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There are three beliefs that are at the foundation of work-life balance. I am enough. I am doing enough. I am good enough. These three beliefs make up the Enough Triad. When you believe you have done enough, you stop working late. When you feel like you are good enough, you stop needing to please everyone. And when you believe you are enough, you stop trying to prove yourself. At the core of all imbalanced behaviors is one of these three beliefs and in this episode, I'm going to talk about the inverse of each of them and how they create the foundation of an imbalanced life. In this rebroadcasted episode, I invite you to consider making “enoughness” your new year’s resolution.
Topics in this episode:
Why you need to feel enough in order to feel balanced
3 common “not enough” thoughts that are causing imbalance
Why you shouldn’t believe your “not enough” thoughts
How practicing sufficiency can counter the feeling of not being enough
How over-working is connected to feeling not enough
3 ways to practice your enoughness
Show Notes:
Want to learn the building blocks to creating a balanced life and join other working moms who are doing the same? Check out the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom Collective, a lifetime membership that includes 30 videos and workbooks, weekly coaching and an exclusive community to support you in creating an ambitious and balanced working mom life no matter your circumstance. Check it out at: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/collective.
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Transcript
So, I was on a free breakthrough call the other day with a woman that asked me what work-life balance really meant to me personally and how I created it in my own life.
I thought about it for a moment, and I said, 'I think the amount of time I spend with my kids is enough, and the amount that I work is enough, and the impact that I'm having through my work is enough. And that's why I feel balanced.' The answer struck her because it certainly wasn't what she was expecting, but I 100 percent stand by that thought.
My life feels like enough, and that is why I feel balanced.
On some level, a balanced life is a life of 'enoughness', and I really wanted to spend some time talking about this today - this idea of 'enoughness' because for sure, the opposite is a life of overworking, of proving yourself, having lack of confidence and all sorts of things that cause imbalance.
So, I really want to walk you through how a life of lack or a life where you don't feel enough or you’re doing enough, that that is a life that causes imbalance.
And then we'll talk about how a life that feels enough, a life that feels just right, is a life of balance. And then ultimately, as I do in most of my podcasts, I'll give you a few ways of really shifting your brain so that life can begin to feel enough for you.
Okay, so here's what you have to remember as we begin the conversation around 'enoughness', you need to remember that your thoughts are what generate emotion in your body and your emotions are what fuel your actions. So, when we're talking about a life of 'enoughness', that's kind of a feeling in and of itself.
We want to feel like our life is enough, and that means we have to have thoughts that generate that feeling.
And so, we're going to be talking a lot about thoughts. We're going to be talking a lot about feelings and then we're going to talk a lot about the actions that are fueled by those things as we talk about 'enoughness' today. So, the most common not enough thoughts sound like this:
I'm not doing enough.
I'm not good enough.
Or
I'm not enough.
So, I want to break down each of these three thoughts.
I want you to really take a moment and close your eyes. And think the thought, 'I'm not doing enough'. I'm not doing enough. When you really say that to yourself, how does it make you feel? What comes up for me is failure and anxiousness. 'I'm not doing enough' feels like I should be doing more because as an ambitious person, I know I can do more.
So, if I'm telling myself I'm not doing enough and I'm feeling really anxious and I feel like I'm failing, the most likely thing I'm going to do is just keep doing. I'm going to keep working. I'm going to be keep checking those things off of the list. I'm going to keep the tasks up because I think taking more action is going to fill the gap. It's going to make me feel like it's enough and it's going to help me no longer feel anxious.
So, it's that feeling that we get at the end of the day where we didn't get a particular task done and we didn't send that email, or we didn't prepare for that presentation. And so, we jump online, and we start working a couple of hours at the end of the day because we don't want to feel anxious anymore because we think that if we just keep working, if we keep doing, we're going to end that anxiousness and, on some level, that's true.
But it also is all of the action that we don't want to be taking.
An imbalanced life is a life where you jump on at night and you keep working to get more things done. It's a life about lots of doing. It's a life of overwork. And so that's ultimately not the action we want to take.
So, the only other way to not feel that anxiousness and feel like we're failing - instead of overworking - is which is what most of us have done up till now maybe.
The only other thing we have to do is start to shift these thoughts that make us feel anxious and like we're failing.
We have to shift the thoughts that 'I'm not doing enough' because remember, and we'll talk about this a little later in the podcast, just because you think you're not doing enough isn't actually true. It's just what your brain is offering up to you.
And so, at the end of this time, we're going to really talk about a couple of different ways to really practice shifting your thoughts in order to help you take the balanced action that you want.
Okay, so let's talk about this second thought: I'm not good enough. Now, how does that thought make you feel? For me, it makes me feel inadequate where 'I'm not doing enough' is kind of centered on taking a whole lot of action, being not good enough really feels personal - like I don't meet the standard, like there's something wrong with me. I have what it takes, but I can't really meet the goal.
And when you're feeling like something's wrong with you and you're feeling inadequate, you tend to do one of two things:
One, is you either spend a whole bunch of energy and time beating yourself up and judging yourself and just feeling terrible about you.
Or two, you move into people pleasing. You say 'yes' to all sorts of things in order to prove yourself and prove your value, prove that you are in fact, good enough.
And so once again, this is another moment - if you're constantly judging yourself and beating yourself up and there's a lot of negative self-talk and your fear, constantly people pleasing and you're trying to prove yourself to everyone. It's going to be really hard to create a balanced life because you don't feel really awesome about you, and you're not really living the life you want to live.
You're living the life you think other people want you to live.
So, this third thought, which is kind of similar to the last one, but it has a little bit of a different flavor. The thought is, 'I'm not enough'. It's still very personal. It's not focused on action so much as it's focusing on you as an individual. But what I think makes it different is that this one makes you feel insufficient, like you weren't born with the right stuff.
You never had it to begin with. You're innately lacking. When you feel insufficient, the two common actions I see in the women I work with is number one - you give up from the start. You're very risk adverse and you tend to not do anything unless you can do it perfectly. Or two, you move into proving yourself again and moving into a whole lot of action in order to make up for what feels like this innate lack within you.
This last thought, the one that is 'I'm not enough', and this feeling of insufficiency is one of the most common loops that goes through my head.
I've had to work really hard to re-pattern this into something else, but my brain still offers it to me all the time. For most of my life, I think this is what really drove me to achieve, to get top grades, to go out for ASB, to start college when I was just a junior in high school, to make friends with all of my teachers.
There's this constant need to prove myself.
And then when I started my coaching business, I needed to get everything right. This showed up a lot like perfectionism, and although I would take a whole lot of action, I never really believed that any of that action was going to accomplish my goal, that it would bring in clients, that it would make a certain amount of money in my business.
And so, I would sort of sabotage myself from the very beginning. And so, this thought was really patterned into me and became one I saw that began to create a lot of negative self-talk. It created a lot of imbalance because I would take a whole lot of action without a whole lot of result; and ultimately just made me feel out of the driver's seat of my life.
I'm going to pick up a little bit of that story later and talk about one of the ways I really helped counter that as we as we begin to talk about that in a minute. But just to recap here - we have three 'not enough' thoughts that cause imbalance in life, because they tend to push you to overwork. They push you to prove yourself, and ultimately just feel really bad about you and move you into negative thought spirals about yourself.
Those thoughts are:
I'm not doing enough.
I'm not good enough
or,
I'm just not enough.
And these are the sources of so much imbalance that we create in our life.
And these thoughts aren't even true.
As I was saying before, just because we think them doesn't mean that they're true. There are so many other types of things that we can be thinking about ourselves and our work and what we do in our life that are so much more useful than thinking that you're not doing enough, and you're not good enough, and you're not enough.
And this becomes - these thoughts - just become a trap that have been patterned into us and cause a whole lot of havoc. So, let's close that chapter for a second and talk a bit about the feelings of enoughness and the thoughts that bring about that feeling.
My favorite 'enough thought' is 'I'm exactly where I should be'.
I love this thought - I'm exactly where I should be.
This thought makes me feel very grounded - I don't need anything more, that I don't need to be anywhere else, I'm exactly where I should be. For me, this thought really counters that need to keep doing more. Because that thought 'I need to keep working' or 'I should do that laundry or fold the clothes', - it really moves you into action when you're thinking that you should be doing more.
And it feels almost sometimes like we don't even have control over it. It's just, 'I need to be doing more' and you just kind of focus on that and you just start going.
But this morning, when I was on the ground, I was playing Jenga with my four-year-old this morning; and I had that thought I'm exactly where I should be. Even though we hadn't eaten breakfast yet, I hadn't made the lunches yet. Nobody was dressed yet. This thought really just grounded me in saying 'None of that matters. I don't need to be doing all of those different things. I need to be right here enjoying this moment with my son, even if it means we're running a little bit late or a little bit frantic. Or the kids are late to school.'
Whatever it would be, it would be okay because I'm exactly where I should be. I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing.
So, this second favorite thought tends to bring a lot of 'enoughness in my life because it's just simply pretty direct. It's the thought 'I am enough'. It's a focus on your value and your worth. Another similar thought to this might be 'I have everything I need right now'. This is the thought that really brings your brain on board with what you have instead of what you don't. It focuses on your strengths and your potential inside of you. You don't have to go out and do anything more. You don't have to find something else.
You don't have to learn anything more because you are enough, and you have everything you need right now.
These two thoughts really make you feel sufficient when you really focus in on them like you're not lacking anything. And when you're feeling really sufficient, it brings about this natural sense of confidence.
It makes you feel like you're making right decisions, that you don't need to go research anything more, that you don't have to go, ask anyone else's opinion. You can simply just decide that you have everything you need and that you're enough in order to make those decisions.
I don't need to go ask permission for my husband to go, take some time for myself or to invest in coaching as I speak to a lot of women about. It's just this belief, this fundamental foundational thought that you're enough, that you're worth it, that your time and your money and the resources of your family, that you are worth all of it.
When you feel enough and adequate and sufficient, you don't have to prove yourself to anyone.
You get to celebrate your accomplishments instead of focusing on what you don't get done. You don't go around searching for something to kind of fill you up or someone to praise you or validate you. You don't have to work more in order to prove yourself. You don't need more time with your kids or even a healthier life of some kind.
You don't need anything because you're not lacking anything.
And that's why it creates so much balance in our life when you really begin to pattern these thoughts into your life. It creates this life of balance because you're not focused on lack, you're focused on what you have.
And so, here's what a lot of women do. They know that they need to stop overworking, that they need to hold better boundaries around work, that they need to say no to their boss, that they need to make time for themselves.
It doesn't feel like rocket science to most people. It's just kind of when we think of a balanced life, we think of someone that kind of has really great boundaries and isn't overworking and all of those things. So, most women, when they try to go out and create work-life balance, they try to simply just move into action mode. They just try to stop overworking. They just try to say, 'no more'. They just go take time for themselves on occasion.
But the reason why it doesn't really work, or the reason why it tends to fail after a very short period of time is because they haven't really changed the thoughts and the feelings that are driving those actions in the first place.
They just try to go take new action from this place, a feeling insufficient and from these thoughts that they're not enough and they're not doing enough. And those two things are in really great conflict - the pulling back at work and putting really strict boundaries and at the same time thinking I'm not doing enough and feeling really inadequate - those two things are going against each other.
So, it's never really going to work to go out and just try to take new balanced actions in your life without changing the fuel, the thoughts, and the emotions behind it. So, if you really want to stop overworking, if you really want to say no, if you really want to create better work-life balance in your life, then you have to believe, you have to train your brain to believe, that you're doing enough and that you are enough.
You have to practice feeling adequate and sufficient.
So, let's jump in to talking about how you do that. How do you train your brain? Because remember, your brain is always going to offer up to you the thought that you think the most. It doesn't really mean that thought is true. It's just it means that thought is the thought that's been patterned into your brain and you have to actually retrain your brain by patterning something different into it; something that you can believe, something that's more helpful and more useful to you so that it fuels those actions of not overworking and putting up boundaries, and say no and all of those balanced actions that we're talking about.
So, I want to give you two suggestions on how to really start training your brain to think these 'enough' thoughts.
Now, the first step when we're talking about patterning something new in your brain is that you have to kind of figure out what the thoughts are in the first place that are causing a lot of the inadequacy and the overworking. So, you have to figure out, am I saying to myself that I'm not doing enough? Am I thinking that I'm not good enough or that I'm not enough?
Which of these, or which flavor of these is really causing the imbalance? So really, you first have to get to a point where you name that. And then secondly, once you can really pinpoint that thought, then you want to pick a thought that can counter it. Now, I gave you a couple here on the podcast - things like 'I am enough' or 'I'm doing enough' or 'I'm exactly where I should be'.
These are some of the counter-thoughts that you can be thinking or different thoughts that you can be thinking that are going to be more helpful to you.
But you just need to pick one - one that really resonates with you. And then spend some time really journaling around how that thought is true.
How do you know that you're exactly where you should be?
How do you know that you are in fact enough?
How do you know that you don't need to be doing anything more that you do enough?
Really, really dig into the truth behind it. And you might actually have to come back to your journal multiple times in order to really let it sink in. Because I tell my clients - I would rather them spend five minutes a day, then 30 minutes in one sitting as they dive into something like this, because we're talking about building a habit in your brain.
We're talking about creating a pattern.
And the fastest way to really create a pattern is to do it over and over and over again. So, picking a short period of time and doing it every single day is going to be a lot more effective than just one sitting for a longer period of time.
And so, then the second suggestion I have for you is to really practice sufficiency and adequacy. And I really think that sufficiency is kind of the opposite of feeling not enough. It's the opposite of lack, it's feeling sufficient.
And as I mentioned before, as I really got into my business and I started to see how I felt insufficient all the time, I started to see my brain think that I wasn't enough, and I would tell that to myself. And so, I would take a whole lot of action, but not get a whole lot of results. And then ultimately, I would feel terrible about myself. And I started to feel really insufficient in who I am and in my work.
And so, this simple practice of really feeling sufficiency is one of the things I did to really help me move into a place of enoughness.
And here's how it really works. Find a place to sit that's comfortable. You take some really deep belly breaths and then you focus on how you feel sufficient right here in this very moment.
How is your body warm enough? Your belly may be full enough. How you're not thirsty, how you feel safe, how this chair is sturdy enough to hold your weight.
You really just focus in on your five senses and how they are feeling enough in this very moment.
I would literally just focus on the things in the moment and then watch that sufficiency - literally just see it fill kind of my whole body. It would begin to feel warm. My inside would start to radiate a little bit, and I would really just focus on 'how does that feeling feel'? I would practice it over and over and over again just to help me really in the moment, know that I can feel sufficient whenever I want.
That feeling stems from the way I think it's doesn’t not happen to me. It's not when I work a certain amount of hours or accomplish a certain amount. It's a feeling that's available to me at all times. And so, I would practice it. I would literally just do that over and over again, and it would turn me around almost instantaneously, sometimes; where I can see my brain start to trail down into this 'not enough' land I would do a practice like this for even just a minute, and it would bring me right back to this moment of feeling sufficient.
And countless times I would use this practice - and still use this practice really - to feel like my life is enough and that who I am is enough. Because a life that feels enough is a life that's balanced, a life that doesn't lack anything, a life where I'm not overworking
That's a life of balance.
Ambitious working moms, I hope this topic really spoke to you as it has for me. I have lived a life always striving for more. Never feeling very satisfied or happy or balanced, really until these last five years of my life and I genuinely don't want that for you.
Now, that is why I created the Ambitious and Balanced Working Mom collective. I want you to feel like the life that you've created is enough. I want you to feel like you have everything you need. I want you to feel the sense of calm and balance and control. I don't want you to wait until you burned out, until your kids reach a certain age, until you get a new boss. I want you to feel that right now.
And in the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms collective, I teach you a step-by-step process to really create work-life balance today. It doesn't matter your job. It doesn't matter how supportive your partner is.
It doesn't matter any of life circumstances that you might blame on imbalance.
The Collective is a place where I get you back into the driver's seat of your life and creating the balance that you desire. You can learn more by going to RebeccaOlsonCoaching.com/Collective. And of course, that will be in the show notes.
All right, working moms, let's get to it. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you're looking to create a life where your career and your home life never feel at odds - where you're working less but achieving at the same level a life without regret, where you know you were doing exactly what you want to be doing. Then join the Ambitious and Balanced Working Moms Collective.
This is a group of ambitious working moms who believe that work-life balance is possible for them and are committed to creating it. The program includes 30 short videos and workbooks that teach you how to create the building blocks of a balanced life, as well as weekly group coaching and in-depth support within a private working moms’ community. Oh, and did I mention that when you join the community, you get lifetime access?
That means you have access to coaching and material to help support your balanced life in every season.
You can find out more information and sign up for the collective on my website at RebeccaOlsonCoaching/Collective.
