the bossbabe podcast - 409. CEO Mama: Putting Yourself Last Has A Cost with Lindsay Roselle

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, welcome back to the pod. This is another CEO Mama episode. And this one is also repurposed for Motherload. So I'm happy that you're here and listening. This one is a conversation about the mental math that I do. And that I'm introducing you to on this episode around thinking about the time that we put into taking care of ourselves and how often as ambitious mothers, we think of that time as time that we should be doing something else. So by deprioritizing ourselves, we're actually saving time. And then we can use that time to work or we can use that time and pour it into our kids

Starting point is 00:00:35 and how in the moment that feels like the right decision to do because we need to work more or our kids need us or something else has come up that feels in the moment more important than taking care of ourselves. But how that lack of prioritization of ourself will catch up with us in the form of, in my case, in this episode, I got the flu and it took me down literally for 10 days. This was back in the fall of 2022, around Thanksgiving of 2022. I got sicker than I'd ever been. I literally could not move off the couch with the flu for 10 days. And all of that time, I couldn't work or anything. And so this was a big lesson for me around, you know, the months leading up to that I had told myself these stories that

Starting point is 00:01:12 if I don't go to the gym this week, I'm at 10 hours of time that I can work more. Or, you know, if I stay up a little bit later tonight and steal the night, you know, this concept of like stealing the night where we get our alone time at midnight, because that's the only time that moms can get alone time. So I was stealing the night a lot to like get some alone time and read books and watch shows. And, you know, I'm like, oh, I can't, I can't do these things during the daytime. I only can do this at night after everybody else is asleep. So I was, you know, I was negatively impacting my sleep. I wasn't taking care of my body. I wasn't eating well. And all of those things compounded to lower my immunity, I think, to the point where I then got really, really sick. And if you're sick for 10 days, all time that you have, quote unquote, saved, you know, in sacrifice

Starting point is 00:01:55 to work more is basically erased because I missed essentially two weeks of time of work, you know? And so anyway, this episode, I giggle because I'm like, oh, Lindsay. But this, the math that I go through in this episode and the thought process of like how I really learned and integrated from getting this sick, I still use this, this like rubric for how I look at my life today. And I would say my life is significantly more busy now. And there's a lot more constraints on my time. I have less flexibility on my time now because of, you know, leading the team at Boss Babe where I have meetings that are other people are waiting for me. You know, I'm not a solo entrepreneur anymore right now. And so I don't have as much flexibility in

Starting point is 00:02:35 my schedule. And so the way I use time is even more important now. And so anyway, I hope this episode is helpful. And the way that I do the math and the way that I think about it, I hope that it's a helpful tool for you to look at your own life and some of those ways that we talk to ourselves as ambitious mothers or the excuses. I call them excuses, you know, and it feels justified in the moment, but it truly is an excuse of like, I'm not going to take care of myself. I'm not going to prioritize myself in this way today because I need this extra hour to work.

Starting point is 00:03:03 And it can feel right in the moment. And some days it's necessary, right? Some days you have to skip the workout or you have to have the easy, quick thing to eat, or you have to stay up way past bedtime because there's a pressing, urgent thing. And I totally get that. But when you're starting to do that habitually and you feel your health, you feel yourself start to go lower down on your list, I think that's the warning sign to kind of come back to this episode and do this math again and do this mindset work that I talked through here and kind of recalibrate to make sure that you are at your best, your immunity is at your best, and that the hours that you do have to work in the week, you bring the

Starting point is 00:03:42 best energy to. So I hope it's helpful. And as always, thank you for listening. And if you have any questions or any information that you'd like to hear about our CEO Mama program, please hit me up with a DM. I love talking about this stuff. And as you know, the balance and the harmony of ambition and devotion for ambitious entrepreneurial mothers is so, so important to me and to Natalie too. We talk about it a lot on all of our episodes. So if you have feedback or you want to chat, just send me a DM. Hello and welcome back to the show. Today's a little mini episode and I wanted to have a conversation about prioritization, specifically, namely prioritizing our own physical well-being. You might hear in my voice that I am

Starting point is 00:04:33 still recovering from what has been a very rough go with the flu here in my household over the Thanksgiving holiday. And I did some reflection on why I feel like I went down so hard with this bug, which I know many people are sick this season too, but this one was especially bad. And I tend to pride myself on being well and really putting myself first in terms of my own wellbeing, getting enough sleep, all those supplements, all of that kind of stuff. Not only was I surprised to go down as hard as I went down with this bug, but I was kind of mad at myself. And so I did a little thinking and a little examining of my life and connecting of dots. And what I came up with is what I want to talk about today. So as you know, I say a lot in the show and in my work, I talk a lot about the order of prioritization

Starting point is 00:05:22 for ambitious mothers and how in my experience, when I was at rock bottom in my life and I looked at my life and how I had gotten there, I really had put myself at the bottom of my priority list. It was businesses and keeping them growing and afloat, number one, kids and all their logistics, number two, relationship, number three, and then myself last. And because I was getting the bottom of the barrel and I was not taking care of myself, I was not listening to what I mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually needed. The foundation of my life, which is me and my own wellbeing was so bad that everything fell apart. And then part of my healing journey and picking up the pieces of my life and rebuilding was really about reprioritizing

Starting point is 00:06:05 so that I and my needs is first, then my relationship and then my kids and then my businesses. And in that order of prioritization, when I say I come first, it means it's like put the oxygen mask on yourself first, coming first, not that I'm more important than my kids or that I'm more important than my partner, but that if I am not well, nothing else in my life works well, right? Like if I'm not well, my relationship's not well. If me and my relationship are not well, the kids are going to suffer. If me and my relationship and the kids are all not well and suffering, the businesses are not going to go well. So this prioritization is really key. And normally I feel like I, at least over the last year and a half, I feel like

Starting point is 00:06:46 I have done a really good job of listening to myself, staying really tuned in and focusing, you know, on this commitment I've made to myself around keeping my wellbeing prioritized. That all is until like the last month and a half. And so over the last month and a half, the month of October, especially, RT traveled a lot. I traveled at the end of September. Our tea traveled a ton in October. I'm heading into launching new stuff with Motherload. The kids were sick, you know, sickness after sickness because of fall coming. We had some childcare disruptions in October. Like it just felt like a lot of stuff started to stack up in October. But most of those

Starting point is 00:07:25 things were still things I probably could have managed around in terms of still prioritizing my wellbeing. What I noticed in this conversation with myself the other day, looking at like, why am I so sick? And how did I get this worn down where my body would be this susceptible to getting super sick? I looked at everything and I realized I've been telling myself over the last month or two that I don't need, not that I don't need to, but that it's not worth the time to go to the gym or to go outside and do my walk or to take some time and do some yoga up in my open room upstairs and allowing myself off the hook for the physical wellbeing side. But I've also kind of backed off of my supplements because I

Starting point is 00:08:12 felt like I was taking a lot of supplements and I wanted to reevaluate and I haven't been eating as well because just all the excuses I've been making about travel and busyness and just trying to get the kids fed and all of those things. And then I have definitely not been sleeping well. And sleeping has been affected one by, you know, sick kids, consistently sick kids, which is not in my control, but also this phenomenon like stealing the night where after a very demanding day or a day where I didn't have childcare or something where I feel like I didn't get enough done during the day, or I didn't have any alone time during the day, I was allowing myself to stay up later at night just to get some alone time. And I wasn't

Starting point is 00:08:52 actually using that time necessarily very well, but it was kind of that effect of, I need to find time for myself. And because I'm not prioritizing it during the day, the only time I'm going to find it is after the kids are asleep at night, which just has the double whammy effect of not only am I not making time for myself during the day, but then the time I am making for myself, which is happening at nine or 10 o'clock at night, is keeping me up, negatively impacting my sleep, thus lowering my immunity even more. So when I sat down to look at all of this this week, it was pretty apparent to me how my immune system would have been, you know, knocked down a few notches over the last couple months, making me more susceptible to getting this flu bug that

Starting point is 00:09:38 went through the house to the extent that I got it. I definitely had it the worst of everybody in the house. So not only, you know, did I end up sick, which I don't love to be sick as part of the motherlode anyway, because obviously life doesn't stop when I'm sick. So there's still a lot for me to need to take care of while I'm sick. But I missed Thanksgiving. I've been really short with my kids. I feel physically terrible, which I just, I hate, you know, like I like to feel good in my body and it's taken me offline from work. I mean, I'm just today recording is really my first day back working after almost 10 days of basically

Starting point is 00:10:17 not being functional. So what I did was looking at all of this and feeling angry at myself, realizing that I had allowed this to happen in part because I have been letting myself off the hook month and a half by either not going to the gym and saving that time, not sleeping enough and giving myself more me time at night. So I added it all up. And it's the irony of all of this is, and this is why I think it's important to say, and I put it on a post this week is, you know, so I'm, I'm typically somebody that goes to the gym or exercises five days a week for about an hour. And I haven't been consistent with that over the last month. So when I added that up, I was like, okay, five days a week, five hours a week times four weeks of a month. So 20 hours. Okay. So I've probably saved, saved myself 20 hours of time that I can work by not going and going to the gym. So,

Starting point is 00:11:24 you know, in the moment I was like, I don't have time to go to the gym today. I want to work. That added up over the last month into about 20 hours of time that I worked instead of exercising. And then I added up the time, the sleeping or the not sleeping, I guess, and realized it was about the same amount of hours. So over the last four weeks or month, I've probably, you know, five nights a week, I've gone to bed an hour late, on average, trying to give myself a little extra time to myself those nights. So call that 20 hours of lost sleep or, you know, hours that I stayed up to do something for myself, work, read, whatever, that I should have been giving or I normally would have given

Starting point is 00:12:06 to prioritized for sleep. So 40 total hours of time that I made a choice to spend on something more productive in my mind than on my wellbeing needs, exercise and sleep. So over the last month, I'm calculating my mind. Okay. That's 40 hours or so that I've had So over the last month, I'm calculating my mind. Okay, that's 40 hours or so that I've had extra over the last month to work, create, read, do things that felt more productive. That's 40 hours less of personal well-being. If I look at this last week, in comparison, this was a holiday week, so I didn't have as much work stuff scheduled. But on a normal work week, 40 hours is about the amount of childcare that I have. So that's my work week. So when you do the math, I'm like, okay, so I saved myself 40 hours over the last month,

Starting point is 00:12:57 five weeks or so, in terms of not exercising, like not taking the time to go to the gym, and going to bed a little late. And I've just lost that entire amount of time in trade for being down for the count, like half dead on the couch for the last week because I was so incredibly sick. I couldn't work out. I couldn't work. I also couldn't sleep very well. So essentially all of that time that I thought, you know, all the sacrificing that I did of those well-being practices in the name of being more productive and giving myself more time to work came crashing down and totally was washed away into neutral by a week of not being able to work because I was so sick.

Starting point is 00:13:40 So the moral of the story, and the reason I think it's important to share the story is that the day by day decision to deprioritize your own well-being may not seem like that big of a deal. A day here, a day there that you're like, oh, I'm too busy. I can't go to the gym. Oh, I need to stay up an hour later and get this project done. That may work here and there once in a while. You may be able to smooth that back over in the formula of your life. Over time, though, if you are doing that consistently, it will add up. And I have seen this in my own life over and over where, and this time was maybe one of the fastest kind of mirrors for me to see it, where just one month of getting out of alignment, one month of not prioritizing my own wellbeing. And I got sicker than I've been in my whole life and couldn't do anything for a week

Starting point is 00:14:30 and not just work. I was a terrible parent during that time. I couldn't sleep. My family didn't go to Thanksgiving. Like I have missed a lot in the last week because of the incremental effect of all of those days of making one hour, one choice for one hour of deprioritizing myself in favor of what I thought was a more productive choice, I paid for it and then some over the last week. So all of that is to say, it's just a reminder of how important it is to stay in that daily prioritization of what you need for your own wellbeing, especially as a mom, and especially through this time of the holiday season where there's so many additional demands on our time and our schedules. But here and there, I'm not saying you have to be rigid and

Starting point is 00:15:18 inflexible with your schedule because of course things happen where you won't be able to make it to the gym or whatever wellbeing thing that you need. You won't be able to get to it that day. That does happen. Absolutely. But over time, you know, week after week, if you're deprioritizing, deprioritizing yourself, it adds up really quickly. And then when one of these things comes along, not necessarily the flu, but any kind of illness comes along or something happens where your resilience is now lower because you have not been staying on top of keeping yourself well. And the effect of having your resilience challenged when you are already down is much worse than having your resilience challenged when you are strong and you're feeling good because you've stayed on top of prioritizing

Starting point is 00:16:04 yourself. So let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention, our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and

Starting point is 00:16:42 instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's Kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. Let that be a lesson. And I wanted to share because I feel like it's super important to be transparent about these things. I definitely have been lax on my rituals and my well-being over the last couple of months. And I feel like it caught up with me hard this last week having the flu and I hated it and I'm angry at myself, but it was a good reminder to get reprioritize and to really get intentional again

Starting point is 00:17:32 about my commitment and my discipline to my, what I need to know that I'm in the best shape possible as a whole human, like that my wellbeing is as well-tuned as possible so that I can be the mother, the entrepreneur, the partner, the friend, everything that I want to be. So I hope that it resonates. I'm sorry if you're going through it with the sickness. This has been a gnarly bug. I know a lot of us are sick, but this takeaway felt important to share.

Starting point is 00:17:58 So I hope that it was helpful. And as always, if you have any questions or ideas for the podcast, reach out to me on Instagram. I loved chatting with you guys there. And of course, always thank you for listening. Wait, wait, wait, before you go, I would love to send you my seven figure CEO operating system completely free as a gift. All you've got to do is leave us a review on this podcast because

Starting point is 00:18:25 it really supports the growth of this show. This is my digital masterclass where I'll show you what my freedom-based daily, weekly, and monthly schedule looks like as an eight-figure CEO, mama, and high performer, and I'll walk you through step-by-step how to create this for yourself. It includes a full video training from me and a plug and play spreadsheet to literally create your own operating system. It's one of our best trainings and it's worth $1,997 but I will unlock access for you for free when you leave us a review. I know, wild right? All you have to do is leave your review on the podcast, take a screenshot of it and then head over to bossbabe.com slash review to upload it.

Starting point is 00:19:06 And then you'll get instant access to the seven figure CEO operating system. Again, head over to bossbabe.com slash review to upload your screenshot and get access. We are so, so grateful for all of your support and can't wait to hear how the podcast has supported you.

the bossbabe podcast - 409. CEO Mama: Putting Yourself Last Has A Cost with Lindsay Roselle

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