Stop Surviving (Part 1): From Panic to Peace and the Path to Internal Calm

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Today, I’m kicking off a special series called Stop Surviving—and we’re diving into what I believe is the most transformational shift working moms can make: internal peace. You’ll hear about real women who were once trapped in survival mode—feeling behind before the day even began and how they reclaimed calm, control, and confidence in their lives. This episode is raw, practical, and deeply inspiring if you're tired of spinning and ready to actually feel present and grounded. Plus, I walk you through the exact 3-part process I teach in the Ambitious and Balanced group coaching program. 

Topics in this episode: 

  • What “survival mode” really feels like from the inside 

  • Client stories of peace and transformation 

  • How unshakeable confidence stops the inner critic cold 

  • The 3 C’s Process: Clarity, Confidence, Control 

  • Why balance isn’t about the perfect schedule—it starts inside 

Show Notes & References:   

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Transcript

Intro

Welcome to this special series I'm calling Stop Surviving. This is for every ambitious working mom who feel stuck in the loop of just getting through the day where you're feeling like you're juggling so much work and kids and laundry and meetings, and somewhere in there, you're supposed to feel successful and you're supposed to feel grateful and you're supposed to feel fulfilled and joy. 

But instead, what you often feel is just overwhelmed, exhausted, reactive, and disconnected from life that you've worked so hard to build. This series is about what happens when you stop operating in survival mode and start actually living. 

I'm gonna walk you through the three most powerful transformational results women experience inside my group coaching program Ambitious and Balanced. The first one is peace over panic. The second is time for yourself. And the third is success that actually feels like success.

 And if all of this speaks to you, then I want you to know the September cohort of Ambitious and Balanced is open right now. A few spots have already been filled and once I hit 10, I close the doors. 

So if you're tired of feeling like you're just treading water, like if you're ready to feel calm and in control and alive in your life once again, then I encourage you to go to my website, www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced to learn more, to get all of the dates, and to book a 30 minute strategy call with me to make sure you are the perfect fit for this program. 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. 

Welcome, my friends, to the very first episode of the survival series that I am doing over the next several weeks. And today we're focusing on what might be the most impactful result that my clients achieve when they reach a more balanced, integrated state in their life.

But I'm not gonna lie. It's not the most sexiest result.

We're gonna talk about a couple of those in the series—ones that sound a bit more sexy, a bit more cool if you achieved it. But this one, this one makes all of the difference. The result is internal calm, or peace.

And it's almost like the opposite of what is likely going on inside of you if you are in the middle of survival mode, right?

Because survival mode is not just like your life on the outside being chaotic, where there's too much on your plate and there's not enough time to get it all done. And you're just experiencing this go, go, go, go, go all of the time, and there's no time for yourself and there's no time for rest.

I mean, of course that is what it looks like on the outside. But inside, when you're in survival mode, you're experiencing something much more impactful.

What survival mode is like on the inside.

And here's how I would describe what's likely going on inside of you if you're in the middle of survival mode: You probably wake up and you already feel behind, right before the day even starts.

You likely jump right into mental overdrive, right? Lunchboxes and Slack messages and meetings and doctor's appointments and emails and phone calls. All the things immediately from the moment you wake up.

You're sort of in reactive mode all day, pulled in 10 different directions, feeling like you can't give anyone exactly what they need. And you're failing all the time.

You end your day questioning if you really did anything at all of value, if you did enough—even though you really never stopped moving throughout the day.

The Internal Talk Track of Survival Mode: “No Matter What I Do, I’m Failing”

If I pulled language from my clients, they would say things like this:
 
“I live with this low hum of anxiety I didn’t even realize was there.”
 
Or another client would say, “I never stop, but I also never feel caught up.”
 
And the last one is, “I don’t know how to shut down my brain.”
 
I think of the internal state of survival mode as being this feeling of utter failure—no matter how much you do or how hard you try.
 
It’s like an internal talk track, as I like to describe it with my clients, that is always telling you that you are failing, that you’re letting people down, that you’re missing the mark, that you’re not doing enough.
 
And how likely, probably everyone around you actually notices—at any time, they might find out.
 
So many women that I work with who join the Ambitious and Balanced program, this has been their internal experience for so long that it feels almost normal, right?
 
So much so that they’re sort of waiting—for their kids to get a little bit older, for life to get a little bit easier, for a project to slow down, or for the season to end—so that they can finally, finally prioritize rest and prioritize themselves and get out of survival mode, right?
 
How often have you likely said, “After this project, I’m gonna get right back into that workout routine”?
 
Or, “If I could just make it through this season, then I’m finally gonna be able to slow down and get back on track,” right?
 
How often are you thinking that work-life balance is down the road, right?
 
When you just get through this time period—whatever that is—then, only then, can you experience balance.

Don’t Settle for Survival — Take Back Control of How You Feel

But the goal here in the Ambitious and Balanced community and in my programs is that we don’t settle, right?
 
It’s not to just say, “This is the way it is,” but to do something about it—to take back ownership and control over not only what you’re doing and prioritizing and your time, but over how you feel in your life so that there’s no regrets.
 
And so one of the key results that my clients achieve in the Ambitious and Balanced program is ending all of that hyper-negative talk track in their head, right?
 
The talk track that is focusing on how you’re failing. It’s reminding you of how you’re not getting it all done, how you’re doing things wrong, how you’re not making enough progress—and learning how to develop a much more peaceful, calm, internal voice.
 

What Inner Peace Really Looks Like (Even When Life Is Still Busy)

My clients that achieve this much more peaceful, calm, internal state—their lives tend to look like this, right?
 
They get to the end of their workday and they say, “That was enough. I did enough for the day.” And then they actually don’t log back on or check their messages later.
 
My clients that have this internal, peaceful, calm state, they hear a meltdown going on around them—whether that’s their kids having a meltdown or maybe there’s some massive fire going on at work (not like literal fire, but like, fire going on at work)—and they pause before they react.
 
So they make much more proactive decisions.
 
My clients that experience so much more calm inside of them—they make a decision and they don’t have to run it by six people before they decide.
 
They wake up and they actually do their morning routine that is fulfilling for them. So they fill their cup and they operate from a filled cup every single day.
 
And my clients that have developed this peaceful, calm state—they feel still even when life is busy, even when they have back-to-back meetings all day.
 
My clients say this to me all the time. They’ll tell me how their circumstances in life don’t really look a whole lot different, right?
 
But internally, things have completely changed.
 
And that’s almost exactly what one of my clients, Kathy, said.

She was in the very first cohort of Ambitious and Balanced. And that was one of the things she wrote in her evaluation.

Let me just read it verbatim for you. Here’s what she said.

She said, “Even though my circumstances haven’t changed, I feel vastly more in control.”
 

Feeling More in Control Without Changing Your Circumstances

You see, Kathy came into this program with a demanding job, looking for a promotion, two very young kids, a husband that worked nights.

And yeah, all of that was still true by the end of the program.

Although actually—she had received that promotion within the three months that we worked together. And yet she felt immensely more in control of her life.
 
That wasn’t because she had figured out some time management hack or strategy.

I mean, of course she got more efficient with her time. And she did, in fact, learn how to prioritize with so much more ease using the process that I teach you.
 
But really what happened is she took back control of how she felt about her life—how she was thinking about her life, her internal state in her life.

And then there was my client, Dana.

Dana was actually on this podcast a couple of months ago, and she was sharing how just seven weeks into this three-month Ambitious and Balanced program—so just over halfway through—she was sharing how transformational the program had already been for her.
 

When You Think Quitting Is the Only Way to Get Balance

Because she came into the program thinking that the only solution to work-life balance in any sustainable way was for her to quit her job.

She was convinced of it, right?

And that's not so uncommon for a lot of working moms when they come to me—when they are relentlessly faced with the choice, thinking that they have to choose between their career and being a good mom.

Almost every woman I know would choose their kids, right? Because family comes first.

Now, we might feel resentful or bitter about it—but of course that’s what we’re gonna choose.
 
And I remember on Dana's 30-minute strategy call together, I told her, look—hold off on the thought of quitting.

I want you to go through this program, and I want you to learn what it takes to build work-life balance at a foundational level—and what the four key priorities are to doing that.

And then I want you to start experiencing a bit of work-life balance in your current job. And then come to me and tell me if you still want to quit.
 

Reclaiming Identity and Control Without Leaving Her Job
Well, guess what? Of course, seven weeks in—she shared it here on the podcast—that internal questioning, that internal wondering if she could really figure this out, if she was capable enough to really work this demanding job and be a great mom, had all gone away.

She had actually learned how to take back control of the negative chatter. And in so doing, she learned 100% she could actually stay in this job.
 
I want to share a quote from her final evaluation that she wrote.

She said, “My internal dialogue has shifted from ‘This is too much, I can't handle this,’ to now where I log off without guilt and I've started going out again and I have found myself rediscovering who I am beyond just a mom and a manager.”

The Power of Presence: Ena’s Story

The last client I want to tell you about, before I tell you about the actual process of getting to this point, is Ena. You’re actually going to hear from Ena on the podcast in an upcoming episode, where she’s going to share more of her story in her own words—around the transformation and the peace that she experienced joining Ambitious and Balanced.

And she told me this story, and it just blew me away. I had to share it here with you today.

She was sharing about how just last week she was sitting with her son—actually, I don’t think she was sitting with her son. She was at her son’s swim meet, and she was sitting in this beam of sun.

Her eyes were closed. She was just taking in the warmth. And then she noticed some birds chirping. She probably felt a little breeze on her face. Right? Can you imagine that moment?

It was a moment of pure presence. And while that moment doesn’t sound like much—for Ena, it was everything.

From Frenetic Pressure to Internal Calm

She told me that she could not have imagined having a moment like that before she joined Ambitious and Balanced.

Because her brain wouldn’t have allowed her to focus on that. Right? Her brain would have been telling her she needed to get something done during that time. She needed to pull out her laptop. She needed to be coaching her son. That there were more productive things to do than sitting in a beam of light and listening to birds chirp.

Right before she joined the program, she had an internal talk track that was constantly telling her she was behind. That she needed to get more done. That she needed to do more. That she should be doing something at almost every moment of the day.

But through this program, she developed an internal calm—an internal presence that is not always frenetic or frantic all of the time.

That is not telling her that she is failing someone at every moment of the day.

That she’s just a human being—and she gets to experience the wonder of the sun, and the birds chirping, and the beauty of our world.

Creating Calm in a High-Achieving Life

And for a high achiever like Ena—who came into this program averaging at least 60 hours a week, if not more—who now says she rarely works the weekends like she used to.

And when she does work evenings or weekends, it’s on her terms. It’s something she has chosen to do. And it’s because of the calm presence that she was able to create inside of her.

Now, I have no doubt that if I would have told Ena before the program started that she would be able to create an internal sense of calm and actually experience regular moments of not doing anything—right? Just being—I don’t think she would’ve believed me. She was too deep into survival mode.

Even the Most Overwhelmed Moms Can Create Calm

Just like Kathy, who was drowning in a super demanding job with two kids under the age of two. But that's what makes this such a powerful achievement, right? That's what makes this result so mind-blowing.

Teach you some of the best practices for time management? Sure. Break down exactly how to prioritize the things that matter most? Okay. Calm down the negative chatter in your head that has likely plagued you for most of your adult life? Yeah, right. And yet, it is consistently the result that clients share with me when we close out our work together in coaching.

So let's talk for a moment about how my clients actually achieve this result. What do they do specifically in the program to help them get there? Because likely you're in the same place. You're thinking, Yeah, right. I've had not-enough thoughts my entire life. There's no way that I could actually solve for that.

The Three Core Shifts: Clarity, Confidence, and Control

Well, let me break it down—exactly how we do it inside the Ambitious and Balanced program. Okay, you ready?

In Ambitious and Balanced, I teach a simple but powerful process to help women move out of swirl—the swirl of, like, negative chatter—into a much more calm, confident internal space. Right? And I frame this process around three core shifts: clarity, confidence, and control.

So let me walk you through what that actually looks like for each of those.

Clarity Starts With Reclaiming Who You Are Outside of Performance

So, clarity. If you want to create internal calm—an internal peace—you have to reclaim who you are outside of performance. Before you could ever feel grounded, you need to know what you're grounding into. Right? And for most working moms, their identity has been filtered through what they do—at work, at home, through their kids, by everyone else. Right?

So this first piece of the process is about coming back to your worth as a human being. Not just an achiever, not as a mom, not as a performer, but as you. Your value doesn't rise and fall based on how productive you are, or how patient you were this morning with your kids, or whether you got recognition for the work that you recently did. And when you have that kind of clarity—when you know who you are and what really matters to you, you stop needing to prove yourself all day long.

This is where we start. In the program, we do identity work that helps you untangle your value from your output. So within this program, there is a series of video teachings where you learn the process. Each video comes with a worksheet that you dive into answering questions that really help you tailor the process to your life. And one of them, in specific, is around who you are—your identity. And I help you actually to name who you are at this foundational level, so your brain has evidence to see that you are more than just what you do.

So that's our starting point inside the program.

Unshakable Confidence Doesn’t Come From Getting It All Right

The second C is confidence. When it comes to building an internal voice that is supportive of you, that is calm, that is at peace—what's required is that you build what I like to call your unshakable internal belief. Right from that sense of clarity, where you know who you are, we move into confidence.

But not this, like, surface-level confidence. Not “I fake it till I make it.” Not like, “I need to get everything right” kind of confidence. I'm talking about unshakable confidence, right? The kind that doesn't waver based on how your presentation goes or whether you got everything done on your to-do list or not. Right?

It sounds like this: I'm capable even if I don't have all the answers. I deserve this job even if I don't get it right all of the time. I belong here. Even if I make a mistake, I'm doing enough even if I don't check every box. Right?

It's the kind of confidence that creates real internal peace because it means you don't constantly question yourself. You don't need to earn your enoughness every single day when you have unshakable confidence.

How We Build True Confidence Inside the Program

And the way we do that inside the program is through some mindset work, some coaching, and some practices—specifically, like the Daily Kickstart, which is my simple 10-minute morning routine that helps you align with who you want to be before the world starts, like, pulling and tugging at you each and every day.

I also teach you a few practices like thought adoption that helps you practice believing really powerful, capable, belonging, enough types of thoughts every single day. And then we also do some deep thought work as we reframe self-doubt so you stop trying to tie your worth and your performance to praise.

Control Isn’t About Being Type A—It’s About Mental Authority

The last C is control, which is about taking charge of your thoughts and your emotional world. And of course, this is the part that a lot of women like to skip—or they don't have much in their toolkit to actually deal with this. But it is the piece that changes everything when it comes to creating internal peace and calm, right?

Because even with clarity and confidence, your brain is gonna keep offering to you the same old thought patterns. Right?

 

I'm behind. 

I'm not doing enough. 

They're probably disappointed in me. 

When 5 o'clock hits and it's time to leave—no matter if you got two things done or ten things done on your list—your brain is gonna tell you it should have been more. Right? That's an old thought loop. And if you don't know how to manage those thought loops, they're gonna keep running you every single day.

So this third C is about control—but not in a rigid way. I'm not talking like type A kind of control. This is about mental authority. It's about learning how to notice when you're in a negative thought spiral, interrupt that spiral, and then replace it with something more useful. I call that the Pivot Protocol.

The Pivot Protocol: Rewiring Your Daily Thought Loops

I teach you a very specific six-step process on exactly how to interrupt your thought loops so you don't keep swirling in them day in, day out. Right?

So here's how we do that inside the program. I actually teach you how to catch your unhelpful thought loops in real time. And then you practice introducing new, more supportive self-talk. I like to call that your cheerleader thoughts in that moment. And then you build those thoughts into a sort of daily mental habit—if you will, a mental workout—so that it becomes so familiar and automatic that your brain actually believes that to be more true than all of those "not enough" old patterned thoughts. Right?

We use tools like the Pivot Moment. We use tools like weekly evaluations to spot patterns and practice new beliefs. And week by week, you go from defaulting to self-doubt and I'm not enough and I'm behind—to actually telling yourself more productive, helpful, positive things every single day.

The Path to Internal Calm: Clarity, Confidence, and Control

So that's the process in its simplicity. In order to build that internal talk track that makes you feel calm, in control, confident, at peace—you have to have clarity around who you are and what matters. You have to have confidence that you are enough, just as you are. And you have to have control over the thoughts that used to run your life.

You Can Outsource Everything and Still Feel Like You’re Drowning

And here's why it matters so much when it comes to sustainable work-life balance, okay?

You can build the perfect schedule. You could outsource, like, half of your tasks and still feel like you're drowning—and still feel like your thoughts are working against you. 

Because remember, balance isn't a perfect schedule. I know that would be nice, but it's not really about having an equal amount of time for work and home and yourself and your family and your friends and to work out and all the little things, right? Because you can have that life and still not be happy.

That's one of the key reasons so many women join my coaching programs. It's like—they have everything that they've ever wanted. Their job, their marriage, their house, their kids—all the things. Literally, they're living the goals that they once had for their life. And yet—they're not experiencing joy. They're not present for it. They're not loving the life that they have worked so hard for.

Real Work-Life Balance Starts on the Inside

And the reason for that is their internal thoughts and feelings. They don't match the amazing life that they've created. And because of that, they can never experience balance. Right?

You could have the perfect set of circumstances on the outside, but if it doesn't match the internal experience that you're having, there's always going to be dissonance. Right? You're never actually going to experience balance.

But when you feel at peace and calm and grounded and confident and connected—to who you are, to your goals, to your dreams, to the amazing life you have—you will, in fact, start to make time for all the things that matter most in your life.

Essentially, when you feel calm internally, you make more calm decisions. Right?

If You Want to Prioritize Joy and Rest, You Have to Feel It First

Think about it this way. If your toddler was having a meltdown and internally you were feeling all worked up and angry because of the meltdown—right?—most likely you're gonna respond in a way that you don't want. Right? You're gonna snap. You're gonna yell at them.

But if your toddler was having a meltdown and you felt internally calm, or at least somewhat neutral about it—right? Like their tantrum was totally normal, it was okay, no big deal—your reaction would be totally different. Right? You'd be more calm, you'd be more loving, you wouldn't raise your voice. You'd respond in a much more present and connected way because that's how you're feeling on the inside.

So if you want to be making more balanced decisions in your life—which means that you stop over-prioritizing work all of the time and thinking about work and being more productive—and you start actually prioritizing rest and fun and filling your cup and adventure and spontaneity and joy, all the things that you value and care about in your life, like a life actually worth living…

If you want to do that, then you actually have to experience all of those things on the inside first. And when you do that, then you will prioritize it—not the other way around.

The Process Behind Ambitious and Balanced: Built for Real Work-Life Balance

My friends, after coaching literally hundreds and hundreds of women through my Clarity, Confidence, and Control process, I created this group called Ambitious and Balanced. That's where it comes from—where I teach you the most effective process for creating work-life balance that you feel completely in control of.

It's a three-month commitment, and the group meets weekly starting the week of September 17th, where we will meet on Wednesdays at 3:00 Eastern Time for one hour. And we will meet all the way up till Christmas on a weekly basis.

When you join the program, you get access to all of the material where I will teach you, and you will get access to the video course that breaks down the whole process into bite-sized pieces. You'll have a whole month to go through that course—to watch all the videos, to do the worksheets—so plenty of time to actually do the work and prep before we even get started.

What You’ll Get: Community, Coaching, and a Proven Framework

In the three months, you're gonna learn the Three Cs. You're gonna learn how to apply that to your life. I'm gonna hold office hours, I'll do some live teaching, making sure everybody in the group is connected to each other.

This is gonna be the most amazing cohort I have ever had—because I've never taught the material quite in this way before.

Look, sustainable work-life balance doesn’t have to take a lot of time. Right? You can build new habits in a matter of weeks as you learn a very simple and repeatable process—as I teach it.

Spots Are Limited—Here’s How to Join

Now, look. I only take 10 women into each cohort. I keep it small because I want to track your progress. I want to make sure each individual is getting the attention that they need—that they are applying the principles and the strategies to their own lives.

Which means that I'm going to close the doors as soon as I get to 10, and you're gonna have to wait until 2026 to join the next group. So now is the time. The September cohort already has a handful of women in it, and I would love for you to join me as well.

So your next steps are to go to the website and book a 30-minute strategy call with me—or simply sign up. Right there on that strategy call, we’ll talk through the challenges. We’ll talk about how we’re gonna tackle those together in the program. And we’ll make sure, ultimately, that this is the perfect fit for you.

Simply click on the link in the show notes. It’s on my website: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced

Working moms, I can't wait to continue to talk to you about getting out of survival mode, taking back control of your life, of your balance, of your joy - it’s possible for you too. 

Until next week, let's get to it. 

Rebecca Olson