Can 5 mins a day really change your motherhood?

0:07Welcome to Motherkind. We are proudly sponsored by Wild Nutrition women supplements. I am your host Zoe Blaskey and this is the show that is going to grab you by the hand and be your guide through the wild ride that is modern motherhood. Today it is a solo with me and I want to explore a really simple but potentially powerful question. Can five minutes a day, just taking five minutes a day for you, really transform your motherhood? Because what I've learned over the last eight years doing this work is that we all want to be happier mothers. We want to enjoy our motherhood, we want to be calm and connected with our children we want to get to the end of the day feeling grateful not resentful and guilty and this was the premise of my debut book motherkind a new way to thrive in motherhood maybe you've got a copy hopefully you have the new way being that we have to prioritize ourselves too that we have to manage our energy our mindset and regulation we have to become ninjas with boundaries and asking for our needs to be met too and saying no because the speed and pressure on us in 2025 is insane.

1:13So if we want to be the mothers we want to be, we have to become really good at managing ourselves too. And can you believe that book is nearly a year old? It's actually insane. And once I started getting unreal feedback from the concepts in the book, I decided to set myself another challenge. Can I teach the ideas in the book. Can I transform your experience of motherhood in just five minutes a day? Because you guys, my readers were telling me this new approach is incredible, Zoe. I love it, but keep falling back into old patterns I keep forgetting. And it was this one message that someone sent me in DM and it said, Zoe, I wish you were in my ears every day reminding me of this stuff.

1:58And it clicked what my next big project needed to be. I needed to find a way to teach mother kind in five minutes a day, a way that fits into your busy day. And that's what I've developed. You guys over on Instagram, help me name it. It's called five minute mother kind, and it is 21 days of me in your ear for five minutes a day, teaching you how to regulate, stay calm, switch up your mindset, believe in yourself, protect your energy and be happier. So yes, I think just five minutes a day can change your motherhood, can make you a happier mother. And if you want to try it out for free, then you can.

2:32I'm gifting you, the listeners of the show, the first three days for free. So to claim your three free days, just click into the show notes, wherever you listen to this, and you'll see a link. Click that, pop your email in, and you'll be sent the first three days. Can I just be honest for a minute? Modern motherhood is relentless, isn't it? There is always something to do, someone to help, a need to meet, something we're supposed to be doing or feeling guilty for not doing. I speak to thousands of mums in our community and I hear the same words over and over. I'm exhausted. I feel like I'm not doing enough.

3:07I feel snapping and then I feel awful. I love my kids, but I've lost myself. And if you've ever felt like that, I want you to know you are not failing. The system really is. And the truth is it is too much. What we're carrying is too much, but that doesn't mean that we're powerless. There's another kind phrase that I love and that is control the controllables. We can't change the whole system overnight but we can choose to take five minutes a day just for us to build a stronger, calmer foundation to stand on. And I used to think that I needed really big things to feel better a weekend away. I remember once completely becoming obsessed with the idea of going on a silent retreat and it shows how overstimulated I was that I was willing to sit in silence for a week, a perfectly calm morning routine with a journal and a herbal tea.

3:55But the reality is motherhood just doesn't leave space for those things often. And when it does, when you finally get the break or the weekend away, it can just feel like everything's waiting for you the moment that you get back and it's all there again. And within five minutes, you're overstimulated and overwhelmed again. That's because you don't really need a weekend away. You need a way to change the foundation of your motherhood in a way that fits into your life. And that is what I want to talk about this episode. And that is what I teach you in 5 Minute Motherkind. How do we change the foundations of our motherhood in five minutes a day?

4:36I'd like to take this moment to thank our headline sponsor, Wild Nutrition, who are offering Motherkind listeners 50 % off for the first three months. when I was pregnant with my first 10 years ago I asked a few nutritionist friends what's the best pregnancy supplement and they all said the same thing wild nutrition so I listened and these incredible supplements have kept me feeling great through two pregnancies starting this podcast writing a book a relocation and everything in between for the last decade so it's magical to me that I now get to tell you about this incredible woman founded brand every week.

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6:04so I think there are five ways that in just five minutes away you can genuinely shift how you feel and how you show up and I'm going to talk you through those now so the first one is about regulating your nervous system if you know me if you know mother kind if you read the book I talk about this a lot because it was genuinely so motherhood and life-changing for me when I realize that when we're stressed, overwhelmed or overstimulated, our nervous system goes into fight, flight, freeze or fawn. And in that state, everything feels harder. I remember the first time I experienced this, everyone was screaming at me.

6:42I was exhausted. I was at the end of my tether and I have this overwhelming desire to just bolt out the room. And I felt so much shame at that reaction until I learned about the stress response. And so many parenting books, you know, talk about being the steady ship, staying calm, what they fail to mention is how hard that is to do if you get hijacked by the stress response, which by the way, everyone does. So every time you get overwhelmed or overstimulated, basically most of the time that we're with our children, your nervous system responds in one of four ways. I'll talk you through them now.

7:18Fight, flight, freeze or fall. So I'd notice how when the girls were climbing on me, I would want to push them off and run away, that's flight. When they'd scream and fight, I'd instantly feel a rush of rage, that kind of just wanting to fight back, that's fight. When they asked me for the hundredth time for more screen time and I'd want to give in just to make them quiet, that is fawn. Or how if in a particularly intense meltdown, especially with my eldest, if it just felt too much, I've talked about this a lot, it would almost feel like I was dissociating. That is freeze, where we almost freeze, like rub it in a headlight.

7:58And again, realising there is nothing wrong with me for these reactions and there's nothing wrong with you. You're just a human with a nervous system. So we all have these different stress responses as well. And something that blows my mind is that how you were wired to handle stress growing up is often where you'll go to now in your most stressful situations. So if as a kid, you used to run away to your room a lot when things got too much, you likely now when things get too much with your kids, find yourself wanting to run to your room or run to the toilet and lock the door. So we all have a different window of tolerance.

8:33Now, in five minutes a day, and I teach this in five minute mother kind, you can absolutely learn to regulate and expand what's known as your window of tolerance through these moments. The best way to do it is breath. Essentially, the moment you realise you're in a stress response, you're 90 % out of it because it is about the awareness. It's like turning off that alarm part of your body and turning on the calm part of your body. And breath is the most effective way to do that. So simple box breath, which is four in, hold for four, four out, hold for four. And you do that in a loop or one that I love, which is the straw breath.

9:11So you're breathing in, do it with me now and then you're piercing your lips as if you're breathing through a straw or drinking through a straw and then breathing out through pierced lips for as long as you possibly can. Now I am telling you I've been doing this for two three years now and I honestly feel like I have a new nervous system. I do not get the stress responses that I used to. My window of tolerance is so much bigger. You really can start this today. I teach you exactly how to do it in five-minute mother kind in just five minutes a day. It's unreal. Okay, the other thing linked to stress is how to complete the stress cycle.

9:53So I used to think that I was burning out in motherhood, you know, juggling everything, spinning all the plates because I was taking on too much and I was too stressed. And in a way that was true, but also not true. Because what really causes burnout is when we don't release the stress. It's called completing the stress cycle. we can actually take on quite a lot of stress as humans but we have to release it it's like wiping the table at the end of the day and then putting the new dishes on tomorrow the equivalent is we just keep piling dishes on dishes on dishes on dishes if we don't wipe the metaphorical table complete the stress cycle release the stress that is when we burn out i love this analogy of the sponge so imagine the stress is the water you're the sponge you're absorbing the stress of everyone around you, of everything you're holding, everything that's going on.

10:42And you can only absorb so much. You have to wring out the stress so that you can go on and carry on doing it the next day. Well, wringing out that sponge is completing the stress cycle. And what blows my mind about this and the reason I'm so passionate about it, because it's really simple to do. The scientifically proven ways to release the stress cycle take five, three to five minutes. Again, I teach it all in five minute mother kind. You want to be shaking your body. You want to be making noises, kind of groans or screams. I love doing that one, by the way, in the car when I'm parked near no one.

11:17It really does complete the stress cycle. Hugging someone that you love, doing a short five minute guided meditation. There are so many simple ways that you can complete the stress cycle. I do this every single day now. And despite being busier than ever with work and everything else. I haven't burned out in four years. It was my last big burnout because I have discovered completing the stress cycle. So I feel like I'm on such a mission for us all to start doing this. I teach in five minute mother kind. So it is very simple. And I promise you, I've had so many messages of people saying, Zoe, I started doing this.

11:54I haven't burned out. You know, I feel miles from burnout. So completing the stress cycle is really, really, really simple and really, really important.

12:11The other way that I think just five minutes can completely change your experience of motherhood is what happens between your ears. Because the reality is, life isn't as it is. Life is as we see it. It's as our internal dialogue narrates it. And so the truth is that if you have an inner critic, which I do, and I know so many of us do, that part of us that says you're not doing well enough, you're failing, you can't cope, you're dropping too many balls, that's your inner critic. That's not actually the reality. The reality is you are doing so much better than you think you are. There's a phenomenon called the negativity bias, which essentially means that you are wired, we are all wired to focus on what is wrong, not on what is right.

12:59So if we can learn to see what we're doing right, if we can learn to not listen to those critical shame and guilt inducing thoughts, if we can learn to replace them with neutral or maybe even positive thoughts, it changes everything. It changes your stress response. It changes how you feel in your body. It changes how you show up. And one of the biggest motivations for me changing my inner voice is that we know that the inner voice of the caregiver has a direct impact that the on the inner voice your children develop so I desperately want my girls to have internalized kind coaches between their ears and so that is what I try to develop for myself because when you are kinder to yourself when you become an inner coach not an inner bully to yourself, it's so much easier to take a breath before you snap.

13:54It's so much easier to be regulated and calmer. It really does matter. And actually in my book, Motherkind, I made this the second chapter. I called it get on your own side because the pace and the pressure of being a mom in 2025 is already so much. And yet what most of us do is we make it twice as hard by deciding that we're failing, that we're not good enough, that we can't do it. So we call it hard squared. It's really, really, really important and powerful. And it doesn't just impact your motherhood this. If you can learn to change that inner voice, it changes everything. It changes how you show up at work.

14:34It changes how you show up in your relationship. There are so many studies that I've read, you know, hundreds of studies that I've read about the power of having a compassionate internal voice. The benefits are across the board, especially physically. You wouldn't think that, but it really impacts with the mind-body connection, how we think really impacts our health as well. So in just five minutes a day, less than five minutes a day, you can absolutely begin to rewire how you talk to yourself. The first step is spotting a negative or critical or thought and then challenging it and perhaps just thinking I'm not listening to that today even if it were true I'm not going to listen to that today the next step might be replacing it with a neutral or kind of thought and over time as you do this you really really can begin to rewire your relationship with yourself and that inner voice you can absolutely do it in just a couple of minutes a day and again I teach you how to do it in five minutes mother kind the other thing and the one of the last pillars I want to talk to you about is this idea of so many of us feeling lost in motherhood you know we give to our jobs we give to our partners we give to our children we give to our homes we give to logistics we give to our friends and our family and we can start to feel like a shell and I've really been practicing this in my own life just taking five minutes a day to remember that I'm here that I matter who I am what matters to me at the moment and again in five minute mother kind I encourage you to think about your needs think about what's fun for you at the moment think about what you want to do because when we do that it's like lighting a little candle inside it's like a way of saying I'm still here so and the last pillar I want to talk to you about is how just five minutes a day can change your whole family dynamic when we are regulated, calm and resourced, everything gets easier.

16:39Parenting, work, fun, being a partner, being a friend, it gets easier. And it's not that the kids stop having tantrums or our partners stop annoying us or, you know, our work suddenly feels easy and our bosses suddenly become entirely supportive. No, it's that we can hold ourselves through those challenges better when we have taken even five minutes a day for ourselves to regulate it. You know, when I feel good, granted, grateful, when I've done a bit of exercise, when I've completed the stress cycle, I've drunk some water and I've eaten something, I'm basically a really good mum. I hold space, I can validate, I'm fun, I play.

17:21The girls really do get the best of me. It is when I don't do that, when I don't take five minutes just for me or 10 minutes on a good day, that's when they get the sort of snappy, dysregulated, ungrateful, resentful version of me that I really don't want them to see too many times because I just don't. It's not the truth of who I am. And I really, really want to be, you know, the best version of myself in motherhood and everywhere in my life, to be honest with you. So when we invest a micro moment back to ourselves, we can handle it all better. And it does change the whole family dynamic. It really, really really does and I know that this is a different idea I know we get taught that you know it's these words that we use with our kids or it's this type of parenting intervention that will work but I promise you I have tried it all and until I was regulated until I was okay until I knew how to quickly de-stress or be present or get out the stress response none of it worked honestly because your children don't listen to your words they mirror your state they really really, really do.

18:31So I asked a question at the start of this episode, can five minutes a day change your motherhood? Can it make you happier? And hopefully you have been convinced, not that I'm here to convince you, but hopefully we've talked through the ways that it can. You can regulate your nervous system in five minutes a day. You can rewire your inner voice. You can release stress instead of storing it so you won't burn out. You can light a candle to yourself. You It can reconnect with you and you can change the whole family dynamic in just five minutes a day. So if you haven't tried 5 Minute Mother Kind yet, then I want you to.

19:09I want you to do the first three days. It's totally free, so why not? Why not just take the first three days? A lot of us are in the summer holidays at the moment when it's even harder to focus on ourselves. So just click the link wherever you're listening to this. there'll be a little link and it will say five minute mother kind if you click on that pop your email in you will get a first three days free and I hope that you love it even if you just do the three days and then you don't want to continue that's fine I really hope that you do want to continue and if you do that is a really ridiculous offer that my team were trying to tell me not to do but I really want you to get this idea of five minutes a day for you so I've put an insane offer in for anyone that does the first three days free and then carries on.

19:52So let me know if you do carry on as well. I'm always, I'm always here wanting to connect with you and I will see you next time. Thank you for being here.

20:19Thank you.