Thrive Like a Mother Podcast
I'm Ebony and I'm a mama to 3 beautiful souls. I'm learning how navigate my trauma healing while building the life I never dreamed was possible. I'm a survivor of childhood abuse and for the longest time, I believed that if anyone knew my story, I wouldn't be worthy of love. Many years later and now I know that it far from the truth.
On the Thrive Like a Mother podcast, I'll share the resources and tools I use on the daily to cultivate a healthy mindset break the wheel of survival. Here we're about honesty and transparency. Because at the root of it all, my purpose in creating this podcast is so that you know you are never alone in your journey.
There may be laughter, there may be tears and we'll do it all by linking arms and learning to thrive together.
Thrive Like a Mother Podcast
Reflect, Refract, Reset: Harnessing the Power of a New Quarter
Quarterly reflections serve as powerful checkpoints in our lives, stopping us from barreling through month after month on autopilot. As we've closed the first quarter of 2025, now is the perfect moment to reflect on what's working, celebrate our wins, and intentionally pivot where needed.
The reflection process begins with acknowledging progress—both the milestone achievements and the seemingly small victories that often go unnoticed. For me, successfully keeping my son Henry at home for his first year while returning to my corporate job was a significant win that started off as a six-month goal. What were your wins this quarter? Taking time to celebrate before moving into analysis is important.
Beyond celebration, honest reflection requires examining resistance points, unhelpful habits, and external factors that influenced your progress. This awareness becomes the catalyst for refraction—the intentional bending of your light and energy to focus on creating better outcomes. Just as light changes direction through a prism, your path forward can shift in beautiful ways when you adjust course when needed.
The beauty of quarterly checkpoints is that they provide fresh starts throughout the year. You don't need to wait for January to reset your intentions or release what isn't serving you. This second quarter offers us the opportunity to align our efforts with our energy, plan strategically for success, and remember that not everything requires hustle. Some goals benefit from working smarter rather than harder, and some may need to be temporarily set aside—not as failures but as pauses in your journey.
Take 10 minutes today to write down your wins, lessons learned, and one small pivot that could create better flow in your life this quarter.
And remember your journey toward thriving isn't meant to be walked alone, so share your reflections with me on Instagram!
Thank you so much for listening in! If anything in this episode resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you left a review or shared it with a friend or on social media.
And don't forget to tag me so I can personally thank you for helping me get the word out.
Follow and chat with me on Instagram:
Podcast account - @thrivelikeamother.podcast
Personal account - @thrive.empowered
Sending you light and love always!
Hey, love, I'm Ebony and welcome to Thrive Like a Mother On this podcast. We're scared for our truth, but that fear is what fuels us to truly live in it. You're in the right place if you feel like you're stuck in survivor mode and you're ready to step into who you were truly meant to be. I'll share resources and tools I use daily to help you in your journey towards a healthier mindset and to break the wheel of survival. The journey may not be easy, but you won't have to face it alone. I'm a mama of three, healing day by day from past trauma, and I'm on a mission to build a life I've always dreamed of but never thought was possible. So, love, if you're ready to believe in what's possible, let's link arms and thrive together. Hello, loves, and welcome to another episode of the Thrive Like a Mother podcast.
Speaker 1:Today is extra special because we just ended the first quarter of 2025, y'all, can you even believe it? Like I honestly cannot believe that three months of the year have already passed and so much has happened or is happening, I will say, in our world, in our country, in our lives just jam full pack of things happening. So today's episode, we are going to be talking about quarterly reflections, reflections and refractions. Reflections, ooh, reflections and refractions. And I'm going to get right into it, because the end of a quarter is so powerful in the way that we can use that as a checkpoint, right. We take a look basically at what we've been doing for these past three months and we reflect. It stops us from just barreling through month after month on autopilot, checking in with ourselves really truly about where we're at, what happened, what occurred, celebrating our wins and looking basically for any opportunities that we may have had and basically setting an intention to pivot where needed, right. And that's what we're really going to get into today really just focusing on how we can best reflect on how quarter one went. I know it was a lot, I know it was heavy for a lot of us, but reflecting on how that went and looking at how we can then take what we've learned into this brand new quarter that we just started here in April. So I want to talk really quickly on just how this past quarter has helped me kind of shape my decisions for this new quarter that we're stepping into, and it really has helped me understand what things work for me, what things don't work for me.
Speaker 1:I have been kind of in this slowdown season, or really coming out of this slowdown season, and so I've really had to reflect, y'all honestly, every on a daily, on a daily, y'all honestly, every on a daily, on a daily. I needed to check in with myself and make sure that I wasn't heading towards some type of burnout. And so for me, this past quarter was really recognizing like where my speed is now, because, coming out of a slowdown season, you can go from or at least personal experience, I can go from zero to a hundred so fast and I'm like, oh, we're out of the slowdown season, let's do all the things right. Let's do all the things that have been in our minds this past, you know, in this slowdown season. And that wasn't going to work for me because I was going to, like I said, head me toward a fast track to burnout, and so that knowing that helped me figure out, like, what I needed to do to make sure that I wasn't heading towards that. And so a lot of what I did first quarter was understanding my own pace, and I got back into cycle syncing, which really is trying to figure out what task fit within where I'm at in my cycle, which was very cool, because for this past year, before this 2023, when I was pregnant with Henry, I was syncing up with the moon y'all, because I didn't have a cycle, obviously, and so it's been interesting to kind of get back in tune with my own body again. That has been completely wild, completely wild.
Speaker 1:But I want to. I want to talk about something big for us, because a lot of the times, we can focus on the okay, what didn't go well in this quarter, what do I need to, you know, shape up on right, but we tend to forget that we're not going to be as we're thinking of what can I do better this quarter? We tend to forget to celebrate our wins. So we're going to take a second right now together. Or, if you're listening to this and maybe you want to do this activity later, there's going to be a couple of points through here where I'm going to give you some prompts. So have your notebook out, have something out to write with.
Speaker 1:But I want to acknowledge, really, that progress is not just about, like, the big milestones that you hit. Yes, we had some big milestones in quarter one. I mean, it's three months, a lot has happened, right, but your small wins matter too. So for you, I want you to think of three things big or small does not matter Three things that you are proud of from the first quarter of the year. My own, big, I want to say.
Speaker 1:This is a big win, maybe small for some, but Henry and I accomplished him being at home for the very first year of his life and not having to go to daycare or put him in childcare, and that was huge because I went back to work. It was May, june, I think it was May. I went back to work in May and so here I am, going back into my corporate workforce and kind of relearning my job, you know, relearning who I am in that area and in that space. And I had this little tiny person with me and the goal was to make it to at least him being six months old, got to six months and I was like let's just keep going and see how this works. Of course there were some parts that were not easy. There was some juggling and things, especially as he got older and kind of got on the move, um, start to stay awake a lot longer, but we did it and so that is my big win that I'm celebrating from the first quarter of the year big win that I'm celebrating from the first quarter of the year, and y'all now we know, we know we talked about the wins right and I hope you really take that to heart and focus on the three things that you're proud of.
Speaker 1:But we know that with the wins come some challenges in some areas of opportunity, some areas for growth, because no day is perfect, no month is perfect. Things don't often go perfectly as planned, and so I want you to take a deep breath. First of all, after you've celebrated your wins, your hype, your all the things, take a deep breath, breath, and there are three questions I want you to think about Journal whatever you need to do, talk it out. Where in the first quarter did you feel resistance? Resistance may be in a goal that you are reaching for. Resistance in relationships, resistance in getting rest wherever you felt that. I want you to journal about what that was.
Speaker 1:Number two, what habits or decisions did you make that did not serve you? What did not pour back into you? What did not fill your cup? You know how to write those down. It might be one, it might be multiple, but take note of those because those are the things we do not want to carry into this new quarter.
Speaker 1:Number three what outside factors influenced your progress? Want to take note of, because maybe we can try to replicate those things. And it might be something like, you know, having some type of lo-fi music on in the back or your favorite jam, your morning routine. What are those things that either set you forward or pulled you back? Because sometimes there's some music I might have or a show I might put on, for instance, me trying to do my taxes. Yesterday there was a show I wanted to watch and I put it on, but then I realized I wasn't like focusing on the tasks that I needed.
Speaker 1:So what are some external factors or external areas that, basically, you know had some influence, whether it be good or bad, on your progress towards your goals? And that's that's us reflecting on the first quarter. Amazing, right, just amazing. And so now I want to talk about and we'll talk about this new quarter, because it is April, right, it is the second quarter of the year. We've gotten through the first quarter of 2025.
Speaker 1:And I want you to start looking at quarters not as just a continuation, because, right, we can barrel through these months. We can just keep going and keep going and keep going. But a new quarter really is a fresh start. It's just it's literally the reset that you need to not carry over those past frustrations, not carry over any habits or decisions that did not serve you, not carry over those external factors that did not help you in your progress. You and your progress. It's a reset. It's a reset and it's honestly a place where you realize that reflection and redirection, refraction, equals progress. It equals you continuing to make steps towards your small big goals, whatever those be your goals, small big goals, whatever those be your goals.
Speaker 1:And so, like refraction, basically bending light through a prism, this new quarter, it allows us to reshift our focus and our energy so that we are able to get better results, because we're understanding okay, this worked for me last quarter or this didn't work for me last quarter. It gives you the opportunity to understand where you need to pivot. You know, if something in the last quarter was not working for you, how can you either adjust to help it work for you, or how can you adjust to say, hey, this is something that I need to let go. I need to let go of. What is that for you?
Speaker 1:And as we're looking at this new quarter and we're setting our goals and we're setting our goals and we're being intentional about that I want you to remember to keep them realistic, first of all, and measurable. Help yourself going into this next quarter by making sure you are really specific on what you need to achieve and that you are measuring. You know how you're getting there, taking track whether that be journaling every day, your small wins, your big wins, your gratitude that's something that I do. Still get that list going. Y'all Good things are always working out for me and we want to basically keep track of that. Because what can happen is we can go into this new quarter, right, and we are maybe working on goals that we were still working on from the last quarter Perfectly normal, right. But we can keep going and thinking that, oh, we're not reaching that goal when, in reality, we have been making small steps throughout this quarter to reach that goal, even if we don't reach it.
Speaker 1:And so, when you're setting your goals for this new quarter, I want you to remember keep them specific, keep it measurable, keep it achievable, keep it relevant. Is this something you need to be doing this quarter or is it something that needs to be future wise. Also, give yourself a time. Time really helps me. Like I said, I'm going to use the Henry example again, because the original goal with him was to have him home with us for um six months. That was an achievable goal, that was measurable. And then when we hit that, it allowed me to say, okay, am I still good? Are we still good with where things? So let's talk about, as we're talking about, this refraction piece right and adjusting things as needed.
Speaker 1:I want you to think about two things here. So I want you to think about aligning your efforts with your energy, and the second thing we're going to chat about is really how we're planning for success. So, first one, aligning our efforts with energy. Okay, the first quarter like we can be really excited, like new year, new me, right, we can get so excited. And so we have all of this energy. And sometimes the first quarter can feel like we're barreling through it, trying to reach these goals that we've set, sometimes not realizing that, hey, the year just started, we have an entire year to accomplish so many things.
Speaker 1:And so in the second quarter, I want you to start thinking about your goals and where the hustle is needed, because not everything needs a hustle y'all. There are some places, some areas where you can work smarter and not harder. You don't need to keep barreling. You don't need to do that with every single goal. Keep barreling. You don't need to do that with every single goal. And so remember to really continue checking out with your why so that you stay motivated, but then also remembering that if you need a break, you need a break. If you need to pause and reevaluate, do that. Some goals require you to put them down for a bit and pick them back up when you've allowed yourself to reflect and digest everything that you've learned in going towards that goal.
Speaker 1:The second thing I want to hit on really planning for success in the quarter. I love that we have this quarterly mindset right. We think in these chunks, these chunks of threes, but I want you in this quarter to schedule time for yourself to check in For you if it's not daily, maybe it's something you do weekly to check in on your wins, check in on where you need to refract, where you need to bend, where you need to refocus your energy, because doing that throughout the quarter instead of waiting until the end of a quarter, honestly will help you. You know, you'll start to get progress towards your goals that maybe you didn't think you could reach because you're constantly having that mindset to reflect and and refract. Think about what's truly worth your time. Y'all, like throughout the entire quarter.
Speaker 1:If something you're working towards you realize, hey, I maybe need to put this down for a while, go ahead and put it down for a while. It doesn't mean and I'm going to say this again, I've said it so so many times but what is for you will always be for you. So even if you need to put a goal down for a while, that doesn't mean that you have failed. That doesn't mean that you've given up. It just means that you need a moment and if it's for you, you'll be able to pick it back up again when it's time, when it's ready. So I want to end the episode there and take a moment just to recap.
Speaker 1:Don't forget to reflect throughout this entire quarter, y'all. You don't need to wait until the end of three months to think about what's going well, what areas you need to pivot in. Don't forget to celebrate your wins. If you need to go ahead and start that daily gratitude list, please do that, I promise you. It has definitely shifted my mindset, especially on those harder days when I am trying to find the glimmer in that day and y'all have no idea how much just finding that one moment in the day, especially on a very difficult day, you know how much that one glimmer can help you go to bed with your mind, you know a little bit more at ease, so that you can start the next day and say, no matter how yesterday went, you know, I did still have something, something that went right, something that was beautiful in your day.
Speaker 1:And then you know, refract as needed, let's say. Let's say that don't wait till what is that April? Don't wait till June to refract. If you need to refract weekly, daily, as you're noticing things throughout this quarter, do it, y'all Do it. And we're going to end with a challenge.
Speaker 1:I gave you some prompts throughout this entire episode, but if you did not have time to do that, go back and listen and do those. And also take 10 minutes today to write down some wins for today, some lessons that you've had, and write down one small thing that you can pivot in this new quarter, one small thing that you have noticed will help you achieve a better flow in your day, in your week, one small thing that can help you refract just as the prism, or just as the light going through the prism. Honestly, but yes, be the light. Allow yourself to pivot as needed and share any takeaways that you have, or any pivots, any wins. Share them with me on Insta, on Instagram. I would love to hear them. Thank you so much for listening, love. If anything in today's episode resonated with you, share it with your bestie or share it on social media and tag me so we can chat about it, as always, sending you light and love, and remember you are worthy, you are enough and you deserve to thrive you.
