TRANSCRIPT
Searching for Normal | Mastering Mompreneurship Amidst Sick Days and Snow Days
Hi, Des.
Hi, Iva.
And it's quite interesting what we are delving in today, because this is something that has been brought up by people around us, around our network, right?
Around our sphere and circle of interactions.
And it's sort of this common theme of getting back to normal or not being able to wait until things get back to normal or a variation of that, right?
Hasn't that happened to you now that the winter holidays are over, that you're in the school yard or something waiting for your kids and other moms like, oh, I'm so glad the kids are back in school because now I can go back to my normal routine or I can get back to normal.
Or like, oh, I have this project that I'm working on and it's so annoying, I can't wait till let's finish so I can get back to normal.
And that does not always raise the question though, okay, what's normal?
What's your normal?
Yeah, and it's such a relevant question to ask because it's true.
What is normal?
And it's something that we can only answer for ourselves, for our own individual lives, circumstances, stages that we're in, and so forth.
So if we are looking for an external metric, that's where we probably trip up, or that's where we probably end up getting more confused or overwhelmed because somebody's normal, quote unquote, is not necessarily our normal, right?
But I do know that when it comes to the standard normal, I think it's because as mothers and having our children, starting to get into daycare, starting to get into school, what begins to be normal is for them to actually go during the daytime somewhere that is not home.
So for us, normal means, then it starts to become this standard of, okay, they need to go to school or they need to go to daycare.
And so their rhythm and their patterns of life become attuned to that, to the school calendar, to the holiday breaks and so forth.
When we reach those gaps, so to speak, where they are not in school, then that becomes disruptive in some sense, even though it's holidays, even though it's Asian, even though we might be planning to visit family or so forth.
But things have to switch around and change during that period to accommodate for them, for their presence, for their need of attention, for all the things that come into that space of okay, it's holiday time versus it's normal business, as usual type of thing.
Do you feel that it resonates in that sense of what normal might be?
I know.
Yeah, I guess people refer to it as in terms of their own routine, like their own mommy routine, for example, dropping off the kids and then finally having some hours to themselves and doing the things they need to do.
However, I feel that in motherhood, like this word normal and motherhood and entrepreneurship combined is almost needs to take a backseat because what percentage of your time do you think that you can operate under this quote unquote normal routine?
And what's the percentage of the time that you are in this?
Do we call it disruptive stage?
Because, I mean, motherhood, it is always unpredictable.
It's an unpredictable, no matter how well your routine is laid out, even with your children taking completely the work aside, just your work as a mom, that is almost unpredictable as well.
You don't know what mood are they going to be in?
What mood are we going to be in?
Are we going to do the routine this way or that way?
Are there going to be nuances here?
Do we need to mix it up all together?
Is there a playdate that we have to go to?
Is there all of a sudden a new after school activity?
Is there?
There is already so much that cannot fit into that word normal because it's ever changing, right?
And then we take that word normal into the entrepreneurship phase where it's like, well, we are entrepreneurs.
We don't have this, okay, these are your SOPs.
These are, this is your work routine.
These are your work cycles in the morning, then you have lunch break, and then you have your work cycle there.
You have your certain to-dos during the day.
But we're entrepreneurs, so we kind of like, we shoot off the hip sometimes, or we get this unexpected call.
Like you call me, I remember sitting in that hotel room almost two years ago, Ivan, you're like, Des, we're going to do this challenge, and we're going to do this.
And I'm like, okay, no idea what you're talking about yet, but I'm like, okay, I'm all in.
If it's something to do together, no problem.
I'm all in, fill me in.
And all of a sudden, it's like, okay, so you shift your stuff, because then you all of a sudden have to reshuffle priorities.
You have to reshuffle your time, because there's an opportunity that was unpredictable that you then, you know, grab.
And that's something unique in entrepreneurship, I find, because it's also so unique and so dynamic in the every day.
Yeah, and to that point and expanding a little bit more on that, is going back to what we always share.
And it seems like it's this almost cliched phrase already, but there's so many layers to it.
And one of the things that I wish our listeners would get from this episode today is to really get the frequency or get to dimension that being in harmony with what is, is it has a lot to do with how do you allow for your priorities to coexist with the fact that yes, motherhood is unpredictable, entrepreneurship is unpredictable to a large extent, and life is unpredictable, and life with kids is super hyper mega unpredictable.
And so being able to handle that ebb and flow, because for me, the way I see it, it's an ebb and flow.
It's like things are not going to feel completely out of whack the whole time, and they also won't be, as you say, perfectly arranged in order where it's like, I know that from 9 to 11, I have a wide open space to really do what I need to do without interruptions, because there are sick days, because there's no days, because things happen.
And so the more that we are able to navigate in those waters and feel like, and this goes back to one of our previous episodes where we were talking about anxiety and overwhelm.
And one of those core beliefs that would help us, I feel that it would help us both in entrepreneurship and motherhood, is to really, really dial in this idea, this belief and this knowing that regardless of what is happening outside, we are always able to take care and pay attention to the important things.
Because once we internalize that to a very deep layer of our core, then whether it's holiday, whether it's a normal day, whether it's a snow day, whether this happened day, you know and you're trusting that that day, you took care of what was important.
And what was important is going to be revealed itself to you as the day progresses.
So there is this sense of, okay, I'm trusting that I'm going to know how to make the right decision, how to separate what is a priority from something that is not so urgent or so important to me.
And I'm going to look back on my day at the end of that day and feel good about myself without the guilt, without the I should have done this, you know, the rumination of, oh, I should have, could have whatever.
Because that is also part of the equation, right?
We're always looking backwards instead of forwards.
And so we tend to berate ourselves a lot as mothers.
And it adds up to our entrepreneurship as well, that we are like, oh, my God, I didn't do the things that I was supposed to do.
Well, yeah, not on that day.
Not on that day.
On that day didn't happen.
If you're able to embrace that and move on and say, okay, tomorrow is another day, and it's going to be filled with a lot of surprises, but also with a lot of magic, then it shouldn't be a conversation, an internal dialogue of, oh, my God, biting my nails type of thing.
Right, exactly.
And there's so much like, I always say, I should really cushion, like, sort of my task and give myself enough room because of the unpredictable, because of the not normal in this, right?
Whatever eventualities could happen so that I'm not stressed and I don't hit these walls of anxiety and overwhelm.
But that's also not my case because of, I guess, of my human design and all of that.
It's I am a very last minute person.
I am a very, I concentrate best when I'm under pressure and I do things the best.
But that also puts me in a lot of trouble sometimes because then the unpredictable does happen.
And I'm like, oh, no, like today, I was supposed to deliver something for you and me, a project we're working on or something we're working on.
I couldn't deliver because we had a snow day yesterday, right?
It started snowing in Tokyo, which is completely not normal.
There we go.
It's not normal.
It's and it wasn't forecasted at all.
It just happened.
It started snowing and sowing uncontrollably until nobody is prepared for that in Tokyo.
So everything was kind of stopped.
All the schools were canceled.
No taxis are available.
So it was basically the kids were home.
It's like great.
Those were my hours.
I was supposed to do this thing that we're supposed to have done by today, right?
Yeah.
But okay.
And you go back and hold again what you said as well, Iva, right?
Your glass balls.
What are your glass balls?
What are your rubber balls?
And also, like also, I'm grateful on these days though, that I've realized, well, I'm my own boss.
Yes, I do have people that I'm responsible.
Like I have accountability with you, but I also know I chose you or we chose each other.
We were, we are chosen for each other because we understand and we give each other so much grace when one of us cannot because we get it, we understand.
It's not always possible.
We're flexible.
And I think it is again, so many points here, important who you're surround yourself with, important that you can identify also for you what's glass, what's rubber, and also being flexible without losing your, right?
And that flexibility, I just want to interrupt you right there because I think that we also touched on this on a separate episode where you were really just shedding so much light into our own feminine cycles and our periods, how to work with that, and what we work in really signals to the level of energy or the level of rest that we should be getting.
And being in harmony with our own physical body and our own biorhythms.
So going back to that, I feel when you say flexibility is also this sense of can we ambition ourselves and can we really adopt more of this, I call it play dough mindset, where we're able to really expand and contract as needed.
So you are going to expand so much that you burn out or you go bust.
But it's understanding that there are some periods in life where you're able to be in a, I call it like a turbocharged stage.
And I think that of our listeners or many of our listeners can relate to this because it goes like this.
Like you are on this sort of turbocharged mission.
There's goals and projects that you are really intent on finalizing for whatever reason.
Life is happening all around you and you're like, okay, I'm going to go through this no matter what.
If that means going to bed at 4 a.m.
and waking up at 6, I will do it for like however weeks that happens to last.
And then we push through, we do it.
We accomplish it.
But then making sure that we allow ourselves the downtime and the rest time.
And where we say like, okay, I really pushed this heavy boulder up the hill.
I took it all the way to the top.
But then now I really need to refuel.
Now I need to really replenish myself.
And if you know that we are in that stage, I think it's also easy.
But what's not sustainable is if we are during the whole year for several years in that train of I need to push through, I need to push through, I need to push through, because today was a snow day.
So I need to catch up at night and midnight, burn the night oil and then way past in the morning.
And I'm still like running on matcha or coffee or a combination of both or whatever it is.
And so I go and so I go and so I go.
Because that is when you are not showing up as the best version that you can be.
That's where everybody starts to suffer.
That's where you start to also suffer and become this person that you don't even recognize anymore.
So going back to what you said, right?
Like having this flexibility to understand, okay, how I'm a rubber band.
How much can I push myself all the way out, without breaking and then contracting again?
And that is getting to know ourselves, our biorhythms, our bodies, our capacities, our season in life.
We also talk so much about our season in life because we think that this is going to be like this forever and it won't.
Our mind plays tricks on us all the time, thinking things are permanent, but it's not like that.
I love the Plato mindset and it really hits home there.
And I love that you brought up the feminine cycles, which probably also explains why I feel a little bit tense today, not as relaxed as usual, right?
But you're right, we need to honor that.
It's also often not, we don't plan for that, right?
We don't plan it, but we need to then work with it and plan around it if we can and if we make use of that time.
But you were right, like yesterday, I felt at the end of the day, I so did not accomplish what I wanted to accomplish, but I was still feeling quite in harmony because we built snowmen.
Hey, didn't think I'd be building snowmen in Tokyo.
I have a truckload of pictures with the kids in the snow, and it was so much fun.
And while also at night, I was doing a little bit of some family stuff, but I thought, okay, I could stay up now, like you said, burning the midnight oil and pushing through and doing two more hours, operating on very little sleep.
Or I'm like, okay, that's it.
I just need to say I wasn't able to do it because I know I'm not doing myself a favor by that, right?
I'm going to wake up in the morning cranky, impatient, probably my kids are going to get the end of it, and it's not going to be worth it.
It's not worth it.
It was not worth dropping that glass ball.
Yeah, and that's where priorities come in, right?
If you say, okay, this is a period where I'm going to have to again expand my capacity and bite my tongue and try to just not get...
When I say try not to get triggered, I know I'm asking too much sometimes, but what I need to say is if your priority is regardless of where I am heading in my entrepreneurship journey, do I want the journey to be an enjoyable one?
Do I want my kids to have good memories of me while I was building this business?
Or are their memories going to be, my mom was always stressed, she was always freaking out, she was always triggered, she was always this, yeah, she built this amazing business, but to what, what was the price?
What was the cost of that?
Exactly.
What was the price?
So if you are feeling that, no, I want it both, and I'm sure we all do, right?
I want to have fun along the way, and I want to enjoy myself, and I want my kids to have amazing memories of me while I'm building this, and I want to build it, and I want to be successful, and I still want to have a good relationship with my children, and I want it all.
I want my cake and I want to eat it too.
Then that's where more, I would say more solid foundations need to be examined.
We really need to go inwards and say, okay, what are we talking about here?
What are my boundaries?
What are my limits?
What are the things that I am willing to push myself through a little bit more?
What are the things where I'm going to say, no, I'm sorry, I can't.
So it's more than, oh, I can't wait to get back to normal.
I would say, how about we try to get back to being real with ourselves?
Right, right.
Exactly.
So exactly, because the time we're spending in normal is less than the time we're not.
Yeah.
So we'll never be normal.
Exactly.
Not when you're an entrepreneur.
Definitely not.
So now, then let's talk about the question.
So how do we then be prepared for anything that comes our way and still be able to crush this Mom Boss gig?
Like, what are the things that we need to keep in mind?
For me, I think it's definitely what I said before.
I'm so glad I'm my own boss.
I make my own rules, right?
I have an accountability partner.
I have people.
I have a team.
However, I am still making these decisions, and I don't have anyone to report to, like, officially, right?
But also the fact that nobody really knows our deadlines, except us, right?
Us, maybe in our small circle, or you, yourself, you yourself only.
But we put a lot of pressure on ourselves because we have these deadlines.
But then again, we need to understand, and that's a big mindset shift as well, to be able to let go and relax, because nobody knows.
If you're going to launch this thing a week later, nobody knows.
Okay, unless all your marketing is out.
That's different.
But other things that we're working on in the background, nobody knows.
So it's also really important to keep that in mind and to really use that as for setting priorities, right?
Yeah, but I want to ask you, Iva, because I know you work with a lot of clients and you have a lot of appointments that you have scheduled with them, right?
That are fixed in the calendar and it's often across many different time zones and everything.
How do you navigate this when the unexpected happens, when there is a sick day, when there is a snow day, maybe not in Singapore, but when there is something that is unexpected that comes up, where you're not able to show up in the normal sense like you were hoping to?
Right.
So I come at it through, I come at it in several ways and through several layers because it's not a, like this is my answer and that's it.
But the things that I play with are the following.
First of all, I make sure that I give myself grace every day because the more that I practice that, then when something really has to give, I can trust in being vulnerable or having to cancel or having to apologize and make it up some other way, whatever that is, right?
And knowing that I'm still safe, knowing that my clients are not going to go anywhere, knowing that I'm not going to be punished, because the reputation that you're building is being built across a long period of time.
So what does that mean?
It means that people are willing to be understanding and forgiving of things when they know there's a major disruption.
And for the most part, they are also humans, they also have children, they also know that life is life.
So that's one thing.
The second thing is, I am very intentional with my subconscious mind and my RES, that's the reticular activating system.
And I'm always very intentional at the start of every week or every month, for example, to say, you know, this month, what I am setting the intention for is to have a wonderful month, a month that is super productive, that I get to have fun, that I get to work with amazing clients, that things align, that the timing is perfect.
And you know what?
More and more, what has been my experience is that for some reason, well, not for some reason, I actually know what the reason is, but because I am connecting to my subconscious mind and my higher mind, what that does is that my schedule starts to become arranged in the best way possible.
So I do have a schedule, I do have plans, don't get me wrong, I do know where I need to be in an hour, okay?
But sometimes there are days where I wake up and I'm like, oh, you know, today I'm not, today I would like to do something different instead of what I have on my calendar, for whatever reason, or one specific thing that is on my agenda.
And then boom, I get a call, a message, someone needs to rearrange, someone needs to shift something around, and I didn't have to do much.
It was just done.
And I'm like, fantastic.
Like, it works so perfect.
And I didn't have to lift the finger.
So the more I lean into that, the more my RAS is going to give me more of that.
So I honestly, sometimes I look at my week and I'm like, yeah, I know this is roughly.
This is the rough draft.
Yeah, the outline.
But along the way, pieces and things are going to move around.
And I'm always trusting that they're moving for the right reason, because maybe on that day, you know, for some people, it might be like, oh my God, my clients are so unreliable or they have to reschedule or they change the appointment and I'm going to penalize them because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Where I come from, my mindset is, you know what?
That was not the time or the day for them to receive what they needed to receive to move forward in their journey.
And I trust that.
So if things had to be changed, that's fantastic because now I have the opportunity to look into what else was there in the pipeline and I'm going to that direction.
So I really use my mindset a lot.
I instruct my RAS exactly what is it that I want to experience more of.
And lo and behold, it gives me more of that and more of that and more of that.
It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So that is how I'm able to keep my capacity almost like intact because it's effortless.
And I do put in work.
Don't get me wrong.
I still stay up sometimes late at night providing certain things that I have to provide to my clients or things that I'm working on.
But I do it from place of joy.
Like it's not depleting me.
You know what I mean?
But I also keep in mind that the next day I have to wake up early, that my kids need me.
And so what are the things that I can put in place to help myself?
And that's the third answer to your question, which is I am very mindful about my sleep hygiene.
I am very mindful about the foods that I eat because that's the fuel for my body.
And I meditate because I need to give my mind space for replenishment.
And our minds are so bogged down with so much data, so much information, so many decisions, so many things happening, so many snow days, so many sick days, so many, so many, so many, so many that I need to clean up.
I need to clean up my mind so that I'm able to be aware of when the signals, when the hints, where the nudges, where the intuition is coming from.
Because I work in that space as well.
So, that's pretty much in a nutshell what works for me and I have been experiencing amazing, amazing results for myself along the way by implementing this in this.
I know, I know that you have and I love watching you and watching your journey and how it's all evolving.
It's so amazing.
And I love that you mentioned that because I actually haven't really spoken to anyone out loud about this, what you just mentioned that the RES, right?
I'm learning so much from you, see?
But that the fact that things always happen for a reason, like you said, appointments or calls or things that are canceled or things that pop up.
And isn't it often like, especially when, let's say, I have visitors coming to town or I have something I stress myself so much for getting things organized perfectly in a schedule.
And sometimes it doesn't work.
And it keeps me up at night.
I was like, it's like a puzzle that I need to try to fix.
But then when you let go a little bit, it just all falls into place.
It falls into place, either like a comment that the friend makes that she doesn't even want to go there, she only wants to go there, or like one of my appointments that gets moved, so now that frees up to do this and this.
It's just incredible once you let it go a bit.
Like you said, all the attention that you put in.
I love, Iva, like how we complement each other so much in our like strength and how we operate and how we're ever, always, always learning from each other and that we have such unique strengths that we play off.
Like I love talking to you just because I learned so much from you.
Yeah, I do think like a little bit differently, right?
So for me, I leverage more on this whole automation part, right?
I am so for systems and processes, but with a good mix of that, all of what you're doing, right?
Because I have learned that from you and also that is so much more effortless because it's with intention, with that whole subconscious mindset, with everything that goes along with it.
But things in place that is so easy to pull, like for example, yesterday, snow day, okay?
Couldn't really do much, but I had a few people sign up for a program that is starting very soon at the end of the month.
Because of things that were in place, I didn't even do anything and I had people signing up for that, which was amazing.
Right?
I had there's emails going out, there's people clicking links, there's, and I didn't have to do a thing.
And that gave me the time to really be there and have a pancake lunch with my son.
To really enjoy after building a snowman, you know, and things were still running because of these things that you put in place.
I think when we managed to have all of that somehow together, not having a normal is totally fine because we are navigating this journey, this unique journey of motherhood, of entrepreneurship, of life abroad, right?
In such a beautiful manner that nothing is set in stone.
Nothing needs to be black and white.
It doesn't need to be.
But it works and it works beautifully and therefore I'm glad we have these conversations.
So also it that there's no one size fits all first of all.
But second, processes, automations, having a system is also part of the equation.
Things are not going to just take care of themselves on their own.
What I mean to say is like, yeah, circumstances, events, yes, but when it comes to you setting up system or a foundation that allows you to be able to disengage because you need to take care of some things, that is being anti-fragile there.
And I'm introducing a new concept, but it is more the idea that we become stronger in the face of chaos, in the face of disruption, in the face of things are going to be chaotic because there's the sense that, yeah, the world that we operate in is very much like that, it's unpredictable.
And because of that, we can never hedge ourselves fully to be able to predict every single thing that might go wrong or that might happen along the way.
But if we have systems the way that you do, where you say regardless of what it is, regardless of the interruption, disruption that comes in, the system is there to do what it needs to do, and I just need to get people in there so that they're taking care of until I go and check it, until I have the bandwidth to do that.
Then that is also self-care, that is also being responsible for yourself and your sanity, because it is important to have things that are going to support us.
That can be a business bestie, an accountability partner, that can be a coach, that can be a therapist.
But it's also our own processes and systems that we have in place, and the better that they're set up, the more trust we also get to have in, okay, hands off the wheel, so that I can do the things that matter for me on that day, given the circumstances that are.
Unfolding.
So it is a sense of your, becoming the version of you that can really be prepared without having to go into anxiety mode that you need to be prepared, because you have planned consciously, but you also allow that space for magic and for things to become even better than what you ever anticipated to unfold along the way.
And I think that is the harmony that we keep referring to over and over again is that it's being in that space as often as possible, because from that vantage point, life is just so much more pleasurable and enjoyable than just having to focus on the is this my normal or is this not normal, and then I have to have all these emotions and thoughts about it.
Well, if you start off with saying it doesn't matter, it really does not matter how I label the day.
I have the intention that it's going to be a great day and it's going to be unpredictable and it's going to be, you know, fun in the sense that whatever happens I'm going to be okay, and I know that I'm taking care of the priorities that matter to me, then I would call that an amazing day.
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Episodes Mentioned
Mom Bosses Abroad: Expansion Without Burnout| Wealth and Your Nervous System on Apple Podcasts
