Hey, beautiful boss mom. Pull up a chair. This is the last episode I’m recording as a 44-year-old, and I want to take you on a little journey with me.

Every year we get older, we (hopefully) get more wise. We get to know ourselves more. And we tend to look back and judge ourselves. Feel like we could have done more. Feel like we’re behind. Feel like all the feelings.

So today, I want to walk you through what reflection can actually look like for moms. Not the Pinterest-vision-board version. The real one.

I’m not going to pretend I have it all together. I don’t. There are still about a hundred things I’m working on. But there is one skill I’ve gotten really, really good at, and I think it’s the one skill every mom should focus on building. Not because it makes you perfect. Because it makes everything else feel lighter.

Let’s get into it.

The Skill That Changes Everything

The skill is this: recognizing when you’ve been pulled away, and coming back into focus.

That’s it. Sounds simple. It is not.

I get distracted at least ten times a day. Sometimes it’s the kids. Sometimes it’s my own brain. Sometimes I sit down to post on social media and emerge 30 minutes later wondering what just happened. (You know the moment.) But over the last year or so, I’ve built this practice of recognizing what’s happening and bringing myself back into focus.

And it’s done two big things for me.

One: I actually accomplish things now. The little bits of progress compound. Goals that used to feel impossible are now happening. Not all at once. But consistently.

Two, the bigger one: I experience my life completely differently.

When you can come back to focus, you stop resenting your schedule. Not because you love your kids more (you already love them with your whole chest), but because the things that used to feel like interruptions stop feeling like interruptions. They just become part of the day. (Side note: moms actually have some of the best time management skills on the planet — we just don’t always realize it.)

My parents just sold their house in a wild, falling-out-of-escrow-then-back-in-escrow situation, and yesterday they needed me to drive 30 minutes to Carlsbad to help them get stuff to Goodwill before the movers came. Was I in the middle of 18 other things? Yes. Did I drop them and go? Yes. And here’s the difference: I didn’t spiral about it. Old me would have been derailed for days. Sad, depressed, frustrated, mourning the lost time. New me knew I could come back to focus whenever I wanted, so the trip to Carlsbad was just… a trip to Carlsbad.

That’s the gift. That’s why this skill matters. It’s not about getting more done. It’s about feeling like a different kind of human.

You’re Not Actually Distracted by Your Kids

Here’s the part that took me a while to figure out, and I want to save you the time.

Most of the time when I “lost focus,” I would tell myself it was because of the kids. Or my parents. Or someone needed something. And sometimes that was true. But often? It wasn’t. I started noticing my own procrastination patterns.

The classic ones for me:

• “I should probably grab a snack.” (Am I hungry? Or am I procrastinating?)
• “Maybe I should take a shower.” (Do I need to be clean? Or am I procrastinating?)
• “Let me see if one of the kids wants to watch a show with me.” (Do we actually need quality time right now? Or am I procrastinating?)

99% of the time, the answer was procrastinating.

So I sat with that for a while and asked myself, why am I trying so hard to leave the chair?

And the answer was: my body was uncomfortable. Not physically uncomfortable. Emotionally. I was doing something I wasn’t sure would work. Something uncertain. Something my brain didn’t know yet how to confidently protect me from.

In other words: the discomfort of uncertainty was the real distraction. Not the kids. Not my schedule. Me.

The Chiropractor Analogy I Can’t Stop Thinking About

I’ve been going to the chiropractor my whole adult life. (Got hit by a car when I was about 10. Long story. The reason I stay fit at 45 is honestly because if I don’t, my back goes out and I can’t feel my hands or feet, so fitness is more like pain prevention than vanity at this point.) The chiropractor is one of those things every mom should consider splurging on, by the way — body care that keeps you functional isn’t luxury, it’s foundation.

A friend recently asked me, “If I start going to the chiropractor, will I feel better right away?”

I told her: No. The first few months, you’re going to feel worse.

Your body is used to your spine being in the wrong place. The wrong place causes you pain. But it’s familiar pain. When the chiropractor starts putting your spine in the right place, your body freaks out. This isn’t where we live! You feel off. You feel uncomfortable. You feel like something is wrong.

But if you stick with it, eventually the right place becomes the new normal. And then when your spine goes out of alignment, you can feel it, because your body knows where it’s supposed to be.

Sitting in discomfort while you build a new focus practice works the exact same way. Your nervous system has been living in the wrong place. Distracted, scattered, reactive, procrastinating: that was your normal. When you start sitting in the discomfort of focus, your brain says this isn’t where we live, get up, do something, eat a snack, take a shower. But if you stick with it, the new alignment becomes your normal. And then you can feel when you’re off.

That’s the work, mama.

The Inner Work That Actually Moved My Business

Here’s what nobody told me until I figured it out myself: the thing that moved my business forward wasn’t a better strategy.

It wasn’t a new content framework. It wasn’t a smarter funnel. It wasn’t more reels.

It was inner work. The business mindset every mom needs to have starts here, with this exact realization.

I had to look at myself and ask why I was scared. Why I was self-sabotaging. Why I kept telling myself I wasn’t a finisher (I’m an Enneagram 7, I’m a Gemini, I’m a “starter not a finisher,” I had a whole identity built around it). Why I kept telling myself I was a great consultant but not a great CEO.

And here’s the thing about self-fulfilling prophecies: they fulfill themselves. Just like I told my daughter she was bad at math and she became bad at math, I told myself I wasn’t a finisher and I didn’t finish things.

When I went deeper, I found that one of the things holding me back was a fear that if my business hit the level I really wanted, it would turn me into a different person. A worse parent. Someone my kids wouldn’t recognize. I was raised hearing that money turns you into a bad person, and that conditioning ran deep.

Untangling that wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a strategy session. It was hypnotherapy, journaling, therapy, talking it out, sitting with the discomfort. And on the other side of it, my business has more momentum than it’s ever had. Not because I cracked a marketing code. Because I cracked the version of me that was keeping it small.

The Line That Replaces Every Affirmation

I’ve tried a lot of affirmations over the years. “I am enough.” “I am worthy.” “I am abundant.”

None of them worked for me. They felt forced. My brain didn’t believe them.

What did work, what I say to myself out loud at my desk when I feel the discomfort rising, is this:

“Dana, you would never sabotage someone you love. You would cheer them on. You would kick them in the butt to get them to do the thing. Why on earth would you sabotage yourself?”

That line gets me back in the chair every time. Because the answer is: I wouldn’t.

I love myself too much to sabotage my own dreams. And so do you. You sabotage your dreams by waiting. You sabotage your dreams by overthinking. You sabotage your dreams by letting the feeling of “I’m behind” keep you from doing anything at all. (Self-sabotage in business is real, and naming it is half the battle.)

Stop it.

Be Cringe. Be Quirky. Be You.

There’s a video from Hormozi where he talks about being cringe. The idea is: cringe means you care. Cringe means you’re passionate about something. And to the people you’re meant to help, that level of care is exactly what they want.

I am a ball of energy. I am passionate. I rally the troops (according to my dad). When you leave a conversation with me, you feel like anything is possible. And for a long time, I tried to dim that down because I’d hear advice like “be aloof on social media, slouch into it, be like a chill friend in a room.”

Great advice. For some people. Not for me.

Because I know who I am. And me being too much is the entire point.

I can get people past the finish line who never thought they could. I’m not trying to do that for one tiny high-end group. Boss Mom is for the masses. Boss Mom is a Batman-style lighthouse: come here, we’ll help you. And I can’t reach that goal if I keep dimming myself down to match somebody else’s strategy.

You can’t either. Being fully yourself is the whole point.

What I’m Leaving You With at 45

You don’t have to wait until you’re 45 to build this practice. You don’t have to wait until you’ve reflected, beaten yourself up about the years that passed, and felt behind for the hundredth time.

Here’s the practice:

1. Decide what you’re focusing on. Write it down. Every single day. What am I focusing on this month? This week? This 10 minutes?
2. Notice when you’ve drifted. Snack? Shower? Show with the kids? Ask: is this real or am I procrastinating?
3. Sit in the discomfort. Your body is going to scream that something is wrong. Something isn’t wrong. You’re just getting realigned.
4. Talk to yourself like you love yourself. Because you do. “I would never sabotage someone I love. So I’m not going to sabotage me.”
5. Get back in the chair. Even just for 10 more minutes. (If you want a deeper system around this, here are 3 time management skills every BossMom needs that pair perfectly with this practice.)

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. And it stacks. Day by day, week by week, you stop being someone who can’t finish things and you become someone who quietly, consistently, finishes things. Without burning out. Without losing yourself. Without giving up the relationships that matter.

You’re not behind. You’re just in the part where your spine is getting realigned. Stay with it.

Your Next Step

If this episode hit something for you, here’s where to go next:

Come into the free BossMom community. This isn’t just a place to hang out. This is where we actively help you figure out what you want to focus on, what your real goals are, and how to come back into focus in the middle of motherhood. Because when you have limited time, limited space, and constant distraction, you have to learn different skills and do business in a different way to actually thrive. Inside, you get free networking events, workshops around mindset, our daily mindset audios, real connection with other members, and so much more. It has its own dedicated app, so it’s completely off social media. And it’s free. There is genuinely no reason not to come hang out with us.

When you’re ready to level up, BossMom+ is where you go. This is where we build out the right marketing plan for your business, and then you get the ongoing support system to actually implement it so you hit your financial goals. It’s $197 for the whole year. Honestly, it’s worth its weight in gold.

And tell me a story. DM me inside the community after you listen. Tell me what hit. Tell me what you’re sitting in the discomfort of right now. I read them all.

I’ll see you next week.

xo, Dana