in the app, label them first grade Isaiah and go back to them every single year. She’s got a solution to keep the kids memories in a place, and not all the paper drawings of the Pokemon that I don’t need anymore.

Cara Harvey 00:04:11 Her Class Keeper app is a game changer. No more piles, no more glue guns to make scrapbooks, and your mom guilt for not having it all beautifully organized. I want you to go over to a purpose driven mom. That’s a purpose driven mom keeper that’s going to link you over to all of these free printables to get organized in your routines together. All of the incredible journals and planners she has, and her incredible Class Keeper app. That’s a purpose driven mom keeper. Now we have different influence around other people and we’re going to talk about that today, but I think it’s important to remember them, right. So we have the things that we can control. Look how small this is. And we don’t like this, right? We don’t want it to be small. We want it to be big. We want it to be the thing we’re like. Yes, I totally have control. Like, I can do everything. We want our control to be all of it. But in reality, it’s not.

Cara Harvey 00:05:06 In reality, our control is internal only. We only have control over what we think, do or say and how we act. That’s it. Just like we can’t control the weather, I can’t control how my husband handles something, right? I can’t control what that person thinks about me. I can control me. And that is a tough pill to swallow because we want to think we’re more influential. And we are. We’re just not in control. So our biggest fear here is the influence that we have now. You influence people every single day. You don’t have to be an influencer on the internet to influence people by your actions, by your words, by what you do, the way you show up. We talk about this how if you’re around other people who are showing up a certain way, then it really does help us, like impact those people, right? When you’re on these calls and we’re talking about this, you leave a little more inspired, right? A little more together on it.

Cara Harvey 00:06:04 You have influence, negative or positive based on what you do. And I just want you to like, think about that. You can’t control how people respond to you, but you can influence and impact their behavior based on how you show up. My husband and I, we were just talking about this the other day because we were going to baseball, right? And with baseball, the coach has asked if you can be there 15 minutes early. Right. The coach is like, yep. If everybody can just be there 15 minutes early, then that way we can know who’s there. We can get the lineup together. Okay. It’s not an unreasonable ask, but I know that on the weekday games it’s a little bit harder, right? Because the game starts at 545. We have to be there at 530. Oftentimes I’m always there at 530, right? Like that. I don’t play around about time. And I think part of it is because I volunteered so much. I know how important it is for that.

Cara Harvey 00:06:53 Being on time, you know, is a respect thing for me. Like, I, I don’t play on time. I’m, I’m early as on time. On time as a late person. You wouldn’t you’re not going to catch me being late for something right. It also is part of my anxiety. So I have found that if I plan to be early to something, I am giving myself space for something to go wrong and I’m navigating around it. Okay, it is how I am my husband. He doesn’t have the same urgency around time, so we’re driving on Monday or Tuesday this week to go to the baseball game. And you know we are leaving. So we could be there at 530. And he’s like, why are we doing this? Nobody else is going to be there on time. He’s like, we’re going to be there before the coach. And I was like, it doesn’t matter, right? We get there. There’s one other family there. The coach is not there. It’s 531.

Cara Harvey 00:07:35 So he’s he’s making fun of me. He’s like 005 31 what are you going to do? Right? And you know, we’re in the car with the kids. And I said, it doesn’t matter what time other people get there, we are told to be there at a certain time, and so it is respectful to follow those directions. And I was like, and isn’t that what we want the kids to do? And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that’s the influence I have on my kids, right? Not to make them anxious about time, but to teach them. Right. That if some if it is important to prioritize being not being late for things like that, you know, that is important. I have that influence. I don’t know what my kids are going to do with that. Right? I don’t know if if that’s going to impact them in any way or my husband in any way, but I as a person, value that. So I will continue to show up that way and see what the influence is, but I don’t control it.

Cara Harvey 00:08:21 Okay. So you have your influence and then you also have the concern, right? These are the things we have no control over. These are the things that I can’t impact as obvious as the weather to how other people think, feel, do and act. The book Drive Your Own darn Bus. I read that one in book club like two years ago and the Art of saying no. Those two we’ve read in book club here. If you’ve not read them, I recommended I relisten to them off like at least once a year because it has that line that reminds me we cannot control how other people think, feel, do or act. We cannot. And when you really fully grasp that, you give yourself a level of freedom and a level of less stress. But I can’t. I can’t make anybody do something. I get really frustrated and stressed out about the way people act and like, you know, couple this with the Lethem theory. If you read that one too, is that I have learned in my own personal growth and development that I have to not only realize that I don’t have control over other people, but I also have to go and couple it with let them write my son and Girl Scouts, right? Parents, they do their thing, right.

Cara Harvey 00:09:25 They’re going to do their thing. They’re going to frustrate me, right? I cannot control how they’re going to act, respond or do I can’t. So I have to just let them up to a point. Right. It’s hard, but we have to do it now. What are the things on the internal control? This is here. This is the things that we can control to. And you can screenshot this again. It’s over and saw right how much effort you put into something. What is in my control is that this morning I got up and it was cold. So I went back to bed. Right. I chose those things. I said, no blankets, here we go. So I woke up later than I wanted to, which meant I didn’t have the full amount of time I would prefer for my entire workout this morning. So I had an option, right? I said, could I just skip or do something? And I made the choice to at least do half my workout because then I was doing something.

Cara Harvey 00:10:14 I increased my effort and I went in, okay, how I interpret a situation. So my husband and I have been talking through this one situation I’m having with a parent right now. It’s just irking me just getting under my skin about stuff, right? And if you’ve ever heard me talk about the theory of being in your box, I can’t remember the book title, but Ron read it at A Personal Growth and he’s recommended to me. I haven’t read it yet, but we talk about this concept of someone being in your box, and it’s when they’re just like getting under your skin and when they’re breathing annoys you, right? Like. Everything they do absolutely irritates you. Okay, I can have a situation happen and someone not be in my box, and I’m cool. But if you’re in my box in the same situation happens, I might respond differently. Okay. So we have lots of these conversations where I have I was literally just analysing a situation this morning with him, and I was like, what is it like? What is it that’s irking me so badly? And he was like, he’s in your box.

Cara Harvey 00:11:05 And I was like, she’s in my box. There it is. So how I interpret a situation that’s under my control, right? How I take care of myself right in my control. If I smile, show, open the door for people. Have a good attitude, okay. Who I choose to spend time with. This year I had a couple challenging friendship issues that I’ve been trying to work towards through this year, and they’ve gotten better. Not that the friendship has gotten better, but the fact that I’ve made the decision to spend less time with these people, I still spend a lot of time with them, but less has given me more peace because that’s in my control. Okay, what I’m consuming when I’m reading the media, right? We always talk about the echo chamber, how you’re in your echo chamber. You see one thing I think it’s important to listen to different news sources, go to different accounts, like see different things so that you can make your own decisions. Right, based on those things.

Cara Harvey 00:12:00 But if you’re like, I’m just going to watch one news channel, and that’s the only way I’m getting news. I’m never going to speak to anyone who doesn’t think like me. Well, then I’m never going to get a different opinion and be able to critically think, right? Whether you follow through on things, if you ask for help, like these are all things that are in your control that you can choose to do. These are things that are directly related to you your actions, your thoughts, your emotions, your belief, and your choices. That is all. And it stinks. For those of us who are a little bit on the controlling side, hand up here, right? Those of us who like things a particular way. But I found for myself. Once I was truly able to come to terms with this, I’ve been better. Right now, it doesn’t mean that I don’t struggle with trying to control things. And as a parent, I think this is really important because of our kids, right? There’s only so much actual control we have over our kids and what they do.

Cara Harvey 00:12:53 We have a lot of influence, but we don’t have control. And I’m going to tell you a story I haven’t gotten to process this through. So this might be my first time processing through, but I had a lot of feelings about it when it came to parenting. Right. I heard this thing, and I think I’ve shared it a few times, but I was on a podcast where the parenting expert and they said, our job as parents is to be consultants eventually, right. Like to graduate into a consultant in our kids lives. So, you know, my oldest, he’s got prom tonight, graduation a couple weeks back. He’s about to go. My job is that he’s able to fly the nest and call me when he needs something. Not that I run his life, not that he doesn’t know how to do anything. And for a lot of us parents, that’s hard. A couple of weeks ago, we were at my daughter’s tier banquet, and there was a little girl there that she’s in our Girl Scout troop.

Cara Harvey 00:13:34 They’re not on the same cheer team. She doesn’t know a lot of kids. She’s very shy. And so I just asked my daughter. I said, can you make sure that she, you know, like you include her, please? She doesn’t have a lot of friends. You have, you know, your friends you hang out with. Can you just be like, just include her in your group, right. You don’t have to not hang out with your friends. But can you include her? And my daughter chose not to. And she wasn’t mean, right? She just wasn’t, like, out of her way to be like, come on and play with us. Come on and dance with us, right? Because she wanted to hang out with her friends and I got big, mad guys. Like, I was livid at her because I was like, I wish that you like, I want my kid. I’m going to be so real. Like, I was like, I want my kid to be the kid that sees another kid that has no one to play with and invites them along, right.

Cara Harvey 00:14:14 Like, that’s what I want. I don’t want them to exclude anyone. And Ron was like, you can’t control that. And I was like, I hate that because I can influence I can suggest, I can in my actions. Like when we’re at Field Day, do I just stay and talk? Does my kid only ever see me talking to my friends, or does she see me talking to other people that I don’t know? It’s a running joke in my home. Like we never get to go anywhere because every time it takes us an hour to get home while mom’s talking to somebody else, mom’s making another friend. Like, I can influence that, but I can’t make her do it. And so I got mad, and I definitely said some parenting things I wish I hadn’t had said I had to walk some things back. Like, it was a really hard situation and it like, I threatened to leave. I was like, oh my God, what are you doing? Like, I was like, if you’re not going to be nice and include her, we’ll just go.

Cara Harvey 00:14:58 And she’s like, mom, I just want to hang out with my friends. But. And she’s right. But at the same time, I hurt for this child because I know this other child. I know what it’s like to be excluded. Right? Again, she wasn’t mean. She wasn’t like, you can’t sit with us. She just wasn’t like, hey, come to the photo booth. Like she just didn’t include the kid intentionally. And it hurt me a lot. And it hurt me as a parent because I realized, like, as she gets older, we move into the influence circle, right? It’s not so much that my kid, she’s her own person, making her own choices, finding her own way. At nine. And as she goes into puberty. And this is where I need to remind myself that whereas she was a small person, right. Like I needed to control a couple things to keep her safe because she didn’t know how to function. She has to learn now, right? Like take a breath.

Cara Harvey 00:15:50 Like that’s very, very challenging. Now again, I’m her parent, right? So there are things like, I don’t let my kids do right. Because I make rules about certain things. That’s different. This is like the personality, right? This is allowing her to be her own person and find her in control. But I can try my best to influence things. Okay. This is about stepping into leadership. And I talk to my girls about this a lot. We want people to look at you and not be like, oh, those Girl Scouts are mean and rude. We want them to be like, oh, like, wow. They always raise their hand in class. They’re always helpful, right? I think it’s important you start to pay attention to how you influence other people, because it’s going to make it very obvious to you, and you’re going to pay attention. Okay. Are you looking to spend intentional time with your kid and have no idea where it’s going to fit in? Let me help you out.

Cara Harvey 00:16:41 I just made an activity book called draw with mom, and the purpose of this book is to give you intentional time with your kid. That doesn’t have to take hours. I’m going to be real. I don’t want to play for hours at all. I also don’t want to play dolls and have you tell me how I’m doing it wrong. I made this book to be an interactive journal so that you could be creative, your kid could be creative, and you can have fun together. There’s 50 prompts that are set up for you, where the child draws on one side and you add to it. Yesterday, my son and I did it and it was draw a house and then it said the parent to draw a rainbow and a sun. And we’re super creative. We make up stories, we draw outside the box. We don’t have to stick to the prompts, but the goal is sometimes it’s always the start that stops us. I want to spend intentional time with my kid and I don’t know what to do.

Cara Harvey 00:17:23 I’ve made a plan for you. You can go to a purpose driven mom, Draw with mom or just search on Amazon to grab the book. Now it’s 1995. It’s a great way to be intentional about your one on one time and spend time with your kid. That’s a purpose driven mom. Draw with mom. I know that I do this, this is my job, right? I post on the social media. I don’t love when people call me an influencer. I don’t think that’s what I am or what I do. I’m a teacher. I’m a coach, right? I just I don’t vibe with the influencer word, but I know I have influence. I know that some book I just suggested to you, you might go read. I know that something I just said to you is going to get into your brain like, I know this, and it does boost my confidence to realize I matter, right? And you matter. Influence. It’s it’s natural. It’s a part of who we are.

Cara Harvey 00:18:15 But it’s up to you to decide how you influence others. Right. Again, you can’t decide what they do with it. You can decide how you show up again, what’s in your control and also what is influencing you? Now, one of the issues I have with some of these friends that I kind of was, I just said, there’s a lot of crap talking. I was like, why are you always talking about other people? It’s like, not the type of person I want to be. Like, do you have anything else to talk about? And I just was like, you know what? I’m gonna back myself out of this. Like, I’m just going to. And it’s honestly, it’s been very peaceful because I was allowing it to influence me. Right? We’d get around, they would start complaining about somebody who was in my box and I would want and I would jump into it. Right. And that’s not the person that I would like to be. So I think it’s important that you not only pay attention to what you can influence, but also what influences are around.

Cara Harvey 00:19:01 So going back to the parenting thing. there are certain kids that and this is challenging. I talked about this a lot because there’s some kids. I love all the girls in my troop. Right. But there are some kids parented differently than my children, exposed to things differently than my children. And I noticed my kids behavior is different when they’re around those children. And I don’t always approve with Saying curse words and like, all this kind of thing. Like, I notice it, right? I’m not going to tell my kid you can’t hang out with someone. But as a parent, I’m going to put my parameters around how much influence I allow into their life. Like, we’ll hang out at scouts, but I might not text that parent for a playdate, right? I think those are important things. As parents, we also notice. But no, again, it’s not in control what other people do. But if you show up a certain way, you’re influencing others. Now the thing’s out of our control.

Cara Harvey 00:19:50 The concerns, the external simple examples, the weather, the traffic, right? Stuff gets put on your plate. A kid is sick, right? Field day got canceled yesterday because it rains. So now I have to move my work schedule around for the rain date, right? When we fixate on the things outside of our control, we’re just giving up the power that we actually have. And the other reminder you cannot control how other people think, act, feel, or what they do, even if it’s based on you. I had a situation a few years ago that is still vexing me like I work really hard on, like not letting this person get into my my zone. But they did something and have continue years later to talk crap about me to anybody who will listen. Right. And we’re together, which is just so fun. So I have to like, put on my face and not let them impact me. I can tell I sometimes let them impact me when I’m like around them, and I pause myself and I’m like, I’m giving them my power by paying attention to this person, by worrying about what this person might be saying to somebody else.

Cara Harvey 00:20:50 Like by doing all those things, all I’m doing is giving up my power, and instead I need to worry about what I can control. I cannot control how people perceive me. I know that maybe some people don’t like me, right? Like I’m not everybody’s cup of tea. I cannot perceive how or I cannot control what people say about me, you know, like all those things. So why do we worry about it? One of the things I loved about Letham Theory. Right. Well, she’s had the chapter or whatever section I can’t remember. It was a full chapter, but it was like, they’re going to talk bad about you. Let them. And I was like, dang, no, I don’t want to. I’m a fighter. And part of it for me is one I, you know, I could do me wrong, right? Like, I’m I’m not confrontational. Maybe Ron would laugh at that. I’m not confrontational, but I’m not intentionally going out of my way to, like, pick a fight with someone just because.

Cara Harvey 00:21:44 But I’m not. Conflict avoided, right? Like if if I feel a weirdness or a tension or something happens, or if I did, I’m going to address it like I don’t not address things. And sometimes that doesn’t go well and sometimes I overreach and some. Right, like sometimes it comes off a little whatever. But I have to remind myself like let them. So when in the book when she says, like people are going to talk badly about you, I was like, I don’t like that. No. What? I’m not going to let somebody talk badly. Like I one of my core values, I don’t know how to word it, but it’s like fighting for injustice, like having things be like, yeah, I guess I’m fighting for it. Which is why, like, I get. So if you seem like I get amped up about stuff because I just feel like. Thing like people should treat each other kindly. And I also feel like I can fix almost anything. Like I just have this belief that, like, I it can just be fixed and I’ve had to realize it sometimes can’t, and I may not be the one to fix it.

Cara Harvey 00:22:37 And also, people are going to think badly about me. They’re not going to like me. Like there’s some mom. Like I keep trying. I’m like, hey, hi. This lady just looking the other direction. And then the other day we were standing at the pickup and she said hi to my friend, stand next to me. And I was like, no, she really don’t like me and I don’t know why. Like, I’m like, but she’s not my friend, right? Like, I don’t know her like that, but like, she really I’m like, she really don’t like me. Maybe I just rub her the wrong way and that’s okay. Like, not everybody can like you. That’s okay. People are going to speak badly. They’re going to think badly. They’re going to make their own perception of you. And that’s okay. Let them. Don’t give up your power over something that you never had power over in the first place. So I want you to ask yourself, is this in my locus of control? Is it in my sphere of influence, or is this an external concern that I do not have control over? And once you can identify what it is, you can either work on yourself.

Cara Harvey 00:23:33 Right. Because maybe this situation this morning with somebody being in my box. Right. Okay. The issue itself is an external concern. It’s like, not even I can’t fix it. It is what it is. But the way I’m responding to the issue, the impact I’m giving, like, the time it’s taking, the emotional energy that’s all in my control. I’m choosing to give up my power. You see the difference? So once you can identify where things are at, then you can take that deep breath right. And move forward. All right. So how does this impact our goals? When you can actually identify what’s in your control and accept it and exact. It will allow you to leave that victim mentality behind. Right. Well, I can’t do this because this person didn’t. This person doesn’t. I don’t have enough time because nobody helps me out. Like, get over it. You you don’t have control over some of those things, but it also gives you grace to remind yourself, like, let them write that phrase, be love.

Cara Harvey 00:24:33 Let them like, this is not in my control. This is not something I have. Like I’m just going to let it be right. And then it allows the sphere of influence to grow. It allows us to realize where it is while we’re working on goals. You know, I ran that five K last week with my daughter. If I show up and tell people I’m running A5K, it might influence someone else to be like, I want to run A5K, right? It might not, but I will work on my goals. And this is why I think it’s so important to share your goals with other people, to get them out there, to talk about them, because you are going to inspire and influence more people than you know by showing up. By working on your own goals. By doing those things. Okay. What I want you to do this weekend is I want you to think about the things that you’re letting own real estate in your head. People, things, projects, whatever.

Cara Harvey 00:25:27 And ask yourself, is it in my control? Because here’s the thing. If you find yourself constantly. My husband and I were just talking about this this morning, you can say, Ron, I have not had like any time together lately. So this morning I feel like we got like a whole 40 minutes to just like, talk about everything. We were literally just talking about this morning about just how people complain about everything. Like there are just some people where like they are just all they do is complain like I was. Again, you can see it on social media, right? Like there’s this one lady I know she’s all right. Like I feel very neutral towards her. I don’t really know her, but what I do know, if I scrolled her Facebook, it would be about I mean, this she can find anything to complain about it. It’s, you know, her back hurts and then the the school drop off and pick up is messy. But then, you know, now it’s sports.

Cara Harvey 00:26:11 It’s just like. And so I also caution you go on at yours. Have your last couple posts been negative. Right. Have they been complaining or are they uplifting or neutral or you know, and I think it’s important to pay attention to that because I know when I’m around people who complain more often, guess what I’m going to do? Complain more often. So do a little bit of an audit of how much have you been allowing things like I can’t control what? Drop off and pickup line looks like, like maybe I could if I joined the PTG. Like I’m not unhappy with ours. Ours is actually really great, but I know some of the other schools struggle with that, right? I can join the PTA, give suggestions if it really bothered me, but I’m not in control of it right now. Here’s the other thing. If something is really bothering you, say there’s something like the pickup line, for example that is out of your control, right? You don’t like the way it’s being run, you don’t like the way things are done.

Cara Harvey 00:27:05 Right? We just had elections here. And then somebody get go run for the school board, right? Go join the PTA or the parent group at your kid’s school. Go run a thing. Like, part of the reason I volunteer for a lot of things is like, oh, like, oh, that season was kind of messy. It was unorganized. I wasn’t really pleased with it. So I’m gonna try to make it better, right? Like, I’m going to try to do something different. If you don’t like the way something’s going and it is currently out of your control, ask yourself, is this something that I want to concern myself with? And if the answer is no, then you need to bless and release and let it go. But if it is, if you’re like, no, I’m really bothered by like like our school doesn’t have a school dance, right? All the other elementary schools do. Our principal doesn’t really like that. Some of my friends are up in arms about it.

Cara Harvey 00:27:45 I don’t care, it is what it is. Would it be cool if they had a school dance? Yes. Not in my control. I’m not going to change your mind. But some of them are. So are the dance, right? So go talk to the principal. But most people won’t. What most people will do is whine, complain publicly posted on social media. Complain to their friends. Be a victim. Right? Well, we can’t have dances and this principal is the worst and blah, blah blah. What are you doing about it? I noticed that with volunteering, some of the parents that I work with and other sports activities that are the loudest are always the last ones to volunteer for anything. The last ones to help out, the last ones to want to make a change because staying in our complaining zone is safe for us. Because what if I decide to make it in my control? I try and it’s not better and I fail and I realize how hard it is. This thing I do find about parents who complain and then later volunteer for stuff.

Cara Harvey 00:28:40 They start to have a better appreciation, right? Like, I really appreciate our teachers because I was a teacher for nine years. My friends who weren’t teachers, I don’t think they have the same level of appreciation for what teachers do because they didn’t live it right. You don’t have that experience. You can’t get it until you’re there. So volunteer at the school, do those things. Like, I think that’s really important because when you’re complaining and you’re saying this can never change, and I don’t like this, but you’re not willing to do anything, and this doesn’t have to be external. Also, it also could be like internal. If I’m sitting here complaining and I’m going to pull myself out, right? Like I’ve been trying to lose weight my whole life. Like up, down, up down, up, down right. It’s all harder now in my 40s, but I was talking to my accountability buddy and I was like, oh my God, I keep losing these same £5 over and over again.

Cara Harvey 00:29:18 Like, I can’t get past like a £7 loss. And I was complaining and complaining and then I was like, you know what? Let me take some ownership because this is in my control. I’m not being consistent. I’m eating according to all my health goals until Friday. And then I’m like, screw it, it’s the weekend. Well, yeah. No wonder. So this is where it’s like you can complain a lot, but until you’re actually ready to take some ownership, nothing’s going to change. So you have to make that decision. Do I want to take the ownership or not? And if I’m not going to take ownership or I’m not going to want to concern myself with one of these external concerns, then I gotta let them, right? I can’t be a victim of it. I can’t worry about other people. I can’t worry about other things I have to say to myself, okay, what is in my control? So going into the weekend, I want you to do a little analysis of the things that are maybe bothering you, the things that are, you know, really just getting under your skin, like all those things.

Cara Harvey 00:30:10 And I want you to ask yourself, is this actually in my control? And if it is, what can I do about it? And if it’s not, how can I let it go? 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.