You guys, when I first started thinking about starting a podcast, I made a list of dream guests I wanted on the show at some point. I am so excited to share a conversation that I had with one of them!
Mandy Arioto is the the President and CEO for MOPS International. If you’re not sure what MOPs is (and Mandy says herself it’s kind of a funny name), it stands for Mothers of Preschoolers. I have had the honor and privilege of being involved with the MOPs organization locally for the past couple of years, and if you need a mom community, MOPs might just be the place for you.
MOPs is a world wide organization, with over 130,000 mother members and thousands of groups who gather all across the globe.
Mandy serves and represents as a voice for the organization. When she’s not crafting her Have More Fun podcast, she speaks at events around the world. She has been featured on MSN, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and USA Today. Mandy and her husband have three kids and we talk about what it’s like to be a CEO and a mom and how she manages it all.
Mandy also just came out with a book called Have More Fun, and I recommend that EVERYONE read it. We talk about that in the show, too It’s incredibly good and real and full of smiles and some happy tears.
WHAT IS MOPS?
Mandy is the first to say that “MOPs” is a weird name, and she didn’t think it was for her when she was first invited. MOPs is a group of moms that meets in over 60 countries all over the world, and they believe that better moms make a better world. MOPs sets out to equip women to be the best versions of themselves.
We all have days that we feel like we’re horrible moms, partners and friends, but with the help of MOPs, we can make small changes to be our best selves.
As moms, we can feel chronically lonely, and MOPs seeks to create communities of women so that we all don’t feel so alone. n When we take time to intentionally come together as women, powerful things happen!
You can find more about MOPs and how to find a group near you, here.
For Mandy, her MOPs group became a place of transformation in her life. The women around her walked through addiction, divorce, eating disorders, you name it. She felt like she could be honest about the things she was dealing with. The power of MOPs is that women feel empowered in their leadership, mothering and relationships. She was then offered a position in marketing at MOPs International, and after a worldwide search, she was chosen as CEO of the organization
ARE THERE COMMON THEMES BETWEEN MOMS ACROSS THE WORLD?
Absolutely. We all have the same common fears for our kids. We all want them to thrive and feel safe and secure.
Whether she’s in a midwestern suburb or across the world, is that women feel exhausted because they do so much. We all feel like we aren’t doing enough with our lives.
HOW DO YOU DO IT ALL?
Mandy is quick to say that she DOESN’T do it all. She doesn’t volunteer at school, she doesn’t do bake sales and her house isn’t always clean. She’s 100% present in her kids’ lives, but she realizes there are certain things she has to let go of.
She gets up really early to get things done, and she’s had to surrender a lot of things and realize that she just can’t do everything. Her husband is really helpful, too.
Mandy has a lot of juggling and feels low grade mom guilt a lot of the time, and she encourages other moms that we all carry that sometimes. Her advice for all moms? Tune in to find out!
ESSENTIALS OF PARENTING
We have so few moments with our kids. We have to prioritize the things that matter, instead of nagging them about having their rooms clean or other things that don’t matter.
Choose where your energy goes! We can choose how we spend our energy and our time. When we focus our energy on something, those things become the most important thing in the house, and we get to choose.
Mandy has found in her life that the conversations with her kids that happen in the most unexpected moments are the gold we look back on. Being intentional in these moments is what counts for Mandy, and she doesn’t feel like she could personally do that if all she focused on was a rigid schedule and life.
HAVE MORE FUN
Mandy has made having more fun a priority in her life. When I asked her what inspired that, she admitted that she had become a slave to her to-do list, and she’d forgotten that “fun” was an option. The day-to-day tasks and keeping children alive, running a business and all of the details sucked the life out of her soul.
“Fun” does not come easily to her, and she has to work at it and choose it. In working with moms, she noticed that many of us have forgotten that fun is an option. So she wrote this book to remind us that fun is so often the answer we’re looking for:
How do I parent better?
How do I spice up my marriage?
How do I interact with people who annoy me?
Mandy’s answer is VERY simple. Tune in to find out!
The cultural climate we live in is really tense and difficult, and she wondered what it would look like to engage in a little more fun throughout the course of our day?
HOW DO WE START TO HAVE MORE FUN?
Mandy encourages us to say ‘YES’ more! When your kids ask you to ride bikes outside, instead of catching up on your to-dos, say yes instead of putting it off until later. Fun is a choice! We have to do it with intention.
WHAT IF WE DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO START HAVING FUN?
Think about what made you happy when you were a kid. When Mandy was younger, she loved to dance, so she started taking dance lessons again. So, start thinking about things that made you happy before.
Fear keeps us playing small. We have so many things telling us that we’re not enough, we’re not doing enough, and Mandy talks about how we can live an ABUNDANT life.
Mandy encourages us that even though we’re scared, we should do it anyway, 100% of the time. It is such a gift and makes other things that feel risky, not as scary the next time.
Mandy talks about loneliness, and how she overcame that, and how important it is to surround ourselves with other people in order to live a full life.
THINKING DIFFERENTLY ABOUT CHANGING THE WORLD
Up until about 15 years ago, there were only about 100 books in all of history that had ‘changing the world’ in the title. Since then, there are tens of thousands of them. This idea that we have to do something that’s so big and significant that it impacts every single person around the globe is crushing and so overwhelming. It keeps us from doing the things that are right in front of us that could profoundly change the world that we actually live in.
Mandy is a big believer in doing small things to create change in the people right in our proximity. When we dig into the people right in front of us, it creates such a bigger impact.
So many people want to change the world but they don’t want to change the toilet paper.
Do the small things that shape a family and a community. We don’t have to solve world hunger; we can have fun by changing the world in small, measurable ways. It has changed Mandy’s heart and how she sees other people.
Hey you guys if you’re interested in learning more about MOPs or finding out how you can be involved in a group near you, visit MOPs.org for more information. I serve as a Mentor Mom and it’s so amazing. There are also tickets left for MomCon coming up September 5-7 2019, and I know they’d love to see you there. I’ll be there, and documenting all the FUN to share with you when I get back!
CONNECT WITH MANDY: