441 MINISODE Amber Trueblood: No More Mom Guilt

Women Innovating Networking Growing Scaling – that’s WINGS … I’m Melinda Wittstock, my mission is to help women take flight to soar to the success of our dreams in business and in life– and create and grow businesses in alignment with our passion and purpose.

On this special Mentoring Minisode of Wings of Inspired Business … we talk about 2020 Vision and the shift from the past decade into the new … and how to value what makes us unique and different … double down on finding the resources and tools to enable focused action on those highest leverage activities that align with your true purpose. We all have a choice what to leave behind in the past decade … and what to bring into the new.

Here with us today to provide her insights and inspiration is …

Amber Trueblood.

Amber is an entrepreneur, mom of four young sons, and the author of a great new book called Stretch Marks.

Amber helps her clients clarify their values and their priorities – with a unique perspective that comes from her psychology degree, MBA, her humor and compassion … empowering them to make better discipline decisions, relieve mom-guilt, reduce self-judgment, and become a truly enlightened parent.

Amber Trueblood will be here with her advice in just a moment on our Mentoring Minisode and first …

Make sure you take a moment, follow Wings of Inspired Business on facebook @wingspodcast, Twitter @MelindaWings and Instagram @melindawittstock2020. If you use Alexa, you can now simply say, Alexa, play Wings of Inspired Business. And if you like what you’re hearing, please review us on iTunes so more women can find these amazing interviews and soar in business.

And now to the inspiring Amber Trueblood, author of a great new book out this week called Stretch Marks. It’s required reading for any woman – the men that truly love us – to find an enlightened and conscious path … and be true to our best selves without guilt, apology or tradeoff.

Stretch Marks is testament to the fact that we can reject all those “should’s” – what we think we should be or do – and live exactly how we want without negative self-judgment. Amber wrote Stretch Marks while on a Broadway Tour with her husband and four sons, traversing over 60 cities across the U.S. and Canada. Amber is most passionate about providing mothers simple and realistic tools to guide them toward a happier, calmer parenting life.

Melinda Wittstock:         Amber, welcome to Wings.

Amber Trueblood:          Thank you so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m so excited to talk to you this early in the new year 2020. It’s always nice to go into it with 2020 vision. What’s your vision, and what’s your inspiration for this year?

Amber Trueblood:          Well, to me, this year is an entire shift. It’s beginning, obviously, of a new decade for everybody, but for me, it’s the shift from really focusing more internally on my immediate family. Then this last year, I’ve been building up my business to launch it. 2020 for me is that evolution where I’m focusing more outward on my mission to help as many women as possible moving forward into this next decade.

Melinda Wittstock:         How wonderful. We all have challenges in business and in life. I’m always seeking with this podcast to, I guess, de-stigmatize them a little bit because I think as women, we’re hardwired for perfectionism. It’s hard to show vulnerability, and yet it’s part of the program. When you’re running a business and a startup, there’s always something. What are some of yours going into the New Year?

Amber Trueblood:          Some of my challenges?

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah.

Amber Trueblood:          I mean, I think for me, I’m very excited about my projects and creating this movement and this momentum for Stretch Marks and my retreats and my book, but obviously, I have a big family. I have four children. They’re still young. For me, it’s bringing them along in the excitement of this journey and not going off on my own, really bringing them in to see what I’m doing, and model what it is to follow your passion and the challenges and the triumphs that come from that.

Melinda Wittstock:         So true. Oh my goodness, so when you look back and when you think about all the things you juggle, you’ve got a lot of kids, all boys-

Amber Trueblood:          All boys.

Melinda Wittstock:         … business, husband, so many things going on. If you were to look back at different times on your entrepreneurial journey or just even what’s going on right now in the present, what would be the top three go-to pieces of advice you’d share with other women?

Amber Trueblood:          Well, to me, everybody’s really different. Obviously, everybody has different values, different lifestyles, different personalities. I think lots of times, we judge ourselves as if we’re all the same, as if we all have or supposed to have the same values and the same priorities. That’s where we get really frustrated and sad and down on ourselves. To me, the first step is being really honest with yourself, allowing yourself the time and space to say, “Wait a second, is that important to me? Wait, do I really value that?”

Once you can uncover what’s really important to you given your lifestyle, your values at this particular time in your life, because obviously they change, I think then you can move forward and say, “Okay, are my actions, are my resources, is my time and attention focused on those things that are really important to me instead of spending so much time and energy and money on things that really aren’t important to me?”

Melinda Wittstock:         Sometimes, it’s a sign of living a life of “should’s”. We’re so influenced by external circumstances, where we think that we have to do it a certain way because someone else has done it, but actually being true to our own inner compass, I guess is-

Amber Trueblood:          I had this epiphany two years ago before I started writing this book. My kids were all in this private school that was really far away, and I had to drive in all this terrible traffic in LA to get there. It was this whole world we were entering, and I had this moment where I played that future forward. Only then could I really clearly ask myself, “Wait, do I really want that? Is that where I want to go because I’m spending a lot of money and energy in that direction? Do I want that?” When I really honestly asked myself that and was able to hear the answer, it was like, “No, not at all.”

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s such important advice, so just taking time to actually really know yourself. What would be number two?

Amber Trueblood:          Number two would then be… The next step would be finding the tools and resources and tactics that you’ll actually use, that you’ll actually implement into your life every day and use comfortably, that makes sense to you. Some people you know want to run one of those… What did they call that? The iron man marathons, and they can get up every morning. They can train for two hours. That feeds them. That excites them. That fuels them up internally. Other people that would drain them.

I think you have to find and be really honest with yourself once more with, “What are the tools that are going to work for me?” Part of what I talk about in my book is here are a slew of tools. You have to know also at what point you’re being blocked. I talk about this a lot, which, “Am I blocked because I really don’t know what I want yet, and so I need tools to help me uncover that?” That’s like I have these five mindsets. That’s ask, the A, and then it’s A-M-B-E-R just to be cute and remember it.

The M is move. Maybe I totally know what I want, but I have to find the tools to get me moving in that direction, so identifying like, “Okay, What tools, what practices, what techniques do I really… Which ones resonate with me? What am I going to actually do?” That’s move. Then maybe you know what tools totally work for you because you’ve done it successfully in the past, and you know what you want. B is the belief, but at the back of your mind or really deep in your subconscious, there’s some beliefs that are blocking you.

You know what you want. You know how to do it, but in the back of your mind, you have these lingering bologna beliefs that say like, “You’re not really worthy of this. You don’t deserve to have this. You shouldn’t be… You shouldn’t have this. Other people are dying. Other people are starving, and you want this. That’s not right.” We hold these beliefs that block us, so maybe it’s dispelling and taking all of the strength out of those bologna beliefs so that you can move forward, and they can stop blocking you.

Melinda Wittstock:         Success in business like in anything in life. It’s all in our head. With the success of company and as I’ve grown and gotten a little older and wiser, I just realized more and more and more your mindset is absolutely 100% predictor of what you’re going to be able to achieve in business, where your upper limits are set, where you think you deserve something or maybe don’t deserve something. You think you’re worthy, not worthy. This is something that is such an issue, especially for women who we can sometimes play sometimes a smaller game than we should, because of some of those thought patterns.

What would be the third piece of advice?

Amber Trueblood:          The third piece of advice I have is to go easy on yourself, I would say.

Melinda Wittstock:         Now, that’s hard. That’s funny.

Amber Trueblood:          Give yourself a break, because a lot of these women, especially female entrepreneurs, have had to fight against a lot of stigmas and had to break out and be different and prove themselves in a different world that maybe is not in alignment with how we would naturally do things as a community. With those skills and what’s made us successful, also like you said, is that perfectionism, that judgment, that constant push, push, push, push, push. For instance, I’ve often found myself… One of my go-to things that I’m working on is to sit back and enjoy the present and really be in the moment.

I’ll find myself… I work because I enjoy the process. I enjoy the process and problem solving and digging in and making it happen and figuring out the steps, but I’m so busy doing that, that stopping and enjoying the fruits of any of that, it’s really difficult. Instead, I’ll jump on to solve the next problem as I’m sure a lot of women who are listening to this can relate to.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh gosh, it’s true. That’s what makes us feel, I think, that our work is never done because we never take the time to just say, “Oh wow, that’s completed. Look, I did that. I finished it. That’s awesome, and it is now off the list.”

Amber Trueblood:          I know a lot of people talk about mantras and affirmations, and you are enough and all of these things. One of the ones that I find helps me the most is I am in this moment. I’ll just say that over and over again. I am in this moment. I am in this moment. I’m in this moment. It brings me back inside my body and out of my brain and this constant juggling that’s happening mentally all the time and really into my core, “Oh, I’m in this moment right now.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, isn’t it so true … the more that we can be in the now or the power of the now because when we’re thinking of things in the past and we’re running all those old soundtracks from what has happened in the past or when we’re really stressing about the future, there are all kinds of impacts on our bodies. I mean, we’re getting stressed, so trying to figure out how to stay in this moment of right now is tricky for people cause there’s an uncertainty around it perhaps.

Amber Trueblood:          100%, and living in the future has served us. For me, and I explained this to my kids. At dinner time we do a round of “gratefuls” and then we do a round of what we’re working on, kind of character building traits. One of the things I explained to them is in order to keep this family afloat and keep toilet paper in the pantry and keep socks in the drawers and all of these things or planned vacations or pay bills, figure out schoolwork, it takes constant planning ahead and anticipating how I’m going to manage all of that and fold it together and get it all done.

It serves us. It keeps us moving forward, and then everybody in the family often begins to depend on you serving that role, you providing all of that. We think, “What point do we let go of that a little bit, and enjoy the present, and sit down when you’re eating dinner?” I mean, it’s as simple as that sometimes.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh God, just remembering to breathe. This is all such great advice for turning over a new leaf. Everyone listening here into 2020, it’s a real chance to leave all the stuff that didn’t serve behind in the last decade. We’re in a new decade now.

Amber Trueblood:          Exactly. I would say let’s start with-

Melinda Wittstock:         Be in power. Be in the now.

Amber Trueblood:          Be in the now, and how about be kind to yourself? Treat yourself like you would treat a friend or a stranger. I mean, there’s so many things we say to ourselves and think about ourselves that we would never say to even a stranger on the street.

Melinda Wittstock:         So, so true. Amber, how can people find you, work with you, obviously, get your great new book, Stretch Marks? I can’t recommend that highly enough. You have retreats and everything as well. Tell everybody how they can find you and if you have a special offer for any of our listeners today.

Amber Trueblood:          Yes, definitely. Well, my book is called Get… Not Get Stretch Marks, my Instagram is Get Stretch Marks. The book is called Stretch Marks, and my website is ambertrueblood.com. On there, you’ll find blog posts, articles, information about all my upcoming retreats. I have longer retreats that are five nights. Then I’ve short weekend retreats that are two nights. I have an intensive retreat coming up at the end of February in Palm Desert that I’m really excited about. That’s two days, one night retreat.

That’s all on the website on ambertrueblood.com. I would love to offer any listeners a 10% discount on all the retreats that are coming up. If they’re able to sign up in the month of January, that would be fabulous. Let’s see. We have Instagram. We have the website. Mostly, you can find everything through the website. I have a couple exciting things that are yet to come in 2020 that a mastermind, a digital mastermind and a book club that I’m really… I’m obsessed with books, so definitely talking about books is going to be part of my 2020.

Melinda Wittstock:         Fantastic. Well, we’ll have all that information in the show notes as well if you’re listening to this driving or something.

Amber Trueblood:          Don’t write it down.

Melinda Wittstock:         Amber, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Amber Trueblood:          You’re welcome. Thank you for having me, Melinda.