Thriving In Motherhood Podcast | Productivity, Planning, Family Systems, Time Management, Survival Mode, Mental Health, Visio – Détails, épisodes et analyse

If you want a better present, you need a bigger future. This principle from Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning” has been proven in positive psychology - to truly thrive in your present, you need something you’re working toward. I came across this years ago when I had two little kids at home and felt aimless, with days dragging on. That’s when I started developing my yearly vision practice, and it’s become the single most transformative tool in my journey from surviving to thriving.

In this week's episode, I’m walking you through the five steps of creating your vision for 2025 using the CREATE framework:

• Capture what happened (by reviewing the previous year)

• Rewrite your story (shifting from default negative stories to empowering ones)

• Envision the year (exploring possibilities in all areas of life)

• Assess your roles and foundation (who do you want to be in each role?)

• Think long-term and evaluate priorities (where are you heading?)

Whether you’re deep in survival mode and can barely think beyond today, or you’re ready to dream big for your family’s future, this framework will meet you exactly where you are. Your vision might be crystal clear or totally fuzzy right now - but either one is a perfect starting point.

If you’d like to work through this with me, you can find the Create Your Vision Mini Course and workbook at thrivinginmotherhood.com/vision. These principles are also built into the 2025 Thriving in Motherhood Planner, but they work in any planning system you already love.

I truly believe this practice can help you move from just surviving your days to finding more joy and purpose in motherhood. It has for me.

We’ll also be working through this together in the Thriving in Motherhood Collective if you’d like some community support along the way! You can join that HERE.

When I was pregnant with my fourth baby, I learned something fascinating about labor – in between contractions, our bodies release oxytocin, flooding us with feel-good hormones. This completely changed my birth experience because I started focusing on these moments of relief instead of just anticipating the next contraction.

This principle, when we choose to magnify applies to every season of motherhood. Whether you’re navigating toddler tantrums, teenage conversations, pregnancy challenges, or relationship struggles, we can choose what we focus on.

In this episode, I dive into:

• Why our brains naturally focus on the negative

• How magnifying the hard moments can seep into our relationships

• The difference between acknowledging difficult seasons and letting them consume us

• Practical ways to start noticing and appreciating the good moments

• How to train your brain to look for what’s going well
  

Whether you’re in the trenches of morning sickness, managing strong-willed toddlers, or navigating big kid challenges, the conversation will help you find more joy in your days without denying the hard parts.

And, don’t forget to grab the free five-step path from surviving to thriving checklist to help you identify where you are on the path and what you can do 

I’m thrilled to share with you the 12 major updates we’ve made to the 2025 Thriving in Motherhood Planner. These changes are based on the latest productivity research, time management strategies, and systems design. I’ve been diving deep into these topics to bring you a planner that truly supports your journey in motherhood. Let’s explore what’s new!

Getting Started Checklist

Ever felt lost staring at a brand new planner? Not anymore. I’ve created a step-by-step guide that’s like having a friendly expert by your side. Whether you’re a planning pro or a first-timer, you’ll be up and running in no time.

Enhanced Planning Sessions Checklist

The planning sessions guide includes detailed checklists for quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily planning. Each session has it’s own acronym to help you remember it’s purpose.

Separated Vision Workbook and 2025 Vision Page

I’ve split these sections to give you more flexibility in your planning process. Why? Because sometimes you need to get messy with your dreams and sometimes you need a clean snapshot. The workbook is for brainstorming, while the vision page is for your refined goals.

Leverage Task List

This new two-page spread allows you to note repetitive tasks or pain points that you can improve or automate. It’s like a “to-improve list” that will help you free up mental and physical energy over time. 

Energy Map

A way to plan your tasks with your natural energy levels throughout the day, week, and month, maximizing your productivity and reducing frustration. No more beating yourself up for not being a morning person (or a night owl)!

Personal Life Philosophy Page

A dedicated space for you to collect inspiring quotes, scriptures, or ideas that resonate with who you want to be and how you want to live. This page is your personal collection of guiding lights, helping you stay true to your values and aspirations.

Quarterly Vision Pages

I’ve repositioned these pages to appear before each quarter, making it easier to plan and review your progress throughout the year. No more flipping back and forth!

Updated Project, Goal, and Habit Planning Pages

These pages now offer more white space for brainstorming and customization, allowing you to plan in a way that suits your style. Scribble, doodle, mind-map to your heart’s content.

Monthly Routine Page

Say goodbye to forgotten monthly tasks. This new page is designed to capture all those important monthly to-dos that often slip through the cracks. 

Improved Monthly Planning Pages

I’ve supercharged these monthly planning pages with new sections for habits and weekly routines. Now you can see your big-picture goals, daily habits, and weekly commitments all in one place. It’s like having a birds-eye view of your month.

Weekly Reflection Questions

Two thoughtful questions at the bottom of each weekly page to celebrate wins and tweak what’s not working. Because you’re awesome and you deserve to know it!

Annual Calendars for 2025 and 2026

By popular request, I've included annual calendars for both the current and upcoming year, perfect for long-term planning

Mark your calendars for October 21st (my birthday - what better way to celebrate?) through October 26th. That’s when you can get your very own planner coil-bound by me and my family. After that planners will be perfect bound (which works great as well!).

Remember, this planner is designed to grow with you as you manage your home, pursue your dreams, and thrive in motherhood. Here’s to creating a life we’re excited to wake up to each day!

Typically at the end of the year, when there is so much going on, I start to feel like I’m not seeing a lot of progress on my projects and goals. 

This leads me to feel discouraged and want to give up - which is not an option when managing a household. 

One thing I like to do when I notice this feeling creeping is to create a “Finish List” to create some momentum. 

Dave Ramsey has a principle he calls the “debt snowball.” The idea is that if you have multiple lines of debt, you pay off the smallest amount of debt first to see some quick wins and stay committed to making progress. 

This same principle can work with our projects! 

Sit down and write a list of all the unfinished projects currently taking up brain space. Now evaluate that list and see if there are things you could knock out today or in a few hours. 

Start to build momentum by seeing progress and watch how much you can accomplish in your small pockets of time before the end of the year (or not, if that stresses you out instead of motivating you). 

The key ingredients to a long-term commitment to our goals are: 

• Clarity about what matters
• Consistent action
• Recognizing your progress along the way. 

When you do all three, you build energy and momentum. It becomes exciting as your time and energy are aligned with your heart-decided priorities. 

The Thriving in Motherhood Planner takes these research-based principles and includes all of these elements to keep you moving forward in small pockets of time on the things that matter most to you and celebrates your progress along the way.  

You can get yours today here!

For more tips like this, listen to this week’s episode as I share what I do to turn things around, end the year with a clean slate, and get ready to create in 2023.

I read Tiago Fortne’s, Building Your Second Brain and immediately saw how the time I was wasting online was because it was too hard to do the things I really wanted to do on my phone or computer.

In this episode, I share the behind-the-scenes of how I organize my digital life as a mom so that I am not wasting time on social media and getting way more done by being effective when I’m on my computer. 

I love my physical planner and journals to keep my day-to-day life organized and my brain working and emptied. However, a lot happens digitally that, for me, was a complete mess.

With my second brain system, I now have a place for everything - a place for things I want to read, a place for things I want to reference, a place for things I need to do on the computer, and easy systems to get everything where it needs to go.

I have great systems for knowing what I want to do and getting those things done (hint, hint, The Thriving In Motherhood Planner), but I needed a way to organize knowledge. 

That was one of the huge epiphanies that hit me while reading Building Your Second Brain. A knowledge management system is different than a productivity system! 

Things that I want to think about, read about, learn about, or want to reference in the future now have a place. Since setting up this system, I’ve wasted less time and become more productive when I sit at the computer or get on my phone.

Check out this week’s episode for a deep dive into:

• What I use
• When I use it
• How I manage incoming email (I have maintained an inbox-zero email for the first time in my life for the past few months!)
• Take notes on the books I’m reading
• Take action on online courses 
• Keep what I’m learning organized
• Jumpstart my projects and keep all the pieces organized

I hope this will help you organize your digital life to increase your productivity and make your life easier!

I read so many great books this year that I can’t wait to share with you! And since the year isn’t over, I’m not done reading yet and have even more favorites to add  (How Not To Die and The Collapse of Parenting are a couple of recent favorites.)

I love to keep track of the books I read to prove to myself that I’m learning. There are loads of ways to track your books, but I like to keep it low-tech in the Thriving in Motherhood Planner monthly review page.

Keeping track helps me get a better picture of where my time and energy went as a whole, and it is part of my game plan for combatting the lie that “all I do is…”

Plus, what you focus on grows - and I want reading to be a foundational part of who I am because it makes life richer, deeper, and much more interesting.

So, without further ado, here are my 12 favorite books I read this year:

Forty Autumns

Building Your Second Brain

What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid

Mothering By The Book

How The Word Is Passed

Think Again

The Self-Driven Child

The Sleep Fix

Hunt, Gather, Parent

Heaven Is For Real

The Battle Plan For Prayer

Awaking Wonder

I hope you find some new favorites from this list! Tune in to hear in this week’s episode.

We all have hard things in our life that we get to keep learning from again and again. Mine is physical pain and health challenges. 

In this week’s episode, I’m sharing some practical tips for parenting while in physical pain (which can be applied to mental and emotional health challenges, too), as well as some principles and lessons I’ve been learning over the last few months.

For me, one of the biggest things this challenge has taught me is to rely more fully on God. I’ve chosen to look at the pain as an opportunity to grow closer to Him. 

Whenever the fear starts to creep in because of pain or the unknown underlying causes, I try to remember who does know. God is all-knowing, and He is the only one with all of the answers. I try to remain focused on the fact that I can trust Him to walk with me through all the ups and downs.

I’ve also discovered some helpful practices that make mothering easier when I have painful days:

• Play music to match the mood you want in your home.
• Instead of focusing on what is not going well, practice gratitude.
• Remember, in this moment, you are okay. Notice what doesn’t hurt right now.
• Instead of worrying about how you will survive this moment, look back and see all that you’ve endured and overcome.
• State your limitations calmly and thank children for their help.
• Ask, “What would I do to take care of myself if I didn’t have kids?” and then do that thing.
• End the day with the Thriving in Motherhood Journal to help keep your brain in helpful thought patterns.

While none of these practices or mindsets eliminate my physical discomfort, they do help me live my life with purpose and joy. They help me create the life I want my family to experience while setting an example for my children about dealing with challenges.

For more real-life examples and discussion about this topic, tune into this week’s podcast episode.

Would you like more support from your husband with your projects and goals? This week on the podcast, I’m sharing the principles and practices that help Andrew and me be effective in communicating and supporting each other in making our priorities happen.

As I’ve looked back over the last few years, I’ve been able to see the simple things that have really made a difference in making life joyful and meaningful in everyday life. 

The great news is that you don’t necessarily have to look outside of your current responsibilities and plans to increase fulfillment. 

Listen to this week’s episode for ideas on how to recognize and create more moments of joy and meaning in your life and ways that you can celebrate your everyday accomplishments more fully. 

Emily is the creator and co-host of the Enlightening Motherhood Podcast and a life coach. As a mom of four, former foster mom of 27, and educator of all ages, she understands what it’s like to feel overwhelmed with your children’s intense behaviors and emotions. 

Her mission is simple yet strong: to empower moms to calmly and confidently handle their children’s big feelings and behaviors, so motherhood won’t seem so hard and so there can be more peace at home.

In this week’s episode, we talk about how to be the parent you want to be and how understanding the reasons behind your child’s behavior can help you handle big emotions more calmly and effectively.