What is success? How is it defined? I've been pondering this a lot lately in relation to my business, which is still very new. I find myself checking my "likes" and "views" on my social media posts. If it's above a certain number, I feel satisfied but if not, I sort of feel like I failed.
Today I taught a webinar which I advertised for heavily for several weeks. I had so much fun teaching it, and felt like I was in my element. I knew I was helping some amazing moms with the material. However, later in the day I felt a little discouraged because of the numbers of participants who had showed up. Part of me wanted to let those numbers mean I didn't try hard enough to spread the word, or I must not be a good enough postpartum coach.
Do we do the same thing as moms? Obsess over these arbitrary, subjective numbers? I think it starts really early.
If you have your baby at 38-40 weeks, you're right on. Success. But a lower number? A higher number? It's easy to feel like a failure that you "couldn't keep it cooking a little longer" or you "still haven't had that baby."
When the baby is born, the amount of hours you were in labor or spent pushing sometimes feels like a failure. "Oh, labor was only 6 hours... not as hard as if it had been all day..."
After that you may feel you failed because of the weight number. The Apgar score.
Many moms seem to feel failure about the number of kids they have. "Just two." or "Yes, these are all mine."
What about how many hours the baby slept through the night? Or how high a number your pant-size still is? It goes on and on, this shame based on numbers.
When you stop for a moment and think about it, it becomes clear that these numbers don't really tell us ANYTHING about the kind of mom you are. The kind of woman. The kind of person.
So many of those numbers which make our birth stories more dramatic or categorize us as "not good enough" when we compare with others are based on things we have zero control over. Now that's a number I can actually start to understand.
How much control do I have over what people think of me? Zero.
How many minutes should I hate myself for doing it wrong all the time? Zero.
How many times do I need to prove that I'm a competent, good-enough mom? Zero.
Photo by Lawrence Crayton on Unsplash
Don't let the numbers dictate what success is for you.
Did you show up today? Did you try again when it was hard? Did you love? Were you kind? Did you learn something from your mistakes?
We like the validation, but truly it doesn't matter if no one ever tells you that you succeeded. You get to decide what success means for you in your motherhood. And if you just decide right now that you are succeeding, that you are enough, that what you are doing every single day is worthwhile, you'll do even better. I promise.
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