The Working Mom's Balance Podcast with Tracy Kulwicki

In this episode, we talk about the science behind our moods and why it is beneficial to have a better mood more often. We also learn practical strategies to help us improve our mood. The goal is not to try to experience happiness all the time, no matter our circumstances. Rather, the approach we want to take is to not let small, everyday annoyances derail our mood and ruin our day. Having a more positive mood can improve our health...

A long, dark, and cold winter has left many of us feeling like we're in a funk. On the heels of a two year struggle through the pandemic, we're feeling exhausted, stuck, and unmotivated. This 8 step process can help you reset your mental, spiritual, and physical health, refresh your work life, home life, and relationships, and create a fresh outlook for your values and goals. After completing these steps you will feel less overwhel...

Pope Benedict XVI is quoted as saying, "The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness."

The pandemic has increased our options for comfort these days. And many of us are doing all we can to seek comfort and avoid pain and discomfort. The circumstances in our current lives are ever-changing, overwhelming, and hard. It is so tempting to just move into survival mode, doing the bare minimu...

Flow is an experience of total absorption in the task at hand, where you completely lose track of time and space. Researchers, like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, have discovered that flow is the best predictor of well-being. The more often you are in a flow state, the more enjoyable your life experience will be.

But all flow is not created equally. Sometimes our experience of flow doesn't lead to more meaning and satisfaction. Sometimes...

In early 2021, Adam Grant published an article in the New York Times that said, "There's a name for the blah you're feeling: It's called languishing." The article quickly went viral. Adam spoke to an experience that we had all been experiencing. Over the past couple of years, we have moved from grief and sadness to an overwhelming sense of languishing due to the pandemic and ongoing challenges of life. We just feel meh. Empty, stuc...

This episode will help you understand what it means to flourish in life. We talk about three aspects that are necessary to help us flourish. These aspects are fulfillment, balance, and presence. We'll learn what it looks like and how it feels to live our lives fully alive, flowing smoothly, and with mindful awareness and appreciation for the present moment.

After going through a global pandemic, many of us are struggling to find ou...

Good emotional health is the ability to cope with both the highs and the lows in life. It involves being able to accept and manage any and all emotions we face with vulnerability and authenticity. You build strong emotional health by becoming aware of your emotions, learning to self-regulate in the midst of intense emotions, and developing healthy coping strategies to support you in hard times. In this episode, we learn healthy way...

A healthy approach to exercise is flexible, adaptable, pleasurable, and compatible with your daily life. It supports the healthy functioning of your body and is done from a place of positive motivations and beliefs.

Exercising our bodies is extremely important, not just for our physical health but for our mental health and cognition as well. Many people approach exercise with an unhealthy focus on weight loss, disordered eating, an...

Improving your body image is one of the most important things we can do to support our overall health, wellness, and well-being. When we have a negative body image, our very motivation for pursuing health usually leads us down a dangerous road that often makes us even more unhealthy than when we began. This episode helps us better understand what body image is and provides practical strategies and inspiration that we can use to hel...

In this episode we talk about the what, why, and how of rest, relaxation, sleep, and sabbath. These four things can have an effect on every aspect of our health and wellness. When we don't get sufficient rest it can impact our physical, mental, spiritual, and relational health. Learn some practical strategies to help you begin to make small changes to focus on getting more rest and relaxation in your life.

Links and Resources f...

A lot of research has been done to help us better understand wellbeing. What makes up wellbeing? Does everyone have access to it? How can we increase our experience of wellbeing and what factors might hinder our it?

In this episode, we talk about 9 building blocks of wellbeing that we can examine and adjust to help us experience more wellbeing and flourish. The 9 building blocks or pillars include the original 5 facets of the PERMA...

If you want to reach the goals that you have set for yourself, the answer is not more motivation, more confidence, or more self-discipline. Confidence is trusting and relying on yourself to do the things you said you would do. You can't build that trust and reliance until you start taking action, no matter how you feel. In this episode, we talk about how we choose our actions to live the life we truly want to live. We discuss what ...

We are continuing our series in which we are working to learn how to get ourselves to do the things we want to do, even when we don't feel like doing them. In episode 19 we learned how to accept our thoughts and feelings. In this episode we discuss the next step in the process, to choose a value-based direction and next step. We decide the person we want to be, we consider what is important to us, and then we choose our next right ...

There's a popular passage of scripture in Romans where Paul says something along the lines of "I don't understand myself. I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate...I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out." I think we can all relate to this passage in some way. We know what we should do, we know what we want to do, but how do we get ourselves to actually do it. We long for the...

People with a fixed mindset believe that their personal character, skills, intelligence, and abilities are fixed traits that cannot be changed. They believe you’re either born with it or you’re not. On the other hand, people with a growth mindset believe that their abilities can be developed through hard work and effort. A fixed mindset keeps us stuck and afraid of failure and mistakes, but people with a growth mindset are constant...

Psychological Capital, better known as PsyCap in the world of positive psychology, is the psychological resources of hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism that can help employees perform better at work and increase overall well-being outside of the workplace. We can use the acronym HERO to help us remember these important resources. This episode talks about what each of these resources means and how we can develop them in our ow...

Resilience is the ability to bounce back after adversity. We will all face hard times and suffering in life. Instead of resisting the hard, resilient people learn to face challenges and stressors, accept mistakes, and grow from failures. This episode will teach you practical ways to increase your resilience and come out of hardship stronger.

Links and Resources from this Episode

Episode 3: The Why and How of Better Relatio...

Optimism can help us achieve more success at work, home, school, in sports, and every other area of life. An optimistic explanatory style also helps us live longer, healthier lives. This episode discusses the power of optimism and provides practical instructions for how to increase optimistic thinking to improve your life.

Side note - starting next week, The Working Mom's Balance podcast will release new episodes on Mondays (instea...