Listen on Apple Podcasts here.
In this episode, I discuss:
my thoughts on 'doing it all' and what I prioritise in life
suggestions on how to practically manage a full life
my support systems
how I stay productive and organised
why it's okay to let the balls drop
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to the Mindful Soul Collective Podcast, a safe space for your healing.
I'm your host Shorina, a counsellor, well-being coach, multi-bus owner and mum.
I'm here to talk all things mind, body and soul.
You can expect conversations on mental health, mindfulness, mindset, healing and whole body wellness.
I've completely redefined my relationship to myself and to my life.
And now it's your turn.
Hello and welcome back to the podcast.
A question that I seem to get asked very frequently is how do I do it all? And I feel like I get asked this question by clients, friends, every time I'm interviewed for a podcast or an article or whatever it is, I just seem to get this question really frequently and I wanted to address it on today's episode. People usually say like, how do I juggle it all, how do I not lose my mind? And I think the first thing that I wanted to say is please don't ever look at my life or anyone's life for that matter online and think that they all have it together. Because I share like 5% of my life online. It's not because I'm hiding anything. I still be really super authentic and honest when I'm talking about my life, but that doesn't mean that I share everything. Some things are of course going to stay personal because I don't want to share everything. And honestly, I don't have to do either. Sometimes when I'm going through something, I just need to go through it. And then once I'm through it, it's not even worth mentioning. So I guess I really wanted to start today's episode off by mentioning that.
I know it's super easy to scroll social media and even listen to podcasts and think, wow,
they have an incredible life. But then from there, you get other thoughts like, they never have breakdowns like me. How do they manage work and being a mum? Or, you know, you might even think they seem to be able to do it all and I can't. So what's wrong with me? Or I'm a bad mum, a bad friend, a bad sister, a bad daughter, feel in the blank.
I get it. I've done it before. And honestly, sometimes I find myself scrolling through social media or I'm listening to a podcast. And I have those thoughts still now. But I make a conscious effort to remind myself that nobody shares everything on social media or on their podcast. Nobody.
So if you know me, my work or you've been a long time follower or listener firstly, I love
you and thank you for being here. And secondly, you probably already know that I have lots of balls in the air. But if you're new here, or I guess just as a refresher, I did want to start off by giving you guys a rundown of what all those balls are and all the things that I am doing to kind of understand why do people ask me this question all the time.
So first and foremost, I'm a mum of two little boys. At the time of recording this episode, Ezra is five and Wyatt is two. This alone is a full time job. Honestly, these kids keep me busy. They keep me on my toes. It's ridiculous, especially Wyatt. He is the definition of a wild child. But yeah, they keep me super busy.
I'm the founder of Mindful Soul Collective, where I'm a counsellor and wellbeing coach.
Obviously, I'm also a podcast host and I'm the founder of Bras By S, a lingerie store
that stocks more than a thousand styles. With that in mind, I run two businesses.
I'm the founder and the face behind both of them. And there are many, many, many different things happening at once, including lots of different customers and clients.
We also hire our caravan out to other families. So I manage that. Things like bookings and accounts and maintenance on the van, all that sort of stuff. I self manage our investment property. All those things again. I also do some marketing work for a local business here in Newcastle. So a few hours a week. Honestly, I love doing it. It gets me to use my mind in a different way to my own businesses. But I think that's a story for another day.
I also handle all of my family admin finances. A lot of the housework, not all. Karl is great and helps quite a bit. And then in between all of that, I still exercise. I have time to learn from my healthy habits and routines. I have date nights with Karl. I take care of my mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health. As you can tell, a lot happening a lot of the time.
And you might be having that same question of how the hell do I do it? How do I have enough time in the day to do it all? I wanted to share some thoughts with you on this idea of me doing it all and then share a few practical ways that I do actually manage my life and manage all these different projects and things happening.
So first, my thoughts on this idea of doing it all.
I think we should ditch the idea of doing it all. Ditch the idea that you need to do it all.
Can we have it all? Yeah, for sure. That doesn't mean we have to do it all. I do not do it all.
And I'm going to say that again. I do not do it all. I truly believe that we cannot do it all all at once and all well. Balls are going to fall when you're juggling a lot of things and that's okay. I absolutely don't do it all. I never have. I never will.
I use services, I hire people and I use and ask for help from the people around me.
But shit still falls behind. My priorities in my life are myself, my family and my work. That means that sometimes my housework falls behind or I don't see my friends for a few weeks or I have baskets of laundry piled up around my house everywhere, which is actually very common in my house by the way. Or maybe I haven't washed my hair in a week or I take a few days to reply to a friend. The truth is when I try to do it all, I burn out real quick and it takes me months to recover.
Instead, I now choose to leave the dishes. I leave the laundry. I leave the cleaning. I allow myself to reply a day later to friends and I focus on my three priorities, me, my family, my work. And that's okay. We really need to normalize not doing it all because I sure as hell don't want to live up to those expectations.
I don't want to be known as the person who does it all because fuck that. I don't do it all and I don't want to do it all. I kind of think of anything worse than having to do all of this on my own. I'm sure you can tell I'm very passionate about this topic. But I did also want to share a few practical ways that I do actually manage and I guess juggle those balls in the air because I do think that that's really helpful for people, especially moms in business or people juggling multiple projects or passions or whatever it is.
Practically my first suggestion is to cry and I'm kidding. Kind of when you have a full life and you have lots of things going on, managing your own emotions is going to be so important. For me, that means letting my emotions out that could be crying. It could be talking to my counselor or my coach. It means ensuring I have enough time alone and to do self reflection and self awareness work each day. If you have a life that feels full, please ensure that your allocating time to manage whatever is coming up for you each day.
The second suggestion is to have a support team. There is no way I could do what I do without my support. I could not do all of this stuff and keep myself sane without the support and I want to be really transparent around that.
My main support is my partner, Karl helps with so, so much. He's of course a great dad, but he also helps around the house. He cooks most of the meals, which might surprise you guys, but I am not the cook in the house. Never have been, probably never will be. Although I am the baker, I am the baker in the house, but not the cook. He even helps me with some of my work stuff too. He might drop parcels off at the post office or pick up my stock orders. Just really depends day to day, but he's really, really helpful.
My kids day care is also part of my support team, so they go to day care four days a week, Monday to Thursday. I drop them off at about seven, seven thirty. Unfortunately they wake up very, very early and then we pick them up around five o'clock, so I admit it's a huge day for them, not ideal, but they do love going and I love my work so right now and this is what works for us. Next year when Ez goes to school, I think we'll have to shift our schedule a bit to make sure we're all getting that one on one time with each other and the days aren't quite as big for everybody, but for now it works and that is part of my support team.
My mum is also part of my support team. She has my kids for a sleepover every second Friday night, so Karl and I can have a night to ourselves. Sometimes that's a dinner hour, sometimes it's dinner in bed watching a movie, sometimes it's doing errands.
Like last sleepover, we did the Christmas shopping. So again, she's a big part of my support team.
I also have an assistant. I talk about Victoria a lot on my socials or I mention that I don't hide the fact that I have an assistant, so I do try and mention her in my posts and things as well because she helps with so many tasks. I don't even have the time to sit here and tell you them all. She has been a lifesaver and honestly changed the way that I do business and she has created so much freedom for me in my life.
And then on a more personal level, I have a business coach who I see quite regularly.
I see a counsellor very regularly. I have a monthly bodywork massage and all the fun things like regular facials, getting my nails done and hair appointments. I am about to start working with a dietitian as well and sometimes we get a cleaner in to help around the house or someone to come and do our lawns. So as you can tell, I have an amazing support system. I lean on them. Please don't look at my life and think that I've got my shit sorted by myself because believe me, I do not. Victoria is the one who has my shit sorted for me.
My third suggestion is to find ways to be more productive and organised that work for
you. So I am going to run through some of the things I use and do for myself, but I think
it's really important for you to find things that are going to work for you. So if the things that I mention don't work, great. Just find things that do work for you.
I love a to-do list. In fact, I have many to-do lists going all at once everywhere. So for personal stuff, I've got a general to-do list on my fridge in the kitchen. I have a note in my phone that Karl has access to, like we share a note, and that's where all their non-urgent household tasks kind of go, like painting a wall or fixing something.
And then for work stuff, I use Asana. So I have a board for each business as well as one for family admin. So underneath each board is various to-do lists again. So for example, for my lingerie business, I have a daily to-do list, which includes things like replying to emails, checking in with Victoria, checking socials, that kind of thing. And then I have a monthly to-do list, which is things like my profit and loss statement, ordering new stock, paying invoices. And then I have a general to-do list, which is random one-off tasks like paying insurances or booking meetings.
Again, I have these under all my different boards, which are different colours. So when I'm zoomed out, like on my day or on my week, I can really easily see what tasks need to get done for what part of my life, you know, what area of my life. I find that super helpful, if that works for you, like colour coding is really great as well.
Like my to-do list, I also have a really great calendar set up. I have several different calendars. I have a work calendar, family calendar, and a caravan booking calendar. They're all different colours, and I just use the good old iPhone calendars for that. They're all shared with Karl, so he can easily see where I'm at and what I'm doing too. In those digital calendars are everything you can think of. Appointments, events, when invoices are due, daycare closures, Ezra has a daycare graduation coming up, like everything is putting there. Every single thing.
I also have a monthly and weekly calendar on my fridge, so everyone can quickly and easily see what's happening this month and this week. And on those fridge calendars, each family member has a different coloured marker as well, so we can easily see what's for what family member, and that really helpful too.
I've also found that having a structured work week was really important for my productivity. So earlier this year, I was really just kind of doing whatever whenever, and I found that I was wasting so much time and just running around in circles. So I sat down and I really planned out my week to have a bit more structure with time blocking. So each morning is a different business or area of my life. So for example, Monday morning is for freelance marketing work, Tuesday morning is Bras By S work, Wednesday morning is Mindful Soul Collective work, and then Thursday morning is for training because I'm always doing some kind of training or it could be personal appointments, family admin or loose ends. And then all of my client sessions are in the afternoons. Fridays, my kids are home, so I spend the day with them and then weekends are for whatever.
Since I've implemented a more structured week, I feel like I can get through tasks a lot quicker and it's kind of nice waking up and knowing what I'm doing each day. I think if you work for yourself, it's really easy to get caught up and like waste time in just, you know, busy work. It's like stuff that you sure it has to get done, but is it really important? Does it need to be done right now? That sort of thing.
By having this structured week, it means that I'm just getting the shit done on time
and in a way that flows nicely for my brain. It doesn't mean that I can't change things around if I want, but 95% of the time I do stick to the structure to do lists.
Calendars to do lists and a structured week has been a game changer for my businesses and my life. So highly recommend you go back, listen again, take notes and try these things out for yourself.
My final suggestion is to let the balls drop. I know I said this earlier, but please don't put pressure on yourself to do it all. Life is busy and it just seems to get busier and busier.
It's okay to let balls drop. Yeah. And it's okay to let things fall behind. But I'm almost always behind on my laundry and it is what it is. The world won't end. It'll be okay.
So as a quick refresher, my suggestions on managing a full life is to prioritise time
for your own self work. Find and lean on a support team. Find the ways that make you more organised and productive and let the balls drop without guilt.
I hope this was helpful and if you feel like you could use a little loving support to manage
your full life, please reach out.
Let's talk about working together because we can create a life that feels easy for you
as well.
So lots of love and support and I will talk to you next week.
Bye.
With love & support,
Shorina | Mindful Soul Collective
Counsellor & Wellbeing Coach
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