As a Mum do you find yourself constantly juggling a long list of things from housework to kids to grocery shopping? Do you find yourself stressed and overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and worry about managing it all? Here is Why You Need My 3 Top Stress Relief Tips for Mums guaranteed to save your sanity!

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Top Stress Relief Tips for Mums

As a mother do you find yourself constantly juggling kids, jobs, shopping, exams pressures (your own or the dreaded LEAVING CERT), cooking, cleaning, ironing and ALL the other stuff that goes along with being a parent?

In fairness, the list of things that mums juggle seems endless! The list is also important because everything on that list of yours is what creates the perpetual spinning motion on what I like to call the “Parenting Worry-Go-Round”.

Parenting Worry-Go-Round

The Parenting Worry-Go-Round inside your head is where you’ll find all the thoughts that make you feel stressed and overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and worry. (Parenting guilt is huge for us Mums.)

In order to escape the spinning thoughts inside our heads we make ourselves feel good on the outside.

• We might get our hair done and go on a night out with the girls.
• If you can find someone willing to look after your kids for 2 days (sisters, aunties, Grannys are the first port of call, we love you all dearly) you might get a weekend away with himself and a massage thrown in for good measure.
• When summer hits you may get to go on a 2 week sun filled holiday.

We always feel brilliant doing these things but the problem is, the feeling doesn’t last long because all the things you’re trying to escape from travel with you inside your mind, they are called your thoughts.

There is no escape from the thoughts inside your head they are with you 24/7, 365 days of the year and that’s a fact.

You can distract yourself for sure with the nights out and weekends away but as soon as you return from the break all those racing thoughts come flooding to the forefront of your mind and you find yourself back on your Parenting Worry-Go-Round spinning even faster.

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Learn How Your Mind Works

Real escape comes from learning how your mind works, because how you think the thoughts inside your head totally dictates how good or bad you feel on a daily basis. But more importantly, how long those good or bad feelings stay inside you and affect your humour.

There are times when mothers tend to focus on the bad stuff. We can make ourselves feel like terrible mothers, sisters or friends simply by remembering something that happened over a month ago or longer.

The internal Nagging Committee has a field day with this type of over thinking. It triggers the thoughts inside your head to come flooding to the forefront of your mind and the associated negative feelings those thoughts initially created inside you, make you feel bad all over again.

All of this causes you to give yourself a terrible hard time about yourself inside your own head and so the bad humour persists.

This type of thinking soon begins to leak into family life because as you continue with the day to day stuff the racing thoughts in your head spin you faster and faster on the Parenting Worry-Go-Round and all the bad feelings those racing thoughts create inside you build up and up and eventually you find yourself losing it over the smallest of things.

We’ve all been here, haven’t we?

This is how powerful your thoughts are and we are brilliant at OVER THINKING the bad stuff, so it’s time to be brilliant at OVER THINKING the good stuff!

Prioritise Time For Yourself

No matter what stage of motherhood you’re at, taking care of yourself isn’t just a good idea, it is essential. Seriously, it’s a must. So real escape starts with you prioritising time for yourself because relaxing and rethinking definitely makes family life easier.

When you begin to take control of the Nagging Committee inside your head you can stop making yourself feel bad because you can stop the guilt, you can stop the worry which means you can reduce the stress. The domino effect this has on your kids and partner is exactly like spring colds, highly contagious.

Remember, it’s not about not feeling guilty or stressed or bad or not having arguments or shouting at the kids/husband/dog – the reality is, that is life.

This is about you, being in control of the Nagging Committee inside your head so you’re not making yourself feel bad for longer than is necessary which means a happier person and a happier Mum.

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My Top 3 Stress Relief Tips For Mums

These 3 stress relief (and sanity saving!) tips will help you do this. Use them daily because they are free, easy to do and, I promise, they work! I have 2 girls, aged 3 and 5, and I use these on a daily basis.

#1. Stop Over Thinking The Bad Stuff

Once is enough to make yourself feel bad about ANYTHING so stop belittling yourself and beating yourself up with the parenting guilt stick inside your head.

You know the way you make your best friend feel good about herself when she’s giving herself a hard time about something?

What would happen if you started to think about what a good mother, sister and friend you actually are and started talking to yourself the way you do to your best friend, same encouraging, loving tone?

Imagine making yourself feel good about yourself inside your own head for a change?

#2. Do a Mind Dump

Before you switch off the light to go to sleep do a mind dump. Have Post-Its and a pen beside your bed, write down whatever comes into your head, full sentences, words, whatever is inside your head driving you insane, get it out of your head onto that post-it.

Scrunch it up and aim it towards the bin.

Lights out.

Simple as that.

Give it a go and see what happens, you might find yourself sleeping like my husband (head hits pillow, passes out, snoring within 5 minutes, doesn’t hear a thing…).

#3. Stop The Nagging Committee Inside Your Head

There is waaaaayyy too much going on in there and it’s toooo loud and noisy, it’s time to slow down your thoughts so you can mind dump the thousands of thoughts that are making you feel bad (yes there are 1000’s of those very useless thoughts going on at any one time) and make room for the thoughts that make you feel good instead.

5 minutes is all you need.

Being 6 years into this forever adventure, I’ve discovered a calm mind and a relaxed attitude are every parent’s new BFF, no matter what age your kids are.

Good luck with the tips. I hope reading this has inspired you to try them out and get yourself off that Parenting Worry-Go-Round!

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Over to you now. Are you going to give my Stress Relief Tips a go? What works for you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.