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Let Go of Mom Guilt: Learn About Your Personality Type with Personality Hacker

Juli

Personality type quizzes and profiles have always missed the mark, for me.

Until this one.                                  (Affiliate links, but content is free excluding final link.)

sitting woman silhouette - Text: Let Go of Mom Guilt Learn About Your Personality Type

In a nutshell, your “personality type” is an outline of your dominant personal qualities, the way you tend to best think, feel, work, and interact with others.  The most esteemed version of this is probably the Myers-Briggs system – the one that assigns you four letters like INSF or ENTP, etc.  For more information on that, check here.

I stumbled upon a company called Personality Hacker and took their free personality test.  The results of this, the thorough explanation of personality types and ways to work with your personality to enhance your daily life, were life-changing.

Not exaggerating.

I’ve found out, from these resources, that I’m an INTP.  This type is blunt and honest, sometimes considered rude, and very intellectual (sometimes to a fault – spending a lot of time inside their own head musing over what they’ve learned and are working on.)  You can read more about INTPs here.

How on earth does this help with mom guilt?

Let me transcribe some daily thoughts of a real mom.  (Myself.)

“Should I call ______ to get together for a playdate?  I know she wanted to, but I really don’t feel like socializing.”

“_______ gave me a strange look while we were talking at the library.  Was I rude?  I was trying to be helpful.  How can I get people to realize I’m just being helpful?!”

“I just sat down to do paperwork for an hour… how is there no paperwork done?  I feel so guilty and unproductive.”

These are forms of mom guilt.  Trying to fit in socially with other moms and failing, trying to nurture and reach out but feeling misunderstood, struggling with being “productive enough” or doing “real work” enough hours out of the day.

The wealth of information that Personality Hacker’s website provided me about my personality type showed me that most of these kinds of struggles are directly flowing from my personality type.  It has given me license to stop fighting my daydreams, my idealism, my introversion, and my bluntness.  To stop feeling guilty about how my time is spent, where my mind wanders, and policing every syllable that comes out of my mouth.

The old me was completely convinced that these situations were results of not trying hard enough. Failing to be self-disciplined.  Being a mean person.  Not being “mom-like” enough.  Being disorganized.

All of my life,  I have been told that if I just tried harder, I could be more organized, productive, tactful, focused, social, patient, etc.  That I could have more friends, more time, more contentment if only I did things “the way everybody else does.”  And I believed this.

But an actually accurate personality typing has shown me a different truth.  The way I am, the kind of mom and woman and friend I am, is a personality type.  Others like me exist.  I’m not “doing it wrong,” I’m just doing it my own way.  I don’t actually need to try harder, socialize more, change the way I truly am inside.  It’s fine to INTP all over the place.  There are lots of great positives to this personality type, and so many free resources at Personality Hacker to help me enhance what I’d like to enhance.

What’s the catch?

No catch!  While these are affiliate links, the resources I have linked until now are all free.  I really used all of these pages myself, to learn more about my personality type and how it relates to others.  I followed links throughout the website to additional (free) content.  I’ve even joined a Facebook Group associated with Personality Hacker to participate in educated discussions about navigating the world as our true personality types.

I found Personality Hacker all on my own, used it for my own purposes, and felt compelled to share in this blog post.  Only after I began writing it did I reach out to Personality Hacker to let them know I was doing a write-up, and they surprised me with an affiliate program.  (That’s how we do here on Mostly Caffeinated – we’re never ever ever going to clickbait you, sell you stuff, or write just for affiliate purposes!)

Check out the free resources.  Learn about yourself, and how your version of motherhood / adulthood is perfectly valid.  It’s very freeing!

If you find you want to learn more, dive deeper, etc. there are paid programs you can join (webinars, downloadable resources, etc.)  including some on family and marriage.

 

What’s your personality type?  How does it play out in your home life for good?  What would you like to work on?

Let Go of Mom Guilt: Put Yourself on Your Schedule

admin

Among the HUGE list of “Things I Was Clueless About When I Became a Professional Mom” was the entire concept of planning.

But that’s a topic for another day.

This is just about planning YOURSELF.
Yes, that’s a thing.
Yes, it’s a thing you need to do.
Yes, it will actually improve your parenting.

Whether you’re an on-paper planning aficionado, or all your vague scheduling is in your head, think about it.  Where are YOU on the schedule?  When do you partake in your hobbies, or personal growth activities, or real, intentional leisure time?

Hint: “whenever I can fit it in” is the wrong answer.

That’s how I operated for over a year of full-time at-home parenting.  In practice, it turned out that I did hobbies/personal growth/intentional leisure exactly zero times per week.  Really, almost zero times per year!  Not okay.

The result was a very grumpy, lackluster momma.  One who felt irritation rise at the very first whine of the morning, who felt guilt and exhaustion every time she spotted the half-finished novel on her bedside table.  (The novel I promised myself I would finish before moving, and didn’t finish until months afterward.)  I was a mom who didn’t even feel at leisure on vacation – I would bring along a hobby and it never made it out of the suitcase.  Ugh.

Enter 2017.  This year began with a little Parents’ Getaway (something I always said I’d never need or participate in.)  The epitome of scheduled leisure.  I planned this little vacation to intentionally include nothing but scheduled leisure – the dead of winter in Wisconsin, in the middle of farm country, in a tiny vacation home with nothing but two bags: one of face masks, board games, and novels and the other of groceries.
And this spurred an entire lifestyle change.  (No exaggeration!)  I realized that the only thing preventing me from reading, relaxing, etc was that I didn’t treat it as important.  That if I didn’t create pockets of time for my own adult brain, I was going to lose my patience/sanity/creativity/intellectual prowess during my years as a professional parent.  And that prospect was NOT ACCEPTABLE.

So here’s what I did:  I took out my planner (because I’m old fashioned!) and quite literally penned myself in, every day.  In the first slot of my planner, every day, I schedule a cup of tea and either blog writing or professional development reading.  In the very last slot, every day, I schedule fiction reading, movie nights with my husband, nail painting/face masking, etc.  The last weekend of each month, I spend my early morning at the local coffee shop (read: my literal happy place) setting goals for the next month. I actually think about this at the start of every week and pen. it. in. with equal weight as my cleaning schedule and meal plan.

And a lot of the time, I actually do it!  I don’t fall asleep on the couch at 8:30 thinking of all the wonderful things I could do, but feeling like I should do housekeeping instead.  I don’t drag myself out of bed to the sound of little boys pounding on bedroom walls.  I’m actually pumped to get up early each day for my “me time” and I can dive right into a relaxing activity as soon as the kids are tucked in at night.

It’s given me the “permission” to nurture myself, in addition to looking after the hearts of my family.

And a peaceful mom runs a peaceful home.

What’s a hobby or leisure activity you claim to love but never have time to do?
Make an appointment with yourself!

Let Go of Mom Guilt: Capturing Memories

admin

Mom guilt takes up residence in all kinds of sneaky places.  Let’s address one of those today.

I am never here to mom-bash, so I am definitely not linking to this or mentioning usernames.  While meandering on Pinterest, I saw a pin about mom checklists, specifically “Can’t Miss Photos of the Month.”
There were something like 50 photo opportunities listed here!  If this were a list for the whole year, it might be conceivable.  Being a checklist of 50 photos you “can’t miss” of your kids each MONTH means 90% of people pinning that are going to fail, miserably.  And with that idealism + failure equation, mom guilt sets in.

Do you have a handful of pictures of each kid each year?  You’re doing fine.  (Bonus points if YOU are in any of them!)

I had a looming fear when I had a second child that I wouldn’t take “enough” pictures of him.  Whatever “enough” means.  I love taking pictures, and I had taken a plethora of my oldest because he was so stinkin’ adorable all the time.  Probably ridiculous, but one of my biggest concerns about adding a second child was that they wouldn’t feel as special because I wouldn’t focus solely on them – wouldn’t take as many pictures.  That there would be digital and print evidence that I “loved the older one more.”

After child #2 being on the planet for a full year, let me tell you.  There are just as many pictures.  In fact, I upgraded to a smart phone recently so there are actually BETTER pictures this time around.  Gasp.  There are so many sweet moments between the two boys that I take photos on an almost-daily basis.

I have my own checklist – make sure I take a photo the day a child joins our family, and on each birthday.  Sometimes I remember to take one on “firsts.”
But about “firsts.”  I have learned this – it is far more important to be engaged, present, actually watching the firsts, than it is to be taking photos or videos.  In 20 years, it might be fun for your child to page through photos of their firsts.  It might impress or entertain some relatives or a future child-in-law.  But really, those firsts are the most important to you as their parent.  And what you hold most dear will be a strong memory of having actually witnessed this event, not a sterile photo of it taking place.

While we’re on this topic, let me address scrapbooks.  If this is a hobby of yours, wonderful!  Go forth and craft.  If it’s not, let it go!  Remember our moms’ photo books of yesteryear?  There were some pictures with names or dates scrawled on maybe half of them, jammed into photo albums.  Done.  And our lives weren’t any less rich for it.

Maybe a lesser guilt: printing physical photos.  This is one I feel distinctly, as a natural cynic.  I assume that the internet is going to fail me at some point in the future, and my photos backed up in the mysterious “cloud” will disappear.  And then who will get to see all the badly-timed smartphone photos I took?!
I have decided to let go of that mom guilt by specifically printing photos once a year.  Around December, after everybody’s birthdays in November, I go on a spree one night and choose pictures to print.  I get them done “overnight” to our local-ish Walmart and pick them up the next day when I go to pick up my photo Christmas cards.  Sometimes some of them make it in an album.  Good enough.
I’m going to try photobooks this next year – supposedly I can use my Instagram and have them automatically curated and delivered to me.  Sounds wonderful!

Be present with your kids.  Put down the camera/phone.  Watch and encourage and feel.

That sense of family created by memories is what you’re really after.  Photographic evidence that it existed is just extra.