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Whitnee Hawthorne is a speaker, coach & Founder of The Savvy Working Mom.
She’s an advocate for working moms, because she knows how hard it is to thrive as a working mom and she recognizes that women who work and also have children deserve all the support they can get.
Whitnee is a leader at home, in the office, and in her community. She has inspired women’s groups, start-ups, and Fortune 500 companies with her presentations. She leads by example and loves to inspire aligned action in others, as she teaches her audiences steps they can take right now to increase their productivity, grow their confidence, and bring more joy to their lives.
Whitnee and I are going to be talking about routines today, which is one of the number one things that you guys frequently ask for and want more of in your life. So I feel like today’s episode is going to be a perfect fit and it’s going to add so much value and joy to your life as we get to dive into this topic. And I’m really excited to narrow it down even further and talk specifically about the top five things that you need to prepare on Sunday to make your upcoming week amazing specifically, as a working mom, whether you work from home mom or work outside the home. Let’s be honest, in some way, shape, or form, we’re all working moms because even if we’re a stay at home mom, we’re working!
Whitnee is super passionate about serving working moms because for her, she believes we need more women in leadership at corporations and companies. She is a leader at the company she works for as the Chief Customer Officer and when she had when her first son, she realized how hard it was to work and also have kids. Her husband was supportive, her boss at the time was supportive and her team was supportive. But it still was really, really hard. And that got Whitnee to realize that women who work and have kids aren’t supported in the right way. And that’s so important because as Whitnee says, working moms are the backbone of society. We are raising the next generation, we’re contributing to the company’s bottom line. Through data, we know that when moms do better, their families, communities, and companies do better. And so when a working mom is supported in the right way, she can improve her life, improve her career, everything around her actually gets better which will lead to a better world.
Whitnee helps bring this to fruition by helping other women who work and have kids with easy frameworks and systems so that they can advance their careers without sacrificing their personal life. She helps them get unstuck and really move in the direction of their dreams because she believes that when working moms can fill their dreams, everyone’s dreams and everyone’s star gets a little brighter.
I love that so much and I think that women are so smart and valuable and if they choose to be in that setting and work outside the home, helping them to thrive and offering that support to them is so important.
Building a Foundation with Routines
Whitnee obviously has a lot going on so there has to be some routines that are working really well for her. Otherwise, it would feel like a whole lot of chaos on the plate. Whitnee shares that if you have really strong routines, you have to think less to get things done, and that means you’re not wasting that thought power and energy on figuring out the mundane or the ordinary. It’s the things that are repeatable, that you kind of know are coming and if you don’t waste your time and energy on figuring out how you’re going to figure those things out, then you can really spend more time and energy on figuring the other stuff out. Whitnee says she ends all of her emails basically saying, “Grace, peace, and joy”, because we need grace so that we can have peace and through peace, we can find joy. And routines are really the foundation of having that peace because we know when certain things are going to get done, we know how they’re going to get done and we don’t have to worry about it.
I totally agree that routines just help make life a little bit smoother and help to eliminate some of that overwhelm.
5-Step Routine for a Great Week Ahead
Whitnee shares with us her 5 step routine that she prepares on Sundays to help make the week ahead run much more smoothly. These are the things that have helped her to really develop her career, to thrive in life, and to have joy! Let’s dive in.
Step 1: Write down 3-5 things that you’re grateful for from the past week.
Take a moment to reflect on things that you are truly happy about having in your life or that have occurred. It could be people, it could be experiences. Reflecting on that will get you in the right mindset to do the next step.
Step 2: Take 3-5 minutes to visualize an amazing week and an amazing life.
What is that end game? What is that you really want out of life?
Step 3: Write down the 3 most important things that you need to do for work, for home and for yourself.
Step 4: Write down the first step you need to take to accomplish each individual task.
This will help make sure you take some level of action towards achieving each of those things.
Step 5: Celebrate how awesome you are!
Celebrate yourself and the great week you’ve had. Celebrate the fact that you’re still here showing up for your work, for your kids, and for yourself. Whitnee said she loves to end this with a dance party and even cake! Doing this will make you feel good and positive and it’s a great way to end the week.
That is such a great and actionable routine and it takes less than 15 minutes! I just love it.
My personal Sunday routine is a very simple and very loose process and I’m excited to incorporate this into it. I call it my Sunday WRAP up – Worship, Rest And Plan. So for my family and I, it looks like church, whether it’s being out in nature, whether it’s doing church at home as a family or in the actual church building, and then we spend time resting and then plan. A lot of times, it’s Sunday evening, and I’m planning out my week ahead. But I’m so excited to incorporate these five steps that Whitney shared with us today because I think they’re really powerful and they’ll help set me and my family up for success for an amazing, non-overwhelming week ahead.
I encourage you to take some action on this routine because listening to it isn’t enough to actually see the change that you want in your life. Take a little bit of action and try this routine!
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