Hello Mama, and welcome to episode ELEVEN of Mumstoppable! First, I get you’re busy, Mama. So let me tell you the top 3 reasons why investing 30 minutes in this episode is a game-changer:

Empowerment for Busy Mums: 

• In just 30 minutes, you'll gain invaluable insights into managing your emotions and mental wellness, empowering you to navigate the daily struggles and challenges of motherhood with grace and resilience. Learn practical strategies to regain control of your emotional responses, transforming stressful situations into opportunities for growth and connection with your children.

Life-Changing Tools for Self-Improvement: 

• Discover powerful tools like the three-step emotional control process introduced in this episode, designed to help you recognize and shift your emotional responses effectively. By understanding how to reinterpret situations through different lenses, you'll unlock the ability to choose your emotional reactions consciously, leading to a more harmonious and fulfilling life for you and your family.

Quick and Accessible Techniques: 

• As a busy mum, time is precious. This episode offers efficient and accessible techniques, such as grounding exercises and the "container hug," which take only moments to implement but yield significant benefits in managing stress and promoting emotional well-being. 

Invest just 30 minutes in this week’s episode to equip yourself with transformative strategies that can positively impact your daily life and relationships.

For those of you that want to listen - click below to play the podcast:

Otherwise, you can read this week’s show notes below:

Hello Mama, and welcome to episode ELEVEN of Mumstoppable. I hope you’ve had a fabulous weekend, and that you managed to have a go at some of the relationship work we covered off last week?

I’ve been doing some Love Languages work with my kids and it’s so interesting how different they both are, despite the fact they’ve been brought up together. I’m also loving having conversations with them about it, and the importance of trying to notice what makes others feel super loved, as it might not be the same thing that makes them feel loved. 

Anyway, I digress… because this week, on 24th February in fact, it’s “Emotional Health Day”. So what better way to theme this week’s episode than by bringing things back to “emotional health”, which The Samaritans define as being “Emotional health is about how we think and feel. It is about our sense of wellbeing, our ability to cope with life events and how we acknowledge our own emotions as well as those of others. It doesn't mean being happy all of the time.”

Now there’s a lot to unpack there, but today we’re going to focus on “our ability to cope with life events and acknowledge our own emotions”. So first, what is an emotion?! Google tells me that it’s “a strong feeling deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.” So basically it’s how we FEEL about things, often in reaction to things that are happening to or around us. Makes sense!

Okay the other thing I want to cover off is the different TYPES of emotion, and WHY we even have them… First let’s list off some common emotions:

• Happiness

• Sadness

• Love

• Fear

• Confidence (although this is questionable - see episode 11 for more!)

• Anger

• Playfulness

• Embarrassment

Okay great - obviously, there are many, many more but that’s a good start. Looking at that list, we could categorise those into two - comfortable emotions (happiness, love, playfulness) and uncomfortable emotions (sadness, fear, anger). The first thing I want to be VERY clear about here is that I have intentionally used the terms comfortable and uncomfortable, rather than positive and negative. The reason for that is there is no such thing as a negative, or bad emotion. I truly believe that, and I want it to sink in so let me say that again… there is not such thing as a bad emotion.

Why? Because let’s think now about where emotions come from. Let’s take fear as an example because that’s a pretty extreme emotion that I think a lot of people would class as “bad”. At its core, what is fear? What is its purpose? What is it trying to tell you? Well… at a very basic level fear is a protective mechanism. A sense of fear is telling us something is wrong, and we need to do something about it (think fight or flight). For example, in our history when early man was attacked by a wild animal, fear would kick in and get him to either fight the animal off or run away. Fear there is keeping him alive! Without it he would likely be killed.

Pain is another example… Let’s say you touch a hot pan handle and you feel pain. The emotion of pain tells you something is wrong and you need to let go. If you didn’t feel that pain, you’d keep holding on and get burnt.

Now these are extreme examples but hopefully you get my point. Emotions are there for a reason. They are our body’s way of trying to protect us. 

As an interesting aside, did you know there are only TWO fears we are born with? Guess what they are? Loud noises and falling. All other fears are learnt….

Now let’s go back to that part of the definition of emotional health which we want to focus on today, which is “our ability to cope with life events and acknowledge our own emotions”. The next thing to understand is that there are a lot of different schools of thought around how to deal with the emotion in the moment. Some people think it’s best to quash the emotion immediately by getting back into the present moment and moving on. Others say you should allow yourself to fully FEEL every emotion, and let it move through your system before you try to move on.

My thinking is a bit of both, depending on the situation and the strength of the emotion. And I’m going to start with the BIG emotions… Think about when you were a teenager and had your heart broken for the first time. Or the feeling of grief when someone close to you passes away. These are BIG, SERIOUS emotions that we can’t just get rid of. In these situations I believe it’s important to allow yourself to feel all the things. And that might mean locking yourself in your bedroom for a few hours and just crying. If you’re feeling anger, it might mean you scream into a pillow to get some release. Whatever it is that you need to do, give yourself permission to feel the feelings, and let them flow through you.

The reason I think in these situations it’s important to FEEL the emotions before you get rid of them, is if we suppress these big feelings, they can lead to more sinister things including depression, chronic anxiety and also a range of health conditions. By allowing them to flow through us, before releasing them, we are allowing them to do what they need to, before getting rid of them.

Okay so, when you are ready to come out of the other side of the big emotion, there are loads of things you can do to shake that emotion off. And they all revolve around CHANGE and MOVEMENT. Essentially, if you feel STUCK in an emotion, you need to physically move your body to get UNSTUCK. So put your favourite song on and have a dance; or go out in nature and take a walk; or go to a fitness class. Do something to physically change your state, and in all likelihood your mood and emotional state will change too. And remember, nothing changes when nothing changes…. So if you DON’T change your physical state, your emotional state is going to remain the same.

Great, that’s the BIG emotions covered off, but what about the daily struggle with all the emotions we feel throughout the day? Including those where we might be triggered by our little people (I’m looking at you, terrible twos!). 

For this I want to visit #coachingcorner and reintroduce a concept which we have spoken about before, but having a good understanding and awareness of this tool is absolutely KEY to taking back control of your life in so many ways, so I want to go through it again. This is the idea that we can actually control how we feel about things (controversial and not an absolute truth, but I think most of the time it’s true, and I’ll explain why shortly).

Now there are various models which show how this works, but I’m going to use my own variation which is Now there are various models which show how this works, but I’m going to use my own variation which is my 3 step emotional control process. Okay, if I asked you to think about how an emotion works, practically speaking, most people would come up with two steps as follows:

. Okay, if I asked you to think about how an emotion works, practically speaking, most people would come up with two steps as follows:

1. STEP ONE is you have an emotion, often in reaction to something that’s happening to or around you.

2. STEP TWO is you decide what action to take, based on your emotion

However, there is a fundamental step missing here, in which you have a CHOICE, Mama. So let’s revisit the steps:

1. STEP ONE - you imply meaning to whatever is happening to or around you by putting it through a filter. This filter includes your values (see episode 8 of Mumstoppable if you don’t know what your values are), your ideologies, your beliefs, you instincts, past experiences, etc etc. Basically everything that makes you who you are.

2. STEP TWO - based on the meaning you have implied, you set an emotion into play

3. STEP THREE - you decide what action to take, based on your emotion

Now I understand this may be a tricky concept to both understand and buy into, but stay with me because I have a couple of examples.

Let’s say your kid comes back from school and goes to get a glass of water. However, once he’s filled the cup from the tap, he turns around and drops it. Now there is water everywhere, he’s upset and you have a choice…….

Mama, you COULD decide that your kid has done this on purpose and is just trying to cause you problems by creating a mess which you now need to clear up. In this instance your emotion would likely be… ANGER! And your reaction would likely be to shout at him before angrily cleaning up the mess.

But WHAT IF… WHAT IF you decided in that moment, that your kid was trying to be helpful and save you a job by not asking you to get him a drink, because he’s noticed how much you do for him. And WHAT IF he was actually getting that cup of water for you, because he wants to do something nice for you? In this instance, your emotion would likely be… SORROW and APPRECIATION! You’d appreciate the sentiment, and feel sad for him that it didn’t turn out how he wanted. And your reaction might be to give him a big hug, before mopping it up.

And think now about AFTER that incident has happened… physiologically in the first scenario your heart rate will be raised, your blood will be pumping, your adrenaline will be going overtime. You will be physically stressed out.

In scenario two, you’re more calm, you’ve had a hug (which is scientifically proven to have health benefits), the house is calm, nobody is upset and you can go about your afternoon…

Do you see how the same situation, with a slightly different lens in STEP ONE creates a totally different outcome?! Do you see that the ONLY difference here is the filter you applied to the situation as it occurred?! Do you see how powerful and utterly life changing that is, Mama?! Because once you understand this, you can take back control. You can directly impact how your day goes. You can decide whether you are stressed out, or calm. YOU HAVE THIS POWER, MAMA! 

And that brings us to our coaching challenge. Because I know, in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to get swept up and, using that previous example, flit right into anger mode… And that’s because as mums we have SO much on our plates, that this is just another thing to deal with. And anything could be the thing that tips us over the edge. But there are tools and techniques that we can use to conquer this, Mama. The main thing is that you understand the concept of my 3 step emotional control process, and you can now look out for situations like this happening, and emotions taking over.

So what I want you to do for this week’s coaching challenge is to look out for exactly those moments. Try to catch yourself in the act of applying those filters, before the emotion hits you. And make a choice to apply a different filter.

If you’re too late and notice after the emotion has hit, take a breath and use one of these gorgeous grounding techniques to get back into the present moment. This will help you come out of the emotion and be able to rationally make a choice about the filter you are going to apply:

• Countdown from 10, slowly, ideally with your eyes closed

• Use the 5,4,3,2,1 technique… look around you and name 5 things (in your head) that you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell and one thing you can taste

• Box breathing: breathe in for 4, hold your breath for 4, breathe out for 4, hold your breath for 4 and repeat until you feel calm

• Try to recite the alphabet backwards in your mind

• Put both feet on the floor, stamp them a few times and shake your body out

• Splash your face with some cold water

These are all small things that take a minute or two, and the point is you are resetting yourself. You’re also creating a state change, to move out of the undesired emotion, even before it happens. And when you are reset, you can calmly and logically make a choice about the emotion you are going to feel, and the action you’ll take as a result of that.

This is an utterly magical tool, and if you use it correctly it’s one of the most transformational tools you can use because it will have such a positive impact on the experience you are having when you live your life, and it will also make you a better mother… win win!

Okay now, I’m feeling uber generous today, so I actually want to set you another mini challenge! And this is one you can do with your kids… 

I mentioned earlier that hugs are scientifically proven to have a positive physiological impact on you. Which I think is WILD. So if you’re having a bad day, a decent (10 seconds of more) hug can change everything and make you feel better. BUT did you know that hugging yourself can have the SAME impact?! Mind. Blown. 

So next time you or your kid is feeling sad, maybe you (or they) are on your own so no chance of a hug, hug yourself! Put one arm across your chest and your hand over your shoulder, with the other arm going across your belly and your hand around your waist, and SQUEEZE! And do it for 10 seconds minimum. And that will instantly give you a scientifically proven physiological boost. 

It’s called a container hug. Try it. Teach it to your kids. Let me know what you think!

Now, before you go I want to tell you a bit more about my new mobile app! It’s going to be your one-stop shop to all things Mumstoppable, wherever and whenever you need it.

So, If you've enjoyed the Mumstoppable® podcast but want more; if you're intrigued by how coaching could help you rediscover yourself or help you grow your confidence; if you long to feel seen and heard outside of being just "mum" but aren't sure where to start... the Mumstoppable® app is for you.

I've created this app to turn the world of coaching on its head. I know how hard it is being Mum (and often losing yourself in the process). I also know how damn life changing coaching can be, but I also acknowledge that 1:1 coaching isn't an option for a lot of mums. It is often expensive, you have to commit to regular time slots, and it's ANOTHER thing to add to your list.

By combining my love of technology (I had a long and happy career in videogames) with my passion for coaching mums to help them find themselves again, I have designed and created a mobile app that brings you expert coaching support at your fingertips. It's built so you can dip in and out of the content as and when you need to with no need to book regular slots, or even commit to watching videos. In fact, most of the content is audio based so you can dip in and listen whilst you're busy doing all the other things on your to-do list, whilst still making time to work on you!

Using my bespoke Mumstoppable® Method, I'll support you to rediscover your pre-mum sparkle by:

⚡ Asking you to commit to just 30 minutes per week... and that's broken down into chunks for you to complete whenever you can

⚡ Giving you access to expert guided coaching sessions, tools and techniques to help you rediscover who you are behind the "mum mask" (and for those of you familiar with the podcast, we'll be visiting #coachingcorner and I'll be setting a coaching challenge each week!)

⚡ Monthly group coaching sessions to keep you on track

⚡ Membership to the Mumstoppable® community, where you can connect to other mums

When the app launches in March, I'll be looking for a group of founding members who will get access to:

⚡ Access to my signature course, "12 weeks to a Mumstoppable You", which is designed around 3 core pillars: clarity, connection and commitment. Each week I'll ask you to commit to spending just 30 mins in total (and you have the flexibility of being able to dip in and out of the content across the week) working through bite-sized audio lessons. These will allow you to: get clarity on who you are, connect with yourself and others, and commit to a future of feeling Mumstoppable. You will also have the option of completing worksheets within the app (to save you having to dash to find a pen and paper!).

⚡ BONUS 1: monthly group coaching calls to keep you on track

⚡ BONUS 2: daily affirmations to help you shift your perspective and start to love yourself again

⚡ BONUS 3: access to the Mumstoppable community where you can connect with other mums, stay accountable and ensure long-term results

⚡ BONUS 4: access all of the above via the Mumstoppable mobile app, so that you can get all the support you need whenever and wherever you need it

⚡ BONUS 5: access to new content and challenges once the 12 week course has ended, continued access to the Mumstoppable community and monthly group coaching calls

I'm SO excited to bring this support to you, Mama! If you're as excited as I am, click here and pop your details in the box to sign up to the waitlist and be the first to find out how to sign up to become a founding member when we launch in March 2024!

I really hope to see you there!

That brings us to the end of this week’s blog! Thank you once again for joining me, and well done for spending the last 30 mins doing something just for you! 

Enjoy working through this week’s coaching corner tips, and as always, I would LOVE to hear how you’re getting on with the coaching challenge, so please feel free to send me a quick email at [email protected] or find me on Instagram at @mumstoppable_ and send me a DM or leave a comment on one of my posts. 

You will also be able to find reminders of the coaching corner tips and details of the coaching challenge on Instagram towards the end of the week.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be talking to you about challenges facing mums ranging from feeling lost and like you don’t know who you are anymore, to surviving overwhelm as a mum, to motherhood and the strains that puts on your relationships, to the struggle of returning to work. Please also feel free to email me with any challenges you’re facing which you’d like me to cover off on upcoming sessions.

If you’ve liked what you’ve read today, please do sign up to my newsletter by clicking the side bar on the left. As a thank you for signing up, you can choose to receive my FREE Self-Love Journal, which is full of gorgeous self-love exercises and a 14 day journal template for you to print and fill out. 

And more importantly, by signing up, you’re guaranteeing you’ll never miss a blog post (or Podcast episode!) as they will land directly in your inbox every Monday morning.

For now, though, have an awesome week, and remember:

I see you, Mama. 

You’ve got this. 

You are Mumstoppable!