Episode 80: Critical Skills for a More Fulfilling Parenthood with Diana Ballard
/Parenthood can be really tough. There's so much to think about like house chores, taking care of our kids, keeping our cool, and even managing our careers. It's a LOT. And when we are bombarded with so much stress and fatigue juggling all of these responsibilities (especially after the last 18 months!), we may start to really feel like we are failing, not doing any one thing well, and have this lingering feeling of dissatisfaction.
I know I've been there at various points in my parenting journey, and this past year has brought this on for so many of us and I really want to support you in this, especially as the holiday season approaches (yes, you read that right! It's coming faster than we think!). And so, for this week's episode, I have invited a colleague who is the host of the Mom Training Podcast, Diana Ballard. She is passionate about helping women balance their responsibilities, find fulfillment, and thrive as moms. Now, this episode may be addressed to moms but this can help dads, too! Diana will guide us in creating your own experience according to what works for you so that you can feel fulfillment in your parenthood. Here is a summary of our conversation:
Critical skills to balance responsibilities at home
Self-care practices (that are actually nourishing & sustainable!)
Respectful relationships and communication with our partners
REMINDER: Don't forget that your chance to learn LIVE with me ALL ABOUT SIBLINGS is coming up quick! Head here for all the details: www.laurafroyen.com/sibling
To get more support in your parenting journey, follow Diana on social media,
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Dianaballardlive
Instagram: www.instagram.com/dianaballardlive
YouTube: Mom Training Channel
or join her Facebook community Dancing Through Motherhood and visit her website ww.dianaballard.com
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts, and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Balance Parent Podcast. I'm really excited to introduce you to my guest today. She is the host of the Mom Training Podcast and is so passionate about helping women balance their responsibilities and find fulfillment and actually thrive in their parenthood and so please welcome Dianna Ballard to the show with me today. I'm really excited for this conversation, Diana. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do and you're amazing story?
Diana: Okay. So I am a mom and a wife, I am growing number four right now.
Laura: Congratulations
Diana: Thank you. I'm excited about that. I love being a mom and I love being successful in motherhood. Now, that doesn't mean being perfect. But it means being successful, alright? So that's like a percentage of the time, I'm very successful. The other percentage I'm still learning, right? And growing. Like the majority of the time, I enjoy motherhood and feel good and what I'm doing.
Before becoming a mom, I was really terrified to become a mom. I had a lot of negative examples around me, not that my growing up, I had great parents, you know, I was the oldest kid, I didn't live around any family or anything. So my experience of seeing young families, I would say I was judgmental. Like I just saw all the horrible things that came with motherhood okay? By looking at these families like, oh, I don't want that.
Like, you know, she looks exhausted and you know, she complains that she's lost herself. She doesn't know what to do and she's bored all day and I was like, oh, I just don't want any of that. So at age 25, I decided that I wanted to become a mom and a wife, but if I was going to step into that moment and I was going to be prepared because like, there was no way in heck I was going to just jump in and think that everything was just going to flow well, I was going to have the right skill sets and mindsets that I needed. So I decided that I was gonna.
Laura: Hold on, I just got to say. I, I became a mom in the midst of a Ph.D. program where I was doing family therapy. I saw how hard it was and I still had these rosy colored glasses, so I just think it's so amazing that you had such clear eyes going into this. Okay, sorry, I took over your story, but I just think so many of us go into motherhood with this kind of rose-colored glasses, you know, with the ideas about what it's going to be like.
Diana: I think is good in a sense, because I mean, if everyone, I mean that's kind of why I had such a bad taste in my mouth for motherhood is if people just only talked about the hard stuff, like a lot of people complain a lot about motherhood and family life, and there's not as many people that are talking about the good stuff, which I understand because you know, I mean you don't want to be like, well let me tell you how good this is when someone's really struggling, right?
You know, I can see how it happens now that you said that I want to backtrack just a tiny bit to tell you why I decided to open my eyes to that and decide that was because I went on a Europe trip by myself, it was my dream to go to Europe. I left with a one-way ticket just by the seat of my pants. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, I ran out of money, I was homeless, I was in the rain standing on the corner, I mean, and like, pretty, I had like a nervous breakdown during that thing and, and literally realized every single area that I sucked or that I like really struggled and I was like, man, I'm so not good at like, I think it was like seven areas, like really big areas, like money management preparation planning.
I mean like huge areas of like, man, I really suck at this. So that's kind of what spurred this on, of saying, well if I'm going to step into this big moment of motherhood and family life, I'm not going to show up the same way I showed up to Europe and have myself fall flat on my face and have to like crawl my way out. So that's how it kind of, that's how it kind of spurred on, on this, this track that I went on. And so I started interviewing just any mom that I could get my hands on, whether that was actually like, I sat down with pen and paper in so many households.
Can you show me how you organize your recipes, what do you do with your husband or how do you bond with him? Like can you give me a tip of this? And I would just go through and I have just paper after paper your paper of so much research of what these women were doing and so what I found over time and like I really dug in for like a couple months and what I found in that amount of time is that there was a significant difference between two groups of women and there was one group of women that you know had their house clean, had great relationships with their husbands.
You know cooked a lot of homemade meals and just found like incredible fulfillment and they had different skillsets and mindsets that they practiced and this was like you know generally through that entire group of okay, how interesting like all of these connect like these women have like a very successful experience and you know they all believe the same things and practice these same things and then the other group, they did not practice those things, they did not believe those things and man, they struggled.
I mean there was so much problem in their marriages and in the way that they felt and they, you know and so you know in which I have compassion for especially now being a mom because like it is challenging, you know, because...
Laura: I just feel like I heard all of my listeners just like lean forward and be like what are the things, what are the things?
Diana: Yeah, no totally .
Laura: That's probably what you teach on your podcast.
Diana: It totally is so I'll totally share some of them with you and obviously like going into detail is the best you can find more on my podcast or in a mom training, which I do. Yeah, I created a system for myself and practiced it for two years before becoming a wife and mom. I got married at 27 I mean things have just flowed smoothly okay anyway, years down the road the podcast came mom training came whatever.
Laura: So the things let's get into the same things, we're all hanging on the edges of our seats.
Diana: So here's the base of them, okay, meal planning, being able to successfully meal plan and what that looks like knowing how to budget on a family budget, you go from single on a single budget to now suddenly being on a family budget where it's very, very different living and that's where a majority of the problems actually came from was people not being trained in money management.
Laura: There's so much research that one of the biggest family stressors is money and money management, that when you helped, families get that figured out that their lives in general get better and move more smoothly that there's like academic quantitative research on that very topic that you noticed. Yeah, validating for, you know,
Diana: Totally. So that was a huge one and there are so many layers that go into that, but, and being able to know exactly what your self-care needs are. So that was like a huge focus me for that two years of, you know, being conscious about what do I need, you know, what fills my bucket, You know, things like that just so before I even got into motherhood and maybe things got a little cloudy because I'm exhausted or hormones or pregnancy or you know, just dealing with a lot of different people's needs that I already had like a basis of what the heck do I need now?
If you're like I didn't do that before I became a mom, what the heck do I do? It just literally is starting as simple as making a note on your phone of like things that make you happy. Like, I mean, it can really be that simple of figuring out like what you need is a person can literally be just being conscious in writing it down or keeping so you can go through and figure out, okay, I'm gonna, this week, do something that makes me happy. I'm gonna go through this note in my phone and say, oh, I like to, you know, walk around the lake and so you're going to go find a lake and you're gonna walk around to get what I'm saying. So.
Laura: I do, yeah, I'd like to have my parents and who are in my membership go through and make a self-care menu where they have little appetizers or tapas, you know, things that are small or shareable, that you can do with your family, the things that are the main courses, things that are deserts the icing on the cake, like, and have just like the menu of self-care options that take five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, you know, and then the bigger things too. Yeah, I love that idea.
Diana: Yeah, so that was a huge one. And then another topic was relationships and communication and a huge one was about respecting men and which is kind of a huge issue right now in my opinion, that a lot of media does not teach women how to have a successful relationship with a man and that is something that's very detrimental. It's not in the fact that I'm a very independent, very driven, very bold woman.
Like, I work very well with my husband as a partner and you know, it's like, I think there's like a fine line that people kind of balance on sometimes of like, the feminist movement going a little too far slash you know, are we working together? Like, it's not like we're, you know, looked down upon or they're looked down upon, but it's about like, an equal relationship. That was another huge pattern between the two groups of the way that each person treated their husband was significantly different in each group.
And so that I needed major training on learning how to respect and honor men more just because whatever was around me, whatever I was learning the friends I was talking to whatever, you know, being very independent and driven and you know, the mindsets that can come with that I can do it all on my own. I don't need a man that can create a lot of problems.
Laura: Yeah. Or the even just the message that I feel like is so pervasive that men are incompetent or that if you're partnered with a man or parenting with a man that they're like a third child or another child, I see what you're talking about.
It is very hard to have an equal, an egalitarian relationship and a team, a partnership where you are actually a team together where one person is being looked down upon or maybe being, you know, in a situation where they are feeling like they're always doing something wrong. That's very hard.
Diana: I get what you're saying about respect.
Laura: It is it's about respectful relationships. I mean, and so like that's something that all people are deserving of respect are deserving of conscious, compassionate and connected, communication with each other. And I mean, I definitely think that men have a lot to learn on that front as well, but there's a rule for those of us who are partnered with men to see exactly how they've done definitely go both ways.
Diana: Yeah but this is what we can do and part of the communication is learning how to create respect in general with everybody, you know.
Laura: Absolutely, we don't learn growing up for the most part.
Diana: And so another one of the topics was routine, an organization that was amazing to see like how these women that have successful family lives, organized their life, like ridiculously organized and you know, for people that don't like to be organized, they're like, oh man, that's just sucks. I don't want to do that.
But man, it changes your life when you learn how to organize things, when you learn how to get a good routine in how to organize your tasks, organize your mind, especially, it makes a huge difference in how you can run your family and the joy and fulfillment that can come with that. So that was definitely another one that's very, very important and something that I noticed and then let's see. So we had, we had self-care and like nutrition and health.
So that was like the meal planning, how to take care of yourself. We have the money management, the communications and relationships, the organizing, oh emotional mental coping. That was the other 12 of that women knew how to balance out their stress levels or like be aware of what they were feeling and how to take care of that.
Whether that be that they need more sleep, they need to have time alone to themselves or whatever. It may be being able to manage their emotional mental capacity was another very powerful thing that I learned and also have practiced.
Laura: Okay, so it sounds to me like you are incredibly intentional in the way you put these things into practice in your own home, right? Like in your own life, in your own motherhood and that's what allows you to feel so successful in your motherhood or you don't feel overwhelmed, you don't feel overburdened, you don't feel overtaxed. Yeah.
Diana: Yes. Yeah, for sure these things that I practice are crucial for me because if I don't practice them, I get really, really imbalanced. Like my mind, my body, like I feel really, really bad.
Laura: You have a big stress response.
Diana: Yeah, well like I chemically get imbalanced and so without being able to like organize myself, take care of myself with, I need to communicate the way that I need to, it creates a lot of problems and so like it just being like, oh I just want to find fulfillment in motherhood. No, I want to find fulfillment in motherhood instead of feeling like crap all the time.
Laura: Yeah. And so these things are not just because you know you can do them, you have to do them, you're doing them so that you can have a motherhood that feels good to you. Yeah?
Diana: I share that because someone is listening right now and they're like I just don't even know where to start. I feel like crap. I just want people to know that there are ways to build yourself up and give yourself support systems that you have created yourself. Like obviously like reaching out for help and you know, finding the necessary things that you need to support you, that's that's outside of your own home, whatever, like that's that's great. But there are ways for you to build up yourself by learning the skill sets
Laura: And there skills you can learn right, like so like I teach conscious communication, like that's something you can learn, most of us did not learn it growing up, we can learn it now, it will feel awkward, it will feel different, it it is different to communicate respectfully with a partner but if you've never done so before, if you've only ever communicated from a triggered and reactive place it's different. You can feel awkward but you can learn it and so like these skills that you're talking about, I teach some of them but it's so lovely to know that these other ones have a great place to be learned as well.
One of the things that I'm thinking about, you know here at the balance parent, we don't think that balance is a state of being, we think it's a thing you do that you are kind of doing these micro corrections where you are kind of on this like wobble stool and you're keeping yourself balanced, you know by making all of these micro collections, but it's also a piece of having a balanced approach to some of these things that we're learning.
So for example meal planning is something that when I think about meal planning a month of meals or however I've seen some people in Pinterest or Instagram do it, it's so overwhelming for me, it does not work for me. So I do some meal planning in a way that works for me that is more rhythm-based on Mondays.
We have this on Tuesdays, we have this but never I never planned dinner, I only plan snacks and lunches because that in breakfast because that's what I can do and so I want to just, can we have a little bit of a conversation about like how can we make some of these things feel more balanced or feel more they can work for us. Is there kind of permission and room for that flexibility on some of these things?
Diana: Oh totally. Another thing that I really love teaching is called designing motherhood where it's pretty much creating your own world, your own motherhood experience according to what works for you, and once you want these skill sets are like a basis like you know there's a million ways you can do your budget but you need to have some form of a budget so that you're a little more balanced, right?
Just flying by the seat of your pants, it's going to still create a lot of problems if you're not being aware, you're not in your finances, you're not, I'm kind of system. Yeah, I love that when you're saying like this is what I plan, you know, for my meals, you know, for me for meal planning, I plan out five whole days a week, and then we left over the last two days. So that's what works for me. Okay, so, but it, what it is is it's creating a system for yourself.
It works for you now, whether that's, you know, work part-time out of the home or you work in the home during, you know, different hours and you have a nanny or you know, you work only in the evenings and your husband watches the kids like, I mean there's different things that can flow, but what it is is figuring out what's going to bring you peace, what's going to bring you fulfillment, Here's this bubble of meal planning, Okay, what can you put in it? What are you going to do that's going to make you feel peace and fulfillment at the end of the week and
Laura: Make your life a little easier.
Diana: Exactly. There are strategies, There are tips, there are things people have put together that they can share that can spur ideas, and a lot of times maybe you don't want to recreate the wheel, right? You wanna be able to say, okay, like I'm going to try what this person did and see if it worked for me like, okay, that kind of work located for a couple weeks, I'm gonna try another one and see and I'm not saying just hop around to different things, but you'll be able to start to feel okay. You know what that kind of, I've got the flow of that one.
Like I need to tweak it just a little bit here and okay, this is flowing well, like I like that, you know, and I'm going to throw in going out to eat every once in a while because hey, like I need a break sometimes, right? So it's creating what you want, it's designing your motherhood, experience the way that you want it to be and you'll know that you've hit it when you do have that peace and fulfillment at the end of the day and at the end of the week and maybe you don't feel it all the time.
Maybe it's still a work in progress, but being able to just have like a little touch of that, like you'll never go back. Like it's like, oh how that tasted really good. I want to see if I can create that in this area too, you know? So yeah, I love that. It is about giving yourself permission to create the life, that you want the experience that you want.
Laura: Okay, that feels so good. that feels so light, you know, I say this all the time. There is no one right way to do this and that we get to choose, we get to choose what's right for us. I am so glad that we had that last piece of this conversation that it's about tuning in to yourself, getting clear on how you want it to feel what works for you.
Getting in touch with your intuition and trusting yourself and letting guide you, learning new things, you only know what, you know, it's okay to learn new things, try things out and make them your own and make them work for you. I love that, thank you for that so much. Okay, so I have a feeling people are going to want to go and listen to your podcast. Will you tell us where they can find you on Instagram and everything and I'll make sure it's in the show notes, but sometimes my listeners like to hear it out loud to
Diana: Yeah, for sure. So it's called the Mom Training Podcast and so obviously in any podcast app or whatever and then on Instagram and Facebook, it's @DianaBallardlives, I will say that I do a cooking show every Monday, so which is totally fun. So it's called me on Monday, you can come check that out.
But yeah, and then DianaBallard.com is where I have my mom training where we have by weekly coaching that dive into different topics in those areas that I talked about to really dive in to learn the different skill sets and things that you can then apply to your own situation and you know create your own experience, which is wonderful so that's really.
Laura: Awesome. Thank you so much for being here with us. This was so great.
Diana: Thank you so much for having me and I love being on your show. Thanks.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out um, and definitely go follow me on Instagram. I'm @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes. Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family, and plus I share a lot of other, really great resources there too.
All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this.