BEST BOOKS FOR WORKING MOMS IN 2021

Year 2020 has been challenging on so many levels. And as a working mom, you had to handle so many more challenges. There were many lessons learned and obstacles overcome. But now it’s time to start fresh and go through 2021 with a positive mindset. Let’s talk about 10 best books for working moms!

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What Should Working Moms be Reading in 2021?

After the very challenging year of 2020, working moms need to make some time for books that will help them grow as individuals and find a new balance of all the areas of their lives.

And what better way to start than reading some great books?

The list below contains a great variety to help you in the areas of mindfulness, intentional living, personal development, spirituality, life balance, and time management.

Books About Finding Yourself After Kids

Let’s face it, kids changed our entire world when we welcome them into our family. They are a true blessing from God and they become one of our top priorities.

But sometimes, we lose ourselves when we enter motherhood. We no longer view ourselves as individual people but rather we identify with the roles we are holding: mom, wife, employee, or volunteer. These books will help you find yourself again so can be a better version of yourself. Because when you are happy and fulfilled – you will be able to give that positive energy back to all the roles you have.

Mind Over Marathon by Gabe Cox

This book is a MUST HAVE for anyone who feels stuck or unfulfilled. Anyone who has a dream but is not sure HOW or even IF they should follow it. 

The author is taking us through her journey of going after her dream of qualifying and running the Boston Marathon. She shows very clearly (through a lot of different examples) how mental training is the key ingredient to your success. Success of achieving any dream – this book is definitely for anyone, not just the running community.

But she doesn’t end there! She gives readers the tools (worksheets to download and a free course to take) that we can start using to go after our own dreams. This is not a book that you will read and put away. This is a book that will make you take action and start making changes in your life right away!  And you will reference it again and again.

What I loved about Mind Over Marathon the most is the way Cox encourages moms to follow their dreams. She also has lost herself in motherhood, and describes her journey to find herself again.

The message that really resonated with me was that we have to change our mindset from using our kids as an excuse not to follow our dreams and desires to thinking of our kids as the reason of why we should! They are looking up to us and we most definitely need to set a great example for them.

Miracle Mornings by Hal Elrod

I was introduced to this personal growth book during the beginning of my health journey. Someone suggested it on the Facebook group for people who are struggling to get up in the morning to work out. And I was definitely one of those people.

The basic concept of this books is to get up an hour earlier than you have to and use that time to work on yourself and your personal growth. And no, it does not mean sleeping less but rather going to sleep an hour early so you can wake up and hour earlier in the morning.

Elrod’s miracle morning routine has six components that are called SAVERS: Silence (mediation/prayer), Affirmation, Visualization (of you accomplishing your goals), Exercise, Reading, and Scribing (journaling).

Miracle Mornings is full of examples of people from different walks of life that have seen significant positive changes in their lives. I also have been practicing the miracle morning for the past two years and I am a huge fan!

RELATED: Miracle Morning Routine - Why I Get Up at 4 AM

Everyday Mindfulness by Melissa Steginus

This book is very unique in the way. Rather than describing how to be more mindful, it gives you 108 simple practices to transform your life one step (or one practice) at a time.

The book is divided into six sections, each representing a different area of you life:

• Physical (your body)
• Emotional (your mind)
• Rational (your thought process)
• Spiritual (your spirit)
• Occupational (your time management)
• Network (your relationships)

What I love about this book is that it makes you take action right away and continue to work on your self every day for the next 108 days. The common challenge with how we consume a lot of personal development books is that we get very excited about the new idea or concept while we read it but we never take the time to implement them.

Everyday Mindfulness is bullet proof when it comes to the implementation plan because of the way it is designed. Each day you work on your personal growth in small steps by completing a single task in one of the six areas of your life.

Each day leads to making small but meaningful positive changes in your life as you reflect on your task and learn a little more about yourself. If you are a busy working mom, be sure to grab a copy of this book. It has been designed with busy schedules in mind!

Living True – 40 Days to Get Back to You by Christy Wright

This devotional will take you through 40 days to help find yourself again. This book is specifically designed for moms who feel like they have lost themselves in motherhood. Like a little piece of them is missing. Mom who want to learn how to trust God to lead the way back to finding themselves.

You are more than your roles and responsibilities. You are more. And I believe God is inviting you to discover what that ‘more’ really is

christy wright

40 Days to Get Back to You is divided into four sections:

• Who God Is
• Who You Are
• Where You Are
• Where You’re Going

Each section will take you ten days to get through. Each day you will read about Wright’s life experience that led her to understanding herself better and learning more about her relationship with God.

Similarly to Everyday Mindfulness book, it will allow you to work on your personal growth right away and implement changes are you go.

Girl Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis

This a book that has become a bit controversial because of the unexpected life events of the author (her divorce) that has many people question the authenticity of her advice. However, this book has made such a positive impact on my life, that I have to share it.

Girl Wash Your Face is divided into twenty chapters, each of them dedicated to a lie that Rachel has been told and that she used to believe. Those lies have been a roadblock for her in becoming the best version of herself.  So she takes the readers on the journey of describing each lie and what she has done to stop believing it.

The most profound lesson I have taken away from this book is chapter about a lie that you neeed a hero. We sometimes go through life dreaming of a better future but not doing anyting to get us there. We keep thinking: if I had more money, if I had more time, or if I had a better job.

And Rachel gives some tough love on this topic. She says: “nobody will ever care more about your dream as much as you do”! That is so true! We need to stop waiting for someone else (the hero as she calls that person) to present us with an opportunity to change our lives around. We have to take our matters into our own hands. This is our life and we are responsible for it.

Books About Balancing Your Life

Let’s now talk about the books that will help you balance all your life areas as a working mom. And there are a lot of them. We always have a lot of responsibilities and try to manage our time to be best of our abilities.

These books are a great resource for working moms to help them balance all the areas of life.

Intentional Living by John Maxwell

Intentional Living is a book that everyone should read. John Maxwell talks about the importance of intentional living as key to our success and fulfillment.

An unintentional life accepts everything and does nothing. An intentional life embraces only the things that will add to the mission of significance.

John c. maxwell

Intentional Living is perfect reading for busy moms who feel overwhelmed by all the responsibilities. Working moms can sometimes find themselves struggling with mom quilt because they have a hard time balancing all areas of their lives.

What Maxwell teaches us in the book is to be intentional with what we want from our lives. Because when we become intentional, we no longer worry about anything outside of it.

This is an excellent read if you are starting your personal development journey. Maxwell describes his journey to personal development and is asking some thought provoking questions along the way. He also offers tips and advice on how to be successful with intentional living along the way.

After reading this book you will be equipped to start living with intention.

God Never Blinks – 50 Lessons for Life’s Little Detours by Regina Brett

Like the tile says, Regina describes 50 lessons she has learned in her life. The two biggest challenges she faced was raising her daughter as a single mom and battling cancer in her 40s. I don’t know about you, but I always find it fascinating to read about how people’s perspectives change after a near death experience. And battling cancer definitely falls into that category.

There was a lot of great lessons in this book to which I could relate. One particular one that I want to share with you ups and downs of life. The lesson talks about the fact that no matter how good or bad the situation looks like – it will change. 

It is so true. Nothing ever stays the same. Sometimes we feel like everything is going well and other times we feel like it’s a complete disaster all the way around. But what she points out is that if we look closely at any given point in our lives we will find good and bad things. 

As a busy working mom, things can feel very overwhelming at times. We go through phases where we are extremely busy at work and have very little time for our kids. We go through phases when our kids are little when we are so sleep deprived that our work suffers.

So keep in mind that it’s only a phase and IT WILL change!

In God Never Blinks Regina encourages the readers to concentrate on the positive things – even when you go through a very challenging time. You will always find something to be grateful for.

Choose to Win by Tom Ziglar

This book talks about different techniques and systems that you can implement in order to win in life. It stresses the importance of goal setting in all areas of our lives. 

As often happens in life when I came across this book in a library, I was just finishing up my Goal Planner and Tracker tool. And very quickly I discovered that Tom and I share the same philosophy on goals. We need to make sure that we address all areas of our lives. Simply because they are all interconnected.

Let me give you an example. Let say you have a side business and you only set your goals for that area of your life. At the same time you completely neglect two other areas of your life: health and finances. If you do it for an extended period of time you will start feeling the negative impact. You might start getting sick because you are under a lot of stress but don’t include any self-care. Or you might start having financial problems because you keep spending money on the growth of your business without spending any time creating budgets and setting financial plans.

In Choose to Win Tom Ziglar is telling us that if we want to win in life, in other words be happy and fulfilled, we need to take a holistic approach and address all areas of our lives.

This is exactly why I believe that it is very fitting for working moms who want to find that balance between all areas of their lives.

Start with Why by Simon Sinek

This is a leadership book that was recommended to me during a training session at my work. I read Start with Why a few months ago and realized that it is not only applicable to leadership and organizations but to personal growth and development as well as entrepreneurship.

The author talks about the importance of defining ‘why’ for each organization. Specifically why a specific entity/business was created in the first place. Too often organizations and small businesses are either not clear of why they exist or they lose sight of the reason why they were established once they become successful. Ultimately only the businesses with a clear why will thrive. And he provides a long list of great examples.

Now what does that have to do with working moms? You can, and should apply this concept to your work and all other areas of your life.

Every time you set up a goal for yourself – ask yourself ‘why’?

You should ask yourself ‘why’ every time you want to commit to something or do something. This could be weight loss, getting a promotion at work, doing date night with your husband on regular basis, or really anything else. Things both big and small.

Determination of you why will help you decide what things are really priorities for you and which ones you can eliminate.

When your why is strong – it will help you keep going when you work on your goals and dreams.

Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey

We could not finish the list of books to read without talking about money. There is no way to effectively balance our lives without financial stability.

I have heard about Dave Ramsey from some of the YouTube channels I watch. That prompted me to start watching his YouTube channel and get Total Money Makeover from my library. I read it in a day!

The book is about personal finance and how to get out of debt (if you have any), buid wealth, and become in charge of your money. He provides a simple framework with step by step instructions to your financial freedom.

This book completely changed how I look at money now. My mindset changed from ‘it’s ok to have a car loan, everyone has one’ to ‘I am not buying another car until I have cash to pay for it’.

It was a huge wake up call to realized that we tend to look at money as a way to reward ourselves every chance we get. You had a challenging day at work? Why not go shopping? You don’t have any money in your bank account for a shopping spree? What are credit cards for? We look for instant gratification and we have this sense of entitlement that we deserve things even when we cannot afford them. Well not after reading this book!