Stop Surviving (Part 4): From Self-Doubt to Steady Confidence — Ranjita’s Story

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Today, I’m joined by the incredible Ranjita - a powerhouse working mom of three, tax professional, and former Ambitious and Balanced client. This one’s emotional, inspiring, and real. Ranjita shares how grief, burnout, and relentless self-doubt pushed her into survival mode, and how she found her way back to joy, clarity, and confidence. We talk about what it really means to shift the voice in your head, break generational patterns, and reclaim balance in a way that feels deeply personal. You’ll hear the raw truth about what changed when she stopped saying yes to everything and started saying yes to herself. I promise, you’ll leave this episode both teary-eyed and motivated. 

Topics in this episode:

  • Why negative self-talk keeps ambitious women in survival mode 

  • The identity shift required for true work-life balance 

  • Tangible daily practices that changed everything 

  • What happened when Ranjita stopped checking work email on vacation 

  • How affirmations and boundaries created generational change at home

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 feels stuck in the loop of just getting through the day—where you're juggling so much: work and kids and laundry and meetings. And somewhere in there, you're supposed to feel successful, you're supposed to feel grateful, you're supposed to feel fulfilled and joyful.

But instead, what you often feel is just overwhelmed, exhausted, reactive, and disconnected from the 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—if you're ready to feel calm, in control, and alive in your life once again—then I encourage you to go to my website: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousbalanced 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.

Rebecca: Working moms, I am so excited for today's episode. Today we have a very special guest. This is a client from one of my past cohorts of Ambitious and Balanced. Her name is Ranjita Mello, and I'm going to have her introduce herself here in a moment.

But what I'm so excited about in this particular conversation is that she talks about, of course, her experience within Ambitious and Balanced and what that was like, but really, the way that Ranjita showed up for herself in this program is just transformative.

And I'm so excited to have her energy and everything she wants to share with us today about her journey.

So thank you for being here, Ranjita.

Ranjita: You're welcome. I'm super excited to be here.

Rebecca: So good. Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself just to get started?

Ranjita’s Story

Ranjita: Yep. So my name is Ranjita Mello. And actually, I'm an immigrant. I moved to the United States when I was 19 years old to go to college. I'd never been on a plane before that day.

I decided, I want to come to California. Decided I wanted to go to college here, and got on a plane. And I've been here and never left.

I found my soulmate here. Now I have three children with him. Super happy. It's the life I've always dreamed of.

Career-wise, I have always known I wanted to do tax, which is weird for a lot of people. But I wanted to do accounting and tax when I was in eighth grade. And my whole life has kind of been planned around, that's what I want to do, that's what I'm gonna do.

I told myself I was gonna work in San Francisco when I was 16 years old, and I made it happen. And I continued to work in San Francisco.

Rebecca: Gosh. you declare these things and they happen for you. It’s so good! 

Ranjita: Yeah, I’ve been doing that my whole life.

Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. I love that.

Ranjita: Yeah, I've been doing tax in the accounting world for over 15 years now. And I really love what I do. I think it really shows in the way I show up to work every day is I'm just super excited to do what I do.

Rebecca: So good. So tell us a bit about why you decided to join Ambitious and Balanced and where you were sort of at before you joined this program.

A Life-Altering Loss

Ranjita: So what really happened is a couple years ago I had a really dramatic shift in my life, in my career. I had this amazing mentor who was a father figure, who was a friend I talked to about 14 years every day on a daily basis, unexpectedly passed away.

And I never suffered a loss in my life like that before. And the complete trajectory of my career changed.

I went through the day he passed. I was actually 36 weeks pregnant. So I couldn't really grieve because I really had to take care of the child that I was growing. And I really had to push my grief aside and just let the baby be born.

But that was just a huge change in how my life was. I knew my life had completely changed. This was somebody that I worked together with for two jobs. Somebody who spoke at my wedding. I was really close to his family. So when he passed, it really shook my belief in who I was.

Questioning Her Value

He was really big into his career and I saw how much impact he put on his career, and it really made me think, hey, who am I? and what is my value? What's my worth?

And at that point, there was a change in leadership at my work. And there was an environment that I had struggled with, a change in environment and leadership. And I think that really shook my belief as to like, am I valuable? Am I good enough?

And at that point, I had actually thought about reaching out to you, Rebecca, because I heard you on a talk. But I talked myself out of it. I'm like, hey, I don't need help. I got this. Asking for help is weak. That's what I believed. And I've been told, and I don’t ask for help.

So at that point, I didn’t reach out to you. And that’s one of my regrets — that I didn’t. Because I think my life would have been slightly different, even though it’s pretty good right now.

Rebecca: Yeah. So then what was the impact of all kind of the self doubt and the questioning and all the…what you were going through at that time? What was the impact of all of that?

Ranjita: Well, the impact was pretty harsh on my family. I was bringing home all this energy in my family and to my children, to my husband. And I really look at that period of a year and a half or two years of like not being present. I wasn't present with my kids.

Rebecca: It's like, you missed two years of your kids life.

Ranjita: Yeah, I did. And that was really hard. But I was just doing my best to survive at that point. And I didn't even realize it.

Saying Yes to Everything

Rebecca: It was like, oh, this is just what you're supposed to do. Right. You just work hard and you work as many hours as needed to get the job done. And that's… this is the life of a demanding job and a working mom. Right. That's what you just do. And then you just miss two years of your kid’s life.

Ranjita: And all I did was say yes to everything, even when things were not good for me. And I realized it, I just said yes. I worked extra long hours. I made myself available to these extra work events, like happy hours and things like that instead of really spending time with my kids.

And I really felt like I was in a haze for a year and a half too. And one of my regrets, Rebecca, is like not joining your program at that point. And I really wish I had. So I was really living—like if you were looking at a scale of 0 to 10—I was maybe living at a 2.

Rebecca: In terms of happiness, in terms of balance, in terms of everything. Confidence, like everything was a 2?

Ranjita: Yeah, you couldn't really tell because I'm very high functioning at work, so nobody could tell. But at home you could tell.

Rebecca: Something pushed you over the edge though. Something said, okay, this is the time. What was that?

The Moment Everything Shifted

Ranjita: So what happened was I left that environment, right. I decided to like, change my environment. I went to another job. I took a higher role where I was executive facing. I was doing these things that I knew I was built for. But in the back of my mind I could feel that my current employer, there were some big changes coming. I could just feel it because there'd been a lot of layoffs. And while I knew that my job was valuable, I could just feel big changes coming.

At that point, I actually was invited to attend an event where you gave a presentation. And this was a RISE event—Women in Renewable Energy and Sustainable Energy—an event led by one of my friends, Liz Carol. And you spoke again. This was the second time I had seen you. And I walked out of that conversation saying, hey, I really think I need to join this. But it wasn't just that. Liz and Ena was another friend of mine who had also attended one of your cohorts. And they both know me really, really well. They both reached out to me afterwards and they said, hey, you need to join this because they know me. They know. They hadn't really known the struggles I was going through, but they could see it.

Rebecca: I mean, yeah, you thought you were doing a great job hiding it, but in reality, of course, the people that know you best knew this was. You were at 2 out of 10 and you were barely surviving through all of it. Right?

Ranjita: Yep.

The Three C’s That Changed Her Trajectory

Rebecca: And so, so you mentioned on your final evaluation, I was just reading through that, which was, there's so many things that we could talk about that you have like, literally have been transformations from when you started to where you're at now. And one of them you talked about, you talked about Clarity week. You talked about how impactful this like basically this week of learning right, where you learn the process, where, where we coach through the process and we apply it to your life. We go through, you know, what are kind of the fundamentals, the three Cs of, of this program. Tell me about that experience for you.

“In 40 Years, I Had Never Asked Myself Who I Was”

Ranjita: So that was, I think, and I've said this so many times to you. That was so impactful to me. I realized in 40 years of my life, I had never sat down and talked to myself, asked myself who I was and what it is that's driving me to go out on a daily basis and do things.

Through that week, I actually sat down and journaled for the first time in my life. And I realized that since the time I wake up until the time I go to bed, there was so much negative self talk in my head. Everything was driven by what is wrong with you? Why can't you do this?

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah, you're not enough. You're not good enough. You should be doing more. You're failing in everything.

“You Are Not Good Enough”: The Voice That Played on Repeat

Ranjita: Right. That was really, really hard for me. Everything from, you know, waking up in the morning to my workouts, that's the first thing I do, like consistently every day, my workouts was centered around telling me, you are not good enough. Why can't you do this better? Like that's how I was talking to myself.

Rebecca: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And on some level didn't even realize it. Right. I'm sure you had some semblance of an understanding of what was going on. Maybe, maybe not. But it was really during this week when we took some intentional time to pause and say, hold on, let's actually get in tune with what that voice sounds like and the impact it's actually having in your life. So what did you realize through that?

Breaking the Cycle: From Harsh Self-Talk to Parenting With Love

Ranjita: Is that not only was I doing that to myself, but it was also starting to come out in the way I was talking to my kids. But that's because that's what I've always known. I had the life I had before I moved to America. I was in boarding school. Everything was stick, stick, stick. There were no parents. There was never “do it from a place of love.” It was “do it or you suck.” Basically.

And I really started realizing that, hey, I'm talking to myself this way. I'm also talking to my kids this way. And one of the things that happened that week when I was coming to this realization—and I told you this—you asked me to print a picture of me as a little girl, put it in front of me. And I still have it. It's all in front of me.

Rebecca: I love it. Yeah.

Parenting Through a New Lens: “Would I Talk to My Daughter That Way?”

Ranjita: And my, the picture I have here, she looks like what my 6-year-old looks like right now. So now the way I talk to myself is I just think about, hey, would I talk to my daughter that way? Would I talk to my son that way?

Like right now, every time they need me, I uplift them. Everything is about bringing them up. They're told on a daily basis that they're the dream child, the child I've always dreamed of.

Breaking the Cycle: From the Whip to Supportive Success

Rebecca: Oh, I love it. Things you were not doing before. Let's just be clear, right? Like you've completely changed your tone towards them. As you learned how to change your tone towards yourself, that became something you then did with your kids.

And I remember we had, not just you and me, but the whole cohort had this conversation around kind of breaking this almost generational pattern. The cycle that we as ambitious women have learned somehow, which is, we need the negative self talk in order to be successful and driven and achieve our goals.

And that—not universally, but pretty close—everyone related to that in the cohort. I would say that's true of all of my clients. There's this thing, I call it the whip inside of you, right? That's just telling you always that you should be doing more and you should be better.

And that whip inside of us—on some level—we mistake that for being the thing that actually drives success. And so I remember this conversation that we were having: How do we make sure we don’t do this to our girls? How do we shift this for them?

And I remember specifically I said, you’ve got to shift it in you first. Right? That’s how this is going to happen. You become the example for them of what it looks like to have a more supportive internal voice and still be just as successful.

And that became almost like the problem to solve: how do you become just as successful without that negative internal dialogue all the time? Right? And of course, we had lots of good conversation around that over the three months that we were together. What did you learn about that? I’m curious.

Daily Practices That Changed Everything

Ranjita: That was life changing to me—was first of all, connecting with myself on a daily basis. So now the negative self talk almost isn't there, but every now and then it comes out. But I've realized that it's active work for me to tend to that on a daily basis.

And nothing’s wrong with me if it resurfaces every now and then. And when it does, I just tackle it the way I do. But it's daily work. Every morning, setting the intention.

And now what I do on a daily basis—I have my workbook for my job or for anything that I do during the day. Before I start anything, I write my affirmation: I am strong, I am capable, and I am blessed.

And I have these pencils that all of my children have, and they're like affirmation pencils. You can see it.

Rebecca: Oh, my gosh, co cute.

Ranjita: I am strong.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Ranjita: They all know that because I give them - so every time I have birthday parties, I give packets of those pencils to the kids.

Rebecca: Oh, I love that. So good.

Ranjita: Snd the mom’s reach out. You know, they ask me where I get it.

Rebecca: Where do you get these? Yeah, I love that. Yeah. so good.

Ranjita: That's completely changed for me.

Why Affirmations Finally Worked

Rebecca: And I don't remember if you had an affirmation practice at all before this program. Did you? Because it's not something that's like, one of the core practices. I do talk about affirmations and the impact of them, but really, it's like your brain needs to believe that. Right?

And that's where I think a lot of people—for affirmations, it doesn't work for a lot of people, or it just, yeah, becomes not a useful practice to them because they're saying words that they don't believe. Their brain is sort of arguing with them about it.

From an App to True Belief

Ranjita: It wasn't prior to the program. Like I said, I had this affirmations app. Every day an affirmation would come in. I'm like, oh, good, I'm doing my job. I'm doing what I is. I have an affirmations.

And now you can actually feel it in the morning when I do it. I say it in my mind, I write it down, and then I say it out loud because I want it to sink in, and I want to believe that I am blessed and I am capable of hard things.

Cultivating a New Inner Voice

Rebecca: Yeah, all the things. Yeah. So I almost, like, I don't want people to hear that kind of practice and think, oh, that's, you know, that's kind of all I have to do.

It's what we really do is we cultivate a really intentional voice inside of you. We do that through practicing what you want to believe about yourself, finding evidence for how that is true every single day, and then deepening that belief in who you are and what makes you amazing and remarkable.

And we do that in a variety of ways. One of them is through more of like a traditional affirmations. But there's so many other ways that we do that to get your brain on board with the idea that you are, in fact, amazing and that you are capable and that you are unique and you are valuable and you have so much to offer this world.

And it's possible for you to figure out all the hard things in life—everything from a major issue at work to work-life balance and balancing your schedule. Right. Which is also super hard and complex at the same time. You're very capable of it. Oh, I love it.

Ranjita: Yeah. And we talk about, you know, finding the evidence to support the affirmation. So when I say I am strong, I remember this exercise we did at the cohort, which was writing down three pages of all the hard things we have done.

So I keep going back to those three pages constantly. So every time I have a moment of self-doubt, I'm like, hey, I did that. I can do that. I can do this.

Rebecca: We could do this. Right? We could tackle this moment.

Ranjita: Yeah. This will past. But I've done so many hard things in life that, you know, I can do it. Yeah. It's just finding evidence to support what I want to believe and tell myself every day.

From Harsh Criticism to Compassion

Rebecca: So the developing, kind of lessening the negative self talk, I mean, you're saying like, it's really gone away. Like you probably went from it being, you know, dialed up to a 10 to dialed up to like a 1 or 2 at this point. Right? Huge, dramatic difference. 

Ranjita: Totally.

Rebecca: But not even that. You've also—and this is actually a separate thing and I want to make sure we're talking about it separately—you've done that, but you've also developed a different internal voice. Right? You've replaced that voice very intentionally with one that is supportive, compassionate, loving toward you. Just in the same way that you might talk to your kids.

And so you do. There's been a development of a new internal voice inside of you. And I'm just curious, what has that done for you? You’ve developed to lessen the negative voice and then increased this more compassionate, loving voice. What's been the impact of that in a tangible way?

Clarity Instead of Shame

Ranjita: I think it's helped me see clarity in things. One example is before, if I had a hard day at work, I’d come home, and let’s say my husband and I, for a fleeting moment, were not getting along. Before, I would just say, “Hey Ranjita, what's wrong with you that you can't even have an open conversation with your husband?”

Redefining Conflict

And now, when inadvertently something happens—because when you're married to somebody who is from a different culture, who has their own cultural expectations, and I have my own—there's going to be conflict.

But now, I don’t look at conflict as a bad thing.

A New Way of Speaking Up

So now that self talk tells me, “Hey, go tell him what you want. Go tell him how you felt about something that happened.”

And he might not even realize that he did it, right? So now I just go to him and I'm like, “Hey, I felt this way. I'm not sure if you wanted me to feel that way, but I did, and it felt pretty bad.” What can we do about that?

Becoming Her Own Advocate

Rebecca: You become so much more of your own advocate for what you're feeling, what you need, how you want to be treated. And yeah, I remember you've talked a lot about that in relation to, of course, your marriage, how you show up as a parent. And I assume that has had its impact at work as well.

When Anxiety Took Over

Ranjita: Yeah, I really think so. Because right before when I was starting my cohort with you, I was having a lot of anxiety problems where I couldn't breathe. And I even went and got my heart tested because I thought, something is physically wrong with me—this cannot be normal.

I wasn't sleeping. I was so stressed out with all these potential changes coming down the pipeline. And I went through this whole series of tests… and at the end of the day, nothing was physically wrong with me.

Rebecca: Yep, nothing was physically wrong with you.

Proof in the Data

Ranjita: But I have this aura ring that I wear that basically tracks everything, and I've had it for two and a half years. So it’s been recording my life—my sleep, my recovery, my stress—for two and a half years.

And yesterday it sent me a message saying, “Hey, over the last three months your heart rate has gone down. So you're clearly doing things that are beneficial for you.”

Rebecca: Oh my goodness.

Ranjita: Good work. That’s literally data telling me it’s working.

Rebecca: Oh my gosh, yeah. Which tells you your anxiety has lessened. It tells you there's less pressure. It tells you that you are handling the stress of your daily life—a demanding job and being a mom of three—in a way that is significantly different than what you were doing before.

Ranjita: Yeah, I literally have chills as I'm talking about it.

Rebecca: I know, I did too. That's amazing. Data doesn't lie. The Aura ring doesn't lie.

Ranjita: And I am really data driven. So to me that’s like just evidence that I already knew I was feeling better. I've been meditating a lot, but I've been journaling every single day since clarity week. I've never journal before in my life.

The Value of Writing It Down

Rebecca: Yeah, Never. Yeah. That's crazy. That's amazing. I love it. And you know that's not necessarily something I tell you to do in this program, right? I suggest writing these things down. There's lots of research that says not necessarily. I mean, we could talk a lot about what journaling actually means and what you're doing in your journaling, but just writing your thoughts down and getting those things down on paper in any format—whether it's a bullet point or if it's a story or whatever it might be. Lots of research shows that there is extreme value in that. 

Your brain… something happens when you put pen to paper. Right. And you literally physically start to do that. So I love that.

The Advocate Voice in Action

I also know that because you also wrote this in your final evaluation. You talked about boundaries. And I think that this is a huge impact that this, this advocate voice that has shown up for you. The self compassionate, loving, I'm capable, I'm… this is possible for me. Right. I can do hard things. 

This voice that, that you've really cultivated over the last several months has displayed itself in really tangible ways, like your ability to say no at work and to put up really strong boundaries and to like push back in a way that you were not doing before. 

Can you share a little bit about that?

A New Approach to Time Off

Ranjita: Yeah. Yep. So case in point, I took last week off. I hadn't taken a week in, I don't know, like how long. Years. It's been years. I had a week off. I think between my last two jobs, I took a week off and so I took the week off.

Normally I don't do that. Second, if I take time off, I continue to check my emails to make sure there's no fire drills, to make sure that I'm not the bottleneck holding anybody back.

The shift in me has been last week I worked on Monday because something needed to be done and it wasn't somebody else's expectations of me. It was my expectation of myself. I need to do this because it will make me feel better and it'll make me feel good about what I'm doing. It's not about anybody else.

Then Monday at the end of the day, I sent a note to my boss and I said, hey, I'm off now. I think everybody is set. Have a good week.

Rebecca: And that was it.

Ranjita: I didn’t check my email since Monday night.

Rebecca: Oh, so good!

Sticking to your boundaries.

Ranjita: And it shows up every now and then. My outlook says, you know, like 130 emails. And the other day I just went, quit. I'll talk to you when I talk to you. Because nobody is going to, no physical harm is going to come to anybody because I'm not there. And everybody is capable of handling things that they're meant to handle. And it is not my job to worry about things when I'm taking the time off that I was promised as part of my compensation. This is my compensation.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Ranjita: And my kids, the things I'm looking forward to doing this week is being like, I got the summer pass, bowling pass for the summer.

Rebecca: That’s fun. I love that.

Ranjita: And then I make dinner with every day. So I just think about those things that I want to do that make really happy and how happy my kids are to see me all the time. And they think I'm the best thing that I ever walked on this planet. 

Like, who doesn't want feeling that way constantly? It fills me so much. Like, like it's like a positive elixir, you know, like they just look at me and they're like, you're the best. And I'm like, oh, thank you, thank you.

Rebecca: I am, aren't I? Like, thank you so much. I'm so glad you're noticing and acknowledging my amazingness. So good. I love it. Yeah. You're a crazy, amazing, wonderful mom.

Ranjita: That's what they talk to themselves now. My 3 year old was playing the other day and she's playing with her Legos and she goes, I am so cool.

The Unexpected Byproduct of Self-Work

Rebecca: I love it. I love it. That's so great. I love when like, that's a byproduct of the work that you've done with your. On yourself. Right. Like, that isn't something we could have anticipated was going to happen when we started this program. You know, I couldn't have said, yep, this is how your kids are going to start talking to themselves once you start talking to yourself that way. Right. 

But it's been, what a beautiful, amazing byproduct of the work that you've been doing on for yourself. Like that I want you to really, like, take that, take that in, like receive that. Because this journey has been. You've put in the effort to make these internal changes happen.

A Proud Parenting Moment

Ranjita: Yeah. I mean, my husband, we both looked at each other when she said this and there was joy in his smile and there was. We were just so proud of that moment because she really believes it.

Rebecca: Oh my goodness. So good. So good. I love it. I love it. Well, we'll keep that as long as that innocence as long as possible. Until the world pushes back and she, has developed an internal voice to push back again. So I love it. I’ll continue believing it.

“You Got This” in the Workplace

Ranjita: I actually write this down, Rebecca. One of the changes that's happened to me in my work notebook, you'll notice, like, before, where I have, you know, a lot of zoom meetings and I take notes or whatever during these, meetings that I've been having for the past year and a half, where every week I have an exact facing meeting. And these meetings can be really intense. It's all about this one particular project that's very high value. A lot of these meeting notes… now in the middle of my notes, I write, you got this. Like, you got this. It's just like all over my notebook. And it's just like propping myself, prepping myself while the meeting is continuing. And if I notice that, you know, I feel. I'm feeling a little bit anxious or whatever, I just. Nobody knows what I'm writing, right?

Rebecca: Yeah, of course, of course. You're just writing little statements about yourself, little affirmations, little things you want to remember and like shifting, shifting your energy into that place. Right? Yep.

Ranjita: And I'm like, 10 more minutes, you got this, you got this. You can do this. After 10 minutes, you can go do something else. But like, 10 minutes, just keep it up. Just keep your head up.

From Inner Change to Outer Balance

Rebecca: You know what? One of the things I love about, so much of this conversation is we're talking about your internal transformation that's happened. Right? We're talking about changing your self talk. We're talking about changing the way you feel and lessening anxiety.

But, you know, this program is a work life balance program. Like, literally the goal at the end of this program is for you to be able to prioritize differently in your life, to put yourself, put your family above, work and productivity, and yet still be just as productive and successful as you were before.

The Path to True Balance

It's a really tangible goal that I would expect to see in your calendar as like, data points of that. Right. And I would expect, I would expect that externally we're going to see a lot of things that look differently and how you're managing your time and how you're speaking to people and what you're prioritizing and what. And all those things. Right.

And yet your path there. You know, obviously I can say this, I can say this, in so many different ways, but I think listening to you talk about the transformation just gives so much more weight to the process.

You know, the path there is through the internal journey. We're going to get you to that place where you're putting up boundaries and you're saying no and you're managing your calendar and your time differently and you're prioritizing yourself and you're actually present with your family. 

We're going to get there through shifting the way you talk to yourself, building unshakable confidence, learning how to be your biggest advocate, and to build that self compassion and all those things into inside of you so that those become the things that… that's the way you prioritize life. Right. That's the way you balance life.

Ranjita: Yeah. We talked about what work life balance means. Right? That's how we started our conversation. And, and you said it's a feeling and it's exactly what I've - and at that point, honestly, to tell you the truth, I'm like what the F. Like what?

Rebecca: Yeah, you're probably not the only one. Right, Right. I don't mean bait and switch you, but I mean we got to get to the heart of it immediately.

Ranjita: I don't know what that means. Like just give me like points as to how I can fix things.

Rebecca: Yes.

Ranjita: Right.

Rebecca: Meaning, like fix my schedule. Yes. Not work so much, you know, feel better. Like tell me what specifically I externally have to do in order to do those things and achieve that.

Ranjita: Give me like a three step of tangible things I can do. Which you did eventually. But we still had to sort through the inner workings first and the inner  monologue to actually come up with what balance means and what.

Rebecca: Yes. Yeah, of course. Otherwise it's just an esoteric idea. Right. And we have to put some like tangible legs to it. I am curious, how would you describe the process, the Ambitious and Balanced process or the steps in your own words?

Ranjita: I think the way you had it organized is first think and talk about what balance means to you. Right? Yeah.

Rebecca: Like clear. It's got to be clear. It's got to be clear.

Shifting Away from “Always Available”

Ranjita: And I wanted my boss, my colleagues to always know that I'm dependable, I'm available. And that was a major shift in how I identified myself as a worker. I can tell you now I'm not always responsive on the moment. I think about things before I respond. I'm not always available. I… I'm available during the times I need to be available. And obviously there are some exceptions when you're working in a project that's super intense and requires that, but that is an exception. That's not the norm. 

Rebecca: And it's something that you decide, which is really different. We talk a lot about that. It's okay if you want to work past 5 o'clock or work on the weekend. I just want you to decide that from an intentional place. I want you to give me good enough reasons for doing that. Not just because you feel like you have to, not just because it's like the default way of operating.

Creating a New Identity for Balance

Ranjita: Yeah. I think that Clarity week at the start where you talked about what does balance mean to you? What is your identity currently? Why is your identity. And then is there an identity actually getting… is the roadblock from what you want in terms of balance? And then maybe it's time to create a different identity that still resonates with you, that still makes you feel like you're succeeding at home, work, and what can you do to make that constant and consistent?

Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. So clear, really clear around what the goal is ultimately, like what balance even means to you. And then it's sort of identifying like who you need to be.

Ranjita: Yeah.

Aligning the “Who” with the “What”

Rebecca: And what you need to believe about yourself, your identity, if you will, you around who you need to be in order to achieve that. Right. So like, align the who. 

Sometimes I'll say it like that. Like, you gotta align the who with the what. Right. Because at the moment those things are likely not congruent with each other. Right. You have to actually shift a bit of who you are and how you operate internally in order to create the balance that you've defined for yourself. Right.

Redefining Confidence

And in the sense that I use as I just call that confidence, right. We just talk about. And confidence is really just belief in self. It's the way you talk to yourself. It is, it is… it's kind of an emotional state that is steady and sturdy and consistent no matter what's going on around you in life — if you fail, if you don’t get the desired result, if somebody's upset, or if your kid is having a meltdown. It's that level of belief in self.

Clarity, Confidence, Control

Rebecca: And then to your point, like, and then it's about actually doing some things to make that consistent. Like, and I might, the C I use is control. That's how I talk about it — clarity, confidence, control. And that control piece is leaning into daily practices and strategies to keep your mind in order, keep your emotions in order, prioritize in the ways that you want and do that in a really consistent way.

Work-Life Balance Is Daily Work

Like work life balance isn't like set it and forget it. And I know we like to think that sometimes like, I'm going to achieve that and then I get to maintain that once I achieve it without a whole lot of effort. Like that actually isn't how it works. 

You achieve that level of work life balance and that level of happiness and success you want — and then it requires continual work. It requires you to maintain a mindset, an emotional space, and priorities in such a way that maintains. Now, that doesn’t have to be hard, right? That doesn’t have to be a lot of time at all. No, but it does have to take some intention.

Ranjita: Yeah, I think the daily work and the work from home transition, which have the “non-negotiables” that we work through.

Rebecca: Yeah, we really lean into.

“The work from home transition has completely changed my evenings with my children and my husband.”

Ranjita: Those are my non-negotiables now. So like I love that the exercise is non negotiable seven days a week. It's not always hard exercise. I'm not yelling at myself anymore. I'm actually out there in my garage having a good time and telling myself to push myself harder. But it's all coming from a good place. But with that non negotiable, the daily work every morning I do it — sometimes on weekends I feel like it's like muscle memory. It just naturally happens. But the work from home transition has completely changed my evenings with my children and my husband.

Rebecca: Oh, so good because good.

Visualizing the Evening Ahead

Ranjita: I actually like sit down and visualize for 2 minutes, less than 2 minutes. What do I want to get out of this evening? Like I want to see the smiles on my kids’ faces when I pick them up. I want to feel good about, first of all, how my day’s been. So I sit down and write about the three wins. And then I always plan for tomorrow anyway. So it doesn't take a lot of time. Takes me 10 minutes at the most. And the things that I got to do tomorrow. 

Then I visualize picking up my children, how happy they're gonna be, their smiles on their faces. And then I visualize making dinner — and it's something I love to do. Cooking is very therapeutic. I visualize making dinner, I visualize hanging out with them, and then I visualize taking them to bed because it's also like super… I just love it because they're just—

Rebecca: Like so cuddled all snugly and all the things that they're not going to be always. But yes, I agree.

Daily Non-Negotiables

Ranjita: I know those two pieces have been super non-negotiable to me that I do every single day. But I realized that if I don't do it, where there have been moments I haven't done, I notice an immediate impact on how I talk to myself.

Small Practices, Big Shifts

Rebecca: Sure, yeah, yeah. Which is great because it just reinforces how important these are. And to your point, like this is like 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the afternoon. That's the whole point in this program. I wanted to give you two of the most transformative, impactful practices that take less than 10 minutes — because that’s really all it takes. But it does require some consistency. It doesn't require a lot of time, but it does require you giving yourself some space to think, to feel intentionally, and to prioritize in the way that you want.

Ranjita: Right. Yeah.

Tangible Transformation

Rebecca: So I love that we're sort of ending on this note too because I feel like as we talk about internal transformation, that can feel so like loosey goosey and a little like there's something not super tangible about that. And yet we're also talking about really tangible things that you are doing and that we learn in this program how to do that. I walk you through that internal process and the actual daily practices and things that are going to be required in order to maintain it. So it's this. If you listen to this podcast, you know that I'm a very practical, like linear thinker. I tend to break things down step by step. You know, most every woman that works with me is also likely that way. Right. 

A Step-by-Step Plan to Balance

That's one of the reasons why they're drawn to me is because of the way I structure things. And I want to make it very… I want you to see like A plus B plus C down the line. I want you to see the process. And it really is, it is that way. This program is designed with that kind of linear strategy to get to a place of work-life balance.

Ranjita: Yeah. Not to talk about myself, but you work with some very smart women. Yeah. We are looking for step-by-step directions of how to find this balance, but we need to see it. We need to see the evidence behind it. And I feel myself like, my mind clicking and things making sense. As you would break down the steps, I'm like, oh, that makes sense, that makes so much sense.

Rebecca: I love it.

Ranjita: Ah, daily work has a daily impact.

Final Reflections

Rebecca: Yeah Ranjita. I feel like I could just talk to you forever. Thank you so much for being here on the podcast, on this episode, sharing your transformational experience. I know there's some vulnerability in that, to share that. So I'm just so grateful that you came today. Last question for you. Anybody that is listening that is thinking about joining Ambitious & Balanced, joining the next cohort, what would you say to them?

“My Only Regret Is Not Joining Sooner”

Ranjita: I would say, my only regret of this program is I didn't join sooner. I really believe that if I had joined two years ago, two and a half years ago, when I was going through this transformational change in my personal and professional life, I really think I would have gotten out of the “why is all this happening to me?” and into “what can I do to get what I need out of the situation?” mindset. My only regret is not joining sooner.

And I used to be a very critical person. I still am. I need you to show me evidence that it works. And if you've gotten somebody like me to kind of change the way I approach life, approach my work, and still not punish myself on a daily basis—it's just… I would say join today. Because you don't even know what it could do for you. 

If you really engross yourself into this program—and it's not a huge time commitment, it's really little blocks of time that you dedicate to making your life better.

Now Is the Perfect Time

Rebecca: Yep, yep. I love it. So good. Thank you. Thank you for that endorsement, if you will. And it is the perfect time to join. I am forming the next cohort right now. We actually don't start until September, so we've got lots of time to plan. There’s no excuse that you can't make it happen in your schedule—because you have so much time to block off the required time for our weekly calls and other commitments.

And for the first time, I am integrating a video course into this as well, that you’ll get access to one month before we start, which is why I’m forming the cohort right now.

Take the Leap Into Your Transformation

So if you are one of the 10 amazing women that wants to be in this next cohort, now is the time to join. I would love to speak to you about what this program is and how it can serve your needs and goals right now.

👉 Please go to rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/ambitiousandbalanced. You’ll find all the dates for the next cohort, when we start, when the weekly calls are, and when you’ll get access to the video course. And of course, there’s a link there to schedule a 30-minute call with me if you’d like to talk personally and make sure you’re the perfect fit for the program.

Please, please, please do that right now—while you’ve listened to this testimonial and feel inspired. Now is the perfect time to join me, jump on a call, and make the rest of this year your transformation.

Rebecca: Thanks again, Ranjita.

Ranjita: Thank you.

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

Rebecca Olson