How a Weekly Evaluation Can Transform Your Work-Life Balance

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Today, I’m talking about one of the most powerful tools working moms overlook - evaluation. Think of it as a weekly report card for your life. I share the simple 3-question process I use to regularly check in on how aligned I am with my goals and how I help clients do the same to stay grounded, confident, and in control. This practice is a game-changer - especially if you’re tired of letting weeks fly by on autopilot. We’re halfway through the year, let’s use this moment to reset, reflect, and re-align. Your future self will thank you.  

Topics in this episode:

  • Why you need a personal evaluation rhythm (and how it’s like your kid’s report card) 

  • The 3 simple questions that can transform your week in just 10 minutes 

  • A behind-the-scenes look at how executive moms use weekly check-ins to stay grounded 

  • How clarity on your definition of success is a prerequisite for meaningful change 

  • Why consistent reflection leads to real work-life balance (not just wishful thinking) 

Show Notes & References:

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Transcript

Intro

If you're not regularly evaluating your life, you're leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. You wouldn't go a year at work without a review. You wouldn't let your kid go a semester without getting a report card. So why are you doing that in your personal life? 

In this episode, I'm sharing the exact evaluation process that I use every week to make sure that I'm living in alignment with what matters most. And of course, I help my clients to do exactly the same thing. It's 10 minutes, it's simple, and it will completely change your sense of control, clarity, and balance. 

Don't skip this. Your future self will thank you. Are you ready? Let's get to it. 

Welcome to the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms podcast, your go to resource for integrating your career ambitions with life as a mom, I'm distilling down thousands of coaching conversations I've had with working moms just like you, along with my own personal experience as a mom of two and sharing the most effective tools and strategies to help you quickly feel calm, confident, and in control of your ambitious working mom life. You ready? Let's get to it.

A Message to Stressed-Out Working Moms This Summer

Working moms, hello. I hope you are having a fun and restful summer. If you are not, and you are super stressed out, I just want you to know—I see you.

Summer is very, very challenging for many parents. We're out of rhythms. There's more opportunity for guilt to be present because our kids want to spend more time with us. There's just more sun outside. There are all these things that make us start to question our decisions a lot during the summer.

So if you are one of those moms, please, please have lots of compassion for yourself. Instead of focusing on all the things that are going wrong, I want you to really focus on the things that are going right this summer—the ways that you are creating connection.

If there's a particular way you could improve upon that, maybe there's one specific experience that you really just want to give to your kids, or that you really want to do with your kids, or something you want to be present for in your life, I encourage you to commit to doing just that one thing.

So you get to the end of the summer and you look back and it feels good. It feels fun. It feels like a summer that you are going to look back on and have memories of.

That's the goal. And to help you even figure out what that might be, this podcast episode is going to be super helpful. 

Because actually, I was trying to think back—have I ever really talked about this topic on the podcast before? And actually, I have.

I talked about it kind of as an end-of-year practice, but it's been a couple of years. And now is the perfect time to be talking about what this subject is, which is evaluation, because we are now halfway through the year.

Can you even imagine that? We are literally six months through the year.

And so it's a perfect time to be talking about evaluating and figuring out what's going well, what's not, what needs a tweak—all the things.

Why Evaluation Is Essential for Work-Life Balance

OK, so. Let's dive into talking a bit about evaluation, because evaluation is a really crucial next step for almost any goal that you set in your life.

And of course, we're going to talk a lot about the goal of work-life balance—and that's what this podcast is all about. But it is a crucial step in order to live the life that you want to have and to achieve your goals.

You're Already Doing Evaluation at Work—Here's How

And I know for a lot of us, evaluation is something that you probably do at work. You're probably much more familiar with it at work, right?

You likely have at least an annual review. You might have a biannual review. You might evaluate or do postmortems after some sort of presentation or big project, right? Most of us probably understand that.

And then, even if we think about the ways evaluation kind of naturally happens in our personal life—so for example, even our kids get evaluated, right? They get report cards. Mine get report cards three times a year.

I'm told by their teacher the things they're doing well. I'm told the things they aren’t very good at. I'm told the things their teacher would like to see them improve upon. That’s a form of evaluation.

Think of It Like a Report Card for Your Life

So you can think of this idea of evaluation almost like a report card for your life—for your working mom life.

And it's so important, because if I didn’t receive a report card from my kids’ teachers throughout the year—telling me what my kid was doing well, what they needed to work on—we would probably get to the end of the year and the things that didn’t go well, that weren’t great, that they should have been improving on… we wouldn’t have had any opportunity to grow in those areas.

We wouldn’t have focused on any of those things—because we wouldn’t have known to. So in order for me to support my children really well in school, regular evaluation—a report card—is important to set them up for success in their grade level.

And if you think about it, if you didn’t evaluate yourself at your job at least once a year—in the form of something like an annual review—you’re still going to do your job, of course, because that’s what you’re paid for.

But probably not at the optimal level. You’re probably going to always be wondering: Am I doing this right? Is this really what I should be doing?

I know so many women who come to me wishing they got more feedback—so they can be sure they’re on point, following what’s expected of them, understanding their growth edge, and knowing where to double down their effort in learning and growing. That optimization doesn’t happen without regular periods of evaluation.

But most of us don’t stop and evaluate unless we’re forced to—unless there’s a mechanism like a report card, like an annual review, like a monthly or quarterly meeting with your boss, or a personal trainer who helps evaluate your weight loss or strength goals once a month.

If you don’t have something regularly helping you evaluate, chances are—you probably don’t do much of it.

Executive Moms Know This: Weekly Check-Ins Are a Secret to Sustainable Success

A few weeks ago—even on the podcast—I had the VP of Google, Sarah Armstrong, on the show to talk about her experience being at a VP level and being a mom of a daughter.

And she talked about how she took weekly times that were super intentional for her. I think they were on Sundays, if I recall—times for her to sit down and really think about her week. To think about her goals before the week began. To think about what her priorities were for the week. To think about whether her priorities and her goals were sort of meeting the expectations of what success was for her and her life.

And she described it as being a sort of secret of success for her. It's something that was really important to her—to make sure she was living life without any regrets.

Why Weekly Evaluation Is Essential for Work-Life Balance

I interviewed another executive mom on my LinkedIn series called Executive Moms Behind the Scenes, where I literally interview executive women in high-level positions and talk about their lives as working moms—and some of the ups and downs of that experience.

Side note: I know I’ve been trying to promote this a bit more on the podcast, but if you’re not following me on LinkedIn, I really highly recommend that you do. It’s where I’m most active on social media. I do interview series, I post videos—there’s all sorts of content there, so I highly recommend it.

But I was interviewing Lori on this LinkedIn series, and she was talking about one of her main secrets—if you will—one of the things that really keeps her focused, making sure she’s prioritizing the right things, making sure there’s no room for guilt and regret: she does a weekly evaluation.

She checks in with herself once a week to make sure that she’s on point for the things that really matter most to her. To plan accordingly. To tweak, if necessary.

It is essential—if you want to create a life that is sustainably balanced—to get into these regular rhythms where you hold yourself accountable for your goals, your priorities, and how you're feeling.

And one of the best ways to really do that—it’s not the only way—but one of the best ways is in the form of some sort of evaluation.

It is essential if you want to create a life of sustainable balance.

You Know Evaluation Works—But Are You Using It in Your Personal Life?

So look—I have a feeling you are probably on board with the idea of the importance of evaluation. You see how it has been helpful for you in your professional life. We’re basically just taking that and translating it into your home life.

And so I want to ask you: How often are you actually stopping and evaluating life as a whole?

How often are you stopping to see—How are you feeling about life? How are you doing based on your priorities overall as a working mom?

Because if the answer is not very often or maybe not at all—or maybe just once a year around the New Year, you know, but it’s pretty general and there’s no real commitment or process to it...

Or maybe you are a very reflective person, and you do oftentimes journal or reflect on some level—but you don’t actually make a commitment with any of that evaluation or reflection to do something different—then this podcast is definitely for you.

Hope Isn’t a Strategy—Ownership and Evaluation Are

Because here in the Ambitious and Balanced community, we are not just hoping for you to experience the work-life balance that you want.

We’re not just hoping that when your kids graduate from high school and you look back, you don’t have any regrets. This is not that community. We are not just about hope when it comes to goals. We are about control. We are about getting it done.

Remember—I’m all about ownership. I want your work-life balance to feel like something you own. Something that feels completely in your control and isn’t just happening to you. Life isn’t just happening to you, you are in the driver’s seat of your own work-life balance.

That’s one of the key differences between me and a lot of other coaches. I teach the idea of ownership and control as much as possible. Because that is what’s going to get you as close as we can possibly get to guaranteeing that you actually hit your priorities, and your goals, and the experiences you want as a working mom.

It’s to evaluate. It is to regularly stop and look back - that’s what evaluation ultimately is, right? It’s looking back at what has happened, deciding what’s working, deciding what’s not working, and then making a plan or commitment to make some sort of change.

What Is Evaluation? A Simple Definition That Actually Helps You Move Forward

How do we want to define evaluation for the sake of today’s conversation—and in this community? Here’s what I have for you:
Evaluation is intentional time that you have set aside to think about your goals and make adjustments so that you can get there faster.

I’m going to walk you through my own very simple evaluation that I use—literally, I use it in my own life on a regular basis. I’m also going to share with you a little bit about the evaluation I give my clients in the Ambitious and Balanced cohorts. It’s slightly different.

I’m going to give you two different examples of what effective evaluations really could look like.

Before You Evaluate, You Have to Know What Success Looks Like

But before I even get into that, one of the things I hope you just heard me say as I was sharing the definition of evaluation—right? It’s intentional time that you set aside to think about your goals and make adjustments so you can get there faster—the thing I hope you heard is that: You have to know your goals.

You have to know what success is like for you as a working mom. You have to know what the final destination is—so that we don’t guess if you’re moving in the right direction. We know.

It’s like putting GPS into your mind and saying, “This is our destination. This is what success for me as a working mom looks like. These are my goals. This is how I know I’m not going to have any regrets in my life.”

Your brain is craving that kind of direction. And it’s the first step to almost anything. I call that the Clarity Step. Right? Just generally speaking, it’s the Clarity Step. In the three steps that I teach in the Ambitious and Balanced program, it’s giving your brain some sense of direction.

You Can’t Evaluate Progress If You’ve Never Set the Goal

And if you aren’t very clear about what success looks like for you as a working mom—or in this season of life—then your first step is this.

Because here’s the truth: You can’t evaluate a goal if you don’t ultimately have one.

You can’t evaluate whether you’re losing weight at the rate you want to if you’ve never decided how much weight you actually want to lose.

So—what is success for you as a working mom?

Now, I’m not going to get very far into that because we talk about that here on the podcast all the time. That’s not exactly what this episode is about.

But if you’re feeling lost… if you’re feeling stuck as a working mom… if you’re confused about your priorities or what you really want out of life… or maybe you’re not even sure if any of that is possible for you—and you’ve got all those swirly questions going on?

Then your first step is going to be this: stop and make some decisions around what actually is important to you.

What does it look like to get to the end of this season of your life as a working mom and say, “I was successful at it. I achieved what I wanted to achieve.”

If You Want Help Defining Success as a Working Mom, This Program Is for You

Now, of course, I do this formally with my clients. So if you’re actually looking for someone to guide you through that process—to give you the exact questions, to help you figure out what you need to be thinking about in order to frame up success for you, to frame up the idea of a regret-free life for you as a balanced working mom—then the Ambitious and Balanced program is the right place for you to do that. Right?

The next cohort is actually starting in September. I will walk you through this process where I help you define exactly what success is for you as a working mom. I walk you through what work-life balance really means. And since that’s such a subjective term, you have to actually put a lot of words around what it means and give yourself a practical vision of what that looks like.

So if you’re looking for that step-by-step guide, I’m totally here for you. I’ve got you. It’s the basis of what we do in the Ambitious and Balanced program. It’s the first step. I would love, love, love to have you in it.

I’m actually already forming that group right now. I know it feels early, but for those who join now, they’re going to have the opportunity to also work with me one-on-one as we move closer to September—when that cohort officially launches.

So I’d love to connect with you. There are links in the show notes for that. Okay?

Let’s Assume You Know What Success Looks Like—Now It’s Time to Evaluate

But for the rest of the episode, we’re just going to have to assume that you know what your goals are. You feel really clear on what success as a working mom is. You know what your regret-free life looks like. You have some clarity around your priorities—at least on some level, right? We’re going to assume that.

And now it’s time to get into a regular rhythm of evaluating how you’re doing in meeting those goals—in meeting that definition of success that you have for yourself.

Weekly Is Ideal, Monthly Is Non-Negotiable

Now, I think weekly is optimal. That’s going to give you the most opportunity to keep yourself on track. To evaluate what’s working, what’s not working for you in meeting your goals. To optimize, make decisions, tweak things that aren’t really working for you.

But I know weekly can be difficult for people. And believe me, I have gone in and out of having regular seasons of doing that weekly—and not. So I get it.

But if you’re just starting out and weekly feels super overwhelming to you—at a minimum, you have to do monthly. Right?

Quarterly—I think—is too long. And for sure, six months or yearly is too long. Because this is the opportunity you’re giving yourself to tweak.

Why Delayed Evaluation Leads to Regret

If you imagine yourself going down a path—right? Like, if you’re on a hike and you have two different trails to choose from, and they’re just one degree off from each other… they don’t seem far apart at first.

But if you start taking the one-degree-off trail, eventually, down the line, those paths get further and further and further apart. And you may not even realize it. You’ve gone one degree off for so long that it’s going to be difficult—or at least more challenging—to get back.

If you’re evaluating on a weekly basis, you’re going to know if you’re still on the right track. You’re going to know if you’re one degree off and need to get yourself back on the trail you actually intended to walk.

Versus—if you wait six months or a year—you may have gone so far off your path that it’s really difficult to return.

That’s why I definitely suggest monthly at a minimum, weekly at best.

And not only that—I don’t want you to get to the end of six months or a year and look back and think: Man, I failed. I should’ve done things differently. I focused on all the wrong things. I feel terrible about myself as a mom, as a wife. I shouldn’t have done those things. Why did I work so much? Why did I prioritize that?

We don’t want any of that here in this community. Again, here in this community, we're not just hoping that we achieve a balanced life. We are in control. We are putting ourselves in the driver's seat of that. And one of the most essential tools to doing that is evaluation, right? Ideally, again, on a weekly basis, or a monthly basis, depending on where you're at. 

The Simplicity of Weekly Evaluation: Just 3 Questions

All right, so let’s talk about the simplicity of an evaluation. Right? Very simple. Three questions that I use—these are literally the exact questions I use when I evaluate anything. I just tailor it to whether I’m talking about a project, or a launch, or a program, or a season, a week, a month—whatever it is.

I use the same exact three questions. Very simple.

You ready?

Here’s the first one: What went well?


Or—what is going well, if I’m kind of in the midst of a goal of some kind. What is going well? What’s working? What’s well?

Start with the Wins—Big and Small

We always start here when we are talking about evaluation. We always want to start with the successes, because our brain has a negative bias, so it’s really easy to jump to the things that are not going well.

But we’re going to force your brain to think of all the good first. To literally write down as many things as you can about what went well—the successes that you’ve had as it relates to your vision of work-life balance, as it relates to your goals as a working mom right now in this season.

Remember—we’re not just evaluating life in general. We’re evaluating the goals in specific. Are you living out the successful working mom life that you have defined for yourself? That’s essentially what you’re trying to determine.

With what went well, it could be all sorts of things. What are some of the things that went well that made you feel successful this week? What are the little ways you stayed on track this week—the moments where you overcame something that was really uncomfortable for you? Where you said no? Where you stayed calm—even if it was just for five seconds longer than you usually do with your kids before you lose it. Right?

Whatever it is—we want to measure the little bits of success and the big pieces of success. The little moments of success. Even something like awareness is something that went well for you.

If you’ve been sort of in the dark about what’s been happening in your life—what’s working, what’s not working, what your priorities are—and you just become more aware of it throughout your week, even if you haven’t been able to change your bad behavior or your overworking habits, that’s still progress.

That’s still something we want to celebrate.

So we want to celebrate all the things that went well—even if they’re in little, incremental steps that only slightly move the needle forward toward your version of success as a working mom. We want to name every little thing we can.

What Didn’t Go So Well?

After we’ve done that—remember, it’s after, we always start with the successes first—secondly, we move into this question: What didn’t go so well?

It’s the natural next question. Again, our brain is probably very clued into this more than it’s clued into success. That’s not a problem. That’s sort of the way our brains were designed, OK?

So in this case, you start writing the things that maybe pulled you away or distracted you from your version of success, from your goals, or ways—commitments that you made—that you weren’t able to actually achieve. Maybe it was that you said yes to too many meetings. Maybe you were trying to pause before you said yes to things and you didn’t do that as often as you wanted to. Or maybe even though you paused longer to stay calm with your kids, it still ended up in some sort of explosion.

Whatever it might be—the behaviors, the thoughts, the mindsets, the feelings, the habits that are not serving you towards your goals as a working mom and what work-life balance means to you—we want to name it all here, right? And the what's not going well.

No Judgment Here

Now, remember, there’s no judgment here. There’s no shaming, right? We can’t evaluate how to make progress towards our goals and not think about the things that are not going well. That’s ultimately the things that we have to optimize, the things that we have to change.

Whether we’re talking about a weight loss goal or a money-saving goal or a promotion goal or a work-life balance goal, you’re going to have to think about the things that are holding you back from reaching your goals in order to actually move forward, in order to optimize.

So again, this is—we want to come at this from a very neutral perspective. Step back. Really looking at: What’s not working for me as I think about making progress towards this? I’m not going to shame myself. I’m not going to go down a negative thought spiral at all. I’m just going to name it. I’m going to put it down on paper.

And then I’m going to take that next step, right? And that next step, that last question to ask yourself—you’ve got what’s going well or what’s gone well, what hasn’t gone well as it relates to my work-life balance goals or my vision and then lastly, what do I want to do differently? 

Make a Plan for What Didn’t Go Well

Literally, you're making a plan for each of the things on what didn't go well last week and you're deciding what you want to do this week—how you want to correct it or how you want to make a little bit of progress towards kind of overcoming that, whatever it is. Because remember, there's a lot of trial and error involved in hitting goals. There's a lot of figuring out what works for you, right? And how to plan better. You have to make a plan, evaluate if that plan worked, tweak the plan and move on.

That's the process of learning and growth, whether we're talking about a skill set you're learning or whether we're talking about a goal like work-life balance. So of course, there has to be time where we evaluate and decide to do something differently. 

Because I promise, if you wake up tomorrow and you have no plan for how to do better—you have no plan on how to not yell at your kids tomorrow, you have no plan on how to not rush them out the door first thing in the morning and be all frantic, you have no plan for how you're going to say no to all the meetings because your schedule is already full—if you don't make a plan and you just think, “You know, I'm just going to do better tomorrow. I've just got to stick to it, right? I just have to do it,” but you don't actually make any circumstantial change or mindset change, then you're not actually going to do anything differently.

Bridge the Gap with a Plan

So when it comes to thinking about, “What am I going to do differently for each of these items on the 'What didn’t go so well' list?”—it could be: I'm going to find some accountability for this. Or I'm going to journal and reflect on this in the morning. Or I'm going to listen to some affirmations. Or I'm going to pause before I say yes. Or I'm going to sit and meditate. Or I'm going to take a walk when I'm really upset. Or I'm going to pause before I say yes to any kind of opportunity coming my way. Or I'm just going to practice telling myself, “I am loved” or “I am enough.” 

Every day I'm going to write it down on a post-it note. Every day when I get into work, if that's the mindset you're trying to cultivate.

Ideally, there's almost like this one-to-one. Like for every item you have on the “What didn’t go so well” list, you want an item for what you're going to do to correct that on some level.

Don’t Overcommit—One Small Tweak Might Solve Several Problems

Now, of course, we don't want too many things on this list. We don't want to make a commitment that we can't keep next week. So you might have to pare this down to just a couple of things that you want to focus on.

But my guess is there are several things that can kind of be killed with one stone, if you will. Two birds with one stone. So a lot of the "what to do differently" probably could be bucketed together, and it likely has a very similar solution or a very similar tweak that you want to make this next week.

Busy? Set a Timer and Keep It Simple

Now, look, I can tell you that one of the things that gets in the way of me doing this exercise on a weekly basis is when I get super busy. And when I think that this kind of practice, if you will, is going to take way too long.

Like, there's just so many things that I would have to evaluate, and it's going to be exhausting. I just don't have the time for it. And I excuse myself away.

Okay, look, I'm human. I do it too. I know we all do it. So if you're like me and that's part of the problem, I can tell you the thing that has helped me the most kind of overcome that is to decide how long I'm going to give myself to evaluate. And I set a timer.

So in this case, it's mostly 10 minutes. I can do a pretty good evaluation in 10 minutes—thinking about what's gone well, what hasn't gone well, and what I want to do differently next week. It's not going to be exhaustive by any means, but it's going to be enough for my brain to be able to take that step back and know what kinds of changes or tweaks I'm going to make in the coming days and week.

Ultimately, so that I don't just kind of live in this rinse and repeat of regret, or rinse and repeat of guilt, or rinse and repeat of exhaustion every day.

Okay. So if you're like me and your wheels spin with "there's not enough time to do this," just simply decide ahead of time how much time you want to give yourself to do it. Set a timer—and then let yourself be done.

The 3 Simple Questions That Can Change Everything

So this simple evaluation—what went well, what didn't go well, what do I want to do differently?

I have done it in weekly rhythms. I have done it in monthly rhythms. I do it at the end of the year for sure. I do it at the ends of projects. I do it at the end of kind of big initiatives that I put out there. I’ll do it at the end of a workshop—just very simply evaluating so that I can get better and I can move closer towards the goals that I have for myself and my life and my business as a working mom, right?

Three very simple questions that you can use for any evaluation, in any situation.

Why Most Working Moms Don't Evaluate (and How I Help Them Start)

Now, in my Ambitious and Balanced cohort, it's a little bit different. I actually want them to dig in a little bit more.

If you're not in a habit of evaluation—and most of my clients that come in are not—they don't have regular, self-reflective evaluation. Of course, they do in their job. They're probably pretty good at it at their job. But they just don't do it. They don’t reflect that into their whole life.

So when I give them evaluation, I want them to get a little bit more specific. I don't want it to feel so open-ended.

A Weekly Work-Life Balance Score That Sparks Real Change

And so with my cohorts, I actually have them use a number scale—and you can do this too. I'm going to walk you through the questions.

It sounds like this: From a scale from one to ten, where ten is like, “It’s amazing, it’s perfect, it’s great,” and one being, “It’s terrible, it’s as far from perfect as it possibly can be,” how well did I meet my work-life balance goals this week?

Okay—essentially, what number would I give myself?

So then, of course, my clients give themselves a number—they grade themselves, if you will. And then let’s just say it’s a five. The next logical question to ask is, “Well, why did you give yourself that five?”

Now I like to think about that on both sides of the five, both sides of the number. So the question is really twofold: It's, “Why did you rate yourself as high as the number you gave yourself?” Like, “Why did you rate yourself as high as a five?” Or if it was a two, I would say, “Why did you rate yourself as high as a two?”

Essentially, we’re giving your brain a chance to ask for the successes. It’s asking for the wins. It’s asking for what went well that you might rate yourself that high.

And then they have to answer the other side of that question, which is, “Why did you give yourself such a low number? Such a low grade?” Whether it’s a two, a five, or a nine, right? “Why wasn’t it a ten ultimately?”

That kind of gets at the “What didn’t go so well this week?”

And then the last question I have them answer is: “What do you need to do this week to move that number up—to move closer toward a ten?”

Small Weekly Tweaks Lead to Big Long-Term Progress

And I have them focus just on one or two tweaks. I don’t want a bunch of tweaks through the week—that can be really overwhelming. It’s just, “What’s one or two things you could do to move your number up closer to ten?” Assuming that ten is possible for all of us, right?

And this requires them to get really specific—specific about the commitments, specific about the changes, right?

We don’t want their brain to feel confused or unsure about what is going to happen this week. We want their brain to know exactly what their commitments are, exactly what their goals are, and how they’re going to make incremental progress to meet those goals, right?

If you imagine yourself doing that week after week—like in this program, right? Three months in this program, for essentially 12 to 15 weeks or so—you are evaluating using the same scale and thinking about it. And you’re constantly, every week, tweaking along the way.

You’re going to get yourself to the point where that number permanently moves up, right? Because you can’t make that sort of change—little tweaks every single week—and be that aware and that evaluative and not see that number sustainably move up. It’s just impossible.

And then one of the things I like to do for my clients is, at the end of the program, I actually give them back all of their evaluations. I put it all into one document so that they can see—literally watch—their numbers and how their numbers progressed throughout the whole three months.

And of course, there’s some ups and there’s some downs and so forth. But across the board, generally speaking, you’ll see where their numbers started—at probably anywhere from a three to a five, which is a common place in the beginning of the program—and they’re ending with consistent numbers at seven, eight, and nine throughout the week.

And so, you can really see big changes that have happened over the course of three months.

The Discipline of Weekly Evaluation Can Transform Your Life

Evaluating is a really challenging discipline for anyone. If you haven't really done it regularly, it takes discipline to really sit down and to evaluate the things that are working in your life—kind of in a general sense—the things that are not, and what you want to do differently.

If you're not well-versed in that, I would imagine this is going to take a little effort for you, right? You're going to have to put effort into the life that you want to create—if you want to create that life, right? If you want to actually generate that life for you.

So I want you to imagine what would happen if you did a weekly evaluation just like this—even just using my three questions, right?

If you imagine yourself on Friday, this upcoming Friday, sitting down, evaluating your week, looking at your goals, looking at the ways that you want to live as a working mom, and then thinking about what went well, and thinking about what didn't go well, and then creating for yourself a plan on how you're going to do differently next week—that’s super specific, right? And feels actually attainable to you.

Imagine how different you would feel. How much more control you would have.

Visualize It: Step Into the Driver’s Seat of Your Life

Can you see it? Literally, I want you to close your eyes and imagine exactly where you would do that—whether you are at your computer and you opened up a document on your computer, or whether you opened up a journal or a legal pad, whatever it is.

Imagine yourself, wherever you would be on a Friday afternoon, giving yourself the space to evaluate. Putting yourself in the driver’s seat of your goals.

And now imagine doing that again next week, and then the next week. And imagine if you kept doing that. What would happen?

Now Is the Time: Evaluate Your Progress and Finish the Year Strong

You have a unique opportunity right now, because we're basically at the middle of the year, and it's a chance for you to think about what your working mom goals are—what success for you looks like this year as a working mom—and to evaluate if you're making progress towards those goals in the ways that you want.

Now again, I know most of you do actually know how to do this. You do this for work on some sort of regular cadence. Now it's time to just take those same principles and use them in your personal life so that you feel successful as a working mom all of the time.

And one of the best parts about joining Ambitious and Balanced in the next cohort coming up in September is that there is built-in accountability toward that.

Remember, I read each and every single one of those evaluations. I give feedback on them. I coach during our weekly calls on what I’m seeing come up in those evaluations. As an expert, I look at the challenges, I look at the successes, I look at the tweaks—and I help you make sure that you are remaining on point, on progress toward the successful working mom life that you desire.

If you are truly serious about this being the year where you build a foundation of work-life balance, there is still time. This is the last cohort of 2025. We will be meeting from September 17th to December 17th—on Wednesdays, right before the holidays.

We’re going to shut it down.

So this is like the perfect time to end the year strong, to end the year having built for yourself a foundation of the principles of what it takes to build a successful working mom life—that you can repeat over and over and over again—to literally get back into the driver's seat of your life and ensure that you live life exactly the way you want.

You can do that by simply going to the website: 👉 rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced


That's where you're going to get all the dates. You're going to learn all the information. You can sign up or you can book a call with me to learn more and make sure you're a perfect fit.

Don’t Wait—Commit to the Life You Want Right Now

Look, the people that are signing up right now—they're actually starting to work with me one-on-one. Because that's one of the things I'm offering: a bit of one-on-one support between now and the time that we start.

And so this is the perfect time. Don’t wait until we get closer to September. Decide now that this is the right commitment for you—so you get it in your calendar. There’s no excuses about time. We are months in advance for you to be able to put it in your calendar and stay committed to it.

I would love to walk you through the Ambitious and Balanced process, to hold you accountable, to teach you how to evaluate in a successful way where you literally take ownership of the life that you're creating.

Now is the perfect time. It has never been more perfect, working moms. I'm here for you.

I hope that you found this episode helpful to you as you think about adding another tool into your toolkit that literally will catapult you into the working mom life that you desire. It's a tool that I use regularly. It is something I teach all of my clients to do, and I know that you can do it too.

All right, working moms. Until next week—let’s get to it.

Rebecca Olson