Today we are chatting with Elizabeth, Stress Coach for Moms and host of Emotionally Healthy Legacy podcast. 

See episode transcription below

In this episode we talked about:

The cause and effects of stress.

Choosing to live unstressed and seek peace in motherhood.

Making life as easy as possible – letting go of control over doing everything yourself and grocery pick up services.

You are the CEO of your home – does a CEO do it all themselves? Or do they bring on more help to grow and make a greater impact? Don’t be the control freak who burns out because you’re stubborn.

You can try to do it all yourself, but you’re going to end up burning out, or worse. When you choose to delegate and ask for help, life becomes much easier and more enjoyable.

You can find Elizabeth at the links below:

Emotionally Healthy Legacy Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/emotionally-healthy-legacy-stress-management-mindset/id1552289447

Emotionally Healthy Legacy on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/emotionallyhealthylegacy

FREE download from Elizabeth: https://www.emotionallyhealthylegacy.com/5ways

Get your copy of The Happy Mom Brain on Amazon: or http://www.BrittniClarkson.com/happymom

Can’t wait to listen to the episode? Here’s the transcription for ya!

---

Brittni: Hello, my friends. I’m very excited to introduce you to Elizabeth from Emotionally Healthy Legacy. She is here to talk to us about a very important topic in regards to not doing everything yourself. 

Elizabeth: Hello. I’m so glad to be here. This is one of my favorite topics to talk about is, um, asking for help and how to, uh, overcome some of those mindset blocks that we have when it comes to asking for help.

B: Okay, Elizabeth. So let’s go ahead and jump into it and let’s tell you, or why don’t you go ahead and tell my listeners a little bit more about you. 

E: Yes. So I am Elizabeth and I have four kids. I have three boys and a baby girl. So my boys are 10, 7, 5, and a baby girl. Who’s about to be one. So we definitely have lots of noise and I’d say like normal chaos in the sense of like, when you have kids, you just have chaos if you want it or not?

It’s just part of your life. I think it’s so unrealistic to just have everything just be so chill and calm all the time. I mean, so many different personalities, all in one house. So many kids and boys, you get it, like you have three boys, you know what it’s like? It’s a little crazy . At times. I am actually a stress coach for moms.

I help overwhelmed moms reduce the mental stress so they can respond with patients and calm. I believe that oftentimes moms feel like they’re failing at motherhood. Because they’re just constantly yelling and raising their voice and reacting to their day. And the root is they are just so stressed out overwhelmed and they have unmet needs.

And when that gets taken care of, and they support themselves proactively, they are much, much better place and they can show up in a much better version for their families. And I got on this journey because. I mean, I was that mom, I was struggling, um, being patient and calm with my kids. And I bought a course that was teaching me how to prioritize my needs and having like a morning routine.

And once I started implementing that and started kind of diving into personal growth, I started to do things proactively to support myself, to set myself up for success. And I noticed how that. Shifted and just changed things so much in how I was showing up for my family as well. And then I was thinking, well, more moms need to know this.

There is a better way to do motherhood than survival mode and constantly reacting and being frustrated and annoyed by your kids. I mean, yes, we can still have days like that here and there, but it doesn’t have to be your norm. So that’s how I got into this journey.

B: That is so, so relatable. Um, such a fantastic like revelation of realizing that stress is the, cause. Not like the effect.

Cause I think a lot of times we tend to like blame our kids kind of like, oh, well I’m stressed because I have kids instead of like, I’m yelling at my kids because I’m stressed. Like I’m not showing up to support them because I’m not taking care of myself. 

E: Yeah. Because you’re struggling. Yeah. Cuz like, and that’s one of the things that I teach my moms is you are a good mom, you’re just having a hard time. You’re just struggling because you have unmet needs. It could be basic needs like you’re sleeve deprived or you’re hungry or could be emotional unmet. You or maybe you just need some alone time to recharge and if you don’t have that, yeah. You will run out of energy eventually and you will be reacting.

And so, yeah, that’s my goal is to help moms shift their perspective, how they see this and then help them implement healthy habits that will set them up for success.

B: Absolutely. That is fantastic. Let’s go and jump in and shift into the asking for help because we can’t do this alone. What have you learned in that area?

E: Yeah, this is a big one, so I have four kids.  like I mentioned before, and here’s the deal. I believe there’s two options when it comes to asking for help. One of them is not to ask for help and try to do it all on your own. All the errands, all the appointments, all the housework, just everything. I mean, if you’re a mom, you know how much is goes in into running a household.

And if you have a job on top of that, it’s just a lot. You can try to do it all and stress yourself out. You will be running an empty, you will not have time to recharge because you’re trying to do it all because you have a limited amount of energy. We all have a limited amount of energy we have for the day, and we can either choose to try to do it all.

And it’s gonna run out of it really quickly, or we can choose to delegate, delete. Or ask for help. Right? We can ask for help by our spouse. We can either sometimes even hire help to make things easier. Like, imagine if like here’s in a great example, I can, if I’m, this is this you’ll maybe resonate with you.

There’s this thing that’s called Instant Cart that  people know about nowadays and you can order groceries and pull up to the store and they’ll just load it into your cart. Or sometimes you can even get them delivered to your house. Obviously, someone else is shopping for you and they may not pick out the best produce – so you do have to kind of like let go of some of that control. And that’s like an example of ways that I ask for help or I hired help. Right. I pay for the membership a month, the prices are slightly higher, obviously when like they shop for you. But guess what? The amount of stress it takes off my plate is enormous.

Trying to go to the store with little kids while grocery shopping and like having them say, oh, can I have this? Can I have this? Or, you know, just spilling something or getting through the line, you know what? I can pay a little bit of extra. Have somebody do all the grocery shopping for me. And guess what?

Instant Cart is really good at refunding you if they didn’t get you the right thing, or if it’s not in that great of shape and you can even write notes, ‘Hey, can I get the freshest spinach’ or whatever over there is. And they were pretty good at like picking stuff out that you want, but guess what it takes so much stress off your plate. And that’s one of the things I choose to delegate to someone else and be a little bit more chill about this, or I can try to go to the store and like rush and it’s nap time. And it’s just extra chaos and takes time out of my day. So it’s all a mindset shift. What are you willing to let go and delegate.

And I remember one of the examples I heard from another influencer that really like resonated with me. And she was talking about like running a company, like you are the CEO of your home. You’re running your household. And if you think of any big successful company, does this CEO try to do everything themselves or do they delegate and hire help?

They delegate and they hire help. And that’s how they can continue to be a CEO. But if they tried to do all the position themselves and not ask for help, they will eventually completely completely burn out. 

B: Absolutely. I would double on and agree with making grocery shopping easier because I had to do so much mindset work to be okay with doing grocery pickup at first.

Because we live where we can’t do like instant cart or delivery, cuz they charge like an extra 25 bucks or something to come out this far. So I still have to go to the store, but I have someone else pick it up. So I don’t have to take all three of my boys in, especially cuz it’s a bit of a drive, usually my smallest will fall asleep before we get there. And I was like, ‘what am I doing?’ Like still grocery shopping with all three of these kids, waking up my baby from a nap to take them all in the store where they just fight over who gets to put their hands on the cart handle. And it was such a nightmare.

It’s amazing how much work it took to overcome the guilt that I felt sitting there in the parking lot in that spot, waiting for someone to bring me my groceries. Like everyone passing by, I would just think like, they’re thinking that I’m such a lazy mom, because, I don’t have a disability – I don’t need to have my groceries brought out to me.

What am I doing? Taking up this time and space. And I had to realize, you know, It doesn’t matter what they think. Honestly, I’m doing them a favor by not bringing my kids in the store. I get to have this moment to sit here for five to 10 minutes and wait for someone else to do this because like I do enough and I am enough and it doesn’t matter what other people might be thinking about.

You just have to do what’s good for you and your family. 

E: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And before we touch on like the guilt and feeling like it’s a weakness and releasing some of that control, cuz that’s all mindset shifts that need to happen. Right. We talked about, you said you journaled through it. Some of those are things that we really have to work through.

I wanna give you an example that really like makes a lot of sense to me now as I’m older. So I finished college as a physical therapist assistant and I used to work at a clinic for about seven years. And my coworker, who was the manager, she had two kids, but they were involved in sports on the weekends.

They would constantly like go to all these tournaments and like drive to different cities. And she worked full time and maybe even more than full time, she stayed at late a lot. And she had all these things that she was doing and all these commitments that she had. And I remember I was in my early twenties and I was just thinking, I’m like, how did she do it all?

You know, I would ask her, I’m like, how do you do it all? You know? And as I was still working there, I was still working full time at that time. Something started to happen. Her health completely started to crumble. She was in her thirties, um, like mid thirties and her health completely started falling apart.

She, something just happened and she could not sleep at night. Literally, she just could not sleep. She could not fall asleep. And obviously that affects how you function right during the day. Because if you have lack of sleep, you cannot focus. She kept making a ton of mistakes at work that somebody had to constantly fix.

Even though she was the manager of that clinic, she, um, started to have a bunch of digestive issues and like all these things, you start to go a bunch of doctors and they couldn’t figure out all the tests came back like positive, like normal, I guess, because in general, She was considered healthy because she, you know, she exercised regularly.

She ate organic, healthy food, you know, she was considered healthy and she started to seeing a bunch of doctors and they couldn’t figure out what it was. And now I know what it was, right. It was complete burnout because what eventually happened that she had to completely leave her position. And leave the company completely find a part-time position in a different clinic that did not involve her ma like being a manager at all.

She went to work, she worked half a day and then she left and like they had to sell their house because they obviously couldn’t afford it anymore. Um, because of the income change. But her life had to flip upside down. It got to a point where like everything had to be. Literally stopped and just turned around because her body literally shut down.

And there’s a phrase that I heard that I really like. If you don’t pick a day to rest, your body’s gonna pick it for you. And so if you try to do everything yourself all the time, you will burn out. You’re gonna be overwhelmed. You’re gonna be you’re. Body’s gonna be super stressed out. Your nervous system is gonna be constantly overloaded and you’re gonna be really easily triggered by your kids.

Easily overwhelmed by like little daily things. Like you’re gonna start developing either headaches or migraines or digestive issues. And like, what can you do? You can delegate, you can delete, you can ask for help and that’s gonna, like, that’s what I do. That’s what I hope moms do in my program is to shift their mindset and perspective on how to start asking for help to release some of that guilt to release some of that control. Right. And so, because those are the biggest things that kind of like, hold us back, we feel like it’s a weakness to ask for help. We feel guilty. Well, I should be able to do it all. That’s what I hear the most. Well, I, everybody else does it. I feel like I should be able to do it.

Like I see that mom over there, my neighbor, she does all these things and I feel like I should be able to do it. That’s what I hear. Do you resonate with that? Like, does that relate with you? 

B: I feel like that’s such a big thing with so many moms I what’s coming up in me is realizing we do that a lot. We look at other women and think like, well, they’re doing all of it, so should too, but how much of your story do they know?

Do they really know what you are doing? Because I don’t think we really know. We really know that another woman is doing it all. 

E: Yeah. And you also don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors. Yeah, she could be, look, she might seem like she’s got it all together. She’s doing it all. But behind closed doors, she’s snapping at her husband at her kids.

Her marriage is falling apart cuz she doesn’t have any time to spend time and reconnect with her husband because she’s taking on so much on her self. Right. Mm-hmm  so when it comes to asking for help, we need to learn to say no to certain things. Don’t serve us in this season of life. When somebody’s asking you for a commitment or some sort of help for you to help someone else, like when you close your eyes and you think about it, are you excited about that commitment?

Do you want to show up or do you feel dread? And you’re like, oh my gosh, I wish I could say no. I wish I could say no, because if you have resistance, that is the sign for you to say. You’re gonna do it out of resentment and bitterness, and you’re not even gonna enjoy it. 

B: Right, right. You’re not gonna be able to do it with a happy heart.

E: And then like the other thing is that, um, shifting your perspective from feeling guilty and feeling weak, when you ask for help, it’s like, Instead of like, I really like how you change your podcast name. I get to, instead of like, oh, like, oh, now I I’m picking up groceries. Now I have to pick up groceries cuz you know my, so my kids don’t scream or whatever.

It’s like, I get to do this. This is a blessing I get to pick up groceries, save myself, time, energy, frustration. Stress I get to do it. And who cares? What that lady passing by? Like thinks if she’s judging, go ahead. That’s fine. Because this is my life. I get to ask for help because then I can release some of that stress.

Like I can give you an example. So I. A year ago, I had my baby girl and I had a C-section and I know that for me personally, I don’t enjoy cooking. That’s always been kind of like a thing that same and maybe like one day I have to work on my mindset around it, but I just, it’s just not my thing. It’s like I have to cook to feed my family, but I wish I didn’t have to.

I just don’t enjoy it. It, I. It’s one of those chores that I’m like, I wish I could just delegate somebody take it off my plate, but I knew that that would stress me out postpartum. Try to figure out what to cook. Cuz after a couple weeks my husband would go to back to work and it would be me and four kids.

And, um, I asked my sister-in-law, if she could create a meal train, she created a meal train and she did it for like, um, a sign up was for six weeks. And I sent it out to all my friends and women at church that I know. And I’m like, Hey, if you’re able, I would love for you to sign up and bring us a meal postpartum.

That would be super helpful. And guess what? I had people sign up and I had meals for. Six weeks straight. I didn’t have to do any cooking and you know, how much stress that took off my shoulders, how much overwhelm that took off my shoulders. All I had to do was reheat some food. That’s it. And most of the food, they, when they dropped it off was already warm and it was right around dinnertime.

It was the most helpful thing. I asked for help. I had to overcome and be like, it’s not a weakness for me to ask for help. It’s I had to shift the way I talk to myself and say, I get to ask for help. These women want to help me. I’m not making them. They can say no, they don’t have to sign up. Right. They get to say no, but a lot of these women were either like,  in a different life stage than I was.

Some of ’em were already like in their, you know, fifties, their kids were all grown up and they, they loved bringing, they loved cooking. They’re like, oh my gosh, I love cooking. I would cook all day long. I’m like, oh my goodness. Thank you for bringing this. Come live at my house. You can cook here. But it was like one of those things it’s like, I had to tell myself, it’s not a weakness.

I get to ask for help and reduce stress in my life. 

B: Mm-hmm  I think sometimes we also forget like about other people that some people’s like purpose in life is to help others in this way, like with hospitality or with, you know, like they’re meant to be a support role in your life. Where they’re meant to come in for this brief time and help you in some way so that you can keep fulfilling your purpose and you can show up as the best mom, the best business owner, the best wife, everything, because someone else stepped in and took like 20 minutes of their time to help you.

And it just amplifies the amount of time you have, because you’re not stressed out. You’re not having to recover from cooking dinner.

E: The other thing was like releasing control. Right? Some, one of the biggest things we don’t ask for help is because we feel like it has to be done just so right. And like, we are afraid that if, if we ask for help, the other person doesn’t get it done the exact same way. And it’s also a mindset shift.

It’s like, I choose to release control. I choose to delegate this and it’s okay if it doesn’t get done perfectly, an example would be that my oldest son, I have him do his own laundry. He washes his own laundry. He folds his own laundry and puts it away. He needs reminders and, you know, guidance with that, cuz he doesn’t wanna do it.

But, and even with my younger two, I have baskets that when I have clean laundry, I put it in those baskets and they get to put their clothes back away and guess what? They don’t fold it the way I would fold it. They just like roll it up and they, and the socks are just all just thrown into a little, you know, container.

I could try to make sure it is just so and folded, just so and take the time and the energy, but guess what? I used to do that. And I choose now to let it go and be like, it’s okay. It doesn’t have to be perfect. That is not a priority in life right now. Like it’s just not, and I choose to let it go. I choose to give it to my kids and for them to learn, to do things on their own.

So a lot of it comes back to shifting the way you think. And oftentimes you literally need to write down either new mantras or affirmations, and it’s like, I choose to delegate this. I choose to let go of control. It’s not a weakness for me to ask for help. Like. I get to ask for help and reduce the stress in my life.

When I do that, like you literally can write down those affirmations, which everyone jumps out at you. And the more you repeat it to yourself, like the more like it gets ingrained in your brain. And it’s just easier to see things from that new lens. 

B: Absolutely. It’s funny that you had mentioned that because literally in the past couple of days I’ve had this, um, this kind of like revelation when it comes to cleaning my home, where I realized that my mom had raised me, but my mom had raised me that if you’re not gonna do a drop, I don’t do it at all.

and I don’t think she ever anticipated that I would choose to just not do the job at all.  and so I’ve either like, not delegated things or, and so like, I will get to it later when I have time, because I don’t have time to do it. Right. Right now. And in the last week I’ve been telling myself, like, as I’m scrubbing a section of the shower that I’ve put off for way too long, it doesn’t have to be perfect.

It just has to be better. Things don’t have to be perfect. They just have to get done to some level. And that also helps me with like, when my five year old will start vacuuming up the living room for me. Like he just needs to get the big chunks. It doesn’t have to be totally perfect. He just has to help.

E: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s let it go of that perfectionist letting go of that. You know, control, like you said, like your, you know, your child vacuuming. And I really think a lot of it just comes back to shifting your thoughts and literally, like you have a thought that comes to your brain and it says like this has to be done perfectly.

Or like, if, if it’s not done perfect, then don’t do it at all. You know? And you shift your thoughts and you tell yourself sometimes out loud, sometimes in just to yourself. And you’re like, no, that is not true. That belief is not serving me. And the new belief is. It can, I can do it and doesn’t have to be perfect.

I get to do a little bit and that’s gonna be just fine, you know, or whatever. It might be one that, you know, we’ve talked about earlier. Mm-hmm  I guess the biggest thing is that I want you to walk away remembering is that. Like I said in the beginning you have two choices. You can either try to do it all yourself and not ask for help.

You will eventually burn out. You will. And you’re gonna not gonna have time to take care of yourself because oftentimes when we try to do everything ourselves taking care of ourselves goes on the, you know, on the back burner. And if it’s not your mental health, then it’s your physical health that’s gonna crumple or your marriage or your relationships.

Asking for help can be a strength because you reduce a lot of the stress and overwhelm because you’re delegating it to someone else and life becomes easier. It can be easy. You can choose an easier path. 

B: Absolutely. And so where can my listeners find more of you? 

E: Yes, yes, you can connect with me. I’m a podcast host as well, of Emotionally Healthy Legacy. You can search for that on any podcast platform. And I also hang out on Instagram @emotionallyhealthylegacy over there, and I can also offer your listeners like a freebie. I have a positive affirmations recording for mamas who struggled and blew up on their kids that day, because they were so overwhelmed and stressed out  and the affirmations are about giving yourself grace and taking care of yourself, prioritizing yourself.

So I can send that over to you. And you can add that to the show notes. If anyone is interested, they can definitely sign up for that. 

B: That is perfect. I can’t wait to look at those myself. 

Thank you so much for coming on today. This is a lot of really great information and I cannot wait for my listeners to hear it.

E: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

---

Here’s those links again:

• Emotionally Healthy Legacy Podcast
• Emotionally Healthy Legacy on Instagram
• FREE download from Elizabeth