Week One, Day One

Hannah Keeley's Total Mom Makeover: The Six-Week Plan to Completely Transform Your Home, Health, Family and Life
by Hannah Keeley

Hannah Keeley, America's #1 Total Mom, puts a completely new spin on the domestic arts with a six-week practical and motivational plan to get you, your home, and your family on track.

Motherhood is not what it used to be. Today you are required to balance everything from parenting to homemaking to working - and no doubt you still want to look great, stay healthy, and whip up a few batches of chocolate chip cookies on the side. With all of these demands and expectations, it's no wonder you end up feeling overwhelmed, disorganized, frustrated, and empty. It's time for a brand-new set of skills.

Hannah Keeley - founder of TotalMom.com, television personality, life coach, and mother of seven - developed the Total Mom Makeover just for women like you. Her inspiring voice, innovative methods, and simple exercises will help you take charge of your life by focusing on one attainable goal each day. Hannah promises that in just six weeks, you can:

• look better and sexier than ever
• create a beautiful, clean, clutter-free home
• build stronger relationships with your husband and kids
• cook healthy meals for your family
• develop strategies to effectively manage your hectic schedule
• control chaos, fear, and worry in your life
• feel passion and personal power
• start to build the life of your dreams

With advice and tips on everything from housecleaning to personal growth, Hannah Keeley's Total Mom Makeover is a must-have for any mother ready to reinvent herself and her family and live life to the fullest.

Chapter 1

Get Ready, Get Set

Motherhood has a way of sneaking up on you. One day, you are rubbing cocoa butter on your expanding belly and trying to decide on colors for the curtains in the nursery. The next day, you are wearing sweatpants because you can't button your jeans, dishes are spilling out of the kitchen sink, and the kids have colored all over the walls with permanent markers. Because of the ever-growing list of responsibilities, you begin pushing your own needs further and further down on the list. Eventually, you are just trying to make it through another day without losing your car keys, your temper, or your mind.

That's no way to live. And deep inside, you know that. But you can't stop long enough to catch your breath. And even when you do have a moment, you have no idea how to begin to make it better. Well, the time is now, the place is here, and you're going to start by forgetting everything you know about motherhood.

Old School

Our grandmothers knew how to do motherhood, but that's because they didn't have as many options as we do now. They were raised to know how to cook and clean, how to care for babies, and how to send their husbands off to work with a wink and a smile. They were smart women who applied themselves to their homes and families. They also knew that they were only as strong as their support network, so they reached out and maintained a sense of community with other moms.

Our mothers had more options but an entirely new set of challenges. They were brave women treading new territory in their careers and personal accomplishments. But they still had homes and families to care for, so their lives became a struggle as they learned to balance their responsibilities. With the advantages came the disadvantages. Even the mothers who chose to make family their primary career felt left behind as their support network donned business suits and left for work.

That was then. This is now.

Moms today have options that our grandmothers could never have imagined. We can choose to stay at home, go to work, or even work from home so that we can build a career as well as a family. We can raise our kids and even educate our kids, build a career or pursue a hobby, invest in our marriages while investing in ourselves. It is truly a great time to be a mom, a time full of possibilities and opportunities. As a matter of fact, there are so many options today that it is often difficult to make a choice.

Therein lies the problem: How do we choose? We have a family to care for and a home to manage, but there are endless other choices to be made. We have instant access to entertainment and community through computers, televisions, and telephones. We can shop from our homes or our closest mall. We can take our kids to gym class, the park, the living room, or even to work with us. It's no longer a question of what we have to choose from, but how we make our choices. This determines whether we sink or swim.

New World, New Strategy

The old strategies won't cut it in the world of mommyhood any longer. It's not how quickly we can wash the dishes or how balanced we can make our family meals that matters so much today. What matters is how we choose to invest our time, money, and energy in order to build a successful and healthy home, family, and life. So forget what you know about motherhood. If it's not working, throw it out.

The first step to becoming a Total Mom is to forget about what you should be doing. The shoulds keep you running around like crazy, fueling everyone and everything while you dwindle down to nothing. So quit beating yourself up. There is no room in the Total Mom life for negativity and self-sabotage. Just take it one step at a time. It's not about what you should be doing. It's about what you could be doing. This could be the time of your life to really shine and discover all of the enormous potential that is buried within you. Quit feeling guilty. Quit feeling powerless. Quit feeling hopeless. You don't have time for that anymore. Throw out the old and usher in the new.

Okay, maybe you should be spending less money, getting in shape, raising your children better. You could be doing that. Or you would be doing that if only. The truth of the shoulds, coulds, and woulds is that they do nothing productive for you. Instead they torment you mentally and rob you of valuable time and energy. Shoulds, coulds, and woulds dwell in some far-off world out in the middle of nowhere. Can and will exist right here, right now. If you find yourself wasting time by dwelling in the shoulds of life, then leave those words behind you. Repeat to yourself, "I can" or "I will" and move forward to take some productive action. Staring at your thighs in the mirror and regretting those Double Stuf Oreos will do nothing for you. Instead, say, "I will work on these thighs, " and go do twenty reps of leg lifts. No more guilt. It's time to take action.

Copyright © 2007 by Hannah Keeley

About the Author

Hannah Keeley, author of Hannah's Art of Home, holds a degree in psychology from Furman University and lives in Virginia.