Cara Harvey 00:00:03 Welcome to the Purpose Driven Mom 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 in 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 Driven Mom Show, episode 482. Today, I’m going to talk to you about the small fall habits you can do now that are going to lead to big end of year wins. I know people are always like, hey, you’re always rushing us ahead.

Cara Harvey 00:00:57 I’m not. I live in the moment, but I am intentional about planning. I feel like when you plan ahead, it allows you to feel better and have more joy in the moment. Okay. And fall. It is a whirlwind. Okay, we’re finally getting our back to school routine settled. Now the holidays are approaching the year end. That finish line is there. Of all those goals from that beautiful vision board you made. Okay, it feels overwhelming. And all of a sudden your brain’s whirling, like, how am I gonna do it? How am I gonna get to the end of the year? How am I gonna finish my goals? What am I gonna do? And the thing is, you don’t need a huge overhaul. You’re probably doing a lot of things really well. It’s just some small habits and some small tips I’m going to give you today that’ll set you up for just a calmer, more successful end of the year. That’s always my goal, to remind you, mom, that you’re allowed to have joy.

Cara Harvey 00:01:47 You’re allowed to have calm. You’re allowed to rest, you’re allowed to do all those things. But to get there, we have to be intentional and we have to get started on some things. Small habits are easy to stick with when life is busy and isn’t life busy right now? It is the end of October when this is coming out. When I’m recording, I always like to give you reference so you can hear my examples of where my head is at beginning of September. This is coming out into October, right? Why? Because I batch ahead. Because I do these things so that I don’t have to stress about them. I’m telling you, if you are a podcaster, I know it’s hard to get ahead, but next time you record one episode, just push yourself to record two and then two the next time, and then to the next time. Do it for about a month, and then eventually you’ll be two months. You’ll be a month out, right? You’ll be there. And then you don’t have to stress.

Cara Harvey 00:02:36 I remember the first year of my podcast was literally crud. It’s Sunday night. I want an episode to go out Monday. And this was when I didn’t have an editor. So shout out Sharon for saving my life because I was like, I have to record, I have to edit, I have to get the show. I had to do all of it, like the night before, and it was so stressful and it took the joy away. That’s the same. The reason I batch this is the reason I do all these things in advance that I can write. These tiny habits will actually increase your long term success because you’re going to build momentum instead of just looking at the end, right? I’ve got to get these things done. I’m behind on these things. I’ve got to go here. What if instead you just got started on what was right in front of you and very, very tiny, right. There’s a study done at the University of Scranton. Get this one 8% and I. It might be less.

Cara Harvey 00:03:24 Only 8% of people actually achieve their resolutions at the end of the year. Wow. Okay. That’s a lot of people not achieving their goals. And I think one of the reasons is we get to the fall, then we feel like quitting. Well, I haven’t achieved it yet. I haven’t stepped forward yet. I’m still working on this one. I’m still struggling with this. But here’s the thing small, consistent changes are more effective than let me look at the finish line and full. It’s the perfect reason for like a little bit of a shift. We’re not even going to call it a reset. We’re just shifting because the routines have already shifted from summer. So now we’re settled in those routines that have shifted, and now it’s just asking, how can I tweak things? And then before we jump into like how you’re going to do it, I do want to pause you to ask you to reflect. The reflection process is something I do in my with my members in the club. And, you know, at first people like, oh, can we just get to the good stuff, right? Can we just get to the goals? Can we just get going with it? Right.

Cara Harvey 00:04:19 But what if instead right? What if instead of jumping, we paused and said, how are things going? Really, what needs to be tweaked? We want to catastrophizing. We want to go all or nothing. We want to be like, I can’t do all these things. I’m all over the place, like all these things. What if instead you actually audit it, your goals and you say, well, what isn’t going well about this specific thing? What can I change? What is a tweak I can make? How can I pivot, not let me burn it all down? Not I’m going to quit on my goal because I said I was going to read 60 books and I haven’t read any. Look at the goal for real and ask yourself, okay, I said I was going to run A5K by the end of in 2025. Have I done that now? I personally I have. Actually, that’s one of my goals. I did it, but maybe you didn’t, right? Maybe I got to the end of the year and I was I, I, I remember my five K.

Cara Harvey 00:05:06 Yet instead of saying I can’t do this the time is done. Look at the time a little differently and say, what can I do in this time?

Cara Harvey 00:05:17 I want to invite you over to grab a $10 club pass today. The purpose of your mom club has been around for almost five years now, and we know that sometimes it can be hard to commit to something like a membership, ongoing payments, and all of the times.

Cara Harvey 00:05:29 You.

Cara Harvey 00:05:29 Feel.

Cara Harvey 00:05:29 Like.

Cara Harvey 00:05:29 You have to show up. So this summer we came up with the club Pass and we are continuing it into the fall. For just $10. You can join any of our calls. We have planning calls every Sunday during the week. We have accountability calls where you can get coaching and a laser focused plan for what you want to work on. And we have a co-working, which has been incredible for our members, where you literally show up with the tasks you want to get done, and we are that little kick in your booty to get it done.

Cara Harvey 00:05:53 We We’re going to hold your hand as you complete the task. For only $10, you can join any of the calls and check out the purpose of a mom club. Go to a purpose Driven Mom Club pass and grab your pass today and I hope to see you on a call.

Cara Harvey 00:06:10 I could probably train and run A5K.

Cara Harvey 00:06:12 In two months.

Cara Harvey 00:06:13 Again if I wanted it to. If I wanted to challenge myself to do it. Or I could say maybe this isn’t the season. Or I could say, hey, maybe I don’t do A5K, but I do half of that. Right? So I want you to first start with looking at your goals and looking at the ones that you feel like you’re still not moving forward. And ask yourself, am I giving up on them for the rest of the year? And we actually let me backtrack that one because, see, this is where I do some self coaching. I just heard my language on that. I’m giving up. We want to get rid of that.

Cara Harvey 00:06:39 And we’re going to say bless and release. That’s that’s what we do. And hey listen, I coach myself sometimes I’ll let you know too. And I think this is a prime example of just because I’m the productivity expert doesn’t mean I’ve got it all down right. Like my language wanted to say I’m giving up on it. I’m not giving up on it. I’m blessing and releasing it. I’m saying maybe next year. So I also had I want to run a 10-K on my list. I blessed and released that goal. It didn’t align for me. It wasn’t in my season. I still exercise. I’m just not running. Okay, this is the perfect time to look at those goals and say, where are they at? What still needs to happen, and which ones do I want to take with me? And then create some small habits that are going to help you get there. Now I’m going to give you an examples of a bunch of them today and show you how they fit in to it.

Cara Harvey 00:07:21 If you want to check out your show notes, they’re at a purpose driven podcast, 482, so all resources will be there as well. All right. So here are some examples of some great fall habits that you can do now that might help you kind of get momentum and achieve goals.

Cara Harvey 00:07:35 Have you been wondering how you can make AI and ChatGPT a tool you use, and not something that overwhelms or irritates you? I know I did not want any part in the AI when I heard about it a few years ago, but now ChatGPT has become my personal assistant, I have put together 40 of my favorite prompts specifically for moms to help you manage your schedule, break down your goals, create meal plans, and more. You can go to a purpose driven AI prompts and grab these absolutely for free, and start using the ChatGPT tools for good and helping your day feel lighter and better. That’s a purpose driven romcom. AI prompts.

Cara Harvey 00:08:18 Let’s talk about our bookends. I always say your morning and your evening are the the things that you’re in control of, right? That what happens the first thing when you wake up and the last thing before you go to bed the rest of the day? Who knows, right? We’re winging it with our plan.

Cara Harvey 00:08:30 We’re trying, but things start us off. I want you to add in a five minute goal ritual to your bookends. Five minutes in the morning and five minutes at night where you just work on one of your goals. Okay, five minutes goes fast. I’ve already been talking for over seven. See how fast that goes? Right? And I talk fast, so it probably felt like even faster, right? Can you add in a gratitude list? Can you add in stretching or journaling? So my evening bookend, right before I go to bed I’ve been doing is a ten minute stretch. But you could start. I started at five minutes where I stretch before I go to bed because it’s aligned to one of my goals, which is to work on my mobility. I’m in my 40s, so I’m aging well, which is what I’m trying to do right now. So part of it is stretching my body. I saw this thing that really hit me and it was like, you know, your body and your 80s is made in your 40s and, you know, like, I don’t know, facts if that’s true or whatever, but it made me think, right, whatever that person was trying to do, it works because that is stuck in my head that the body I work on now is the is going to be, you know, I’m setting my foundation for hopefully not ever needing a hip replacement, which my hip is killing me.

Cara Harvey 00:09:34 I actually have to go for a hip X-ray because I think I might have maybe some hip arthritis, or my mom was telling me this is just as an aside, she has. She used to have osteopenia and now she has osteoporosis. And I’m like, oh my gosh, right. So I’m in this place where I’m trying to do these things now to set myself up for success so that I can take care of my body, right? So I stretch. It is the best if you do not stretch before bed. Friend, the noises I make, I’m like, oh. Ooh. Like it is such a desert to my day. Right in the morning. What can you do? Right? I go through my photos, I do my Duolingo. Can you start your day just looking at your to do list? Ask yourself, what is five minutes I can do in the morning and five minutes at night? Now here’s where we have to remember. These things add up. They build momentum. We’ll five minutes of stretching make me the most flexible person ever.

Cara Harvey 00:10:21 Tomorrow. No, but if I do it over time, it will have results. Okay. And that’s the mindset we need. What can I do in five minutes now? What small habit will lead me to big results? Can you do a weekly planning reset? This is a great habit you’re going to want to add in 15 minutes to just look at your calendar. Now Sundays at the Purpose Driven Club we take 30 minutes together. Honestly, we could do it in 15. I just tell a ton of stories. I’m just talking. I’m just literally talking about my week. We’re just hanging out, so it’s fun. You can join us if you want a purpose driven romcom path. But yeah, I’m just. I’m just talking. 15 minutes to reset your calendar for the next week to check out what you have going on. That is going to help immensely. So if you don’t already have that habit, I want to encourage you that in. Can you declutter? All right. Now I’m doing a flat surface challenge for myself because my flat surfaces are full of the things after the summer.

Cara Harvey 00:11:10 But as we go into the holidays, like I want to put my fall decorations out, but I feel like I need to do a little decluttering first. What if you declutter five items a week? That’s one item almost every day. If you start that now, you could have almost 50 items. 60 items? What is that? Two full months by the end of the year? Completely out of your house? Think about that. If I move one item out of my house every single day, I can have 60 things or more, depending on what day you’re listening to this or less whatever. Out of my house. 60 items, right? So why instead of I’m going to declutter my whole house and over everything’s always go big or go home, right? I gotta overhaul my whole house, I gotta declutter. Or whatever. What if instead you were like, I’m just gonna do five items a week, one item a day? Okay? Add that in, it will build up. I also want to encourage you to do some micro self-care.

Cara Harvey 00:12:03 So that was my stretching. It’s also meditation I’ve had on my list meditation all year. I’m trying to reduce my cortisol again. Perimenopause get myself in a better, calmer state. I’ve had a very stressful year, so I started meditating in September, ten minutes a day. I found a program that was ten minutes a day. I do it before my goal. My best. We always talk good, better, best. Here. My best is before I pick up the kids so that I can, like, reset my brain a little bit, reset my body, my nervous system before picking them up. And I really have noticed a difference. Like I’m a little bit more patient when they’re like, can we play the playground? Normally I’m like, no, let’s go. I don’t care as much. I’m like, you know, I’m cool with it. So I started doing these little meditations right, taking care of myself, my stretching, washing my face, taking a little bit of a walk.

Cara Harvey 00:12:44 We were just talking about this in our team thread. How like if, if we find that if we don’t do a little bit to move our bodies first thing in the morning, like you’re tired, you’re not feeling great. Like, what can you do? Like drinking your water before you have your coffee. Add in some micro self-care to take care of yourself. During this season, I want you to pick 1 or 2 habits, right? One of these happens instead of trying to do every single one. Because again, I know your brain’s like, I can do that. I can do that and start small. These habits are going to lead you to big end of your wins. And I’m going to tell you why. Now, when you’re working on these tiny tasks, right, you’re doing a little bit of your planning every week. We did a holiday planning challenge September, for this exact reason. So you can work in small little chunks because you’ve got some things done. When you’re working in these tiny things, you’re doing what’s called creating a compound effect, kind of like compound interest, right? Over time it adds up the compound effect.

Cara Harvey 00:13:33 It’s a book by Darren Hardy. It was actually fun fact, the very first personal growth book I’ve ever read, besides Chicken Soup for the soul, when I was like a teenager as an adult. And it changed my life. When people say that, you’re like. But it really did. That took me down the trajectory of reading more books, getting into network marketing, starting my own business, teaching literally the compound effect to moms, right? Like, it did change my life. And it says small steps repeatedly will create big results. So instead of feeling like you have to go big or go home with your goals, if you start working on these tiny tasks, these tiny habits, you’re going to create wins with your goals. You’re going to notice over time things are going to happen, and then you’re going to have another effect, and it’s going to be the effect it has on you, because you are less stressed on holiday stuff, because you started preparing early, because you said, I’m going to take five minutes a day to work on this thing, right? You’re going to have more family time because you’re not spending time hours, right? I have hours to declutter.

Cara Harvey 00:14:31 I’ve got no, I don’t I can spend five minutes a day decluttering and the rest of it with my family. You can set up if you set up a small savings habit. I’m going to save a couple dollars a day. Now is the time, you know, holiday saving if you haven’t started. You know, I don’t like Dave Ramsey, but we did follow Dave Ramsey when we, first got out of debt and I got back into debt and then out of debt. And you know, you know how it goes, right? And we had paid off about $70,000 in our loans, included car loans, credit card loans and our wedding. We paid for the whole thing in cash. And then we had a couple other consumer debts in there. I followed him, it worked for the season of life I was in. I don’t know if I would recommend him any more. I say all that to say, the one thing that does stand out that he had said was like, holidays happen every year, right? Like Christmas for me is not a surprise.

Cara Harvey 00:15:20 It’s December 25th. I know it’s coming. Start saving now. And it really did change some of the way that I do save money because I know stuff is coming. Okay, if you haven’t started saving, what if you start now? What if you’re like, I’m going to do a tiny habit and I’m going to save X amount of dollars every week. One of the things I’m doing in September, it’s a Facebook Marketplace challenge, because I’m trying to declutter and make some extra money for the my Christmas savings, right? So my goal in September is every single day putting something on the marketplace. Now, I cannot I can’t make someone buy it, right. I can’t control the consumer end of it, but I can control what I do. So I made a tiny habit for myself of putting something on the marketplace every day, and then I’m tracking what it is and then how much I’m making. Right. So think about these tiny things as setting your future self up for success. The biggest win, though, the biggest end of your success, is going to be the emotional self-care that you’ve done by not catastrophizing, by not going.

Cara Harvey 00:16:19 Go big or go home by not quitting on your goals, but by having consistent time. Even if it’s just five minutes to show up for your goals. Consistent pieces of self-care, right? We need to show up for ourselves. Moms, right? So how do we do it? How do we stay consistent? Track it. Maybe make yourself a nice little chart, and every time you show up five minutes for one of your goals, cross it off. Put a pompom in a jar. Celebrate it. Okay. The small wins. Hey, I’m proud of you that you decluttered this item. I’m proud of you that you put that in the bag. Right. Have some accountability with with someone else. Say, hey, I’m trying to work on this stretch before bed, right? Look through your current goals. Pick the ones that you are holding on to, not the ones you’re blessed and releasing. And ask yourself, how can I create small habit around it? Either use some of the examples that I gave you today in the episode, or create your own small habits to move forward.

Cara Harvey 00:17:09 I want you to rethink end of your success as I have to cross it off the list. Or it’s a failure to moving the needle at all in any way. That’s what your success is going to be. Show notes are going to be an a purpose driven podcast for 82. And today’s Quick Tip episode, I want you to take one of these quick habits and add it into your planner. Tag me on a purpose driven mom. I would love to see which one you’re adding in. And remember, just because you don’t cross the finish line and achieve your goal in the way that January you wanted doesn’t mean that you haven’t made any progress. Doesn’t mean that you’re a failure. And doesn’t mean that you have to stop. Don’t quit on the goal now. It’s October. I don’t remember what day this is airing, right? Whatever day in October this is airing. The year is not done. We do not have to end it. We can move forward. Still. Have a wonderful day. And you’ve got this.

Cara Harvey 00:17:59 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 home where 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.