What to do When You Feel Like You Aren’t Doing Enough?
Are you a busy mom who is feeling overwhelmed with the back-to-school season? In this heartfelt podcast episode, Cara delves into the common struggles many mothers face, particularly feelings of inadequacy in parenting, work, and managing family responsibilities.
Being a mom with both work and family responsibilities is rewarding, but can also be overwhelming at times with feelings of inadequacy and failure. This can be the case for moms who are doing a lot of things like taking care of household responsibilities, handling pick up and drop off and taking kids to their activities. For Cara, the back-to-school season brings up these feelings because of the transition and the hectic schedules.
Cara provides some key tips to get over the feelings of not being good enough or thoughts of failing as a parent. One of these things is getting off social media or giving yourself a break. Seeing other parents on social media doing things differently from you can be so damaging for your mental health and well-being because of the constant comparisons. Cara encourages moms to take a break and think about what the truth is for you and your kids.
Take a listen to learn more!
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01:01 Feeling Inadequate as a Mom
04:13 Back to School Preparations
07:30 Decreasing Social Media Usage
09:45 Struggles with Parenting Behavior
10:39 Separating Self-Worth from Parenting
11:28 The Concept of Alignment vs. Balance
12:22 Intentional Family Time
14:41 Intentionality in Daily Life
15:31 The Importance of Perspective
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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! Hey, so I wasn’t planning on going live today. I am here, I’m trying this like multiple stream thing today. So if you’re watching me in the Facebook group, hello, if you’re watching me on Instagram, hello, or if you’re listening to this later on the podcast, I was like, you know what? I need to record a podcast episode.
Cara Harvey 00:01:01 I’m clearly like, not video ready. But I was like, you know what? We’re just going to hit record because I felt like there were some moms out there that needed to hear this message today. So feel free to give me a hey on whatever platform, that you’re hanging out with me, or if you’re listening on the podcast later, a Purpose Driven Mom com slash podcast for 20. That’s where these show notes are going to be. I want to talk to you today about what do you feel like you can do when that voice in your head comes to you and says, it’s not enough, right? It’s not enough. I’m not doing enough, I’m not being enough, and I’m failing because that’s the voice that’s literally been in my head for the past two weeks. And I worked this weekend to kind of coach myself through. And I know that I’m not the only mom that feels this way. I don’t know about you, but there are so many times where, as a mom, I just feel like I’m drowning.
Cara Harvey 00:01:47 I feel like I’m not succeeding. I feel like I’m struggling everywhere. And I’m gonna tell you a couple stories today, and you can feel free to share yours with me if you’re on with me live. But I’m struggling in the parenting zone. Let’s start there. I’m going to talk about what do you do when you feel like you’re not enough as a parent? What do you do when you feel like you’re failing at work? What do you do when you feel like you’re failing at home? And here’s the thing. I think as moms, we could make this list, this constant list of all the categories of all the areas, of all the places where we feel like we’re not enough. Because as moms, there are so many things on our plates at all times. I was I was talking to my husband about this, and I was saying just the mental load right now getting ready for back to school drop in the comments. If you’re watching live like when your kids are going back to school.
Cara Harvey 00:02:27 So my kids go back to school the 26th of August. I have lots of friends. Their kids have already started. So we’re kind of in this like closing out of summer for us. Now we have one more vacation to go, but we’ve got to get everything ready. My son’s getting ready for football. We’ve got to buy the school supplies, all those things. And I was explaining to my husband that the amount of things on my plate right now, the amount of things on my shoulder, it’s exhausting. And it makes me feel like in many areas I’m not doing enough. I know that’s not true. And I think, you know that’s not true as well. Right? You know that you’re doing the best that you can, but the voice that lives in your head that says it’s not enough is the one that I want to help you with today. Because, again, I’ve been struggling as well. I’m going to pause to invite you to something brand new we’re doing here at team ePDM, and that is the very first in-person, purpose driven Mom conference.
Cara Harvey 00:03:21 September 28th and 29th. I am hosting an event right here in Philadelphia that you can attend where we can be together live. The goal of this conference is to help you decide what dreams you want to work on, what goals matter to you, and to really embrace the person you are now in motherhood. We’re going to spend time mapping out the end of your year, creating time blocks for you to work on these dreams and goals. And I have three incredible guest speakers coming to help you embrace and love your mom life journey, and go after your goals and dreams. This event is been on my heart for years, and if you go to a purpose driven romcom slash conference, you can hear and read all about it. And I want to let you know that this event will sell out. We will be capping around 60 attendees, so as soon as it sells out, it is done. I want you to head to a purpose driven rom com slash conference, or check out the Shownotes for the link and come join us in Philadelphia.
Cara Harvey 00:04:13 We are going to have the most incredible experience. It is in September. You have enough time to plan to make it happen, to tell a friend, we cannot wait to see you at the Purpose Driven Mom conference and have some in real life time together again. That’s September 28th and 29th, and you can go to a purpose driven Nme.com conference to learn more. Let’s talk the back to school. I was going to start with my kid, but we’re going to start with back to school. And actually as I’m recording this, my son is recovering. He just had his tonsils out. He’s on the couch. He fell asleep. I was like, cool. I’m going to try to get this recorded really quick because there are these things on my plate that are making me feel like I’m just not, not doing enough. Here is what we’re going to talk about. What do you feel like when you feel like you’re not doing enough? When it comes to getting all the stuff ready for the school, all of the things, all the paperwork, all the kids activities, when we feel like we’re failing in this area.
Cara Harvey 00:05:01 And I think this voice comes because we see other parents doing it, and we think that mom has got it all together. She’s got her kids in 12 different activities. She never is late with anything. She always knows when practices and what color. My daughter does competitive cheer like what the theme is for this week’s practice. And like all those things and we see other moms doing it and it makes us feel inadequate. If you’re in that boat, I feel you. I have been struggling with this as well, and one of the things I decided to do that has been really helpful is get off social media now. Ironic, right? I’m filming this live. Yes, I’m recording on the podcast. You might be listening to me later, watching on YouTube, but I’m live on Facebook right now in my group. I’m live over on Instagram. It’s social media, right? Social media can be great. It can do so many great things. But social media can also make us feel inadequate. I find that I am the most dissatisfied with the job I’m doing.
Cara Harvey 00:05:52 Quotes. Right? The job I’m doing, managing my kids activities and things that we’re doing. When I see other people on social media doing it differently, it’s not that their way is right, it’s that their way makes me feel like the way that I do it is incorrect. I see people buying stuff for back to school now. I don’t buy my. My daughter got a new book bag because hers ripped. My son did not. We did buy some new back to school stuff. Some of the other stuff. I’m like, we have it in the closet. But then I see all these people and they’re going to the stores and the target and they’re getting all their kids these things, and it starts to get in my brain a little bit that I’m not doing good enough for my kids, because not everything that is new. Now, again, I know that’s not fact. And I think that this is the first tip I’m going to give you when you’re feeling like you’re not doing good enough, I want you to ask yourself, what is the truth? What is the actual truth? The truth is my kids have their school supplies.
Cara Harvey 00:06:41 In fact, my kids school supplies have nothing to do with who I am as a person. But we like to make it mean something, right? So the question you then are going to ask yourself is what am I making this mean? If the truth is my kids have their school supplies, not everything is new. What I’m making it mean is that because they didn’t get new stuff, I’m somehow failing them as a parent. Okay, how do I feel about that? I feel inadequate, I feel embarrassed a little bit like, oh my gosh, my kids aren’t going to have new things. Like, I have all these feelings, but what do I want the fact to be? So what I want the fact to be is I don’t I don’t want to care at all about what other people are doing. So how do I get out of this? My tip for this one is going to be decrease your social media time when you are feeling inadequate about things, I want you to ask yourself how much time are you spending allowing outside influences? Get into your head now.
Cara Harvey 00:07:30 Again, social media could be good. You could be hearing what I’m saying today and be like, yes, I needed to hear that. But when it becomes too much and only you know what too much is, when it becomes this thing where you feel like, oh, I’m just always comparing. I’m seeing these other people’s vacations. I’m seeing brand new back to school outfits and things like that. That’s when you want to pause. I feel really strong in some of my convictions I make in the beginning, and then I start to see things and it changes my mind. My husband will say this to me too. He’ll notice I’m like, oh, we don’t have these sort of things together, these systems together. We’re not doing these trips. And he’s like, have you been on Facebook? And I’m like, I have been, and it’s sucking the life of me. I was thinking about this. My daughter, we were talking about back to school clothes. It’s hot where I live in back to school time.
Cara Harvey 00:08:09 My kids don’t need anything new when they need stuff. It’s like maybe November, right? When we need pants, they don’t need new shorts. They don’t need the t shirts. Right? I let them pick one new outfit out for the first day if they want, and that’s it. But I started to see other people’s back to school halls, right? And I was like, oh, this is getting in my head. My kid should have these kind of things, etc.. Here’s the thing. If we are always comparing ourselves to what we see other people are doing, we’re going to always feel dissatisfied. It’s never going to be enough, right? Yeah. And Adrian said the same thing. I’m happier when I have less social media use. So when you’re feeling like it’s not enough, I want to encourage you to get off social media for a little bit. Again, I love a good school. I absolutely love it, but I am not going to allow it to get into my head now.
Cara Harvey 00:08:55 What do you do if you feel like you’re failing because of things that are happening in your life when it comes to parenting, let’s talk about this. My son asleep right now. We’re have we’re on the struggle bus. I’m not even going to going to lie, his behavior has been really not good. Lots of destructive things. If you’ve seen in my stories, I’ve shared a few of them. Lots of defiance this summer, really struggling, and it was making me feel like it was all my fault. I said this to my husband. I was like, I feel like his behaviors are because I’m not spending enough time with him. I got back into work. we came back from vacation, things like that, and I feel like I’m not spending enough time with him. So because of that, he’s acting out. I had to go through the same exercise. What is the truth there? The truth is, yes. Could he use more attention for me and things like that? His behavior is not a reflection of who I am as a person, right? That’s his behavior.
Cara Harvey 00:09:45 He is his own person. And so if maybe you’re in this point where you’re struggling with your kids or parenting, whatever age my kids are currently, my little guy is about to be seven. In a couple of weeks, eight and almost 18. All my kids are about to have birthdays, so almost seven, almost nine, and almost 18. And in all of those ages with my kids, I feel like there’s places I could always improve and do better. But I need to remind myself this just because it’s a place I can do better doesn’t mean that I’m failing in the place I’m existing here. That again, just because you could do better, you could improve in something, does not mean that you are failing in the current space. It’s okay to want to improve. It’s okay to want to be better. It’s okay to want to work on yourself. I love to listen to podcasts and books and courses and things to become a better parent, but it doesn’t mean that the parenting that I’m doing is a failure.
Cara Harvey 00:10:39 It just means that there’s areas that could feel more aligned. And I think when I start to to wrap my brain around that, when I start to say, nope, that is what it truly is. It’s really about making sure that what I’m doing is aligned, not that I’m failing. I take the pressure off myself to be this perfect parent. I think in society we feel like we need to check all the boxes and all the places, and it’s not true. When we think of balance, a lot of times we think of that little circle and your pizza pie cutout, and it’s all kind of set in there, but in reality, it isn’t balance, it’s its alignment. This summer’s been a really good, you know, time for me to get to do that, because I have worked a lot less this summer because I wanted to be present with my kids. My kids have had a lot less camps. Like I said, my son will have been off a month before he goes to another camp.
Cara Harvey 00:11:28 They we really have been having home time. So that means that a couple things need to change for me. I need to be working differently and sometimes that’s less. Sometimes that’s at night. I need to be more intentional about other things. That’s what alignment feels like for me when they go back to school. And I have a full six hours where they’re, you know, there I can work differently. It’s not about everything getting equal amounts of time. It’s about the things that are most important to you working. I just posted this on my Instagram actually based on my sign, my son up for football and football starts Thursday. Football is four nights a week, and again 6 or 7, four nights a week and at least one game on the weekends. It’s a lot. My daughter does competitive cheer. I shared that my oldest is a basketball. He’s going to be a senior in high school, right? There’s a lot happening in our very full and busy life. And I pause because I was like, oh, is this it? Like, should we still do football because we had such a nice summer, not feeling like we had to run to activity, to activity.
Cara Harvey 00:12:22 It was really nice slowing down. But then I came home yesterday. I was running errands and he was like in his full gear with my husband in the back yard practicing, and he was having such a good time. And I thought, no, this is what he wants to do. So for alignment for us for the fall season is going to be that our nights are going to be busier, right? Our weekends are going to be busier. So we need to be intentional about our family time. It’s just looking at it differently. But it’s hard not to feel like you aren’t doing enough. It’s hard not to feel like I don’t have hours that I’m spending with my kid. I don’t have hours I’m spending on my self-care. I’m not spending hours in all these areas because those hours don’t all exist together. We have to allow enough to be enough. It’s why I teach the 15 minute formula. It’s why I teach. Hey, can you show it for yourself in these small chunks? I mentioned my my daughter is at camp this week.
Cara Harvey 00:13:07 My son is home recovering from his tonsils. I have my work schedule and I looked at it yesterday. I started to feel the overwhelm. I start to feel like it’s not going to be enough. I’m not going to be able to put in enough work hours. I’m not going to be able to put in enough time. And I had to stop and ask myself the question of what is true. I want to pause real quick and invite you to an absolutely free webinar that I’m doing on August 28th that is going to help you find seven hours to work on your goals without feeling like you have to get up early or stay up late. I know that it can feel challenging to find the time in your schedule to work on all the things you want to work on, so I’m going to be going through my method that has four parts to it to allow you to create a plan for yourself for September and beyond. That will help you not put the goals on the back burner. I know that you created these amazing goals in December.
Cara Harvey 00:13:54 You set down, you were so excited. And then January hit. Still a little excited. And now we’re getting ready to go into September soon. How many of those goals have you accomplished? Do you need help figuring out how to find the time? That’s what we’re going to talk about at this workshop. If you go to a purpose driven romcoms for seven hours, you can get your absolute free seat, sign up, it’ll get you access to the replay if you can’t get on live. And we’re going to talk all about how to find that time without sacrificing your sleep, without feeling the mom guilt that you should be doing something else, and without burning out and hustling all the time. It’s possible. And we’re going to talk about it. Go to a purpose driven romcom set seven hours and I’ll see you there. Well, what is true is that I’m going to be intentional with the time I have again. I finished a meeting. I walked out there at. My son had fallen asleep, because I was in a meeting that said he could watch TV, and I had planned on spending time with him as soon as my calls were done.
Cara Harvey 00:14:41 I’m going to be intentional right now. I’m not going to feel guilty that I came back into the office and I was like, let me record this podcast. Instagram will let me do all these things. And when he wakes up, I’m going to be focused with him. You’re never going to do enough. It’s never going to be good enough for you. It’s never going to be good enough for society. It’s never going to be good enough for the voice in your head that says you need to do more. Unless you start to look at things as alignment over balance. When you’re trying to do things 100% of the time in every area of your life, you will always feel like a failure. Instead, what if you said, I’m going to switch my priorities up a bit? I’m going to switch the amount of time I want to put on something, and I’m going to allow it to change. That is the thing that has helped me this summer. Feel like, you know what? I didn’t show up for work like I wanted to this summer, but I showed up for my family and that felt really good.
Cara Harvey 00:15:31 And there are some seasons we’re going into the conference. Our preparation for my retreat coming up in September, in September, it’s going to be very busy for me. I’m going to need my husband to help out more. I’m going to have to back up, and that works for us. My husband’s job is very heavy in the summer and it’s light in September. Well, in September I’m going to need him to take him to football practice every night because I need that time to work. I’m going to have to do that. And maybe family is not going to be number one. It might be number two. And I want to tell you that that’s okay. There’s this concept of teaching my program, the purpose of your mom club. and it’s about the glass and the rubber balls. And Nora Roberts, she has this quote, I don’t know the direct quote, but it came from Nora Roberts. It’s for her, really, but it’s about glass and rubber balls and how his moms were constantly juggling all the balls.
Cara Harvey 00:16:13 And in some seasons of her life, the balls are glass and some of them are rubber. The glass ones are going to break and the rubber ones will bounce back. This summer, I can tell with the way my son is behaving, things like that one on one time family time needs to be a glass ball right now. We need that time. We’re creating that time together. Work for me in the summer became a rubber ball. I still worked on it. It was still important. But if some things fell through the cracks, I knew they would bounce back. So to say. I still had deadlines, etc. but you know, it wasn’t the big party. I’m not even going to pretend that in September, like work is going to be my glass ball. We’re getting ready for the conference. We have a lot of things. We’re working on the back end, had to a purpose driven romcom slash conference. Go grab your ticket if you haven’t gotten it yet. But that’s my glass ball and my family is a rubber ball.
Cara Harvey 00:16:56 It’s still important to me. It’s still something I’m focusing on. I’m not going to be like, okay, kids, I’ll see you in October, right? But there are some things where if my kids watch more TV or we eat out more or, you know, I’m not doing everything, it’s okay. And this concept has allowed me to say, like, not everything can be done at a million miles an hour. Not everything can be done at this super high intensity all the time. And that’s okay. Give yourself some grace to know that you’re doing your best, and you will never feel like you’re doing enough if you don’t give yourself that space to decide what enough actually is. I will never finish my to do list. Ever. There will always be something, physically or mentally, honestly, that has to get done. It’s okay. I make my list for the day. I’m intentional about my time blocks. I’m focused on what I have to do, and I still will probably get to the end of the day with things not completed.
Cara Harvey 00:17:51 Instead of beating myself up over what I haven’t done, I want to congratulate myself for how I have showed up and to remind myself I’m doing my best. And if you struggle with this every day, look yourself in the mirror and say, doing my best, I’m doing my best and that’s what matters. Last week I had to struggle. It was just a mental health struggle week, and I was in this mindset of it’s not enough, you’re failing. You’re failing everything. I was like, I’m that brain spiral. And I will say, like, I haven’t been in therapy this summer as much as I needed to because my kids were home. And I know that this is connected, but I was on this brain spiral of I’m not doing enough. I’m failing everywhere. I’m letting everyone down. It was starting to go and I felt it impacting my day to day, and I was feeling kind of stuck. I would get up and be like, I don’t want to do anything because I’m feeling like it doesn’t matter.
Cara Harvey 00:18:37 Nothing is good enough. And these were the thoughts in my head and I really struggled. And then this weekend, I took some time to journal. I took some time, you know, to pray and to think like what? What do I need right now? And I had to remind myself that what I was doing was good enough. And the only thing I need to keep doing is keep going. And I just wanted to encourage you. This episode is going to air on the podcast, I think mid August, late August. So there’s a lot of moms who are getting ready for back to school who might need to hear that you did enough this summer. Your kids had a great time. Popsicles for breakfast was a good idea. You didn’t need to spend $1 million going to every event, as long as what you did felt aligned for your family, that is enough. I’m going to put this on the podcast at a later date. A Purpose Driven mom.com/podcast for 20. I don’t know if the video went in the Facebook group, so we’ll have to check and see if we have a video for YouTube.
Cara Harvey 00:19:24 If not, at least we’ve got the recording and we’ll go from there. Have a wonderful day and if you need help, I’m here. Just send me a DM. We can chat more and also know that the Purpose Driven Mum club doors, they’re going to be opening up at the end of August right around the time I think this is airing. You could go to a Purpose Driven mom.com/club and head over, get on the waitlist, have a wonderful day. Enjoy the rest of your day instead of sitting in what you haven’t done, I want you to find enjoyment of how you’ve showed up for yourself and your priorities today. So have a good one. 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 00:20:19 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.
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