Counting your successes!

 

I decided to get pregnant with my eldest in 2006, my mom had been extremely sick and it was a decision I didn't take lightly. I had given up a really great job opportunity for a paid internship in NYC to be by my mom's side and the jarring ideas of it could have been her last conversations with her, I was compelled to have my first child.
 

2 children later, I was consumed with being a mom and anything and everything career wise had taken a huge backseat. It ate at my soul, I wasn't good at being a stay at home mom, actually I'd even say my husband could have been a better stay at home parent. I was unsatisfied, unhappy and feeling generally unsuccessful.

My first day as a mom

But there is something that having children and wanting to raise them to follow their dreams does to a mom... It makes you a success seeker. I kid you not! I have had many conversations with various moms who all attest to being propelled into finding a passion and being more in their community, their business or their personal entrepreneurial journeys than they could have ever imagined previously to child bearing.

There is a measure to success moms' feel when their kid comes home with good grades, trophy after a game, speaking a second language fluently... but deep in your heart you know that success is your child's. But I forgot how awesome the feeling it was to measure personal career goals... like the highs you felt in High School when you received a perfect mark, when you hit a milestone with your girlfriends (first to get their driver's license, first to get their ID to drink.) You hit your 20s and forget how those personal successes feel... But then you become a mom and it's as if your sense of heightened awareness kicks in.

You want to push harder when you are doing reps at the gym...

You want to create your own business and mold it and fold it to grow...

You want to hit more sales, more leads, more income...

You might even want to accomplish decorating a cake, cooking like Julia Child...

But you enjoy counting your successes.

You understand how hard it is to push yourself and you appreciate yourself more. Why because not only did you do it, did you give 120% of yourself to get it done (because you genuinely enjoy giving it your all, all of a sudden) but you can pat yourself on the back that you got it done while balancing a household. You did while trying to be a kickass mom. You did while being tugged in 10 different directions. Sure you could have done all these items equally well single, childless but it would have been easy and you wouldn't have given it much thought.



Me working back stage after our first runway show.

But now you get to relish in every detail of it all. You get to sit back and your coffee tastes a bit better, that glass of wine is far enjoyable... because you earned it. You are a success. Tomorrow you might wake up frustrated with something, anything, everything... but today you are awesome.

Count it, relish in it... it's important to count your successes!