Hey friend, welcome back to the blog!
This one is for all the busy mamas out there struggling to keep up with all the things. Sometimes it's HARD -- I get it. But there are some things we can do to make it easier.
Ever since I became a mother to my own child, I've been learning how much we mamas juggle on a daily basis. Juggling can be simple at times and difficult at others.
So today I wanted to bring on a special guest who can talk all things when it comes to juggling motherhood, a full-time career, and starting a business. Enter Hannah Pearson.
Hannah is a Registered Nurse and Certified Health and Life coach who works with women in the workforce who are also juggling motherhood. She helps them prioritize healthy habits, routines, and mindset shifts so they can optimize their performance in business and family life without sacrificing their current and long-term mental and physical health. Hannah knows how important it is to focus on habits and mindset to prevent burnout, bad health, and ultimately poor performance in work and family life. Hannah has worked with hundreds of patients and clients over the last decade of her professional career helping them master a holistic long-term solution for mental and physical health. Hannah is a veteran Army Registered Nurse and certified coach with deep levels of experience in leading and teaching patients and clients to long-term success. Hannah has some really interesting advice to help you get there, so trust me, you're going to want to read this one through to the end
First I asked Hannah if there was a conflict for her to make this jump to a more holistic approach to her health?
“It was a transition that made sense to me. I think that it's really hard to go from being so medical minded to this full swing the other way of everything super crunchy and holistic, and it can feel extreme and I find a lot of mamas in this day
and age, I say this all the time when I'm talking to my audience, is that there's
overwhelm and burnout associated with trying to get it right as a mom. Trying to get it right for our bodies, and almost information overload because we do have Google at our fingertips we do have social media with influencers telling us this way or that way or this product or that product this program and so it can become so so noisy with all the information that people end up actually not making any moves because they don't know what to do.”
“I was very blessed to be raised in that military-minded home where disciplined habits were a way of my life. I was taught that from a very young age, but I know that I am very blessed and not everyone was raised that way. I hear a lot of like “well I used to before kids, or before college, or in college” and so it’s not that there was never healthy habits but it's about having the knowledge and having the tools to be able to adapt your habits and routines to a changing life because our life is going to go through so many seasons and if we're stuck in only being able to operate in one we're not gonna be able to adapt into the next one and that's where a lot of people fall off track, specifically moms.”
Next, I asked Hannah what happens once we actually make the decision to prioritize and are in alignment with our habits?
“When you're in line with your healthy habits and you know very clearly where you need to be and what your obstacles are, you're gonna find peace of mind. I talk a lot about the mindset that goes with habit shifts, so when you have a healthy routine and you have healthy habits your stress goes down, your energy goes up, and your body is naturally more relaxed and peaceful and you find better rhythm in your life because you're working with your body instead of against it. A lot of times we're asking so much of our body on a daily basis, especially busy working moms. We're juggling so many balls, wearing so many hats, and essentially just emptying our tank until we’re running on fumes. Women are powerful, we got to give ourselves the credit that's due. What we're able to do with our mental and physical bodies like multi-tasking all the things we do but eventually as with any human-like we will actually hit a burnout place or an empty tank, and so when your body and your mind hits that plays on your struggle. but when you're in a good place with your habits and you’re healthy, then you're just naturally going to flow with your life. Not saying that there's not gonna be stressed and you know you're working hard but did you know that those things are in alignment for a long long term and so you're going to stay healthier and happier and be more productive in your daily life.”
(Prefer to listen along? Tune in now to The Beyond Leadership Podcast)
I then wanted to talk about the inverse, and when you don't have these healthy habits in your life, will it cost you more than just your health?
“Absolutely, I am definitely a positive-minded encourager by nature it so I love to talk about that the positive side of the coin, but it's also super important to understand what we're costing ourselves when we're choosing certain things. We have this “push through” mentality, and all a sudden we realize we've been pushing through for months and years and then it's nothing is improving it's only getting worse. When we go for days, months, years and not address these underlying issues, chronic stress is actually something that can cause many
different symptoms and disease in the body because stress causes inflammation and then you're having things like pain, you're not sleeping well, you're putting on weight, you're eating emotionally, your hormones get out of balance... there's like so many things that go along with that. Being a nurse for so long, I saw the long-term effects of this through my patients. I was taking care of the people in the hospital that were already on the other side of this. So my main goal is to get ahead, to get to you, and to the people that need me. Ahead of needing doctors, nurses, and being treated for chronic diagnoses and diseases in the hospital. The leading causes of illness, like chronic illness and death, in the United States are lifestyle-induced stuff. So things like diabetes, heart disease, and obesity, are things that are all caused by lifestyle. It starts with simple bad habits of not choosing to prioritize what you're putting into your body with your food, not moving your body, not getting enough rest and that turns into a snowball effect. So when you look at that not only just the internal like are my organs healthy but also I also like to say you know eventually that's gonna cost us and the in our marriages if you're married with your children where moms like our children are the most important thing to us, but we might be able to run on those fumes for a while and show up as the best mom, but eventually, what does that look like five, ten, fifteen years down the road are we still the best version of us for our children who are still going to be there and need us and so that ends up costing us in that way.”
From a medical & general life and health coaching standpoint what are the things that we should be prioritizing? Could you give us your top 3 actionable steps?
“This is where it gets really funny, some of these things are so simple. The number one thing that I can say that you can use to move the needle right now is just drink enough water. Most people are not staying hydrated and that looks like half of your body weight in ounces a day at least. That's not counting the caffeine and sugar intake, we have to offset that. so that's just baseline what our bodies should be taking in every single day and it affects so much in our health and also just energy levels.
Another big thing that I really love to focus on is sleep. A lot of busy working Mamas are not sleeping enough, and for those of you that are reading that are the type three achiever like I am, the perfectionist, or if you're all about hustling and constantly going it's easy to make sleep the lowest priority because we have the never ending to-do list. So here begins their hamster wheel right and this is a very common hamster wheel that people get on. So simply understanding how to shift yourself into a habit of good sleep and what that means.
The third one that I really love to focus on which is your mindset. I speak about this in regards to the story you're telling yourself, and this is a habit because how often are we telling ourselves that we’re overwhelmed, as an example. We're telling ourselves different stories, and a habit change that is really powerful is being able to be aware and catch that and rewrite your story and retrain yourself. As women were naturally so hard on ourselves... it's still easy to come down ourselves especially when we’re overachievers. We blame ourselves and so we're telling ourselves negativity, and I'm a firm believer in the power but we speak over ourselves and into our lives and so if we rewire our habit around speaking the positivity and the blessing and the good things into our lives and hearts that will be our story.”
How can having that thriving mentality actually help us with these other habits were supposed to form?
“When we decide to focus on shifting these things, we can really get to a place where our mindset takes over and it's just a no-fail mission. One of the biggest things that I see with failure in habit change is that we try to take on too much at once. So if you look at your goals, #1 is to know where you want to be. What is the healthiest version of yourself? If a year from now you looked ahead and said that's the woman I want to be as a wife, as a friend, as a mom, as a businesswoman. Thriving means mind, body, spirit. and so when you get crystal clear on that then you know what your obstacles are, you look and say “okay, but what keeps me from getting there every time? What derails me every time?” and you get really clear on that. Then you choose the one thing that can be so simple that I can do? and the biggest thing that people do kind of wrong here is they they they bite off more than they can chew. Instead of saying “I want to be healthier and fit, I'm starting a new fitness program I'm on a nutrition plan” that's too much to start with. Start simple. So super simple one right, think how can I be successful to change this one habit.. just change the one thing. Just work on that because as you learn to change one thing you learn to change other things, but it has to start really small.”
I loved everything that Hannah had to say and how she Juxtapoz both the science, mindset, and how it all works together.
Visit her on Instagram at @nurse.hannah.faith and check out her upcoming masterclass to become the healthiest, thriving version of you.
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