Do you sometimes feel like you still don’t know what or who you want to be when you grow up? It can be hard to admit that at your age (insert any number you like here), you’re still struggling with who you are as a woman. Ten years ago, you thought for sure you would have it all figured by now, right? The years passed by and you’re still not any closer to living the life you want.

Yesterday, I was talking with one of my friends about once you become a mother, shouldn’t family be enough? In other words, now that you are a mom, do other life pursuits fall to the waste side?

My response to that is no….

I was a woman with dreams and aspirations before I became a mother and that hasn’t changed. Women so often tell me about what they can no longer do because they’re a mom now. I’m sorry, but I call bullshit. Personally, I think we sometimes use motherhood as an excuse to not do something from a place of fear. Read my blog post from last week on fear….

The truth of the matter is, you still get to be happy and I would argue it’s even more important that you do so because someone else is watching. Your little one is watching. You think you’re hiding your frustration, unhappiness, or lack of fulfillment? Sorry, but no… Being fulfilled outside of serving in the role of mother and wife, in my opinion, allows you to be a better mother and wife.

You can’t give to others from an empty cup, right?

The cup is empty because we aren’t intentional about our time. We don’t actually take the time to create goals and plan them out. We don’t evaluate where we are in achieving those goals, we don’t even stop to wonder if those goals actually make us happy. We go about our day catering to everyone else, not once stopping to ask, “Is this what I really want?”. Is that in alignment with where I see my life? Nothing is worse than looking in the mirror with regret and feeling like you don’t know who you are anymore.

Being a mother may be my most important role, but I get to decide what that looks like. Society is not going to dictate that to me.

I want you to live with intention. I want you to be fulfilled and be the woman you always thought you would be. No regrets…

Here are 3 steps to becoming the woman you want to be:

Pick a word. Not just your word for the year, but a word that reflects who you want to be ten years from now. A word that reflects your legacy, how you want people to feel when they think about you, and how you want to be remembered. That’s a lot of pressure for one word, so you have to choose wisely.

Talk about it often. Whoever you want to be, talk about it with your husband, your friends, your parents, your kids, even people at work. Pay attention to women who reflect what you want and if you know them personally, hang out with them. Immerse yourself in an environment that fosters who you want to be. You are the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with. Don’t waste your five.

Live it out loud. It’s hard to be your word if you only practice it between noon and 5 PM because that’s when you interact with the people you want to be the word in front of. Remember this word should represent who you want to be when no one else is watching. When you live it out loud you shouldn’t have to try to be this word, it should roll off your tongue, you should be able to do it in your sleep. In the words of Beyonce’, “I woke up like this.”

If your current situation doesn’t reflect the word you chose, then do something about it. Figure out a way to live it, to be it, to achieve it by any means necessary. The situation is that urgent…

That’s it! Seems easy enough to do, right? The first two steps can be pretty easy. The hard part is living it. What is one thing you can do right now to live out loud the woman you want to become?

Talk soon,