The Working Mom's Balance Podcast with Tracy Kulwicki

On the day this episode releases I will go for a run to celebrate 2,500 days of running every single day. Building a habit that lasts for 2,500 days doesn't just happen on autopilot. It takes a lot of hard work, intentionality, and planning. In this episode, I breakdown a process you can go through that will help you in identifying and creating a habit that has the ability to change your life. My run streak has made a huge impact on my own life and it has inspired others to improve their own lives. It is incredible what we can accomplish when we focus, act with intentionality, and encourage one another along the way.

In this episode, we talk about the science behind our moods and why it is beneficial to have a better mood more often. We also learn practical strategies to help us improve our mood. The goal is not to try to experience happiness all the time, no matter our circumstances. Rather, the approach we want to take is to not let small, everyday annoyances derail our mood and ruin our day. Having a more positive mood can improve our health, our life satisfaction, and our success. Increased positive affect is an important part of flourishing in life.

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A long, dark, and cold winter has left many of us feeling like we're in a funk. On the heels of a two year struggle through the pandemic, we're feeling exhausted, stuck, and unmotivated. This 8 step process can help you reset your mental, spiritual, and physical health, refresh your work life, home life, and relationships, and create a fresh outlook for your values and goals. After completing these steps you will feel less overwhelm and more clarity about how to move forward in this next season of life.

We can't think or feel our way out of an unmotivated and apathetic place, we have to take action. The steps in this process are purposely ordered to help us build momentum, motivation, and inspiration. We will start small with the simple step of spending time in nature. Our final step will involve reassessing our values and goals to envision a new path forward. The simple act of getting started on the first small step will help us develop a sense of progress and accomplishment to keep us going through the remainder of the process.

Pope Benedict XVI is quoted as saying, "The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness."

The pandemic has increased our options for comfort these days. And many of us are doing all we can to seek comfort and avoid pain and discomfort. The circumstances in our current lives are ever-changing, overwhelming, and hard. It is so tempting to just move into survival mode, doing the bare minimum we can and then spending any free time we can find passively escaping all the hard. But a life in survival mode, filled with comforts and passively checking out of our reality leaves us feeling empty and unfulfilled.

Rest is good and vital for a meaningful, productive life. But it's also important to go out and contribute to the world in a meaningful way. This episode will help you develop new rhythms and patterns of rest, productivity, and fun. You'll learn how to reflect and discover if you need more rest or if what you really need is more meaningful action toward your goals and dreams.

Flow is an experience of total absorption in the task at hand, where you completely lose track of time and space. Researchers, like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, have discovered that flow is the best predictor of well-being. The more often you are in a flow state, the more enjoyable your life experience will be.

But all flow is not created equally. Sometimes our experience of flow doesn't lead to more meaning and satisfaction. Sometimes when we come out of a flow state we still feel stuck and empty. This type of flow is known as junk flow. Junk flow happens when the superficial experience of initial flow becomes an addiction instead of a source of growth.

Adam Grant has developed a theory of peak flow. In this theory, he explains the three things required to experience healthy, peak flow instead of junk flow. The three things we need for peak flow are mastery, mindfulness, and mattering. This episode talks about these three things and provides examples to help us discover how to identify junk flow versus peak flow. We'll learn how to adjust our activities to bring in more mastery, mindfulness, and mattering so that we can experience peak flow more often.

In early 2021, Adam Grant published an article in the New York Times that said, "There's a name for the blah you're feeling: It's called languishing." The article quickly went viral. Adam spoke to an experience that we had all been experiencing. Over the past couple of years, we have moved from grief and sadness to an overwhelming sense of languishing due to the pandemic and ongoing challenges of life. We just feel meh. Empty, stuck, stagnate, joyless. It's not mental illness, but we're definitely not experiencing mental well-being either. We're stuck between sickness and true health.

And I don't know about you, but I'm ready to get unstuck. I'm ready to start living again. I'm ready to show up to my life joyful, hopeful, and expectant. I want to get back to living an active, engaged life of meaning, no matter what the pandemic or the political, or social, or economical world around me has to say about it. 

In this episode, we get clear on what languishing is and discuss what it takes to move beyond it. We learn that many of the things we've turned to in order to cope with the challenges of life in recent years are temporary fixes that often leave us feeling more empty. Instead, we have the option to find the cure to languishing. And the cure for languishing is an active engagement with our actual lives in the real world.

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This episode will help you understand what it means to flourish in life. We talk about three aspects that are necessary to help us flourish. These aspects are fulfillment, balance, and presence. We'll learn what it looks like and how it feels to live our lives fully alive, flowing smoothly, and with mindful awareness and appreciation for the present moment.

After going through a global pandemic, many of us are struggling to find our new normal and reengage in a fulfilling and meaningful life. We want to move forward with intention, to build practices and strategies that help us enjoy our lives more, not overwhelm ourselves with busy, frustrating schedules again.

Listen to this episode to reflect on where you may already be flourishing and where you have opportunities for improvement. Then learn ways in which you can bring more fulfillment and balance to your life while also making sure you stay present and enjoy the journey.

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Good emotional health is the ability to cope with both the highs and the lows in life. It involves being able to accept and manage any and all emotions we face with vulnerability and authenticity. You build strong emotional health by becoming aware of your emotions, learning to self-regulate in the midst of intense emotions, and developing healthy coping strategies to support you in hard times. In this episode, we learn healthy ways to accept and manage both the good and the bad so we can live a better, more meaningful life.

A healthy approach to exercise is flexible, adaptable, pleasurable, and compatible with your daily life. It supports the healthy functioning of your body and is done from a place of positive motivations and beliefs.

Exercising our bodies is extremely important, not just for our physical health but for our mental health and cognition as well. Many people approach exercise with an unhealthy focus on weight loss, disordered eating, and dysfunctional exercise practices that stem from self-criticism, self-loathing, and frustration over perceived flaws of the body. This attitude toward exercise may lead to some short-term physical results but often leads to worsening mental health and greater physical challenges in the future. A healthier approach to exercise begins from a place of self-love, acceptance, and compassion where a person works to support their body rather than loathe it.

A framework for remembering how to approach exercise in a healthy manner is provided. The framework can be remembered by the acronym EASY.

E - Enjoyable

A - Adaptable to your current life and abilities

S - Supportive of the healthy functioning of your body

Y - Yields true physical, spiritual, and mental well-being

Improving your body image is one of the most important things we can do to support our overall health, wellness, and well-being. When we have a negative body image, our very motivation for pursuing health usually leads us down a dangerous road that often makes us even more unhealthy than when we began. This episode helps us better understand what body image is and provides practical strategies and inspiration that we can use to help us improve our body image. In this episode, you'll learn how a body gratitude journal can help improve your thoughts and feelings about your body and you'll find new ways to create physical health goals that have nothing to do with the size, shape, or appearance of your body.

In this episode we talk about the what, why, and how of rest, relaxation, sleep, and sabbath. These four things can have an effect on every aspect of our health and wellness. When we don't get sufficient rest it can impact our physical, mental, spiritual, and relational health. Learn some practical strategies to help you begin to make small changes to focus on getting more rest and relaxation in your life.

A lot of research has been done to help us better understand wellbeing. What makes up wellbeing? Does everyone have access to it? How can we increase our experience of wellbeing and what factors might hinder our it?

In this episode, we talk about 9 building blocks of wellbeing that we can examine and adjust to help us experience more wellbeing and flourish. The 9 building blocks or pillars include the original 5 facets of the PERMA theory as well as an additional 4 areas that recent research has identified as important factors for wellbeing as well. These 9 pillars of wellbeing include - Positive emotions and experiences, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment, Physical Health, Mindset, Environment, and Economic safety and stability.

If you want to reach the goals that you have set for yourself, the answer is not more motivation, more confidence, or more self-discipline. Confidence is trusting and relying on yourself to do the things you said you would do. You can't build that trust and reliance until you start taking action, no matter how you feel. In this episode, we talk about how we choose our actions to live the life we truly want to live. We discuss what it takes to start making progress toward our goals. If you're ready to get serious about taking mindful, committed action in your life, based on what is most important to you, then listen in.

This episode is a part of a mini-series on the concepts behind ACT training. Be sure to listen to episodes 18-21 to learn all the steps in the process.

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We are continuing our series in which we are working to learn how to get ourselves to do the things we want to do, even when we don't feel like doing them. In episode 19 we learned how to accept our thoughts and feelings. In this episode we discuss the next step in the process, to choose a value-based direction and next step. We decide the person we want to be, we consider what is important to us, and then we choose our next right step based on these values, not on how we feel in the moment. This is a practice that we will need to work to improve over time. However, when we choose to live by our values and determine our success in life based on how well our actions align with our values we can feel more successful and fulfilled in our lives.

There's a popular passage of scripture in Romans where Paul says something along the lines of "I don't understand myself. I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate...I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out." I think we can all relate to this passage in some way. We know what we should do, we know what we want to do, but how do we get ourselves to actually do it. We long for the day when we will find some motivation, we search for the formula that will teach us how to develop self-discipline, we wish we could just develop the confidence we need to do all the amazing things we dream about. What does it take to actually get ourselves to consistently do what we want to do in our daily lives? This episode talks about Paul's answer found in Romans 7-8 and also looks at what the research says. We learn about ACT, or acceptance and commitment training, a strategy that we can use to help us accept our thoughts and emotions, choose a value-based next step, and then take mindful action to do what we want to do. 

This episode is part one of a four-part series that breaks down the concepts of ACT and how we can use it to get ourselves to do all the things we desire and need to do.

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People with a fixed mindset believe that their personal character, skills, intelligence, and abilities are fixed traits that cannot be changed. They believe you’re either born with it or you’re not. On the other hand, people with a growth mindset believe that their abilities can be developed through hard work and effort. A fixed mindset keeps us stuck and afraid of failure and mistakes, but people with a growth mindset are constantly improving and growing. They seek out challenges and recognize the power of learning from mistakes. Having a growth mindset can help you be more successful and happy in every area of life.

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Psychological Capital, better known as PsyCap in the world of positive psychology, is the psychological resources of hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism that can help employees perform better at work and increase overall well-being outside of the workplace. We can use the acronym HERO to help us remember these important resources. This episode talks about what each of these resources means and how we can develop them in our own lives.

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Resilience is the ability to bounce back after adversity. We will all face hard times and suffering in life. Instead of resisting the hard, resilient people learn to face challenges and stressors, accept mistakes, and grow from failures. This episode will teach you practical ways to increase your resilience and come out of hardship stronger.

Optimism can help us achieve more success at work, home, school, in sports, and every other area of life. An optimistic explanatory style also helps us live longer, healthier lives. This episode discusses the power of optimism and provides practical instructions for how to increase optimistic thinking to improve your life.

We are all experiencing a number of challenging circumstances these days which are taking their toll on our mental health and well-being. In this episode, I discuss the differences between optimism and pessimism and how we can learn optimism to decrease our risk of depression. Negative and destructive thoughts can have a powerful impact on our experience in life. Learn some strategies to replace your negative thoughts with thoughts that will help you live a happier, more successful life.

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Well, we are one week into 2021 and it has already been quite a year. In this episode, I share some personal thoughts and stories on the importance of my faith and how it brings meaning and purpose to my life. I also describe how the events at the U.S. Capitol building this week have fueled me to take a more active stand in living out my purpose. To thrive in our lives, it won't be easy, but research tells us the discomfort will be worth it. Listen in to learn how you can use the anger, fear, and frustration you feel during these difficult times to fuel you into taking action to make the world a better place.

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Happy New Year, friends!

If 2020 taught us anything it was that change is inevitable and we need to hold our plans loosely because we never know what might be around the corner. This can make goal setting particularly difficult. There are still a lot of challenges and uncertainties as we enter 2021 and it can be hard to plan goals for the year when there is so much that we just don’t know about what 2021 will look like. In this episode, I share a process that can help us make progress toward our goals for living our dream life even in the midst of a pandemic and all the instability that our current reality has left us with.

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This year has had both light and darkness. We hold the tension of experiencing good right along with the bad that has happened. In the story of Christmas, Jesus comes to bring light in the midst of the world's darkness. This episode provides some thoughts and reflections to remind us of God's goodness and hope that is available to us no matter the circumstances we are facing. Merry Christmas!

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This episode begins with the reading of Psalm 42, a Psalm where the writer expresses his grief and disappointment about not being able to walk among the crowds of worshipers. Maybe we can relate. In the year 2020, crowds of worshipers are a bad idea. There are disappointments, we feel weary and discouraged this Christmas. Many of our traditions have been canceled or changed. We long for how it used to be. There is hope that the pandemic will eventually end and we will be able to return to normal, but right now, we wait. This is the story of Advent. The people knew the Messiah would come, but they anxiously waited and hoped and longed for what could be. As we find ourselves waiting, let us remember that God is with us. God continues to pour out unfailing love upon us and give us life, even in a pandemic. 

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For the next few weeks, I will be sharing some thoughts and reflections on the Christmas story to help prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus. Christmas feels strange this year. Things won't be like we are used to and I'm struggling to get into the Christmas spirit. In this episode, I reflect on how God partners with God's created people to do the work of restoring God's Kingdom on Earth. We are invited to speed God's return by working with God to repair our broken and hurting world. As we move closer to Christmas, may we notice the opportunities to express and expand the Kingdom, right where we are.

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Working moms are busy people with full schedules. We are always on the lookout for ways to develop systems and routines to help us become more efficient, figure out how to increase our focus and motivation while decreasing our distractions and tendency to procrastinate, and learn new time management strategies. Before we work on these solutions it is important to address a couple of important aspects related to our time first. You have the power to fill your time with whatever you desire. The purpose is not just to be busy for the sake of being busy or even for the sake of experiencing and accomplishing more and more. Life isn't about experience, it is about meaning. The question we must ask ourselves is how can we use the time we have to make our lives more meaningful. 

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Next week may be Thanksgiving in the United States, but gratitude is something that we should practice on a regular basis to increase our happiness, decrease our risk of depression, and improve our overall well-being. Gratitude is one of the most effective practices for enhancing life satisfaction. In this episode, learn more about the benefits of gratitude, what gratitude actually is, and a few practices that you can do to help deepen your experience of gratitude in your life.

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On the day this episode airs, I will go out for a run for the 2,000 consecutive day. My run streak has helped me learn a lot about how to find motivation and become more self-disciplined. In this episode, I talk about how I made it to 2,000 days and what I do to set myself up for success. I share the 3 things that scientists who study motivation tell us we need to develop intrinsic motivation to do the things we need to do. 

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Emotions are a part of life. Some people avoid and bury their emotions while others get stuck and ruminate on their emotions. Neither approach is healthy and productive. In this episode, we learn what emotions actually are, the importance of allowing ourselves to experience all emotions, and we discover how to manage our emotional experience in order to be resilient and thrive.

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Our world is incredibly divided. The only thing we can all agree on is that we don't agree on anything. And yet, researchers know that relationships are vital for living a healthy life of well-being. This episode explores just how important relationships are to help us experience the good life and discusses how we can work through conflict and disagreement to find love. We need each other. Let's figure out how to build stronger relationships in spite of our differences. 

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You can live a happier and more enjoyable life. Today's working moms are overwhelmed, exhausted, and stressed out. But the good life is possible, even in the midst of difficult life circumstances. Learn more about what an abundant and satisfying life looks like and how you can begin to make the changes in your life to get there. A better life is possible. Are you ready to pursue it?

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