A Mom's Guide to Five Minutes of Peace

Ever notice that your husband goes to the bathroom alone and sits in there on his phone for a long time while you usually have a child or a dog or both in the bathroom with you?

I was speaking with a potential client last week. She’s a successful physician with a thriving practice, a second business, travels twice a month, attends networking events every week, runs once a week, practices yoga once a week, has three children under the age of ten and a husband who is also a physician with two practices. I ask all of my prospective and paid coaching clients, as I did her, to call me from a quiet place where they will be uninterrupted by people, phones and computers. Do you know where she called me? The car. Do you know what the first topic of our conversation was? How much she wished to have breathing space and be able to go to the bathroom alone.

So, this was the basis of our discovery call – how to go to the bathroom alone. What she realized by the end of the call is that as a working mom, or even from her stay-at-home mom friends, we as moms have trouble saying no and creating those boundaries for ourselves. We allow kids into the bathroom when what we really want is a few moments of privacy. She let go of old stories that were holding her back from having self-honoring boundaries and she decided to experiment with saying “no” when someone wanted to come into the bathroom. She also came to terms and agreed to be okay when someone cried outside the door as she said no. The bigger lesson in this for her was realizing that by saying no she was teaching her children how to say no for themselves and create their own healthy boundaries for self-care. Going to the bathroom alone during a discovery call turned into a huge ah-ha moment for her. 

Experiment, try this out and post your comments below on what happened!