Hi, Shalene. This is Deena Eris calling from San Diego and I just wanted to thank you so much for that delightful podcast on being an extroverted introvert, which I am all 10 is me.

So nice to know what I am. I kind of had a feeling that that was me anyway when I heard the title of your podcast, but it was really fun to listen to it.

And my appreciate your information. You always speak so beautifully and it's wonderful to have access to your information to your wisdom and you are very authentic.

So thank you so much. Cheers from San Diego. Thanks again. Bye.

Welcome to the Shalene show. Shalene is a New York Times bestselling author celebrity fitness trainer and obsessed with helping you live your dream life.

So whether you do or don't have kids, I just really to be honest, this episode is for the moms. And I love those of you who don't have children and some of you are trying and some of you are just, you know, maybe it's God's will, maybe it's later in life, maybe it's something you're trying to decide on.

And all I know is that today I really want to speak to the moms. I hope you understand how important this is to me because I don't think enough people talk about this, frankly.

I wish someone had told me these things. I wish that someone had pointed out that a lot of the people who I was looking up to and wanted to be my mentor or wanted to have a life like theirs.

I wish someone had pointed out to me like, okay, but their circumstances are very different. And it's most evident when you have kids. Okay, so here's some quick tips I want to share with you.

Number one, when you're looking for a mentor, first of all, you should have mentors in like lots of areas of your life. But if you're looking for like a business mentor or even like a professional mentor, maybe you don't have any interest in starting a business, but professionally you have big aspirations.

You want to be the CEO, you want to be the, you know, one of the lead partners in your law from whatever it is. I wish someone had pointed out to me that because I knew I wanted to have children, I should probably also look at mentors who had done the same, meaning they had kids.

Because that wasn't true for me in the beginning. I looked to a lot of people who I wanted to emulate who didn't have kids or who had been divorced three or four times, which like no judgment there, but I didn't want that for myself. I wanted to, if at all possible, avoid those things.

And so to follow mentors who had cheated on their wives, sorry, that just didn't make sense to me, you know, or to find out that their family life was a disaster or that their children didn't feel like they were ever even a part of their childhood.

Like that's, that was just like I opening to me like, what am I doing? Like I can't emulate how they've lived their lives and how they've created their success because I don't want that fallout.

So yeah, you can build a business and you can have children and you can do those two things separately and you can also do them together and you can also be successful in your career and also have children.

And you can do those things at the same time, but find a mentor who's done things the way you want to do them. Be mindful of the mentors that you choose.

Next, when you have kids, everything's harder. It is. I mean, certainly it's incredibly rewarding. Our people wouldn't have kids, right? Like we wouldn't continue to pro-creative. It was just that horrible. It's not. It's amazing.

I just can't think of anything I've ever done in my whole life that feels as rewarding or as fulfilling. Nothing makes me as happy as anything to do with my kids.

And so yeah, it is worth having them, but you just have to understand like everything's going to get harder. Your marriage gets harder, your financial situation gets harder and building a business or climbing the corporate ladder.

That is so much harder. You've got to be a thousand times more organized. You have to have everything on writing. You have to have a plan. You have to have help. Like there's so many things that you can just go for it and get it done and will your way through it when it's just you.

But man, when you have kids, if you want to do it in my opinion, the way that truly honors the gift that children are, it's hard. But that doesn't mean you can't be done because anything worth having.

The most rewarding things you'll ever do in your entire life are really freaking hard. The things that are really easy are not that rewarding. Am I right? Yeah, but so just be prepared for that. Be prepared for it to be difficult.

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